When you think about it, the most important things that we have in life are our relationships. Everything else can be replaced, but relationships are one of a kind. One problem is that men don't understand this until it's too late, and women are so excited about it that they make the wrong choices in the beginning. But that's just one part of the divorce problem. The other part is the lack of commitment which is promoted by our society. The perspective of the culture makes it easy to divorce. I remember a couple I met several years ago. They told me their story about getting married 3 days after they met, and when I met them they were celebrating 60 years of marriage. In today's world, that would be viewed as a foolish decision by many. But back when they married, it may might have still been viewed as unwise, but I can see why they both were willing. For one, most people believed in commitment back in their day, so it wasn't so much a risk as it would be today. You could trust that any given person you decided to marry was committed to 'til death do us part', and what ever troubles came up you would work them out. Nowadays, people are committed to their own happiness above anything else, and when that's not happening, we jump ship because it's so acceptable.
In contrast to what one poster said, marriage IS hard. That's what it seems so many people don't understand who get married today. They think, if it's not easy, if it requires effort on my part, it must not be meant to be, so I'm justified in getting a divorce. That's a selfish perspective. Dealing with things we don't like is part of being an adult. Someone once wrote, "Getting married is easy, staying married is difficult, staying happily married for a lifetime is considered to be among the fine arts." That's what I want - to be happily married for a lifetime.
One way to reduce the number of divorces in America is to have a nationwide change of heart. But since that is not likely to happen, taking away the benefits of divorcing, and making it difficult might work too. If we changed the laws so that, with the exception of marital unfaithfulness and maybe one or two other issues, the person who initiates the divorce, gets no alimony and is the one who pays child support. I'll bet there would be a big decline in divorce if we did that, not only because people would think twice about divorcing, but more people would think twice about who they marry. Since we no longer live in a society where the male is the primary bread winner, the laws should be changed accordingly. This would eliminate alot of divorce, because it would make all the people who divorce out of selfishness and immaturity, or because it would have been too much work to stay married, think twice and realize that maybe we can work things out afterall. What do ya'll think?
I could not agree more.
