I was having a chat with a friend of mine who just got out of a serious relationship and I was trying to pick his brain to find out everything about the woman he was intending to marry so I could see why things went wrong. He told me that she had told him over and over that “there would be no divorce” and that he found that very convincing, despite very obvious warning signs in the area of respect (which I wrote about yesterday).
Well. I was very surprised to hear this, and so I asked him whether he thought it was enough that this woman told him that “three will be no divorce”. He said yes. This woman had experienced the divorce of her own parents and she was resolved (by act of will) never to let that happen to her. He found that acceptable, but I didn’t because I know the numbers on this, and I know that children of divorced parents are more likely to divorce themselves. So the pain of divorce is no deterrent here.
So should we believe that people can avoid a divorce just by saying they will? I told him no. And for an example, I offered a thought experiment. I said to imagine two runners on a track who are charged with completing 10 laps. One runner is a Navy SEAL like Mike Murphy, who has been trained to run miles and miles carrying a 60 pound load. In the mountains. The other is a 300-lb couch potato whose idea of exercise is reaching for the TV remote control. Suppose I ask both runners: do you intend to finish the 10 laps? Should I believe them if they both say yes?
Look, marriage is like building a house. People can say whatever they want about their prospects for success, but the will doesn’t decide here. You have to certain skills, you have to have a certain amount of money, you have to have a plan, you have to be able to read blueprints, you have to be able to hire specialists, you understand the differences between materials, etc. When you think about it, no long-term enterprise can be accomplished by act of will. Piano recitals, math exams, investing for retirement… nothing can be done by sheer act of will.
Now with that being said, let’s take a look at an example.
An example
I found this article in the Wall Street Journal way back in 2011, but it fits my conversation with my friend.
The author, Susan Gregory Thomas, lists some of the mistakes she made that led her to get a divorce in her first marriage.
This is the first thing I saw that caught my eye:
“Whatever happens, we’re never going to get divorced.” Over the course of 16 years, I said that often to my husband, especially after our children were born.
So she is trying to express an intention here, repeatedly, to her husband. I think the point here is that she did have good intentions but as we shall see that was not enough to prevent the divorce. That’s a warning to others that good intentions are not enough.
Here is the second thing:
I believed that I had married my best friend as fervently as I believed that I’d never get divorced. No marital scenario, I told myself, could become so bleak or hopeless as to compel me to embed my children in the torture of a split family. And I wasn’t the only one with strong personal reasons to make this commitment.
I noticed that a lot of people seem to think that being compatible is very important to marriage. But I don’t think that it is the most important thing. For example, you would not expect two cocaine addicts or two gambling addicts, etc. to have a stable marriage. I think marriage is more like a job interview where there are specific things that each person has to be able to do in order to make it work. So again, she’s giving a warning to others that compatibility is not a guarantee of marriage success.
And there’s more:
My husband and I were as obvious as points on a graph in a Generation X marriage study. We were together for nearly eight years before we got married, and even though statistics show that divorce rates are 48% higher for those who have lived together previously, we paid no heed.
We also paid no heed to his Catholic parents, who comprised one of the rare reassuringly unified couples I’d ever met, when they warned us that we should wait until we were married to live together. As they put it, being pals and roommates is different from being husband and wife. How bizarrely old-fashioned and sexist! We didn’t need anything so naïve or retro as “marriage.” Please. We were best friends.
Sociologists, anthropologists and other cultural observers tell us that members of Generation X are more emotionally invested in our spouses than previous generations were. We are best friends; our marriages are genuine partnerships. Many studies have found that Generation X family men help around the house a good deal more than their forefathers. We depend on each other and work together.
So here I am seeing that she rejected sex roles, parental advice, or the moral guidelines of Christianity. Again, she is discussing some of the factors that I at least think contribute to divorce. I think that she is right to highlight the fact that she was wrong to disregard the statistics on cohabitation.
So here are some of the mistakes:
- reject advice from parents
- avoid chastity
- cohabitate for EIGHT YEARS
- embrace feminism, reject complementarian sex roles
- thinking that good intentions would overcome every challenge
So, what does the research show works to have a stable marriage?
- chastity
- rejection of feminism
- regular church attendance
- parental involvement in the courting
- parents of both spouses married
- no previous divorces
Guess what? You can’t break all the rules and still succeed by sheer force of will. If you break all the rules like that woman in the story, you can’t have a working marriage. Not without repudiating everything you believed, and taking steps to undo all the damage from everything you’ve done. You can’t keep all the bad beliefs and bad habits you’ve built up and marry them to a marriage that will stand the test of time.
A good marriage is an enterprise, and it requires that your character be changed to fit the requirements. There is no way to short-circuit the preparation / selection processes by act of will. And just because your friends are getting married, that’s no reason for you to rush into it unprepared. The best way to prepare for marriage is pick people of the opposite sex and practice marriage behaviors (e.g. – listening, helping) with them – even with people you don’t intend to marry. Take an interest in their lives and practice denying yourself to help them with their problems. That’s better than making idle promises you’re not able to keep. And this works the same for men and for women. Both people need to get this right.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
You should ask your friend if he would trust a salesman who said to him, “I know that it says [x, y, z] in the contract, but I want to personally assure you that you will get [x, y, z].”
In other words, anyone who thinks they need to double promise something is someone who thinks you should not believe their original promise.
This goes for marriage. The promise to not divorce (frivolously) is implicit in the marriage covenant. There is no need to reassure your intended that you will not divorce (frivolously), “pinkie swear; look my fingers are not crossed; no take backs.”
The other warning sign in that mentality is that his girlfriend/fiancee clearly had not contemplated that there might be a good reason for divorce and how to avoid that. Even God provided that we may divorce for “marital infidelity”. So, the creator of marriage, who forbade us to divorce the “wives of our youth” also said, but in one case you may. Now, you are trying to provide guidelines for avoiding that case (ones that I agree with generally), but one must contemplate that divorce is possible (and possibly good in some situations) and why before one can see the wisdom of such guidelines.
LikeLike
I agree with this comment.
The right way to approach the divorce issue is to accept it as a risk, and then plan to mitigate the factors that cause it (e.g. – feminism, careers, shortage of money, past promiscuity), and perform behaviors that strengthen the commitment (e.g. – pre-marital counseling, church attendance, etc.). But you can’t believe a bunch of lies, break all the rules, and then have a happy marriage simply by telling the other person that divorce won’t happen. There are rules to marriage, and you have to be the right person for it, and choose the right candidate for it.
LikeLike
I was going to bring up the Scriptural “infidelity clause” too. That’s one I’m pretty sure I’d invoke. Other than that, divorce should be understood as off the table for bonafide Christians. The fact that divorce is generally understood as an option is partially responsible for the relative carelessness in choosing a mate.
LikeLike
I think that’s what was behind the embrace of no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce was embraced so that people would have the freedom to DISPENSE WITH the normal rigorous courtship that was focused on plans, goals and skills, and instead make it about happiness, emotions and pleasure. No-fault divorce is what allows you to sort of have the respectability of marriage, with none of the responsibility to court wisely and to work self-sacrificially to keep the marriage going. If you like someone’s appearance, marry them. You can have a big wedding, impress your friends, and then divorce them later if it becomes unhappy for you. The law makes laziness and craziness risk-free.
LikeLike
If you have to wait months or years to find out if someone is worth marrying, you’re taking TOO FREAKING LONG! 30 days, 90 at the most and– most importantly–NO SEX. Sex ruins friendships if there’s no willingness to commit to anything more. I was a 3-question guy: what do you think about getting married; do you think about marrying me; will you marry me? Okay, I had to ask the last one twice, but that’s only because I didn’t have the ring the first time. Divorce isn’t inevitable, but it is preventable if both parties work on it.
LikeLike
I think you need more than three questions, and more than 30-90 days. Do you have any evidence for your 30-90 day view?
LikeLike
11 years of marriage.
LikeLike
I guess I don’t need to tell you that, with all due respect, one person’s case is not as authoritative as research that surveys and studies many people.
LikeLike
True. Personal experience isn’t “authoritative”, but it is compelling. Sometimes people overthink situations, they try to make sure they have all their bases covered rather than just making a decision and following through. If anything, marriage ought to come with a disclaimer, “results not typical”, but people come in with unreal, unwarranted expectations, making promises that they are unwilling to keep if their expectations aren’t met. Rather than revise the plan and move forward they bail out.
But, it also has to do with what is pre-loaded into the relationship. If it is built on many of the problem listed in the post, unless their hearts are bent for repentance, it’s guaranteed to be a train wreck.
LikeLike
When my husband and I were dating, we knew pretty quick that we were right for each other. We went on our first date in mid-September and less than 2 months later we agreed we were going to get married. Actually, I knew by the end of the 2nd date. Of course, we had corresponded by email a lot by then and had covered our positions on the basics already. We started out by finding out major worldview issues and views on marriage and family so we knew we were compatible up front before we built emotional intimacy.
LikeLike
That’s excellent, but you guys are serious people who talk about serious things. Most people are just trying to establish “chemistry” by having “fun” together, and that’s the basis of their decision to have premarital sex and then drift into the “respectability” of marriage by cohabitating first. The emphasis is always on having a good time NOW, not any kind of long-term marriage plan.
LikeLike
Yes, we were very intentional. And if you’re intentional about dating, you can find out if you’re compatible in a short amount of time. But if you just drift along, having fun and having no plan, it takes a long time to really know someone and find out if you’re compatible for marriage (assuming it happens at all). That’s probably one of the reasons people date so long these days. They take years to figure out if they match on the important things if all they ever talk about is trivial things. It takes years for important things like politics and faith and family life and having kids to com up randomly in conversations about American Idol or during a chick flick. But if you just ask the questions up front and purposely find out about each other and look for opportunities to see each other in real life, it doesn’t take long to determine compatibility. I don’t necessarily put a timeline on it of just a couple months, although it certainly can be. But certainly it should be possible to know inside a year. If you don’t know someone well enough to make that decision after a year of intentional relationship, you’re doing something wrong.
LikeLike
“parents of both spouses married”
While I do agree that this plays a factor on how a person views marriage, the results can go two separate ways.
I have a best friend who fervently wants to get married. She fills all of those requirements, except for this one.
Why should her chance of marriage be affected by the actions of her parents?
LikeLike
Statistically it would be affected, and if you’ve ever dealt with someone who has divorced parents, you know it’s a risk. The data does not lie. It’s something that has to be worked on so that it’s not a problem, that’s all.
LikeLike
There are no guarantees in this life. Even this woman who is so fearful of following her parent’s example will change over time. So will he. So will this world. The best you can do is work doqn the fears of yesterday and work for a better tomorrow… and keep working it. -A
LikeLike