MARGARET CHO (Q1: #1 of 12)

Grounds for divorce should be anything, really. Halitosis or identity theft, sudden acts of stupidity or intelligence, sexual incompatibility or boredom. Anything. When your partner becomes intolerable to you, why suffer? What reason is there to stay together? That is just a waste of time. I don't understand those who try to "make it work." I have never seen anyone succeed. But this is all dependent upon a future for marriage that would include same-sex marriage. As I have stated earlier, marriage ceases to be, and should be erased for all time, if it is not available to all Americans.

JOHNATHAN AMES (Q3: #2 of 12)

I've never been married and therefore have never been divorced. (I've had 386 relationships, but nothing legal. There have been some illegal relationships, but no tickets were issued.) My friends are too nuts to get married or, conversely — there's always the converse to idiotic arguments — they're actually too sane to get married. It's like a Philip K. Dick novel: the people who are too insane to get married are actually sane, because marriage and subsequent divorce will drive you nuts. So you might as well stay single and nuts and not go through hell and an expensive wedding and end up nuts in the end, anyway. It's like a math theorem.

Among my friends who have gotten married and then divorced (this is a scientific study of two people that I know), I don't recall hearing any talk of "grounds for divorce." In both cases, the couples stopped getting along, did couples counseling, then separated. Maybe there's only grounds for divorce when there's money involved. Like me, my friends are all poor, so there's no fighting over assets.

Having said all this, I have no idea if the grounds for divorce are too stringent or too lax. But this isn't indicative of much. I have no idea about most things in life. I do wish people didn't get so hurt by love and romance, marriage and divorce. I wish we could all be dogs, living in some kind of dog Eden. We could all just run around through beautiful fields and forests, screw doggy-style as much as we liked, and sleep in a big, cozy communal pack at night. I think that would be very good, and preferable to human heartache.

SUSAN SHAPIRO BARASH (Q3: #3 of 12)

The reasons people divorce have definitely evolved over the past few decades. A woman's autonomy (i.e. her ability to earn money and to have the power that accompanies money) has clearly affected her view of divorce and her lifestyle decisions thereafter. Longevity for both men and women is also a factor. We live a long time and can reinvent ourselves as we so choose. If a marriage is unsatisfying for either a woman or a man, if one of the partners falls in love with someone else at the workplace, if one partner is unfaithful and wants to stay but is found out — each of these scenarios can lead to divorce. But we must remember that the rate of remarriage in the U.S. is at 75 percent. So while divorce is prevalent, so is remarriage. It's a triumph over adversity.

MAGGIE GALLAGHER (Q3: #4 of 12)

Well, the evidence suggests that both young people and married folks are taking marriage more seriously than they did twenty years ago. Polls show that young Americans are twenty points more negative about divorce, no doubt because they've seen so much, and they see it from the child's point of view.

A recent study compared the attitudes of married Americans toward marital permanence. To their surprise, scholars found that married people are more committed to "marriage for life" than they were twenty years ago.  This should not be surprising, because 1984 was just about the height of the divorce revolution.

Compared to fifty years ago, I think the "grounds for divorce" are much more nebulous and lax. What does a spouse do to "deserve" the ax?  Standards are much less clear. But compared to twenty years ago, the negative consequences of divorce are producing a marriage renaissance.

DAVID MOATS (Q3: #5 of 12)

Generalization is impossible. There are plenty of men and women who are able to absorb hardship and pain, not just for the kids, but for the sake of a relationship that is still meaningful, despite mistakes. Some people hold onto hopeless situations for the sake of the kids or out of economic necessity. In other circumstances, a single betrayal may signal a fundamental flaw and may inflict a pain so large that jettisoning the whole relationship is the only possible course.

Context is all. My great-grandfather was a scoundrel who left the family penniless for long periods, dying a sick old man in a brothel in Boise. Would divorce have been better? In those days, who knows? These days someone in my great-grandmother's position would not have put up with it for a minute, and she would have a better chance to support the family herself.

ETHAN WATTERS (Q3: #6 of 12)

I'm not sure whether this trend is going one way or another.

These days, we seem to think about marriage with a single notion in our heads: "soul mate." I hate the term, but there it is. We no longer marry for sexual access, financial security, entry into adulthood, pressure from parents. It's just soul mate, soul mate, soul mate. The thing is, the old criteria for partner selection were easier to gauge. Is he a good provider? Is she a good mother? For us, clear metrics are hard to find. No one knows what the hell "soul mate" even means.

We seem more romantic about marriage than other generations, but this leads to the possibility that we will be quicker to leave our unions when the romance hits the rocks. "Honey, I've decided that you're no longer my soul mate. Goodbye." This would be a very bad trend for the institution of marriage. To prevent this from happening, I think we need to begin having a generational conversation about what makes a good partner. Stop talking "soul mate" and get down to brass tacks.

JIM DE SÈVE (Q3: #7 of 12)

Once a relationship of similar sexualities has devolved to a point where divorce is seriously considered, it is hard to pull it back from the abyss. I'm sure that for some, marriage fits into the consumerist, disposable American mentality. For others, marriage is still something to preserve. I think the Christian right is dangerous to couples (i.e., opposing marriages of gays and lesbians). But they do seem to keep people from throwing in the towel too soon.

But divorce — or the idea that one can divorce — is an interesting topic. On a policy level, there is the increasingly anachronistic and ridiculous Catholic church — which, with its bizarre edicts, seems to be ejaculating itself into non-relevance. But most institutions accept that divorce is a reality, because couples fall out of love and circumstances change.

The war over divorce in this country nearly split the Protestant church. When the dust settled, the landscape of marriage had permanently altered. Legal divorce marked the departure from survival-based feudal marriage to a new form of marriage based on love. When the love is gone, so is the marriage.

That divorce is common is a sign to me that love in this country is immature. Love, balance, harmony with the world are not commodities in our culture. Infidelity is a symptom. The only real grounds for divorce are the separating of two hearts.

MOLLY JONG-FAST (Q3: #8 of 12)

The future of divorce is bright and clean and includes fast service. In the future, divorce lawyers will set up shop in little drive-through windows. In the time it takes to get an In 'N Out burger, you will be able to finalize child custody and decide who gets the silver cake server.

KEITH BLANCHARD (Q3: #9 of 12)

I think our standards for what is acceptable in a relationship are rising along with everything else. It's part of that gradual perfectionism that helps evolving creatures stay on top. So in the very same way that black-and-white TV was acceptable only until the advent of color, the more couples talk with other couples, the less likely they're going to put up with a relationship that's deemed "below average." The limbo bar keeps ratcheting down: for our grandfathers, it was enough to be a good provider (and for grandma to be a docile doormat); our fathers had to learn to be a bit more sensitive and pay a little attention to the kids; but we're fully immersed in delivering a fantasy experience for our children, as well as being the sensitive husband and the good provider, none of which went away with the new duties. It leads to more happiness and deeper communication, but also more stress and frustration as you try to keep up. People today will divorce over things their forbears would have thought silly and trivial, but we're living in a different world now. If you'll excuse me, I have to diaper my baby. There's a Fun Fair at 12:00, and if I'm late, I'll have to have a relationship talk with my wife after I commute home.

DARCY COSPER (Q3: #10 of 12)

I can't imagine anyone really takes divorce lightly. Even in cases in which it's not emotionally devastating — if there are such cases, which I doubt — it must be at least expensive, inconvenient and annoying.

Perhaps people are more likely to divorce these days because the expectations of what marriage is and what the institution will provide have become less practical, more romantic and therefore unrealistic. Which is to say: if one's expectation of marriage is that it will provide a lifetime of emotional security and unfaltering tender love and devotion — in short, what popular culture suggests to us a marriage should be — it wouldn't be difficult, at the first sign of strife, to feel that the marriage is a failure.

BLAISE K (Q3: #11 of 12)

Well, I do think that so many people divorce, it's not considered such a big deal anymore. It's often considered the solution to a bad marriage when the problem was getting married in the first place. Among the married couples I've known, it seems like most things are forgivable, but there's little-to-zero tolerance of cheating and the deceit that goes along with it. I remember, years and years ago, seeing Johnny Carson interview Grace Jones. It was back in the '80s, when she was living with Dolph Lundgren. Carson, who'd been through a highly publicized dirty divorce, asked Grace Jones why she and Lundgren hadn't tied the knot. Jones said she didn't believe in marriage. When Carson asked why, she replied, "because I don't believe in divorce."

DR. SCOTT HALZMAN (Q1: #12 of 12)

Before the Second World War, only one in seven couples divorced. Today, that rate approaches one in two.  Research supports what I see in my own clinical practice: people are separating and divorcing for the wrong reasons.  Admittedly, infidelity, drug/alcohol abuse or physical abuse sometimes impart such hardships on marriage that a divorce is justified.  But, most frequently, couples divide because they’ve grown apart or lost the intensity of their love for each other. It’s not even a question of whether the grounds for divorce are too lax. The real question is whether any grounds are needed at all for leaving.  When lack of happiness becomes the standard by which couples can decide to end their union, it trivializes marriage.  In 2004, we might well ask, “What are the grounds for staying married?”  Commitment demands that marriage continue through the tough times, and riding out the difficulties results in rewards far beyond what each spouse  imagined when they stood on the altar.

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