Women's Devotional Bible
Myth: “If we don’t love each other anymore, we should go our separate ways.”
James is going out with some guy friends tonight. I’m secretly relieved. Lately, all I want to do is veg on the couch and watch movies on Friday night. I’m burned out from working so many hours, and I can’t face another evening of arguing with my husband.
It hasn’t always been this way. James and I were so in love at first. He is a very romantic person, and when we were first married, we’d go out every weekend to try a new restaurant or picnic on the beach and watch the sunset. But that was at first. Over the past two years, it seems like we’ve simply fallen out of love. It’s almost like James isn’t the same person I married. These days I have better conversations with my coworkers than I do with him. He and I don’t seem to have anything in common anymore. We argue about nothing. He spends more time with his friends than with me.
Right now, I’m not saying that I’m going to get divorced. But I wonder if we could find happiness with other people. It seems to me that people change. Things change. That’s just life. So why stay trapped in a relationship that isn’t working anymore? Just to avoid the hassle of breaking up? So Mom and Dad won’t be disappointed?
It seems to me that if you no longer love each other, then going your separate ways is something you have to consider—for both of your sakes.
—Jada
Some women justify walking out on their marriages after the love dies. Well, they reason, we had a 50 percent chance of failure anyway. But that’s not true. The one-in-two statistic originated from misinterpreting the research originally released by the National Center for Health Statistics during the late 1970s when the introduction of the no-fault divorce contributed to a skyrocketing incidence of divorces. The research stated that the number of divorces in one year was precisely half the number of marriages. The media helped deduce the one-in-two theory, and the rest is history. What, however, about the millions of existing marriages (more than 50 million at the time) who neither married nor divorced that year? Those who propagated the 50-percent headline “forgot” to account for this second category. The result was a skewed representation of research that still makes its way into articles and news reports (and even well-meaning pastors’ sermons), bemoaning the “inevitability” of divorce in the U.S.
It’s no wonder that many women who sense a pall wash over the passion in their marriages assume it’s the beginning of the end. They conclude with fatalistic resolve that they must have wound up on the other side of the one-in-two dividing line—just the luck of the draw.
So, what do you do when your marriage seems to be waning? When you don’t feel in love anymore? When you wonder if you made a mistake?
Beyond the fact that this statistic simply isn’t true, the reality is that “going our separate ways” is not as easy as it initially sounds. Divorce court is no picnic—alimony, custody battles, division of property. Any divorce is a life-altering decision with lasting effects. Women and men may heal from the emotional damage divorce causes, but the scars remain for a lifetime.
The Bible endorses a mature marriage commitment based on love. It’s a choice we make—whether we feel like being loving or not (see Colossians 3:12–14). In every relationship, we will face times when we feel as if the love is lacking. Like the Israelites who didn’t feel like they could go on (see Exodus 16:3), we may desperately want to give up during difficult seasons. While fluctuating feelings are a reality in marriage, they are not a loophole in the marriage vows.