How to Avoid Divorce

The bonds that hold people together in marriage are less strong than in decades past. Things like social stigma, religion, and staying together for the sake of the children no longer hold the sway that they used to. For example, a study released in 1994 reported that only 15% of the respondents thought that staying together in an unhappy marriage was the proper course of action. And more research done by the National Marriage Institute indicated that only 42% of people thought it was important for people to marry someone of the same religion. So if raising children together, God, and general social stigma isn’t keeping the marriage bonds strong, why do people get married in the first place?

More research done by the National Marriage Project in 2001 asked that question and found that the main reason young people want to get married is to have a soul-mate, that is, someone with whom they can have a strong emotional bond with. This is fine, but the problem is that the demands of modern life create many forces that tend to weaken these bonds. Work demands, extensive business travel, raising children, and family and social demands often leave couples with little time for themselves together. And when they do find a little time the same demands have left them exhausted physically and mentally.

In modern marriages people seem to have a lower threshold for dissatisfaction. It has been reported, once again by the National Marriage Project, that loud fights and abuse are not the main cause of more than 50% of divorces. Rather, most divorces are a result of hard to define feelings of dissatisfaction between couples. The main thing to realize is that happy marriages are not always happy. Of course there will be ups and downs. If the couple can maintain the level of commitment to the marriage during those hard times and work hard to identify and overcome what are really the root causes of the dissatisfaction, the marriage can be once again turned into one that is happy and satisfying.

For a free email course about how to save your marriage written by noted marriage counselor and author Amy Waterman, click here.