Stop Your Divorce and Save Your Marriage!

Conclusion

We like to be judged in terms of what we have accomplished in the human relationships department.  Read this statement

       “I managed to get my client half of her husband’s properties overseas and alimony and child support payments of close to $250,000 a year plus the three cars, the country home, his art collection and half of his stocks.”

Compare the foregoing with this one:

       “I didn’t really do anything special that I can be proud of, except perhaps provide adequately for my family and raise good children.  Happily, they turned out to be well-abiding citizens and I guess that’s the best reward there is.”

In the first statement, we see shades of greed and materialism, in the second, humility and self-effacement.  Who has made a genuine contribution for the betterment of society?

Much as it sounds terribly old-fashioned, marriage is a commitment, and individuals must make every attempt not to cheapen that commitment in any way.  Staying married is a lifelong, missionary-like endeavour.

It takes guts.  It takes nerves of steel to make a marriage work.  A sense of humour and a lower degree of self-importance can sustain us in that work.

The obstacles will be numerous, and there will be situations where we will question our sanity, unsure if we can really hang in there.

It will be a monumental effort to remain attracted to the same qualities that attracted you to your spouse on the first day you met.  Your spouse is still the same person you fell in love with, he has not changed his soul, his being, only his wardrobe.

So if there’s only way to divorce, but a thousand ways to save your marriage, which path will you choose?  Are you going to throw in the towel or take up one more challenge?

There’s very little meaning to saving face or saving dollars; it’s much more noble and enduring to save souls.  But you won’t unlock the meaning of this statement in your youth or in your 30’s.

Best to wait until you reach mid-life, until your maturity has come full circle, and you get to the point where you don’t want to turn your back on the most important investment of your life, where every nerve of your body cries out, “You’ve got to save us.”

Appendix

An extract from Bill Cosby’s book, Love and Marriage.  Doubleday Books, New York.  1989.

Therefore, in spite of what Thomas Jefferson wrote, all men may be created equal, but not to all women, and the loveliest love affair must bear the strain of this inequality once the ceremony is over.  When a husband and wife settle down together, there is a natural struggle for power…and in this struggle, the husband cannot avoid giving up a few things – for example dinner.

To be fair, I must admit that Camille did wait a few years before allowing me to make this particular sacrifice.  I had just sat down at the table one night with her and our three children when I happened to notice that my plate contained only collard greens and brown rice.

“Would you please donate this to the Hare Krishna and bring me my real meal,” I said to the gentleman serving the food.

“You have it all,” he replied.

“No, what I have is a snack for the North Korean Army.  The meat must have slipped off somewhere.  Why don’t we try to find it together?”

“Mrs. Cosby said we are no longer eating meat.”

“She did?”  I looked down the table at Camille.  “Dear, if I got a letter from the Pope, do you think I could...”

“Bill, meat is bad for us and we just have to cut it out.  It’s full of fat that could kill you.  I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you.”

“So am I.  I could’ve started eating out at a place where they don’t mind who they kill.”

“Honey, lots of people are vegetarians.”

“And lots of people like to get hit with whips, but I’ve managed to be happy not joining them.”

Nevertheless I became a vegetarian.  A husband should go with the flow of his marriage, even when that flow leads over a cliff.

About two years later, however, I sat down to dinner one night and a steak suddenly appeared on my plate.

“Look at this,” I said to the gentleman serving the food.  “Someone has lost a steak.  Would you please return it to its owner?”

“Mrs. Cosby said we are eating meat again,” he told me.

“How nice to see the cows come home,” I said.

References:

John Crouch, Executive Director.  Americans for Divorce Reform, Arlington, Virginia. www.divorceform@usa.net.

David G. Schramm, Utah State University, USA.

Katherine Heine, Cox News Service, Nov. 2005 (www.americanvalues.org/html/r-unhappy_ii.html)

David Popenoe, the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J, 2002.

Dr. H.B. Biem, Separate Future.  Centax Books.  Saskatchewan, Canada. 1993.

Paula Dore of Glenview, Illinois, who participated in the National Marriage Encounter, an initiative that is all over the United States as compiled by Michael Leach and Therese J. Borchard (editors).  I Like Being Married.  Doubleday Books.  New York. 2002.

Doctors Melvyn Kinder and Connell Cowan.  Husbands and Wives:  Exploding Marital Myths, Deepening Love and Desire. Clarkson N Potter Inc., New York. 1989.

William Masters, Virginia Johnson, Robert Kolodny.  Masters and Johnson on Sex and Human Loving.  Little, Brown & Company, Ltd. USA. 1985.

Doctor Mary Pipher.  The Shelter of Each Other:  Rebuilding our Families.  G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York. 1996.

E. Mavis Heatherington and John Kelly.  For Better or for Worse.  W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2002.

Dr. Sonya Rhodes.  Second Honeymoon.  A Pioneering Guide for Reviving the Mid-Life Marriage.  William Morrow & Co., New York, 1992.

www.lifetosuccess.com