Divorce

 Well, the time has finally come...my last blog post. I can't believe how much I've learned and grown these last three months. From gender roles, dating, communication, and family crisis, to culture, family work, sexual intimacy, and adjustments to marriage.  I have covered a lot about families and how people function in a family. The only thing left I wanted to talk about is what I'm assuming and hoping no one wants from marriage: divorce. 

When a couple gets engaged and married, I'm pretty sure they have no intentions of splitting up; their overall goal is to stay married and committed to one another. Sadly, this isn't the case for most couples. In the United States alone, twenty-two percent of women get divorced at least once and twenty-two percent of men get divorced at least once in their lifetime.

So, why do people get divorced?

Of course, it depends on the couple, their relationship, and their circumstances. Some common examples are things I previously talked about on this blog, like a lack of good communication skills, finances, new challenges that come with marriage, adding in children, or even different goals and dreams in life. You thought I was going to mention cheating, weren't you? Actually, infidelity is not the most common reason for divorce. You know how if you asked a woman what she would do if her significant other cheated on her, she would most likely say something like, "I would divorce his sorry butt! It's a complete dealbreaker, you can't come back from that." When in reality, 63% of people try to save their marriage if one of them cheats on the other. Of the 63%, 50% say that succeeded in saving their marriage, AND that it created a better marriage later for them. This was probably the most shocking thing I learned this week!

A common reason for divorce, offered by BYU-Idaho students, says, "It wasn't fun like I thought it would be." Of course, marriage isn't going to be easy! Anything that is worth something is going to be difficult. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? This is why it is absolutely CRITICAL to learn how to communicate with each other before you tie the knot and really get to know the person you are going to be spending your life with. You need to be able to see them at their best and their worst, observing how they deal with stress and hardships. 70% of people who rate their marriage "very unsatisfactory" change their rating to "satisfactory" or "very satisfactory" if they remain in their marriage for the next five years. Loving someone tasks work, marriage takes work. Most people just don't want to put in the effort to resolve issues and struggles within their marriages. Another interesting statistic that proves this claim is that 70% of divorcees regret divorce (within 2 years of getting the divorce). If you accept that marriage isn't always going to be all butterflies and rainbows and that you will put in the effort to work through the hard times, your marriage will be the greatest blessing in your life. 

I'd love to end with this quote from one of the previous presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

"Somehow forgiveness, with love and tolerance, accomplishes miracles that can happen in no other way." - President Gordon B. Hinckley

Thank you for reading my blog and I hope you were able to take something away from what I've learned about family relations. I know family truly is the most important thing on this Earth and is the greatest gift God has given us! :)