Dr. Tim Lau: On the question of dissolution and how long people stay together, one of the reasons that has been theorized for why the divorce rate has plateaued at 50% is because essentially people are now cohabiting rather than getting married more often.

For example, while we may see marriage as an indicator of stability, it appears from the current rate of marriage breakdown that heterosexual union is not an absolute guarantee of stability.stability is a desirable value, but may be achieved in a variety of family forms.long lasting and stable relationships have been maintained outside the bounds of legal marriage, as well as within same-sex relationships.

I argued first of all that survey data from a number of surveys in both the United States and Canada—and this includes the StatsCan survey, which comes up with incidence rates that are somewhat higher than any of the other surveys that have obtained data on family violence, and also only focused on violence towards women—all indicate that the majority of men, approximately 75% of men, in fact, remain non-violent throughout marriages, according to their wives, who were interviewed by female interviewers in this research, and that a sub-group of men are violent once, and a smaller sub-group are violent repeatedly.