An article called The Gray Divorce discusses how more and more couples who have been married for three to four decades decide to get a divorce. This shocking and unexpected news has been a growing phenomenon for the past ten years. Money and marriage are the main sources people expect to gain to make them happiest. Romantic love, even if money is involved, becomes harder to have is there is not a deeper attachment in the relationship. The author says that marriages fall apart later in life because the couple suffers from an emptiness in their spirituality and a lack of sharing a passion. If a couple gets married and do not become soulmates, they will end up as roommates. More women ask for the divorce than men. Men only ask for divorce if they have a replacement. The women who seek a divorce later in life when they realize they have been living in an unsatisfying relationship for many years and their fantasy for freedom they have been thinking about for many years has come out possibly from a flirtatious conversation. Women usually think that I am only 60 years old, I am feeling great, and I have a chance for real love, revived sex, or a chance to explore life on my own.
When I read this article I thought about how a lot of times after the kids leave the house, the couple no longer has the same commonalities that they held on to throughout their entire marriage which were their kids. I also thought of how a relationship with Christ can fill all of a person's voids in their life that nothing else on the earth can do, even a marriage. Larry Crabb in the book Connecting talks about how a unity is formed in the body of Christ and how powerful connecting with other humans is that can even change lives. Maybe these couples are not communicating with each other and Crabb believes that through talking, souls can be restored. We are taught to love one another like Christ loves the church. If a married couple are not seeking God as the center of their lives, Christ cannot manifest in the marriage which can cause each spouse to view the marriage differently than what was intended by Christ.
Wouldn't be arguable the reason for a "gray divorce" is also not just spiritual emptiness but also placed on society's fault. Today the majority of elderly people and our parents are Generation x-ers and they are constantly bombarded with messages from commercials and ads almost all of their lives that this world is about our selves and our needs not others. They got more of these kind of messages more than our generation or the baby-boomers. For the young people we get images from ads, commercials, and ideas that we need connection and relationships, though it maybe for self-gratification. For example, those magazines and ads (though openly admit I love the old spice commercials) tell us how to make a person fall for us so in turn we get some satisfaction. It is rather interesting that people that go through a mid-life crisis usually think about themselves and with the support of their spouse without improving the relationship
ReplyDeleteI do think it goes back to what Dr. Crabb said in his book Effective Biblical counseling, our needs have to be met in Christ, that way we won't go around trying to fulfill the emptiness in our hearts and being frustrated all the time. Part of this people are also christians, and probably tired of feeling frustrated at their spouses all the time. When our focus is on God things are still hard, but now we have the right direction. And we will follow His directions believing He is in control. That focus can change a lot in me, first, and I can be a blessing to my spouse.
ReplyDeleteOne of my undergrad professors spoke about the increase in divorce, which at the time was around 50%. He correlated the increase in divorce to the decrease in need for marriage. He stated that in the past people married out of necessity; women needed their husbands for financial support, and men needed their wives to take care of them and for children. Now people are marrying because they think they have found their soulmate, and when the good, happy feelings are gone they move on to the next.
ReplyDeleteReading this post reminded me of this lecture and made me think of how people really do want the freedom. Whether it is the lack of a need for their spouse in terms of financial support, or they lack small children. They have the freedom to choose and instead of focusing on what the union of marriage means, they focus on their own wants.