The Unpleasant Side of Divorce

Getting married is entering into a contract – but it’s probably the one contract that is the easiest to break because divorce has made it easy for husband and wife to walk out when they go through an unhappy period in their life, albeit temporary.

John Crouch, Executive Director of Americans for Divorce
Reform, says that the most important economic contract of
our lives – marriage – is no longer legally protected.

Just think – lawyers will fight tooth and nail to protect corporations in their contract relations or between you and your landlord, your mechanic and your doctor, but can’t prevent you from breaking up with your spouse. In fact, they would even counsel you to break up your marriage and then discuss division of property as the next logical step.

Crouch says that marriage is the only contract that anyone can break, at any time, and not be held responsible for it.

“So getting married in America is like doing business in Russia. Everything is up for grabs, everything is constantly renegotiated, and nobody has to keep their word. I think that makes for a lot of unhappy marriages.”

The Dollar Costs of Divorce
Read the rest of this entry

How to Save Your Marriage

We have painted the unpleasant side of divorce to help you realize that it may not necessarily be the solution to your unhappiness, and in the second section, we’ve advanced arguments to promote the numerous advantages of marriage and staying married.

But life does have hitches and will always be full of obstacles, threatening the stability of married life. We now offer some tips on how to save your marriage when you sense that it’s on the rocks or needs a re-overhauling.

Recognizing Gender Differences

Men and women perceive emotion, communication, sex, fidelity, work and money because of the way they were socialized and because they have been shaped by their own parents’ perceptions.

They bring these ideas into the marriage and hence have their own baggage of beliefs regarding what is tolerable and intolerable in a marriage, what they have to give their spouse and what to expect in return.

Writing the book, “For Better or For Worse”, Heatherington and Kelly illustrate this point more clearly when they mention the different ways men and women choose a partner:

“Women approach love as informed consumers…they kick the tires, look under the hood, run the motor, check the mileage. Women love love, but being practical-minded, not enough to ignore potential defects. Good looks and romantic love matter to a woman, but in considering potential suitors, a woman also looks at the practical, such as a suitor’s economic prospects, emotional stability, trustworthiness, and what kind of father he will be…Despite a reputation for practicality, males come off as hopeless romantics. They are much more prone to fall head-over-heels in love…and also more prone to idealize the object of their affection. If the bodywork is good and the grille pretty, often a man will buy on the spot, no questions asked.”

It takes practice to learn that gender differences do not constitute threats to a marriage, but a cause for celebration and an opportunity to expand an individual’s sphere of experience.

Try to remember that your partner is not your mirror image. In a loving, effective partnership, individuality and separateness are wholesome concepts that each spouse must work at.

A Word from the Cos!

Bill Cosby, the famous American comedian and still married to the same woman, said that these gender differences – that women are not just men who can have babies and men are not just women who spike footballs – give marriage its vitality, its dynamics and its delights…He says, “Americans may like the style called unisex, but the wiser French have a devout appreciation of the wonder they call la difference.”

A true understanding of these gender differences should therefore lead us to the proper notion of a marriage. While many people view marriage as a fusion, making two separate individuals one, we must still keep our own personality and deal with our own problems ourselves.

“Marriage is ultimately about two relatively whole individuals coming together to create a union that can be even greater than the sum of the parts. But each of us must always be aware that a lack of self-confidence is own separate job to fix. We can look to our mate for support, but not for magical solutions.”