“The main thing that can save marriages is you really have to have a commitment to the institution to make it work. You have to believe this is a good way to live and important to our society and your own future and the future of your children to try to have an intact marriage. There are too many reasons why if you don’t have that view, you’re going to break up.” (David Popenoe)

The topics of marriage and divorce have been big topics in today’s media. With the divorce rate climbing higher with each passing year, people have been questioning whether marriage is really necessary. As someone said to us this week, “I respect those who make the decision not to want to marry but instead just live together because what really matters isn’t the piece of paper that says they’re married but the fact that they live as a ‘committed couple’ for each other’s good.”

As we told her, it’s tragic that marriage has been reduced to a “piece of paper” as an “institution” to be avoided in the eyes and minds of so many. That’s not what it’s ever supposed to have been about. As a society, we’re so proficient at “prostituting” that which is meant to be sacred. Being “committed for each other’s good” really is a lot of what marriage is supposed to be about-not being “life-partners” without the covenantal vows spoken at the marriage ceremony.

And of course, spiritually, marriage has a whole additional dimension to its meaning from God’s viewpoint. We’re living letters from God and represent who He is through how we love one another in our marriages. Pastor Chuck Swindoll says, “Our lives cause other people to form an opinion about Christ.”

This week we’d like to share a recent article, “Rationalizations about Divorce” from Betsy Hart, a writer for Scripps Howard News Service. It appeared in the November 28th Washington Post. While Hart doesn’t write from a Christian viewpoint, what she has to say is relevant to us as Believers because we too often fall into the same traps of trying to rationalize our actions or behavior. I think you’ll see what we mean:

There they were—a picture of the smiling, all American family on the cover of this week’s Washington Post magazine. Three girls, mom and dad—and a caption that read “The Good Divorce: One Couple’s Attempt to Split up without Tearing the Kids Apart.” This is only the latest media effort to sanitize a family breakup at the hands of a selfish mom or dad or both.

This month’s Parenting Magazine featured a similar article titled “From One House to Two: Do a Mom and Dad Have to Live together to Raise a Happy Family?” by divorced mom Laura Stavoe Harm. The title tells much of the story and gives the term “rationalization” new meaning.

Looking back at me from the cover of the Post magazine is a middle-aged woman who divorced a middle-aged man because she couldn’t “emotionally connect” with him. Though they had had, she says, “an incredibly functional marriage” and “we believed ourselves to be happy.” But, she says, “People have one shot at life.” So now she has this great divorce going. Ex-hubby comes to the house every morning to help get the girls up and off to school. The family chats, sometimes has dinner together, and recently they even vacationed en masse. If the divorce is so great, why not stay married?

It’s because mom has bigger plans. She’s looking for a soul mate. Apparently she forgot that she already chose a mate. Anyway, if somehow lightning strikes and the romantic fantasy this woman has concocted in her head does show up, is he going to put up with Dad’s puttering around in the kitchen in the morning? Not likely. Still, maybe the follow-up Post piece can talk about how new boyfriend and ex-husband trade sports stats and borrow tools from each other.

Back at Parenting, Harm writes with apparent seriousness that “her husband’s offer to spend Christmas away from his sons reminded me how much he loves them.’”Anyway, it’s not clear why she divorced. But, as in all marital breakups, one or both partners broke a promise. (And it’s not always the person who actually initiates the divorce. I agree that abuse, adultery or addiction might force the hand of a loving partner.)

In any event, it’s true that not all children are devastated by divorce over the long-term, though they’re far more likely to suffer emotional problems and do worse in school and in their relationships later in life than their peers from intact homes.

Still, many will “bounce back” to some extent, after at least a two year or so period in which almost all children of divorce suffer significant grief, loss and emotional turmoil. But that’s the best-case scenario. How can supposedly loving parents willingly put their children through such a “bounce,” for such a significant portion of their youth, in order to pursue their own desires?

The evidence is clear: except in the most violent and high conflict marriages, today’s studies show that children are still happier and better off over the long-term with “unhappily” married parents than with divorced parents. But of course, kids do best when their parents are happily married. That’s one reason why no one I know suggests unhappy people should stay together for the sake of their kids. Instead, they should find a way to be happy.

Happiness is so often a matter of choice, of getting the focus off of ourselves, and it doesn’t always have to be a hard choice at that. Maggie Gallagher writes in her book “The Case for Marriage” that in a broad survey of self-described very unhappy marriages, five years later fully 86% of couples who stuck it out described their marriages as “happier” with most saying they were now “very happy.”

In other words the act of staying together, of persevering, in and of itself often ended up producing a happy marriage. Now that’s connection!

Another “connection” is understanding that marriage is about more than any two people (which means, for starters, that those two people don’t have the right to pursue a fleeting notion of happiness at the expense of a child or spouse.)

Marriage is about the fabric of civilization, and the responsibility we have to each other and to each other’s children to keep that fabric from unraveling. That means that no matter how the media and the Post’s divorced poster mom might wish to portray it otherwise, there is no “good divorce.”

---

Cindy and I share articles like these because we want to continually drive home the point that our marriages are to be different—especially for those of us who are Christians. No, that doesn’t mean we won’t have crises or communication breakdowns. But what is supposed to make us “different” is how we deal with the problems, the crises and communication breakdowns.

We’re to be living out the love of God in and through our marriages so we make a positive difference in our world. With the Lord’s guidance, our married lives are to show others that “all things are possible” to those who believe. God wants to use ordinary married couples (like you and like us) to make an extraordinary difference in this world that desperately needs to truly know Him.

It’s our continual prayer that God will help us to communicate the hope and help that’s available to all of us through Jesus Christ.

Steve and Cindy Wright