The Death of Marriage: Why the Bhagavad Gita Predicted Divorce 5,000 Years Ago

Marriage has always been described as sacred. The Vedas called it a samskara, a sacrament meant to align two souls with dharma. Yet, if we look around today, marriage is not dying because of modernity alone. It is dying because human expectations have changed. And strangely, the Bhagavad Gita described this human struggle thousands of years ago.

In the second chapter of the Gita, Krishna explains how attachment leads to downfall:
This is not philosophy for philosophers, it is daily life. Most marriages collapse for this very reason. A person enters the relationship with attachment, expecting the other to fulfill desires. When expectations are not met, anger follows. Anger clouds judgment, love turns into bitterness, and the bond shatters.
Divorce is not a new invention, it is simply the modern word for what the Gita already saw in the chain of attachment.

The Gita was spoken on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. But every home can become a battlefield when ego, pride, and desire clash. Krishna never said life would be free of conflict, he taught how to stand firm in the middle of it. Marriage too is not meant to be endless sweetness. It is a discipline. The Vedic system placed marriage in the stage of Grihastha Ashrama, a householder’s life, where the purpose was not only companionship but sacrifice, generosity, and spiritual practice within worldly duties.
When marriage is reduced only to romance or personal gain, it loses its foundation. When seen as dharma, it becomes the ground for inner growth.

The Gita teaches Nishkama Karma, action without expectation of reward. Applied to marriage, this is radical wisdom. It means loving without keeping an account, serving without demanding returns, and standing firm without asking, “What do I get back?” Most relationships break because they are built on contracts of expectation, not on offerings of devotion. As Krishna says:
If couples lived this verse even halfway, marriage would not be so fragile.

The Gita reminds us:

Every feeling, every joy, every quarrel, every season of love, everything passes. Modern marriages struggle because we hold on to moments as if they will last forever. But love matures only when both partners accept impermanence, understanding that storms, silences, and sweetness will all come and go.
Divorce too, painful as it is, may sometimes be nothing more than life teaching impermanence in its hardest form. From a spiritual view, it is not the “end of love” but the breaking of a form that no longer held the soul’s growth.

So when we say the Bhagavad Gita “predicted” divorce, it is not about paperwork. It is about human nature. Krishna foresaw that in the age of Kali Yuga, relationships would decay because people would forget the essence of dharma and run after their own desires. The Vishnu Purana even warns:
This is what we are witnessing today.

Marriage, then, is not dying because of freedom, women’s rights, or technology. It is dying because we have mistaken marriage for possession instead of practice. The Gita offers an alternative:

• See your partner not as someone who exists to complete you, but as a fellow traveler in dharma.
  
• Do your duty in love without calculating the returns.
  
• Accept change as natural, not as betrayal.
  
• Remember that the true bond is not between two egos, but between two souls striving toward the Divine.
  
  

The death of marriage may look like tragedy, but perhaps it is also an invitation. An invitation to return to the sacred roots of companionship, where love is not a bargain but a practice, not possession but prayer. The Gita did not only predict the collapse of conditional love, it also offered the cure: detachment, selflessness, and devotion.
The choice lies with us. Will we continue to repeat the cycle of attachment, anger, and collapse? Or will we rise to see marriage as Krishna described life itself, a battlefield where the goal is not victory over the other, but victory over the self?