How many times have you been in love? I’m not talking about the number of times that you think you were in love, or all of the instances in which you were passionately attracted to another person. I mean really in love with someone, caring about her more than you do yourself and accepting her without wanting to change a thing.

True love, as Tolstoy says, is about loving the “whole person” as they are, and “not as you would like them to be.” Spouses are not meant to be malleable pieces of clay for you to shape and mold.  If this were true, then we’d all have Stepford Wives.  By the time you get married, much of your wife’s character has already been formed.

People seem to like to learn things for themselves though, and oftentimes after years (or months) of failure in trying to change a person the marriage ends in divorce.  The current divorce rate in America is hovering around 40%.

What are the Top 10 Reasons for Divorce (DivorceGuide.com)?

1. Infidelity

2. Communication Breakdown

3.  Abuse

4.  Money

5.  Sex

6.  Boredom

7.  Religious or Cultural differences

8. Parenting

9. Addiction

10. Different goals or priorities in life

How many of those things do you think one or both of the people in the marriage thought they could change about the other?  Is there something these people could have done differently to produce a better outcome?  If you agree with Tolstoy, then the answer is “yes” - true love is the only antidote to divorce.

True love is genuine and personal - it is a connection that extends beyond the bounds of friendship, although it does include those feelings, and it combines acceptance with accountability and forgiveness. In other words, true love is unconditional love.

Many times, though, it seems that people love the idea or concept of being in a serious relationship with another person - the relationship is the object of their genuine affection, as opposed to the individual. As a result, conflict or dissatisfaction arises because one person, or both people, cannot conform to the ideal envisioned in the other’s mind.  Eventually, this kind of love becomes conditioned upon change, which we have already established to be a recipe for failure.

True love happens when you accept people for who they are without stipulations. Are you “in love” with your wife, or do you just love “the idea” of her? If it’s true love, then be sure to cherish and celebrate it. However, if it’s conceptual and not genuine, then you’re cheating yourself and her out of something very special in life by hanging on to a fantasy that will never come true.

Does that mean you should divorce?  No.  Divorce should be a last resort and not a quick-and-easy solution to your relationship problems.

If you want to save your relationship, then you will need to let go of the fantasy and discover the reality about who you wife really is as a person.  Real marriages (or relationships of any kind) take work, but for every little bit of effort you put into it you are likely to get a greater return on that investment of time, energy or thoughtfulness.

True love is often uncovered or strengthened through the trials, struggles and hardships a couple faces together.  Working through your differences builds trust and appreciation for one another.  That doesn’t mean you should go looking for trouble, but it also means you shouldn’t be quick to throw in the towel and give up.

Divorce should only be viewed as the last and final option available.  We all have problems and none of us are ever going to fit the perfect ideal that exists in our spouse’s mind.  True love, though, in my opinion, has a hard time existing in a perfect world - it needs those tiny imperfections to cling to so that it can grow.

Let’s face it - relationships are messy. They take work. Example: one of my favorite movies ever is Good Will Hunting, which about getting past those imperfections to find the perfect life (*Warning: Strong Language in Video Clip):

True love exists, but not in fairy tales. It exists in the real world between real people who, like Tolstoy said, are willing to “love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.”

True love is the only antidote for divorce because it is the one thing that makes two imperfect people perfect for each other.

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Per capita divorce rates 1990-2002:
1991, 0.47%
1992, 0.48%
1993, 0.46%
1994, 0.46%
1995, 0.46%
1996, 0.43%
1997, 0.43%,
1998, 0.42%,
1999, 0.41%,
2000, 0.41%,
2001, 0.40%,
2002, 0.38%

A couple thoughts:

- Divorce rates are down since the 1970’s, and on a downward trend for the most recent 10 years of reporting. So why all the hype around the 50% divorce rate?

- Four states do not report divorce rates: California, Colorado, Indiana and Louisiana. How would these statistics change if these states reported their data?

- These rates are the number of marriages dissolving. Since a marriage involves two, it’s a lot of people affected by this. When you think about it, 38% may seem low but is it?  A 62% (success rate) was not a good grade when I went to school.  What more can be done to lower the rate of failure?

How many people do you know that have been divorced?  Was there anything that could have been done to save the marriage?

*note: Thanks to the readers who pointed out a slip in the original post with the 76% of married people being affected. Even though the number of people is double the percent stays the same at 38%.

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