Last week, a supermarket cashier counted the kids in my cart and pronounced me a saint.
“Wow,” he said. “I can’t even handle my three — and that’s every other weekend!”
Everyone around us laughed, but I didn’t. I don’t know what to say to people like these, people to whom divorce is so normal it is even sometimes a joke.
Ask those three kids every other weekend if it’s a joke.
I was especially moved by writer Amy Henry’s recent blog post in which she described torn feelings about her own parents’ divorce. Though her parents divorced when she was an adult, and even after she had married and become a mother herself, the hurt is still raw and real:
Divorce–and I say this with all my being–sucks. It is a ripping of the fiber of a family. A renting of the one thing that should never be rent. A betrayal to everyone involved.
You promised. Remember? In sickness and in health. Remember? Yes. But the vows never speak to the other things. The little things. The not-so-little things. The layers of misunderstanding. Of tiny hurts laid upon tiny hurts. Of things said that can never, ever be taken back. Of a love that started so strong that was, one cell at a time, rendered impotent.
I think her description of love is an especially startling one:
Love, as I reminded my little brother right after his wedding, is tender. Ever so weak, it is a sapling, reaching toward the heavens in the hopes of what the future will bring. Time, words, circumstances blow cold winds on that tender thing. It’s a miracle any of us survives.
Is marital love a tender sapling? Maybe so.
I do know that in a culture where 50% of marriages end in divorce, where everyday people consider “every other weekend” parenting the stuff that jokes are made of, more of us would do well to think of married love that way. So that we might tend it carefully. So that we might nurture it, protect it, feed it, and make it grow. So that we might never take its future for granted.
So that we and our families might wind up on the other side of those sorry statistics.
(Cross-posted at the National Catholic Register)
This is a really tough time for me to read this. It hurts. Reason being, I have recently decided to end a marriage that I stayed in because I thought I was doing the best thing for my kids. Clergy have told me I could have an annulment , but for me it will always be a failed marriage, and that sears.
As a Catholic, I was raised to see martyrdom as a pure higher purpose, but I am human, and stayed in a marriage that was one-sided and hurtful and took a lot of fortitude to persevere. I loved and forgave over and over again until I finally realized I was a shattered sort of person. I believe in marriage, but not in mine. There are some that are just not salvageable, as much as we believe in the concept and as much as we pray,work, and hope for things to be different. Looking back, I don’t know if I did my kids any favors. When they reflect, will they see me as someone who made great sacrifices because of love and family, or as someone who should have been strong enough to leave decades ago?
So sad the casual treatment of what a child so depends on. And, also sad the pain likely experienced by the woman who said it, who probably entered her marriage with as much hope as we all do and whose reality fell short of her dream.
I think I disagree slightly with the metaphor of marital love as the tender sapling. The tender sapling is the two-person shell of the marriage, while marital love is the sap that rises within to sugar the sapling, enlarging it with solidity year to year so that it has the substance to withstand both the seasons and the storms. Attention to its preservation, through mutual respect that restrains negative impulses while cultivating the habits of word, deed and attitude that nurture, is the bark-like armor that protects precious marital love from deterioration, decay, or infiltration. Those same habits prepare the two for their role as parents.
Too many don’t really surrender themselves to the marriage to become one; they behave like pairs of saplings, with their sugary sap separate, fed and protected independently of, sometimes even competitively against, the other. Such behavior only ensures scarcity of nourishment for all – husband, wife, and child – and, besides denying the child the clear sense of creation from a single source, it denies him the most personally relevant example of how best to nourish himself, and eventually his own marriage, through loving, mutually-giving relationship to others.
If the marital love is the sap, it is the mutually-cultivating respect that is both it’s protection and the eternal Spring that keeps it flowing so what begins a sapling becomes the sturdy, deeply-rooted, and long-lived.
Thank you. Going through a divorce has some similarity to going through a death. It is part of each person that dies, maybe a little, maybe a lot. It’s important to think about how divorce affects children and how they learn to love.
So often I see it coming, the result of vows broken through deliberate neglect, a base and selfish and recurring decision from an “I don’t have to” mindset. What does “to have and to hold” mean, anyway? So often, nothing. But sins of omission are rarely held accountable in this life, and it’s the one that, sick of heart, gives up at last, who is blamed by unknowing onlookers for breaking a contract long since shattered.
“Until death parts us” is not supposed to mean the death of love. Isn’t it supposed to be love that never fails?
“Love… is tender”
Or perhaps fragile. For a few decades now some student courses in parenting have had young people carry around an egg, balloon, or a doll to simulate the responsibility of a baby. I would rather they hand out delicate, hollow glass hearts and tell them they are responsible for another persons heart when they enter into marriage. I just think the image of a beautiful, but fragile heart would have a lasting impression on some of them so that they would think twice about accepting another’s heart…or giving theirs away to someone who might mishandle it.
it has been said that Love is a decision.
There are many today who confuse love with a small “l”, with Love that starts with a large “L”.
Many large L loves have begun with that giddy feeling that comes from emotion. These large L loves have endured to the place where that actually ARE an intentional decision against all logic and reason.
It’s difficult to speak objectively and definitively about this subject, because there are many who are justified to the tune of “He beat me every Friday.” There are many more that wind up as “I just don’t feel the same about her anymore.” The latter is a crime against humanity and the institution that binds our society together.
I would argue that love may be fragile, and is often fleeting. Love is like rock and can endure the storms of life. Never ever enter a marriage with Eros or Phileo as the basis. Only Agape can endure. Until you are there, it’s not time yet.
I guess I understand about the pain of divorce. But I am the survivor of the pain of marriage – my parents.
They were married for 40 years before my dad succumbed to cancer at age 63. I was born 8 years after they were married and what I remember of their relationship was lots of midnight arguments, storming out of the house kind of stuff. There are pindots of happiness mixed in.
But what I chiefly remember – and I’m 47 years old now – is a marriage between two Type A personalities, including one with an unacknowledged mental illness. I remember 2 people who I think loved each other but I don’t believe truly liked each other. That they stayed married for all those years is more a testament to their generation than to anything abiding and strong between them.
I used to wonder, even in my late teens and early 20s, why they stayed married. It always seemed to me they’d be happier not living in the same house, let alone in a relationship. Heck, they stopped sleeping in the same bed when I was 7 or 8; they stopped sleeping in the same room by the time I was 14.
That’s not a marriage; divorce would have been better.
Divorce – At nine my mother left my father with me in tow. The divorce wounded all three of us to differing degrees and many others at varying layers outside of our family.
At 46, I am married only because my husband persisted and had the vision for us. I only had trust. We are married in the Church, and this sacrament is a great source of grace for the four of us (We have two children.). I resolved long ago to forgive and forget, but I am still part of the vast American legion of walking wounded. I react at times more vehemently than I intend against the selfish, bra-burning, me-generation of blinded women when what I need is greater Charity, patience and fortitude. Little by little I am healing – Thanks be to God.
No matter how much one may attempt to realize the ideal of marriage or even just the bare minimum for a valid marriage it sometime just cannot be achieved with a spouse who is a sociopath or a severely mentally ill person or an alcoholic or an abuser or a sexual libertine.
Whether those marriages were valid in their inception is for the tribunals.
As difficult as it may be for family memebers caught up in such relationships, it may be the best thing to explain the problem so that they can deal better with the pain of the ruptures caused by divorce.
I had been told that the only thing more traumatic for a child than the death of a parent is divorce. As I lost my mother when I was 8, I never really believed it.
Last night, my (adult) stepdaughter unexpectedly unburdened herself to me concerning her parents’ divorce. The pain she felt–even after more than a decade–was fresh and palpable. “It was a knife in my heart”, she said.
I believe now that my loss was indeed easier to bear than her’s. And I mourn for her.
Nice blog. Divorce is a tragedy beyond all others, except maybe abortion.
the only time i ever cried so hard i cried myself to sleep was the day my parents told me they were getting divorced. it ruins families, lives, causes great evil. it is truly one of the greatest scourges of society today, only overshadowed by our collective lack of faith, and abortion.
I’ve been divorced for 30 years. If I had stayed married, I would have been dead. I still feel pain and guilt – I probably always will.
Divorce isn’t funny, and I don’t know how it became such a “positive” thing. People joke about it, have parties for it, and even try to teach children that it is normal. I don’t know what I would do if my parents divorced. I have seen friends go through it, and it is NOT easy, fun, painless, or a “fix.” Divorce has caused many to no longer view marriage as marriage, which is why we see such support for homosexual “marriage.”
Divorce rips apart everything–a man and a wife, a family, children from their home, and even society itself. Divorce is ugly and dangerous.
Divorce is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. If the Devil is ever happy it is when a marriage and a family is crushed and broken by divorce. Divorce when there are children is an open wound that seems to never heal. The annullment process helps healing. Parents learning to forgive and apologize (especially to their wounded children) and stay around and be there sacrificing their own lives until the children can heal and move on. All these things can help and even lead to salvation and a greater reliance on God. But Divorce is not what God intends for us. It is a great failure and none of us are meant for that. Divorce is a hard learning experience at best.
Divorce continues to be a reality in the Church, although many parishes fail to acknowledge that fact. Once a divorce happens, the divorced man or woman needs to be around people in the church community that can help them heal. That, unfortunately, is not what I find in Catholic parishes. It’s like an embarassment to be swept under the rug. We Catholics have a lot to learn from our Protestant brothers and sisters about Divorce Recovery programs. These aren’t about finding a second spouse, but finding healing in the loving embrace of God and the understanding hearts of our neighbors.
What I wrote in the prior posting, it is not a matter of doing, it is a matter of being.
It is a false dilemma to have to choose only between a bad marriage and divorce. There is NO good divorce.
Marriage is not something you do, it is something you are. It is a state of being. To unnaturally destroy that state of being — to divorce — is to rip the nature of the person in two.
There is no good divorce. There is good “they never should have married in the first place.” And we would all be better off if more priests said “no” to couples that obviously were not prepared for the Sacrament. But there is no good divorce as the solution to a bad marriage.
The solution to a bad marriage is to stop making it a bad marriage. Bad marriages are a choice too, just like love is a choice, just like hate and distain are choices. The solution to a bad marriage is for both persons to stop being so damned self-centered, and to stop sneaking glances over at the door, ready to bolt for the exit.
But what if one party doesn’t want to stop making it a bad marriage, what then?? Well, that still does not alter the fact that marriage is not something you do, it is something you are.
Besides, there once was this guy who was married, and his spouse was the most vicious, unfaithful, mean-spirited spouse you can imagine. For years and years he pulled his hair out over her, trying to convince her to mend her ways, to make the relationship work. Then one day, his spouse grabbed him, beat him, mocked him, berated him, told lies about him, and then nailed him to a cross. What would we have done if he had said, “I want a divorce,” instead of laying down his life?
Troubles in your marriage? Your spouse is unkind? mean? unfaithful? OF COURSE. It is guaranteed. He or she is a human being, right? Then he or she is going to disappoint you. You can count on it. Running away from those troubles is not the answer. Only love is the answer. Stop making it a bad marriage is the answer.
It may not be an easy answer. It might be the hardest answer ever known. But that is the answer.
My little sister, after many years in a bad marriage– even setting up a marriage counselor, only for the guy to say “if we just went back to how it was before (when she did everything he wanted, they were spending more than they made, and she thought him beating her up was her fault) it would all be great!” — finally had someone pull her aside and tell her it was NOT alright for the guy to assault her, especially in front of witnesses. (He wrongly assumed that someone would think nothing of it; in many years, he never slipped up in front of a family member.)
Apparently, the “marriage counselor” thought this point of view was alright, even in light of the guy kicking her out of the house with their toddler.
I really don’t like divorce, but it beats the hell (pardon, but no lesser word will work) out of going in to ID my baby sister in the morgue.
Bender is right.
Our Lord said that in cases of “immorality”, divorce was perfectly okay. (And the Church has generally considered beating up your spouse as a form of sexual immorality.)
So, yes, Bender is more or less correct, but also more or less wrong. Our Lord’s behavior toward the human race is a type; but He never said He wanted every beaten-up wife to become a dead marital martyr or a split-lip confessor. Our Lord overturned tables and whipped out the moneychangers; He probably would have had an even shorter way with wifebeaters; and of course one of the great OT sins is lashon hara, a nasty lying tongue, so He probably would have had a few whipping cords or millstones for verbal assaulters, also.
And of course, separation is also not a violation of marriage. If people just can’t stand each other, they can stay married but not live together; or they can find some modus vivendi that permits them to stay married without totally losing it with each other every day. Adults are supposed to be able to figure stuff like this out, as they do at work or in other social situations. And truly, sometimes it’s a time thing or a menopause thing or a “we have a lot of family tension” thing.
My parents never would have considered divorce. So when we kids were teenagers, and being nerds didn’t have much social life; and we were all trapped in the house crabbing at each other every night because my parents didn’t trust us out of their sight even to take a walk, even though we never did anything bad or anything at all; and they didn’t really have any adult friends to spend time with, so we could never get away from them except when they went shopping or we went to school; there was lots of fighting between them. When we grew up and moved out, my parents magically stopped arguing all the time and got hobbies that weren’t us. (Thank you, God.)
Love is an act of the will, as is marital consent. I find the notion “love is tender” to be contrary to 1 Corinthians 13. Infatuation is tender and easily fades/flowers somewhat out of the control of the individual. As an act of the will, love is not so out of control. Yet, because of original and personal sin, the will is weakened and so love, like the will, also has its ebbs and flows. But, I would not go so far as to say love is tender.
Bender’s is the type of self-righteous attitude that I come across so often in the Church. “Oh, if they would only work harder or pray more, or if the wife would submit, then they would stay married.”
Bender, sometimes one person in the marriage has absolutely no desire to work on the marriage. None. Whatsover. And will take no responsibility for the marriage. And blame all his problems on his wife and children. He may even be a danger to the wife and children, or spend all the money they have for bills on drugs and alcohol. In this case there is no sacramental marriage, the marriage is invalid, and the wife and children are, thanks be to God, free to go on with their lives.
Bender’s is the type of self-righteous attitude that I come across so often in the Church. “Oh, if they would only work harder or pray more, or if the wife would submit, then they would stay married.”
Where did I say ANY of those things you so presumptuously attribute to me?
As for the Sacrament, marriage does not suddenly become invalid partway through because one spouse doesn’t want to work on it. It is only invalid if it was always invalid.
Not only did I NOT say that it was merely a matter of you working harder (it might take some help, i.e. grace, for one thing, no one ever said you have to do this all by yourself), but I also did not say that one must submit to abuse.
Sometimes love does entail walking away. But even if there are moral grounds for separation, the fact remains that the sacramental reality of the marriage remains. Divorce from a sacramental marriage is not only NOT the answer, it is a theological impossibility.
And, for the record, the VAST and OVERWHELMING majority of divorces have absolutly NOTHING to do with abuse. They are “no fault” divorces, divorces of desire, divorces of convenience, divorces of a disposable marriage mindset.
As for cases of “immorality” and divorce — that is certainly the Protestant position. But it is not the understanding of the Catholic Church.
Marriage is not something you do. It is something you are. The Sacrament of Matrimony fundamentally alters the nature of the person, as does Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders.
Even in our everyday language we recognize that. The word “single” is typically reserved for a person who has never married. Someone who married, but whose spouse has died is typically called a “widow” or “widower.” And someone who was married and got divorced is typically not called, “single,” but “divorced,” thereby implicitly recognizing the marital state.
What the government does — divorce — has no effect on reality.
When a person is in physical danger or her children are in danger she has an obligation to remove herself and her children and protect herself and children. You can separate and pray and sacrifice for your spouse far away from him. You can dress and act in ways that still tell the world that you are married and showing unconditional love for your spouse, safely away from him. You might set up a separate home and separate checking account to protect and feed your family. Some situations require a physical separation. Divorce is different. Divorce does not physically separate the family. Divorce breaks apart the foundation and leaves rubbles, pain, hurt and great suffering for the children. Divorce asks the children to carry the crosses of the parents on their precious, innocent, vulnerable little shoulders. In the heart of every child of divorce (not separation for protection) lingers the questions, why wasn’t I reason enough to stay together? What does an annulment solve? A child’s intact-family is still decimated. Imagine if we today carried our very painful crosses in our marriages and sanctified ourselves and our families with them?
Thoughtful post and comments. I think divorce is a *symptom*, just as bankruptcy is a symptom of poor economy or bad management//the *problem* is bad marriages usually resulting from one partner treating the other very poorly. And in America in 2010, it is usually though of course not always the wife who is treating the husband badly.
If you observe couples in public places in any large city or suburban are (white, middle-class and above) you will hear women speaking to their husbands with barely-concealed (often not at all concealed) contempt//treating them like children, morons, or enemies. Rarely do you hear men, at least men under 65, speaking to women this way. American women who have been married for several years seem very often to be in a constant state of anger at the world but especially at their husbands.
Men have been encouraged to placate women when the latter are angry or unreasonable. Some of this is necessary and good but it has gone too far and when it does it leads to the woman’s contempt for and increasing anger and demands directed at the man.
If we want less divorce we need better marriages. No one needs to have their soul corroded on a day by day basis.
Well, sometimes nothing short of a SWAT team has any effect on reality, either, when a guy is holding a gun to his wife’s head while she’s holding a baby in her arms.
Bender, there are situatins where ending a marriage via divorce AND annulment is the only appropriate answer.
Annulment means no valid sacramental marriage ever took place, therefore no one was fundamentally changed through sacramental grace from the start.
But that’s where I start to get pretty cyncial about things — when the Church stuff begins to sound indistinguishable from the secular lawyer stuff. You know something’s not quite right when that happens. God’s no longer in the equation.
There are obviously situations where ending a marriage is the only sane, right action. Is it a good thing? Of course not. Better the entire situation should never have happened. But sometimes there’s no telling, there’s no seeing down the road how things will change.
Abusive people are very, very good at hiding the abusive aspects of their personalities until after a marriage has taken place, and often these abusive behaviors ramp up over time, or after a triggering event in the abuser’s life.
Very well put, Kristen.
Annulment doesn’t “solve” anything, nor does it attempt to. Annulment recognizes that a valid sacramental marriage never took place from the start.
Divorce does sort out the legal/financial/custodial details, and that is a sad, depressing, painful necessity.
It’s all heartbreaking, of course, but there are practical reasons for divorce as well, I suppose, as practical reasons for annulment.
The Church does have a lot of work to do re the annulment issue, however. Big lack of clarity in that quarter, IMO.
But we do have to recognize that some situations are outright dangerous and life-threatening and that the risk to human life is too great to pretend there is anything remotely close to a true marriage going on. As painful as it is to dissolve those unions, it is the lesser evil.
Is divorce really necessary to solve custodial issues? If the father/mother of the children is sane enough, responsible enough and safe enough to leave with your children unsupervised and overnight for periods of time, then he/she must be sane enough, responsible enough and safe enough to live with together and find a way to treat with dignity even if he/she is not doing the same?
I have experienced enormous and insurmountable suffering and injustice in my marriage. I was advised by numeous clergy to leave and assured of an annulment. But I looked deep within and prayed, sacrificed and by the grace of Our Lord found joy and peace amidst the suffering. I found my dignity in my cross that Our Lord carried with me. One thought I always carried with me was that if my husband was so terrible that no person can be expected to be with him, then he can’t be with our children. If I was willing to let him be with his children alone and overnight because he did not pose a danger, then I can be with him under the same roof.
The good news is that after 17 years the Lord has touched my husband’s heart and we are undergoing great healing that I never expected or thought was possible. We are expecting our 7th baby this winter. My children have witnessed God’s grace working to help their mother carry her cross in faithfulness and joy. They have witnessed God’s grace transform a broken, wounded (possibly mentally ill) man. They are witnessing now God’s grace move hearts towards forgiveness and mercy.
St. Francis of Assisi was called to extreme and heroic poverty in order to offset the opulence of that age in The Church. Today husbands and wives are called to extreme and heroic marital love in order to offset the lack of love and forgiveness in today’s world.
When I stand before God I am sure there will be much to answer for but I am confident that He will not ask me why I did not seek an annulment when I would have been granted one? It would not have been a sin to have left and annuled the marriage. But if I am honest with myself, I would have been saying No to the cross and to holiness.
Please pray for me that I can continue each day to forgive, one day show mercy and carry the cross of pain suffered through the years with joy and that my capacity to truly love God and my spouse continues to grow.
Are some of you suggesting that 50% of all marriages are abusive? To read the arguments in favor of divorce, you’d think every spouse out there was abused!
The Catholic Church DOES allow for divorce in cases of spousal or child abuse. But physical abuse is, thank God, the rare exception.
Yes, there are marriages in which one party no longer wants to work on the marriage. So what? That’s the “for worse” part of the marriage vows. My parents were married for 43 years, and much of that was spent in anger, alcoholism, adultery, and arguments. But my mom stuck it out, against all odds, against the better judgment of those around her.
Would my brother and I have been better off if she had walked out and taken us with her? I don’t know. But I do know that I look at my mother with a profound respect because of her extraordinary commitment in the face of decades of trials. My father did eventually repent and return to full communion in the Church, largely because of my mother’s fidelity. And his repentance brought my mother back to the Church.
One poster said that his/her parents’ commitment to a difficult marriage was partly a reflection of the parents’ generation. I would agree. I think earlier generations didn’t go into marriages so haphazardly, thinking themselves free to leave if things went sour for a few years or more. I am NOT talking about actual abuse, but let’s face it — not all the marriage ending in divorce do not include abuse. It’s just people wanting romance without effort, wanting intimacy without mundane realities, wanting perfection in their spouse without having the courage to assist their spouse in achieving perfection.
Marriage is about a man and a woman helping each other and their children get to heaven. And sometimes that is an awful journey. But I don’t know of a single couple that has stayed together for decades that didn’t have to endure tastes of hell along the way.
Personally, I am a divorced woman — my ex-husband wanted out, and my state is a “no fault” divorce state (meaning I had no legal recourse to fight it). But as far as I am concerned, it is still my promise to God that I will pray and make sacrifices to see that my ex makes it to heaven.
Life is short. Eternity is, well, eternal.
S McG and Bender,
Many marriages end because of “No Fault” divorce laws which leave a perhaps innocent, unwitting Catholic brother or sister divorced against their will, with no way to change the situation. In those cases learning that your marriage was not a “sacramental” marriage and therefore not a “valid” marriage in the first place can have a healing, growth oriented effect. It all however is painful and due in some part to personal or developmental, formative failures of one sort or another. I don’t think anyone in the Church “owes” divorced people a lot of respect or sympathy or “anything,” however. Divorce is something you ultimately do to yourself by not hearing and obeying God enough in the first place. My point is that “the wages” of a failure of this type is very painful and if you plan to marry please do study the Church’s teachings on matrimony and carefully be and select a trustworthy and compatible partner and plan to work hard at living a truly “sacramental” marriage and thereby avoid the disaster of divorce.
Friendly correction of Bender: Baptism and Confirmation mark the soul as does the sacrament of Holy Orders. A sacramental marriage, on the other hand, confers graces on the couple but does not indellably mark the soul. Marriage like the Ministerial Priesthood is a sacrament of service, but unlike it, a sacramental Catholic marriage is renewed by the couple’s participation specifically in the marriage act. Thus, marriage has a more temporal less permanent character as is appropriate since none of us will be wed in the New Jerusalem.
In Christ-
Laura
Thank you for the clarification Laura. You are correct that we are not wed in the New Jerusalem, and it is good to remember that.
But I specifically did not say that Matrimony indelibly marks the soul in that fashion. What I said is that it fundamentally alters the person — it does so on a transcendent level, so as to permit two to become one, not two becoming one in a merely poetic sense, but at the level of fundamental, ontological reality.
A couple who has received the Sacrament of Matrimony is not the same as a single man and single woman who happen to have received some graces to be able to stand living together. Rather, those graces operate to change the person to become something and someone that they were not before and can never be again.
“Marriage is not something you do. It is something you are. The Sacrament of Matrimony fundamentally alters the nature of the person, as does Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders.” Bender
Bender, it seems to me that if we, in general, were better at loving – closer to full submission of our wills to the Divine Will for each of us, then we would in every interaction, even casual ones, profoundly, ontologically, alter one another. As it is in this vale of tears, marriage is a place where we allow ourselves to be more vulnerable than in most other relationships, so in that way we are more open to being more altered by another.
God is no fool…He understands that the vocations of Holy Orders, consecrated religious life, consecrated lay life or marriage are pathways to sanctity; we would do well to, culturally, slow down and ruminate on this Truth.
Nonetheless, there is no particular watermark on an individual’s soul owing to the fact that they were once married or are married, unlike the cases of souls that have been Baptised/Confirmed or have received Holy Orders.
Having said this, however, the Graces that are available from a sacramental marriage are vast indeed, and these Graces absolutely help us to conform ourselves individually and help us to help our spouses and children conform to the Divine Will and Plan for each individual in the family. These Graces are worth more than all $$ on the globe!!
Peace
I guess I really don’t understand the need for disputing what I said.
Here is just a quick example of Church teaching –
“By matrimony, therefore, the souls of the contracting parties are joined and knit together more directly and more intimately than are their bodies . . . and from this union of souls by God’s decree, a sacred and inviolable bond arises.” Pius X, Casti Connubii
The Sacrament involves the soul and affects the soul, i.e. fundamentally changing the person.
Just exactly what is it that we are arguing about????
One question that I have for the people who seem to be defending divorce is: would you ever consider divorcing your parents, children, or siblings? Not maybe putting some distance between you and them for the sake of sanity or safety, which is analogous to separation or civil divorce—but actually washing your hands of them permanently?
I’m blessed to be married to a good man who puts up with all of my faults, so maybe I don’t have a right to talk, but one of the things we decided from the start was that divorce would never be on the table as an option, not even as a joke. He knows that there is nothing that he can do that would cause me to abandon him, and I know the same thing about him. The commitment is absolute and non-negotiable.
One can “divorce” one’s parents, actually. A minor can file for emancipation status. Adult children are not legally bound in any way to parents, so there isn’t a formal process for severing the relationship, but it happens all the time.
Unfortunately, there are parents who abandon their minor and/or adult children, too, and there are estranged families in which siblings haven’t made contact with each other for decades.
So it happens — it happens in the you-are-dead-to-me sense, too — sometimes necessarily so. There are things parents can do to their children that are so beyond the pale, one can only opt to cut all ties in order to survive. I can speak only to that relationship situation personally, but I imagine children can so abuse their parents, or siblings each other, that those cases exist as well.
It is always tragic, but these things do happen, and pretending it’s never necessary to legally dissolve a relationship, or even to sever ties completely is unfair to the people in those situations.
I understand your point in that, for some people and/or our society in general, divorce is too “normal” that they joke about it. However, I, like “Shale” have recently decided to end my marriage. I struggled for the last several years about this and it has been the hardest, most gut wrenching decision I’ve ever made. The title of your post, “Pain of divorce is raw and real” caught my eye. But this isn’t at all what I expected. Yes, the pain of divorce is raw and it is real. It is just as painful for me and my husband as it is for our children. I stayed in this marriage “for the children”, and I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. I prayed to every patron saint that had anything to do with marriage and/or hopeless causes. Did my prayers go unanswered?? Maybe, maybe not. Only God knows. You do not. Like Shale said, some marriages cannot be saved. In my case, it got to the point that my marriage was doing more harm than good to my children. I know how painful divorce is for children because I experienced it when my own parents divorced. I hated what they had done and how it hurt me. I thought my parents were being selfish. Kenny Loggins came out with a song years ago called The Real Thing, which was about his own divorce and how he was doing it for his kids to teach them what real love was. I hated that song from the moment I first heard it on the radio. I thought, ‘Oh yeah right, Kenny, you’re doing this for your children…what a crock, you’re doing it only because you’re selfish, etc…” Now I realize there is some truth to that song and I even used that song in explaining the divorce to my own kids.
I also think you’re being a little too judgmental with the cashier. She may have just been trying to be funny or may have used the humor to hide her own pain. You do not know. I think you’re reading way, way too much into her comment. You do not know her situation at all, and have no right to make some blanket, sweeping judgment of her. You seem to imply that people who choose to divorce, do so flippantly and selfishly. You have no clue as to how painful it is to make this decision. The pain is raw and it is real—for me. I have to constantly ask myself, and God, “Why? Why can’t my marriage work? Why are other people so happy? Why do their marriages work and not mine? Why doesn’t God answer my prayers? Is this what God wants for me and my children—to live in an unhealthy, emotionally abusive home?” You do not know me or my situation, so don’t judge me. Is God with me as I make this decision to divorce? Is he carrying me as a travel through this terrible ordeal in my life? Yes, I think he is. And I pray you can accept and understand that, be a little more charitable and less judgmental towards people who have to make this awful decision.
Yes, not to “defend divorce” (Karen), but tragically sometimes the choice *is* martyrdom or divorce. Did you truly mean to advocate for martyrdom, Post 19, Bender? Hey, I’ve been trying it, barely survived it, so far. You tried it lately?
What if what God intended was maybe the Love (h/t Medbob) and lives of the children of that marriage? I don’t pretend to know… but to say, “the solution to a bad marriage is to stop making it a bad marriage” is to disregard that two people are involved and one cannot control the other. One can react, endure, but not necessarily change and certainly not control.
Separation likewise is not always possible when minor children are involved– if the priority is to protect those children, then leaving with them does not guarantee custody, and neither does battling in court. You gonna count on a judge or jury to see through lies, when your children’s lives are at stake? And, likewise, if a spouse denies access to property, finances, and so on, well walking isn’t going to solve that little dilemma. I have considered entering a convert, where a vow of poverty would come in handy, but I am not sure if that is in God’s plan.
I do agree that there are some marriages that should never have happened, but wouldn’t many divorced people agree with that? Hindsight is… not always with us at the time! I was young, optimistic, sweet and even holy. I was trusting. I have since learned not to be so trusting. Yes, marriage indeed changes us.
Post #13, I am glad that you got out. I know how it feels to feel almost dead, and so I wish rather than guilt you could now feel joy for the life the Lord now intends you to live.
“He’s not done with me yet…”
I do believe in grace, and I know God puts people in our lives for a purpose and often when we most need them. Sometimes, it is simply a friend who makes us laugh. Other times, maybe it is anonymous posters on a blog who make us think about whether we are un-Christian and spineless and ought to know better than to divorce. Maybe that is true. I am pondering, though I would also submit that if marriage as God intends is non-existent, then divorce would be only what the world sees and what facilitates survival in it. God already knows what goes on.
My mother’s parents divorced when she was a teenager. Grandpa was unfaithful and Grandma had had it. The effect on Mom was more apparent as the years went by and we gained greater understanding. And, the effect on each of us, her four children, is apparent. Divorce travels the generations, leaving its mark on each unintended victim.
Grandpa eventually came back to the church but he was never whole – looking back, it was very sad. I never understood why he couldn’t stop and be committed to Grandma. Why he couldn’t be nice. Why he had to go to Cuba to go fishing while his ex wife and child didn’t have enough money for electricity.
We loved him but we didn’t like what he had done. We pray for his soul. We pray for my Mom that she may be healed. We pray for our own children.
Does divorce leave its mark to the 7th generation? I don’t know. It has left its mark in our family to the 4th generation . . .
At the time I wrote post #42, it followed SMcG’s post. My “yes” was in agreement with SMcG.
Not sure how Cathy Sargent’s post (which made me cry) snuck in there, but after I read it, I set up a little blog for any pained spouses or children who care to commiserate further. Or, anyone else who wants to share more knowledge, theology, thoughts…
Dear Ms. Bean,
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “If I didn’t laugh about it, I’d cry,” or something similar. Did you stop to think that the cashier, seeing you with your children, became overwhelmed with the pain and grieving of having lost his own three children to divorce? Did you stop to think that, perhaps, he joked about it, so he wouldn’t break down into a sobbing ball of tears at work in front of all of those customers and co-workers?
As a divorced man and a father of five sons, I can assure you that divorce is never “so normal it is even sometimes a joke.” It is a horrible, gnawing open wound, but sometimes, just sometimes, joking about it is the only way to get to the next day or the next hour or the next minute.
Next time you come across a divorced person and want to judge him from your self-righteous, married-for-life pedestal, maybe, just maybe, you can smile at his joke and assure him that he is a good father and that you will pray for him and his children. Christ empathized with the suffering. Perhaps, you should too.
Respectfully,
Marcus Woods
I’m a woman who is divorced and remarried, had a son with my first husband. He is 27 years old now. In retrospect, the pain my son has suffered and the emotional damage done to him by our divorce was so great that I wish I’d never gotten that divorce. There were lots of things that prompted it and it would have been better had we never married in the first place but, once in the marriage, I should have stayed for my son’s sake. But hindsight is 20/20. Although my ex-husband and I fought bitterly, once I left, my ex- remarried and I had no control over the woman he married and how she treated my son. That was a nightmare.
I have since remarried and this time my husband is somewhat physically abusive and has cheated on my twice. However, I know now what I didn’t know then, that my job as his wife is to do every thing in my power to get his soul to heaven. Yes, it is martyrdom, but I’m not going to fail God or our two children in this marriage the way that I failed my son in my first marriage. If you love somebody, your main concern has to be for their soul. You don’t have to like him. I really did say for better or worse and I really did mean it. Hopefully, someday there will be some of that better that we hoped for when we first married. But I am at peace now knowing I’m doing what God wants me to do and putting my husband’s soul over my personal desire for happiness.
Dear Cathy & Marcus & Others,
I am very sorry you have suffered, and are continuing to suffer, the pain of divorce. I am also deeply sorry that you feel judged by me. I assure you that I do not judge you — I have no idea what the details of your divorce are, and they would be none of my business anyway.
I also have no idea why the cashier joked about his divorce, and perhaps he did do so to cover some of his own pain, but I stand by my statement that it’s just not funny to joke about having your kids every other weekend. I do, however, understand that he (and others) might have deeply personal and painful reasons for doing so.
Other than that, my only point in this post is that divorce is a deeply painful and destructive thing (I did not attempt to argue that no one should ever get divorced — I recognize that there are times when it is the only “solution” to a very bad situation) and that perhaps there are ways those of us who are married can take better care of our relationships. I don’t suggest this from a “self-righteous, married for life pedestal.” Quite the opposite, in fact. I suggest it to myself and others because I fully recognize that the attitude of “divorce would never happen to us” is dangerous and unrealistic for anyone.
You need to have ready answers for the next time someone “jokes” about something so evil and grave.
At the checkout when the man, who happened to be black, encouraged me to dump my change into a container for the Susan Komen Breast Cancer cause, i asked him if he was aware that they support Planned Barrenhood which kills a disproportionate number of black babies, and why as a white skinned person he would want me to support that. You could have heard a pin drop…………..