5 Save-Your-Marriage Tips Guaranteed to Get You Divorced

The divorce rate in this country is so distressingly high because the people we turn to for professional advice are often so clueless.  Years ago, I sought a marriage counselor when my husband and I were struggling through a whole heap of problems.    After a dozen sessions, she essentially told us to get a divorce. One afternoon, a week or so after the last session with the counselor, I sat at a corner table in Starbucks, when she walked in with a man. Nosy, I lifted a New York Times to cover my face and ease-dropped.  Her companion left after forty-five minutes or so and shortly thereafter a different one showed up.  She was interviewing candidates from a personals ad she had placed on an Internet dating site.   In hopes of saving my marriage, I had gone to a professional marriage counselor, who hadn't yet mastered the art of finding a date. That's when the truth struck me.  We can no more learn how to save our marriage from someone whose expertise comes from a psychology textbook than we can pilot a B-737 from reading flight instructions over an iphone.  


Through the decades, I've noticed the same relationship advice echoed back and forth by professional counselors, self-help books and magazine pop quizzes. But, from the vantage of twenty-six years of marriage, I cannot help but cringe.  So, I've identified below the five most commonly repeated pieces of save-your-marriage advice guaranteed to land you in divorce court.


1. Learning to communicate is key.   (NOT)
The problem here may be a cultural one. American culture is what linguists call a low context culture. We are taught that reading other people's nonverbal cues is impossible, supernatural mumbo-jumbo. We assume that the most effective form of human communication is words.  But the problem with words is that study after study has shown that at least ninety percent of communication is nonverbal, situational, and contextual.  Words can and often are misleading.   In high context cultures, (see my earlier blog post) words are not as important as the speaker's tone of voice, facial expression, gestures, posture, and situation.  In relationships, people must learn to pay attention and observe rather than demand answers their partner may not be able to formulate verbally.



2.  Breaking bad habits is key.  (NOT)
Before you ask me to change whatever habit of mine that annoys you, I will first demand that you stop smoking or lose the weight you gained since the wedding or lay off the alcohol, or. . .        However much will-power we adult humans try to exercise, scientific studies have shown that we will fail more than ninety percent of the time.  Our brains' neurocircuiting  is just too hardwired to succumb to nagging or threats of divorce.  Our love for another human being bears no relationship to our ability to break bad habits. Love is acceptance, which usually requires better self-care, so that we are not demanding things of someone we know they will not be able to give us.


3. Harmonizing childrearing practices is key. (NOT)
Human society is infinitely complex.  Over the course of our lifetimes we will meet people with different religions, values, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, personalities, pathologies and deviancies.  The goal of healthy parenting is one of introducing children to that complexity in a safe and loving environment.  If parents learn to accept and respect their own differences in childrearing attitudes, their children will be far better prepared for the cacophonous world that awaits them as adults.  It is also true that children fare better emotionally and financially when their parents stay together.  This is not a statement demanding supreme self-sacrifice on the part of the two people who cannot stand one another's company any more.  It is simply saying that making the commitment to work out relationship problems and then figuring out the magical formula that works in their lives is one of the most valuable lessons that parents can teach their children.  If parents don't learn that lesson, then their children will certainly not be able to pick it up from books, watching cable tv, or their peers.


4.   Love is key. (NOT) 
What  American culture calls love is all to often narcissism parading as something precious and noble.  When we "fall in love" with someone we all too often are embracing some aspect of that person that we would wish to see within ourselves.  In a marriage, it usually takes about seven years for these projections to peter out, at which point we realize that we don't even know the person we married.   Of course there is such a thing as love. It is beautiful and real.  But it grows over time as we come to truly know our partner. It is not something we fall into, however delicious that fanciful sensation of falling in love mixed with sexual attraction may be. And more to the point it's not something we can willy-nilly "fall out of."


5.  Fidelity is key. (NOT)
Why are people unfaithful?  It is not because they fall in love with someone else, who is more beautiful, handsome, richer, exciting, adventurous,better in bed.  Infidelity is not exciting. It is something sad and beggarly.  That person is acting from emotional neediness, a wound so deep and hungry that he or she greedily demands more than any one partner can give.   The unfaithful partner is not trading the spouse for someone else.  He or she is expressing a form of shame.  The  stinging pain that comes from discovering that one's partner has been unfaithful feeds on feelings of rejection, that one was not good enough.  But because the opposite is the case, showing (and genuinely feeling) sympathetic understanding rather than rage can nurture a healing process, that both saves the marriage and helps each partner see the relationship as a sacred and spiritual journey.

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