It's a typical story in the Czech Republic, which boasts Europe's highest divorce rate, according to new numbers from Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office. Nearly half of all Czech marriages end in divorce.

Although the general attitude toward marriage has changed since the early 1990s — people don't get hitched as easily or at such an early age as before the Velvet Revolution — the divorce rate keeps rising. In 1989, 37 percent of all marriages ended in divorce. In 2005, the number was close to 50 percent, according to Eurostat.

"The climate in general supports individualism and personal interests rather than common coexistence," says Radka Duchková, a sociologist. Also, emancipation has made it easier than in the past for women to stay single. "The traditional family in which the wife is economically dependent on her husband belongs to history. Nowadays, women work and are financially independent and they see a family union as a voluntary organization. If they are unhappy, they can leave their partners," adds Duchková.

Marital crisis

But why is the divorce rate lower in European countries with the same lifestyle?

Duchková and other experts attribute the high divorce rate to the relative absence of religion in the Czech Republic, where 60 percent of people claim to be atheists.

"I believe it is the atheism in our society that is to blame," says Zuzana Hájková, a marriage consultant. "People don't consider marriage sacred."

European countries with a strong Catholic tradition — Italy, Spain and Poland, for example — have remarkably lower divorce rates. In Italy, only 12 percent of marriages end in divorce.

In Slovakia, where Catholicism remains strong, the divorce rate is 30 percentage points lower compared to here and other countries with similarly high rates of divorces, such as Sweden, Belgium and the United Kingdom.

"Divorce is not viewed negatively in the Czech Republic. For many people, it is a simple resolution of marital crisis," says Duchková. "If there were more pressure from outside on married couples and they did not see so many divorcees around, then they would try harder to solve their problems and many would probably come to see that their problems can be resolved — because problems occur everywhere."

Already in the early 1980s, more than 30,000 people per year filed for divorce. Before the fall of communism in 1989, there was a lot of pressure on young Czechs to get married and have children early, and this naturally resulted in high numbers of marriages that often ended after only a few years.

"When I was getting married, I did not consider myself too young," says Kalinová. "Now, I understand we were not fully grownups back then and we soon realized our lives were going in different directions."

Getting hitched young

While the trend of living together before marriage hit Europe in the 1960s, Czechoslovak society remained comparatively conservative. "Living together without 'papers' as well as using contraception was viewed as inappropriate. So young couples chose to tie the knot early," says Hájková.

Back in the 1980s, the average age for a woman to get married was 21 and men were just a couple years older. They conceived their first child usually one or two years after marriage.

In 2003, the average woman was 28 years old when she married. And, that same year, the number of marriages dropped significantly, from an average of 70,000 in the late 1990s to 50,000. Statistics also show that almost a third of Czech children are now born to single mothers.

Also, the reasons why people get divorced have changed. According to Hájková, alcoholism was the main culprit during communism, but now it's infidelity, usually on the part of the husband.

"It has become almost a status issue," Hájková says. "Look at the politicians who don't even try to hide their love affairs. It influences people."

Kalinová says it was not hard for her to get divorced, since they didn't have kids. Now, she is remarried and has two children.