Why Divorce Happens

The first question after hearing that my parents were getting a divorce was “why?’  At the time they gave me the run-of-the-mill answer of, “it’s not you, it’s us, we just don’t love each other anymore.”  I knew from the tone of their voice that they were serious in their prognosis of lost love but I also knew that their answer was still lost to them.

As the years went by I started to see more of the world and learn more about why people make the decisions they do.  Even from a very early age I was aware of the choices people were making around me, whether it be the type of job they held or who it was they were dating, I was always paying attention.  The truth is that kids are the most observant they’ll ever be from the ages of 1-13.  If you think about what I just said you’ll see why it’s the truth.  From birth until 13 we’re forming how we look at world and how we fit in it.  It’s not until those awkward teenage years really kick in that we start questioning our place in society and the greater world around us.  Those  early years in particular are integral in the health and wealth of a child’s worldview for the rest of his or her life.  From birth we start learning by viewing what’s happening around us.  We even start learning how to speak to one another from the words that are spoken around us; in essence, we’re all sponges of our surroundings starting the day we’re conceived until the day we start interacting as individuals which seems to take place just about the time that being a teenager is a real thing.

As time moves along and we start to age there’s a period of time where we take what we know and have learned and we start applying it.  These application years are normally between the ages of 12-16.  What we quickly find out as people is what works best for us and what doesn't, and effortlessly adjust to these findings accordingly; quite naturally actually.  There’s one problem though if you come from a divorced household, your view of love and romance has been shattered and left wide-open to outside of the household influence.  The influences for kids are normally found on the television, which as we all know is not the best place to be learning how to be functioning humans in society.  Since children of divorce are without the role-model of a stable family unit we are all left to fend for ourselves in this vicious arena of the romantic world.  We’ll come full circle to this point again before we end this chapter.

If you understand the fact that we learn naturally from our environment as children then you will eventually come to the conclusion that life can be cyclical because of it.  If I’m a child and I see my parents fall out of love,”(I use this term “fall out of love” because I think it’s silly that people say we’re not in love anymore, it’s more along the effect that two individuals who should have never married one another in first place just now understand the horrible decision they made) making that the basis for my views on love, then doesn't it make sense that I’ll most likely carry that residue with me into my new relationships as I age?  Humans are replicators of past, learned behavior, especially behavior learned at an early age.

The meat of this chapter will deal with where I think the real problem lies with divorce, and the answer may surprise you.  It’s not divorce that is the problem; it has more to do with not understanding our personal potential as people before we enter into a marriage in the first place that poses the biggest challenge to overcome.

Divorce is not the real problem here, it’s the quality of marriages and the reasons behind their inception that needs to be examined closer.

The problem that our nation faces is not the epidemic of divorce, but one of far greater significance: we've lost our will to be perfectly who we are before we invite others into our circle of trust.  Think about it for a second, how many people do you know that truly know who they are and how that relates to the world around them?  How many people do you know that follow their hearts and live their passions out loud? Now, I want you to know ask yourself how many people you know that are not perfectly happy in their marriages.  I bet you are like me and can count many more people you know who aren't happy in their marriages than those who are perfectly content in knowing precisely who they are as individuals.

It’s paramount to know yourself inside and out and accept your flaws and your short comings and praise your life because of them, before you can ever hope to invite another person to share in the most intimate details of your everyday life.  If you don’t know who you are and why you’re here, which are both very personal and identifiable questions with answers, how can you accept that you’ll ever be complete enough to fill another’s void?  If you still hold onto questions about your purpose in life it will be very hard to help answer someone else’s questions about why they’re on this earth.  In order to ever consider marrying another person I would highly recommend loving yourself so much for who you are that the reason you’re getting married is so that you can live out your highest ideals and beliefs about your capability to love.  If you so choose otherwise your life could turn out to be very difficult at times.

Enter into a marriage because you each compliment the other seamlessly, and enter into a marriage that is founded in friendship and trust as the main pillars.  Poorly planned marriage is the problem in my mind, not divorce.  I’m not attacking the institution of marriage, I’m more or less pointing out that some people, quite a few actually, should never get married in the first place.  There are people all over the world entering into marriages to try and fill some void they have, or for financial reasons, or because they want a child, or for any myriad of reasons, with the result almost always now ending in a divorce.  I firmly believe that if you enter into a marriage before you love yourself more than anything around you you’ll be making the biggest mistake of your life.  When you love yourself unconditionally you start to realize that everyone else around you is the same as you are, human, and when this hits your mental processes you begin to want to share your love with other people.  The universe has a beautiful way of giving you exactly what it is you want most, so why not want to be totally loving and build a marriage on that principal?  Our building blocks of marriage are eroding because we’re not properly preparing for the storms that threaten to break them down.  If you love yourself totally and supremely you’ll know what you stand for and you’ll know what you’re capable of.  You’ll know if you’re someone who would cheat or not, you know if you’re someone who wants kids or not, you’ll know how important financials are to you, and you’ll know how you’d react to whatever hardships will face your way as you and your partner enter into a life-bond forever with one another.  You have to know what you’re made of before you enter the ring, not before, and it’s not until you enter that ring that you can be tested on your highest beliefs about yourself.  The ring of marriage is no different than the boxing ring.  Boxers don’t train before a fight as a coincidence, they do so because they need to be the best prepared they can be for the opponent they will face.  They train for success and the fight take care of itself.

Why then do we not train the same way for the biggest choice in our life, whether to get married or not? 

In no way do I want you think that I’m against marriage, that couldn't be further from the truth, however, I am against a baseless marriage where two people join for reasons other than a partnership rooted in love and truth. 

How many people do you know that hide things from their spouses?  How many of you reading this right now hide something form your spouse?  The answer is: too many!  I’m not condemning that, I’m here to tell you that it’s okay to forgive yourself for poor choices and it’s okay to share those findings with your significant other.  If you enter into a marriage while hiding things, or you remain in a marriage where you hide things form one another, is there really trust there?  Trust is one of the building blocks of successful marriages, so is love, and so is forgiveness.  If you love yourself above all other things before you get married you’ll know that when your spouse does something to offend you that it’s not that big of a deal, mainly because you’re complete in who you are and thankful to share that whole person with your partner even when things get hard.  All blessings flow out of love and all things in life point back to it as well, love is the key ingredient in any marriage.  I’m not talking so much about the love of another person but the love for the self which will spill over effortlessly onto your husband or wife. 

By loving yourself first you realize that you are love, and when you realize this quintessential fact about your existence it will be much easier to forgive another person and to move on from any though situation. 

We have three, main, building blocks that will build a strong marriage: Love, trust, and forgiveness.  Isn't it beautiful that those three things all fall in line with the golden rule?  Think about it, because you love yourself first you’re able to better love another, to trust another, and most importantly to forgive the other when they fall short.  Don’t we all want love, trust, and forgiveness in a marriage or union?  “Treat others as you would have them treat you,” ring any bells?

So as I wrap this chapter up I want to bring back to light the idea of learning from our surroundings as a child and the weight of carrying that residue with you through your life.  If as a child I see my parents divorce from one another I’ll have a 50/50 chance of doing the same thing as an adult.  But instead, if we as adults can start truly loving ourselves more before we attempt to love another person for the rest of our life, maybe less marriages will fail and the bell curve of divorce will start to flatten out.  All of life carries with it momentum, the pendulum swings in both directions, so if we can slow the pendulum down by fixing what’s broken when entering into a marriage we’ll at least give the next generation of kids a fighting chance to make up their own mind regarding the sanctity of marriage without divorce’s momentum playing a factor in their psyches.  Let’s stop the circle of life where divorce is concerned, by choosing marriage as the union of two souls because love is all that’s present in the union.  Let’s get away from making basic decisions as to why marriage is best ie. financially, maternal reasons, sexual compatibility etc.  Let’s turn away from outside reasons and let us look more inside for the answers as to why we desire to marry another individual.  Until you love yourself you’ll never be able to fully love another person through marriage.