The LDS Guide to Dating & Marriage, Part 13: Divorce

[Previous posts in the series:  Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12]

Imagine this situation: you’re cruising along across the snowy landscape with your partner, moving your skies in tandem. Things are looking good—you’ve made great progress and the finish line looks nearer and nearer by the day. Suddenly, your partner stops cold. He/she sits down on the ground and refuses to move. You, of course, can’t move either now, since your feet are tied together. You think: what's going on?  Why is this happening?  Sure, there have been little ‘bumps in the road’ along your journey before, but you’ve always managed to keep going towards your (supposedly) common goal. Nothing this serious has ever happened...

While your partner is sitting there, you can’t move—and you're not going to make it to the finish line... Your partner says he/she has some ‘issues’—and it’s not likely he/she'll be getting up and heading toward the goal any time soon (at least not with you…) Obviously, you’re going to have to deal with those issues before you can get going again—although what if this time the problems are too large to overcome? Would you be better off cutting your losses, accepting the tough ride back to the ski jump and starting over?

In computer science, we have what’s called the ‘halting problem’. In simplest terms, it goes like this: sometimes your computer slows down—due to memory or processor overload--and it takes a long time to finish whatever it happened to be doing.  And sometimes, your computer freezes—it gets caught in some predicament from which it will never return no matter how long you wait. Unfortunately, there is no way to determine which of these two situations is the case by any internal or external means. You might be waiting for hours without your computer doing anything, but it’s still impossible to prove that your computer won’t come back to life, eventually. (You’ll probably have hit the reset button by then, of course…)

In relationships, we have a similar problem. Sometimes issues arise in marriage that stop your progress in its tracks. It might be righteousness issues, it might be you and your spouse disagree on some major areas of the relationship, or perhaps you and your spouse just don’t get along in general.  In either case, you’ve stopped moving and you have to decide what the chances are that you’ll get started moving again in the near future. Like with computers, it’s impossible to prove that you won’t be able to start moving again, since sins can be repented of, personal problems can be overcome, disagreements can be resolved, etc... Yet, at what point can you not afford to wait around any longer?  Maybe the two of you just don’t like each other anymore and you think trying to move along with this particular partner is a waste of time.  But starting over again at the very beginning of the journey—waiting for another good opportunity to get married (if there is one…)? Is that really a better option?

There is no right answer to the question 'should I get divorced'? Divorce represents failure--there's no getting around it. Very, very few divorces are only one partner's 'fault'--most of the time they represent the failure of two people to do what it took to keep things together. Then again, if the relationship has already soured beyond hope of resuscitation, sometimes you can't just stand there beating a dead horse hoping it comes back to life. Sometimes people really are happier apart than together...

When have you reached that point of 'no hope'? No one can tell--like the halting problem in computer science, it's impossible to determine whether a relationship has any hope left of 'moving' again or not. In fact, in a corollary to Working Theory #2, we might theorize that any marriage will always have the chance of moving again, regardless of what's happened in the past. It just depends (as always) on whether the two partners are willing to do what's necessary to make it work. Again, we have the slippery medium problem—you don’t want to have ‘grass is greener’ syndrome and casually abandon relationships thinking you’ll find someone 'better', but you don’t want to tie yourself to a sinking ship that has no hope of sailing again either…

What are the causes of divorce? Statistics say most are due to financial reasons followed by sexual issues, infidelity, and the common (yet vague) 'irreconcilable differences'. In reality, though, these reasons may be catalysts, perhaps, but not causes of divorce. Poor couples have successful marriages all the time, while many rich couples do not--same with sexually active versus almost entirely celibate couples.

Speaking broadly, divorce is caused by sin and selfishness. Trials, struggles, and challenges that arise don't have to cause a rift in the relationship--only if one or both partners aren’t willing to deal with them properly. Many mixed-race relationships that have failed, for example, probably have ‘cultural differences’ at the heart of the problem. Yet, ‘cultural differences’ in itself is not a problem—only the inability of one or both partners to handle those differences respectfully and lovingly. When one partner blindly assumes his/her spouse will be abandoning his/her cultural identity and absorb themselves into the other’s culture and traditions--and later discovers otherwise—there’s definitely a problem here, but is it really the cultural differences themselves, or the attitude one takes toward them?

The subject of divorce is a difficult one to manage in LDS culture. Church leaders are caught in the bind of not wanting to encourage divorce even indirectly (by removing any negative stigma from it, for example) while still being compassionate and understanding towards those who find themselves divorced anyway.  Many divorced saints are left with a tangible sense of failure, and feel even more on the outside of the family-oriented Church than singles do. Yet, spending effort making sure divorced members feel ‘included’ in everything Church related might have the opposite effect of making divorce seem normal and ‘okay’, thereby increasing the temptation of still-married saints to consider it more seriously. It’s hard to say at what point accepting divorce becomes encouraging divorce, however subtly.

And yet, divorce cannot never be eliminated, even presumably in the next life. To do so would violate the principle of free agency. Plus, imagine the horror if divorce were outlawed completely… True, in some cases couples would be forced to face their problems and work towards overcoming them—but in other cases, one spouse would be able to mistreat the other without bounds, since, after all, they really can’t do anything about it. We discussed in the previous section how the ease of ending a relationship adds to the temptation to end it—but what about the opposite? Might just the possibility of divorce provide subtle pressure towards improving marital relationships in some cases, since each person knows his/her partner has the option of leaving if they aren’t treated properly?

Divorce is never a good thing—at best, it’s the least worst choice among many. Yet, it will always be a reality in this mortal life, and accepting that reality and learning how to avoid it is an essential part of the marital journey.

Next: Why, however, you should never fear divorce…