Happily Ever After: Only if You Work at It

Published July 5, 1985. A few months ago, one of my students asked if he could come in and talk to me during my office hours. He was a handsome, seemingly intelligent young man, who told me he was concerned about his forthcoming marriage. After nearly 30 years of marriage, his own parents were getting a divorce.

As we sat in my office that morning he reflected, “It is one thing to get a divorce after several years of struggling with a bad relationship. But, my parents had a picture-perfect marriage all the years I was growing up. We had a large family, a hardworking father, a sensitive, concerned mother, and all of us regularly participated in church activities.

“How could a divorce happen?” he asked.

I’ve had that kind of conversation more than once during the past few years. Young men and women who are just in the transition to married life find their parents are in the transition out of it. The separations occur after what appeared to be the ideal marital relationship.

I told him I don’t know the reasons why picture-perfect marriages sometimes come unframed and end in divorce. But I am starting to form some opinions. And my opinions are centered around the picture-perfect marriage concept.

Many believe, or are misled to believe, that they do have ideal marital relationships. Since they now have it, they may think they don’t have to do anything to keep it. And that just may be the difference between a marriage that lasts and one that does not.

Another man had been married several years and thought he, too, had the picture-perfect marriage. During 12 years of marriage and five children, his wife had not said one thing that indicated their marriage was anything less than near perfection. There had been no arguments, no complaints, and because of this, he thought the marriage was going well.

Then on their twelfth wedding anniversary, she walked in the room and handed him an envelope. Thinking it was an anniversary card, he opened it. Much to his surprise, it contained legal papers for divorce proceedings.

The man told me that the reason he and his wife, and perhaps many others, were divorced is because they did not think it could happen to them. Consequently, they let their guard down and the blows followed.

Someone once observed that it is better to have a heart attack and then learn to take care of your health than to live on in the ignorance that you have heart problems. So it is with marriage. Working to improve a somewhat less-than-perfect marriage may be far more sound than living under the illusion that we have the ideal marital relationship.