Mawaige

Does it make sense to stay married if you’re not in love? Or if the person makes you miserable or crazy? Or if you have grown into a completely different person who would never have married your partner in the first place?

What if you’d both be happier and more fulfilled and successful with someone else or alone?

I’m in love and happy and like the life I have with my husband. But we grew into our marriage. And there are things I wish I’d had a chance to try – or will have a chance.

I know couples who are so unhappy with each other. Can only complain about each other. They need to be released.

Marriage is so different now than when the Bible was written. It’s meant so many different things in history, and now is evolving again. Can we really say for sure what the requirements are? Should we have permission to divorce? Jesus spoke against it strongly, but he was talking about something different – something that left women without choice or resources. It’s simply not the same thing today. Back then, it ruined a woman’s life. Basically forced her into an immoral or impoverished state. That’s not what it does any more.

Have we left today’s couples without a choice to end an unhappy marriage?

I don’t know what I think. William Countryman (in Dirt, Greed, and Sex - great book) says Jesus wasn’t even talking about what we think he was talking about when he referred to Genesis. Countryman gives a compelling argument for divorce, particularly when one was married on the shaky grounds of being “in love.”

I don’t know. I don’t personally want to get a divorce. But I’m no longer sure that always sticking it out in a terrible relationship, or even just an unhealthy one, is truly the right thing to do. I’m not entirely sure it’s what God would want, even.