Is My Marriage Doomed?

I saw this article today, and I struck me as something I had to write about:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22571847/

Everyone that's ever been married knows that things get tough from time to time. Sometimes you just have to get away. We all deal with that differently. Some take a walk around the block. Some spend time alone in the bedroom reading or watching TV. Some immerse themselves in work. Still others, apparently, get a new job at the brothel where their husband also goes for release.

Apparently, the problem in this marriage wasn't that neither of them was interested. He can't say that he needed something else because she always had a headache, and she can't say that he wasn't interested in being physical. Obviously, they both wanted the same thing, and they both went to the same place to get it. Somehow, they missed each other on that communication, though, and now their marriage is over.

Hopefully, I won't ever end up in a place like this (the life situation or the brothel), but if I did, I would have to worry that I had missed a lot of warning signs. I mean would it seem suspicious that the "new girl" looks so familiar, but you just can't place her? Or how about the way she is always wearing clothes that look just like the stuff you bought your wife last Christmas? Or the way that your friends keep talking about how your wife has so much energy? And the way they go on and on about the weight she recently lost? I mean, you haven't even had the guys over for dinner in months. Surely, you could see the signs.

In all seriousness, we often don't. In researching for this post, I found some very interesting information. You have all probably heard the statistic that nearly half of all U.S. marriages end in divorce, and the corollary that "the family that prays together stays together." The truth is that neither of those is really true (not even close to true). In fact, according to Barna research, the family that prays together is the most likely to end in divorce*. Or more to the point, according to Barna, born-again Christian families have higher divorce rates than any other religious group (including atheists and agnostics). If that's true, then the first statistic doesn't sound so bad (although it's also misleading). I'd put it up to a coin toss rather than be in the majority.

So, should we stop going to church, quit believing in God, and live happily ever after? I really don't think so. I think that this points to something even more important for each one of us. How good are we at helping support our fellow church members when their marriages end up in trouble? Does this speak to a problem with churches trying to ignore problems or ignore (or worse ostracize) those that are having trouble? Do we look too simply at the situation and say that God will work things out and treat it as if it's not our responsibility? To me, this new information is more of an indictment of the church than it is of Christian marriages. We all have problems, and we need our church to help us through the hard times or else husbands and wives might just find each other again at the local brothel.

*"Christians are more likely to experience divorce than are non-Christians," Barna Research Group, 1999-DEC-21, at: http://www.barna.org/ Barna no longer has this report online. However, a review of the report is at: http://www.adherents.com/