Songs and movies create fantasies about romantic love, and the wedding industry creates even greater fantasies about marriage. However, romantic love is fickle, and marriage is hard. St. Paul wrote in scripture that those who marry will experience trouble (I Cor. 7:28).
Humans are basically good but also basically broken, and therefore, while God meant marriage to be a holy and blessed state, if two broken people live day after day in the most intimate relationship in the world, that is, marriage, there are going to be problems.
Besides spiritual direction, I do marriage counselling. All marriage experts agree there are four distinct stages of marriage: romance, disillusionment, misery, and seasoned love.
Marriage normally begins with romance. When dating, everyone is on their best behavior and looks their best. You haven’t lived together, so it is easy to buy into the illusion that this person only has good points and will take care of all your needs forever.
After you move in together or get married, and the other person is in your face day after day, you normally start to notice things about them that bother you, and you may feel that only some of your needs are getting met. In this disillusionment or “reality check” stage, you lose the illusions of romance.
If you stay together long enough, you will normally go through misery at some point, where your partner’s good points seem to be totally eclipsed by their bad points, and you feel none of your needs are getting met. This misery stage is why, according to Statistics Canada, there is now about a 40% divorce rate for first marriages.
At this point, faith can be very helpful. In most religious weddings, the couple takes serious, sacred vows before God and other people that they are going to love their spouse “for better or worse.” When in misery, it is particularly important to remember this unconditional love commitment before God. Prayer and church-based organizations like Retrouvaille, which hosts healing weekends for couples in misery, can also help a lot.
Misery can be as difficult as overcoming an addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous has been successful because its first tenet is to admit that your life is out of control, and you need the help of a Higher Power to overcome your problem.
In a second marriage, faith can be even more crucial. People in second marriages are even more prone to fall into misery because there are usually also ex-spouses, lawyers, children from two marriages, and wounds from the first marriage to contend with. It is not surprising the divorce rate for second marriages is significantly higher than for first marriages. People in second marriages need to pray even harder and exercise even more the virtues that all churches teach: forgiveness, trust, patience, commitment, etc.
However, there can be legitimate reasons for separation and divorce. If there was prolonged emotional or physical abuse or neglect, it probably was not God’s will that the two of you be together in the first place, and you should split up. On the other hand, often couples split up without giving their best effort to preserving the marriage.
Mutual spiritual growth is the purpose of any marriage, whether first, second or third. Difficulties can be seen as an opportunity to rely more upon God, to surrender your ego more, to pray more, to love more deeply.
If you can do all these things, you will eventually come through to the fourth stage called seasoned love. If you learn to accept your partner with all their flaws, remember your wedding vows and recommit yourself to the marriage, you will normally start to see your partner’s good points again, the bad points don’t matter because you are committed to the marriage anyway, and by then you have learned to rely upon God more than your spouse for getting your needs met.
Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com.
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