In 1996, my wife was part of a group of five women who were very active in their churches, as were their husbands, including deacons, children s ministry, etc. They also had families and had all been married in the “20 years” range. One of the women was even the secretary at her church.
By 1999 all of the women except one had divorced their husbands. And they all used the same attorney. No, the one wasn’t mine. I was the second to go. I had been married 20 years and it happened out of the blue and was brought on by a class she was taking at the church (Learning to live, Learning to love).
Interestingly, the Lord brought the woman of my dreams into my life less than two months later! And I was “done” with women - or so I thought. We are nearing our 13th anniversary and the honeymoon STILL is not over.
And my wife is now counseling a woman she works with that is the same age as my ex was when she did it. And the reasoning is the same - she’s just “fallen out of love” with her husband and wants to move on. And yes, she is also VERY active in her church.
On a side note, the reason I think the divorce rate is so high among Christians relative to non-Christians is that non-Christians often don’t bother to get married. They live together and when the going gets tough they split up. It is not factored into the stats.
Your story shows that churches aren’t teaching very well what love is - it is not just a feeling. It is not passive.
Interesting story RobRoy. When I was a teenager, our church decided to get a deaconess because it was a very large church and the two pastors were overwhelmed. I don’t know what the divorce rate was before she came, but all of a sudden it seemed like couples all over the church started divorcing ... people who had been married for years or even decades.
The deaconess had a nice big house, and it seemed to become a staging place for women that had just left their husbands ... until they “got on their feet again”. At one point, I think there were 7 or 8 women living there, with their children. I met more divorcing people in the year after she came than I had in my entire life up to that point. And then my parents switched congregations ... and it all went away.
I thought I was happily married, then the best friend of my wife got divorced........ I was divorced myself within the year.
Excellent point. Did you ever check up on the particulars of that class? There's something odd about its results. It wasn't run by someone connected to the lawyer, was it?! Obviously I watch too many mystery programs. A married person taking a class with "learning to love" in its title is probably in marital trouble already.