Divorce and crucial marriage eras
The greatest number of divorces takes place during the first five years of marriage. These are the crucial years of adjustment to life being with a partner. During these years, any marriage is vulnerable. The couple must learn to accept one another’s backgrounds, habits, values, living standards and goals. There are in-laws who may make demands on the young couple. The new baby puts an added temporal strain on the marriage, money problems, career decisions, home-making and home-building are all pressures that threaten the marriage.
Knowing that the first five years are going to be very challenging ones, the young couple should aim to weather the storms with some professional help if necessary. They can take comfort from knowledge that as they work out their problems together, their marriage will be strengthened.
Later on, in the mid-years of marriage, couples tend to take one another for granted and this too can lead to divorce. Each one thinks that they know how the other will react in a given situation. Each feels there are no surprises in the marriage, no romance and neither one makes an effort to treat the other partner as an individual or a special person. Marriage has become a habit or hobby. Stop it and try to make it a challenge instead.
Forgive and forget. If partners are willing to forgive and forget, any marriage can be made to work. The partner who has been hurt and rejected will have to come to terms with his feelings of anger, resentment, humiliation and rejection.
You cannot, of course, undo what has happened but you can make an earnest effort to forgive. The person who is constantly saying, in so many ways, to his partner, “ I can’t trust you†is surely heading for a wretched marriage relationship or divorce.
