Divorce Proofing Your Marriage

Divorce is such an ugly thing that is happening way too much these days in our lives. I believe that divorce should only be necessary when there are severe circumstances in a marriage. But I believe that too many divorces today do not have any good reason for happening. Too many people see divorce as their scapegoat and a way out to a happier and better life for themselves, but they never realize the life long effects that it can have on them and their children. Divorce has especially hard on children because they have so many changes that they have to go through in their young lives. There are so many complexities when divorce and remarriage happen, because family ties and relationships change in some way, and make the lives of all very complicated. Many times confidence is lost. It hurts for children to see people they love absolutely hate each other. There are so many areas that arise where stress starts to come in on everyone.The big problem with divorce is that 70% of the people who get divorced, two years later say that they could have fixed their marriage.

There are many things that we can do to protect our marriage and stay as far away from divorce as possible. The most important thing that I think will help out a couple is to never even bring up the word Divorce. Never talking about divorce helps couples focus on solving problems and conflicts instead of thinking that divorce is the only solution. When divorce is brought up, it becomes a scapegoat for us, and it becomes easy for people to fall into the loop that it is what they need to do in order to be happy, which is a completely untrue fact. Another thing that couples can do is anticipate that there will be problems and conflicts that arise within their marriage. If they recognize that, they will be better able to solve these conflicts. Another extremely important thing that couples need to do is to keep their courtship alive throughout their whole marriage, even when kids come into the picture. The scriptures say that we should "Cleave" unto our spouse, so in order for this to happen, couples need to continue to treat each other like they did when they were first courting. Affection for one another cannot die as the marriage goes on. A husband and wife need to treat each other like kings and queens, and if they do that, that is exactly what they will become. Another important thing is to realize that your relationship with your spouse is completely different than that between your parents or anyone that has ever been divorced. WE(married couples) have ALL the CONTROL in our marriage. Another thing that couples can do to help out their relationship is to be selectively open with their spouse. This does not mean to hide things from them, it only means that we should be completely open with them, but we should not verbally vomit on them with things that do not need to be said. Married couples should not share marriage problems with other people, because it never has a good long term effect on the marriage. Other people begin to think badly of your spouse if you tell them something, and those thoughts will never go away from that person even if you resolve things with your spouse. For this reason you should never say anything negative about your spouse to anyone. Things never seem to turn out well when others are involved in your relationship. One thing that my mission president taught me was that in marriage, problems or conflicts between a couple will almost always arise because of dumb things. Keeping score in your marriage is something that will never help out. I think that if you put your spouse before yourself throughout all your life, you have no need to fear.