Help For A Hurting MarriageНамуна

Devotion from Loving Your Spouse When You Feel Like Walking Away by Gary Chapman

Just Walk Away

Ours has been called the “Throwaway Society.” We buy our food in beautiful containers, which we then throw away. Our car and tech devices quickly become obsolete. We give our furniture to the secondhand shop not because it is no longer functional, but because it is no longer in style. We even “throw away” unwanted pregnancies. We sustain business relationships only so long as they are profitable to the bottom line. Thus, it is no shock that our society has come to accept the concept of a “throwaway marriage.” If you are no longer happy with your spouse, and your relationship has run on hard times, the easy thing is to abandon the relationship and start over.

I wish that I could recommend divorce as an option. When I listen to the deeply pained people in my office and at my seminars, my natural response is to cry, “Get out, get out, get out! Abandon the loser and get on with your life.” That would certainly be my approach if I had purchased bad stock. I would get out before the stock fell further. But a spouse is not a stock. A spouse is a person—a person with emotions, personality, desires and frustrations; a person to whom you were deeply attracted at one point in your life; a person for whom you had warm feelings and genuine care. So deeply were the two of you attracted to each other that you made a public commitment of your lives to each other, “so long as we both shall live.” Now you have a history together. You may even have parented children together.

No one can walk away from a spouse as easily as he or she can sell bad stock. Indeed, talk to most adults who have chosen divorce as the answer, and you will find the divorce was preceded by months of intense inner struggle, and that the whole ordeal is still viewed as a deeply painful experience.

Kristin was sitting in my office two years after her divorce from Dave. “Our marriage was bad,” she said, “but our divorce is even worse. I still have all the responsibilities I had when we were married, and now I have less time and less money. When we were married, I worked part-time to help out with the bills. Now I have to work full-time, which gives me less time with the girls. When I am at home, I seem to be more irritable. I find myself snapping at the girls when they don’t respond immediately to my requests.” 

And what about the children who watch their parents divorce? In Generation Ex, author and child of multiple divorces Jen Abbas writes candidly, “As I entered adulthood anticipating my hard-earned independence, I was stunned to discover that my parents’ divorces seemed to affect me more each year, not less.” 

Michael was all smiles when he said to me, “I finally met the love of my life. We’re going to get married and I’ve never been happier. Kelly has two kids, and I think they’re great. When I was going through my divorce, I never dreamed that I would be happy again. I now believe that I’m about to get my life back on track.”

Michael had been divorced for three years at the time of our conversation. However, six months after his marriage to Kelly, he was back in my office, complaining of his inability to get along with Kelly and her children. “I feel like an outsider,” he said. “She always puts the kids before me. I’ve never been so miserable in my life. How did I let myself get into this mess?” 

Through the years I have counseled enough divorced persons to know that while divorce removes some pressures, it creates a host of others. I am not naïve enough to suggest that divorce can be eliminated from the human landscape. I am saying, however, that divorce should be the last possible alternative. Far too many couples in our society have opted for divorce too soon and at too great a price. I believe that many divorced couples could have reconciled if they had sought and found proper help.

REACT: Perhaps you are in a tough marriage and thinking of giving up. Or a loved one or friend is in what seems to be a hopeless situation. You might think that no one understands the situation. But God does. Can you ask Him to help? Pray for yourself, your spouse, your marriage; or those involved in the troubled marriage you’re concerned about. Pray the verse at the beginning of this selection.