Why do marriages break up?

This article was prompted by a little incident. I was driving to work with a colleague and we got into a discussion about marriage. I shared a few thoughts regarding marriage and he told me that was the first time in his life he saw the relevance of marriage. Apart from feeling happy I was able to make sense in some way, it also struck me – right between the eyes – that many adults who are already married or who are looking to do so still focus on things like ‘love’, sex, the need for company or societal demands as the reason for marriage.

Several of my peers with really young marriages are divorced and many others are going through the process. Others are married but have spoken about hating being married. One lady described marriage as feeling like a noose. Now, it is obvious that I am not an expert, but I put this note together to share (or attempt share) what I am learning on the journey – and that journey and learning process never ends. I doubt that many of the things said will be new, but maybe this will help to highlight other critical areas.

To be honest, when I was about to get married, especially considering my peculiar financial circumstances, I got LOADS of advice, from single and married folk alike. I sat in silence, with a polite smile on my face listening and sieving intently. Some of the suggestions were not worth a row of beans, some were totally nonsensical, while many other made a lot of sense – and these I still follow. However, now that I am married, I realize that what society needs is NOT more advice but more homes that work; homes that can be models. Society needs people who have a thriving family with an ambience of warmth, ‘real’, and God – and these families will need to allow others in so that people can see and learn what a thriving family is like. The Bible talks about God telling Moses to build the temple ‘according to the pattern SHOWN’ to him… It is easier to learn when we SEE something that works.

A rule I live by is from an old book, ‘The Richest Man in Babylon’ and the rule simply says ‘Do not inquire from a bread maker about the stars…’ In other words, some of these people who were giving me advice on how to have a good marriage did not have marriages or homes that I found appealing. I did NOT want my home or relationship to be anything like theirs, so I listened to them, but knew I would not be using them as models. Also, if you have not observed a man around his wife and kids in several scenarios, you don’t necessarily have to take everything the person says in. Talk is cheap and we live in an age where people are skilled at showing facets of their lives to the public. But let me jump straight into my thoughts around what (I believe) makes a marriage work.

First, it is NOT ‘Love’.

Wait. Don’t crucify me yet. Stay with me...

If you notice, I used inverted commas when I said ‘Love’. When we say ‘Love’ these days, we describe the warm, cuddly feelings that cause an attraction to someone, hopefully, of the opposite sex. These feelings make us want to spend time with someone, make us feel that we can die for that someone, that we can live with that someone forever – and it is based on this feeling, many times, that we make commitments and go into marriages and relationships. However, there is a MAJOR problem in this regard.

Feelings are totally fickle, inconsistent and even for the strongest of men, feelings are an unreliable compass.

Those who like to chant the Bible will prolly come at me with a “Love is patient - Love is kind’ mantra, and these things are true, but often when we are ‘in Love’, we are referring to feelings that make us act patient and kind for brief moments of time – and then, all of a sudden, the man who was in love punches his wife, and the woman who was in love poisons her hubby…and then people say, they were not in love – after the ceremony is over. What then is this evasive love?

Let’s look at it this way.

First of, we are NOT God who can be consistently patient, kind...and who can imbue that nature into willing human beings. For us as human beings, the feelings of Love are a trigger that cause a willingness to EXPLORE living with someone else. If you did not feel that way, you would not go out on a date with that lady, and you would not think of the possibility of that man being the father of your kids. The feelings encourage a willingness to see what being with that other person may turn out like. Now, scientists may say it comes down to chemicals, hormones or pheromones – but we can all agree that we FEEL something for someone when we say we love them, and those feelings make us want to be with them. We can also agree that the feelings do NOT last AND are not consistent. 

That, to my mind, explains why a person who would ‘cross the ocean for you’ refuses to speak to you because there was too much spice in the rice you served. Now, the feelings come and go and when you gain an understanding of how Love works, you soon learn the place of that 'Love'.

However, when people do not get this, what happens is they start to chase feelings over and over again. So a married man finds a woman who gives him a lot of attention and then he realizes that woman makes him FEEL good – or even when there is no woman chasing him, he looks for ways to FEEL good with someone else because when he is around his wife, the FEELINGS have waned. That is why you often hear divorced couples say “I don’t love her/him anymore’ because in their heads, irrespective of what they may say, what makes a marriage stay together is FEELINGS of “LOVE” and if those feelings are not there, then it is time to move on – and that is why people who get divorced soon find there is nobody on the planet who can always make you FEEL a certain way. There has to be something else that serves as the glue. Apparently what starts relationships does not suffice to keep the relationship going, just like the skill sets needed to walk to a car are different from the skill sets needed to drive the car to its destination.

In reality, for saint and sinner alike, what keeps a marriage going is an element that is often overlooked, but is critical – PURPOSE.

Love helps to start the journey by bringing people together, but the question is ‘WHY are the two people together?’

Often, people get involved in activities and think a set of activities are objectives. So the thinking is often “When I get married, I will have kids, and have a spouse and we will have great times. We will work to earn money for the family, we will take the kids to school, attend a local place of worship and travel on holiday twice a year…’

These are a set of activities like a person can go to work and scan documents, make calls, staple paper together, write memos, work up a sweat by going for several meetings – but activity does not imply efficiency or focus on what is important to guarantee success. The person who has carried out all these activities and even worked up a sweat may still be deemed unproductive. What is important is determined by the objective or purpose of the work role and normally, this is WRITTEN down as a reference point so that individuals in that role know what to focus on. All their activities should be carried out to achieve the CENTRAL objective of the Unit.

The question is, what happens when no one knows what the CENTRAL objective is or the function of the unit? What happens when people in a marriage do not know the objective or purpose of their marriage?