In the 2011 Census in Ireland, 87,770 people were legally divorced, this figure is almost double of what it was 10 years ago. Why? Because people's idea of "love" has been so bent and twisted into an unrealistic ideal that they trick themselves into thinking that they've found the person they want to be with forever, but you can only trick yourself for so long and you when finally realise this isn't what you wanted and by then you might be married and what do you do? You get divorced.
Romantic love is the thing from storybooks, love at first sight, butterflies, birds singing. The reason it's such a poor basis for marriage, something that should be for life, is that it isn't real, not really. Romantic love isn't concrete, it's not something you can use as a foundation to build the rest of your life on. The majority of the time it's fleeting, one of those "it was good while it lasted, but it couldn't last," type of things. C.S.Lewis wrote a book called 'The Four Loves' in which he discusses four different types of love, and Eros (romantic love) is below Agape (unconditional love), in the book Lewis recognises the latter as the greatest love of all, and I think that, that is the love a marriage should be based on.
Divorces have become so frequent because people rush into marriages, they don't consider everything that comes with it and so, when it doesn't fit the perfect image in their heads, they take the common route out. I blame Hollywood and it's unrealistic idealistic image of love for marriages not working out or struggling and this is why romantic love is a very poor basis for marriage.
E.R