Marriage Under Assault

THERE is good news and bad news about marriage in today’s world. The good news comes from Toronto psychiatrist Dr. Alan Lyall. He told a reporter for the Toronto Star that, in spite of suffering many assaults in recent years, marriage is making a comeback. Why should that be? He answers: “It really can be one of the most satisfying and fulfilling ways to live a life.”

The bad news, however, is that many marriages are very unhappy. A young woman columnist, arguing against the very idea of marriage, said: “When I look at marriages, mostly what I see is pain. And the thing about having pain is that it feels so good when you stop.” Do you feel marriage is a satisfying way to live a life or merely a source of pain?

The pain and suffering in some marriages cannot be denied. They are seen in the high divorce rate in lands where divorce is permitted. In the United States the divorce rate tripled in the last twenty years. In the Soviet Union one marriage in three is said to end in divorce. In Australia the divorce rate quadrupled in just one year when a new divorce law was introduced. According to the Financial Times of London, the rising divorce rate in England cost nearly two billion dollars a year (one billion pounds) in welfare payments to divorcées and children.

Why so much turmoil in marriage?

No One Is Perfect

One difficulty is that no one is perfect. We all have quirks that can irritate others. When we see individuals only occasionally, those quirks are not important. But when we live with an individual in marriage, they can loom very large indeed. They can result in destructive bickering. Or the relationship can explode in violence. In Canada, for example, one wife in ten is reportedly beaten by her husband.

Differences in personality, or in goals, can cause big problems. What happens when a talkative individual marries someone who prefers to be quiet? Or when one mate values material possessions more than the other does? Perhaps the wife may feel she has lost face if her husband does not keep her in the same luxury she enjoyed in her father’s house. Or the husband may spend long hours at work leaving his wife alone, causing her to feel lonely.

Drunkenness is another major cause of marriage breakup. And so is immorality. Some, in today’s permissive generation, feel that occasional infidelity can be beneficial. But researchers say: “Infidelity doesn’t work. Lots of people think an adulterous affair might spice up a marriage, but an affair was always a sign of real problems. It was never a painless thing.” Bearing this out, a report from England showed adultery to be one of the most prevalent grounds for divorce there. Truly, an adulterer “is bringing his own soul to ruin.”​—Proverbs 6:32.

Did you ever consider, too, the way the deteriorating economy can erode a marriage? When both husband and wife go out to work​—as so many do today—​a family tends to drift apart. And when a couple gets deeply into debt, tension, bitterness and recriminations often result.

Again, the modern tendency of people to ‘do their own thing’ works against the stability of marriage. Couples find it difficult to adjust to each other’s likes and dislikes. Often they expect the same freedom in marriage that they had while single. Married people who cannot cultivate a giving attitude have a serious problem.

Then relatives can be a problem, especially in those lands where marriage is viewed as a union of two families rather than just two persons. In such places pressure from relatives can be strong. The husband’s mother may be so domineering that she, rather than the wife’s husband, is her head. Or perhaps the girl’s own parents insist on telling her what she should do, instead of letting the young couple live their own life.

These are some of the difficulties couples may encounter when they get married. Hence, we can truly say that marriage is still under assault, still under great pressure. Will it survive? Yes, marriage as an institution will survive, because it truly can be “one of the most satisfying and fulfilling ways to live a life.” But evidently individual marriages can be casualties in the war. Do you know how to avoid this unhappy outcome?

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DRUNKENNESS

INFIDELITY

MATERIALISM

PRESSURE FROM RELATIVES

DEBTS