My favorite Aggie joke:

Two guys are taking a leak in a NYC restaurant restroom. First one finishes and goes to the lavatory. The other finishes and heads for the door. The first says, "At Hahvahd, we were taught to wash aftah urinating." The second answered, "At Texas A&M, we were taught not to piss on our hands."

LonghornDub said:

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There are some very interesting posts in this thread, and I'm glad I discovered this board. I have been married for 56 years to the same crazy woman. She may be the only one who would stay married to me. She was conditioned against divorce by being a Baptist preacher's daughter and I was by the fact only 1 of my 25 closest relatives experienced it. I have never understood female humans, have given up trying after living with three (mother, wife and daughter), try to stay out of the line of fire, and am pretty sure it wouldn't have lasted this long without God's help. If you want yours to last, I recommend invoking His assistance. While mine is beautiful, intelligent, and even has her own retirement income, her thought (?) processes are totally different from mine. I love her, but it's a little like loving an undomesticated animal. You have to be careful what you say or do. I still think that if they didn't have certain physical attractions, there'd be a bounty on'em.

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Man, we are brothers from another mother. Except we have only been married 32 years and although not a Baptist pastor's daughter, her dad is a devout Baptist, held every office at the church, officiated at my daughter's wedding, and knows more Bible and theology than most pastors.

I was raised in the Baptist Church but hold more Orthodox views now.

You have my total sympathy as all things being equal, you have 24 more years of wedded bliss to enjoy than I do.

Ran across this piece on this discouraging topic today, seemed relevant. This bit really caught my attention:

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But what about the Faith? Shouldn't faith steel the assenting Catholic against the culture? In fact, it's the other way around. Faith needs a culture to stay strong. Worse, a self-righteous faith can lull Catholics into a false sense of security, a new Phariseeism convinced that intellectual assent to the right doctrinesnot our humility and God's mercyis what saves us.

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...what?

k2aggie07 said:

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...what?

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The article is about how nominally Very Catholic people that are well aware of doctrine around marriage and family life are divorcing anyway, basically that all of the awareness, study and rational assent to the teaching hasn't inoculated them against divorce and pastorally, the RCC hasn't been overly helpful.

It's anecdotal, but real, might not resonate with everyone.

If you missed the hyperlink....

https://www.crisismagazine.com/2020/why-faithful-catholics-get-divorced

Right, I just dont understand the part you quoted.

Faith needs a culture to stay strong? That seems completely backwards from the scriptures... they say that we should not live like the gentiles, meaning, our identity is no longer in our ethnic group or nation but in Christ. We're the new humanity.

k2aggie07 said:

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Right, I just dont understand the part you quoted.

Faith needs a culture to stay strong? That seems completely backwards from the scriptures... they say that we should not live like the gentiles, meaning, our identity is no longer in our ethnic group or nation but in Christ. We're the new humanity.

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I read it more like, insofar as it impacted their marriage, the faith of these individual people was only nominally or superficially strong and was overwhelmed by the cultural ideas of love, divorce, etc., and the intellectual assent that you could ever expect of anyone was not sufficient.

Could be. If so, I'd suggest their parish do some work in Ephesians, because the whole theme of that letter is how that's exactly the opposite of how this is supposed to work.

it seemed like a lot of words to say "They knew a bunch of stuff but didn't put any of it to practice, and they are somehow shocked that it didn't work out"

The article also does a poor job of explaining why those people chose divorce in the end. Everyone, to some degree, is surprised by what comes with marriage. Everyone knows goes through a time where they are wanting to feel more right than loving. Why are people who adhere to a religion (ie, Catholic) that forbids divorce getting divorce?

k2aggie07 said:

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Could be. If so, I'd suggest their parish do some work in Ephesians, because the whole theme of that letter is how that's exactly the opposite of how this is supposed to work.

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Agree.

diehard03 said:

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it seemed like a lot of words to say "They knew a bunch of stuff but didn't put any of it to practice, and they are somehow shocked that it didn't work out"

The article also does a poor job of explaining why those people chose divorce in the end. Everyone, to some degree, is surprised by what comes with marriage. Everyone knows goes through a time where they are wanting to feel more right than loving. Why are people who adhere to a religion (ie, Catholic) that forbids divorce getting divorce?

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I don't think anyone has a good way to explain it. That divorce exists frequently in an institution that forbids it is perhaps very obvious, though I myself have been guilty of searching intellectually/rationally for answers to everything. These people clearly are more developed in this regard than I am, but they haven't been able to synthesize it into something that ought to be the prime goal in your life.

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That divorce exists frequently in an institution that forbids it is perhaps very obvious

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I mean, the obvious answer is that they aren't very devout. It's all window dressing.

diehard03 said:

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That divorce exists frequently in an institution that forbids it is perhaps very obvious

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I mean, the obvious answer is that they aren't very devout. It's all window dressing.

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Right, and therefore, all of the dedication to study (one example was a theology major, another did marriage counseling for 25 years) can in effect be window dressing as well.

Lord have mercy.

A little bit of an outsider here, but...
There isn't always a correlation between faith in a religion and your marriage. Being a devout Christian and studying theology can only take you so far in a marriage. At then end of the day maybe you shouldn't be talking with God, but talking to the person laying next to you. Marriage is work to make it last. If you are only praying to God about it, then you are excluding a very important person from the equation.

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Being a devout Christian and studying theology can only take you so far in a marriage. At then end of the day maybe you shouldn't be talking with God, but talking to the person laying next to you.

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That's like saying "Yes, I know that there's this expert that created the car and gave you a manual on how you should fix the car...but maybe you should stop talking to his guy and listening to what he said and just start working under the hood".

In the end, the issue isn't talking to God. It's failing to do what He says.

Talking to the expert and reading the manual tells you nothing about being in the driver's seat.

You seem to have a very low view of God, based on your interpretation of the analogy.

If the "expert" created the car, knows what we think of the car, sent his son to us to show us the way with the car, also send his holy spirit to continue guiding us with the car...and gave us a book that outlines exactly what to do with the car....what else could we get outside of this?

Every Christian, myself included, can point the Chapter and Verse where they have violated God's Word when they are in the midst of marital strife.

And yes, you are right at we should talk with the human we are doing life with. I just reject the assertion that we stop dealing with God about it.

You're right, I probably should have said that you should be sure to deal with God and your spouse. I was speculating that Catholics who get divorced are possibly only dealing with God and leaving their spouse out. They may put more effort into their relationship with God than their relationship with their spouse.

In 46 years of conducting a professional practice with a couple of hundred clients over the years, I noticed that divorced guys often got remarried to women who seemed a lot like their previous wives. Their divorces also frequently presaged downturns in other phases of their lives - business, friendships, etc. Finally, while I have known divorced men who rued their divorces, I've never known any who were unhappy they stuck it out. I was reminded of the c&w song, "I can't afford to half my half again."

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I've never known any who were unhappy they stuck it out.

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Oh, I know some crotchety old people that are completely miserable and have no desire to fix anything.

Simply not wanting to be alone and "this is all I've ever known" aren't qualities I am looking for in my marriage.

diehard03 said:

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That divorce exists frequently in an institution that forbids it is perhaps very obvious

I mean, the obvious answer is that they aren't very devout. It's all window dressing.

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What? You mean we're all sinners? Who'd a thunk it.

LonghornDub said:

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diehard03 said:

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That divorce exists frequently in an institution that forbids it is perhaps very obvious

I mean, the obvious answer is that they aren't very devout. It's all window dressing.

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What? You mean we're all sinners? Who'd a thunk it.

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Yep. We all need a Savior. And we have one. And all you have to do is believe. Sometimes I think theology drives people away from God and the Gospel. Go read Paul's sermon on Mars Hill. This ain't hard for us thanks to the Cross. But man we sure muddy the waters.

Larry Lajitas said:

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As someone who just went through a divorce that was finalized in January I can tell you that the world is too big to look into stats. Married for 7 years and together for about a decade. We are both 31. She was having an affair and both my family and hers were shocked and devastated. Our friends were speechless.

I study theology relentlessly. Honestly that and joining the Orthodox Church got me through it. With that said there's always too many moving pieces for us to truly understand. Blame was thrown around constantly between us.

We're so distracted from the eternal. CS Lewis puts it perfectly " It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

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Oh wow, sorry you had to go through that. That's really rough.

I'm just going to say what I'm deciphering from this entire thread: married people fall out of love. I am guessing that when you were married at age 23-24 you were on cloud nine and the thought of either party being unfaithful was so out there it never crossed your mind. Then at some point things changed. The same happens in marriages where people stay together and there's no cheating. That is the reason people say marriage is hard. You very well may still love the person but the feeling you had before is gone and people change. Some straight up don't love each other and they divorce.

It makes me sad. I feel like for every 1 happy relationship I see, there are 10 unhappy ones.

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What? You mean we're all sinners? Who'd a thunk it.

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Eh. We aren't talking about sin in general. We are talking about a specific case where something is forbidden beyond the norms of other churches (divorce).

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married people fall out of love. I am guessing that when you were married at age 23-24 you were on cloud nine and the thought of either party being unfaithful was so out there it never crossed your mind. Then at some point things changed. The same happens in marriages where people stay together and there's no cheating. That is the reason people say marriage is hard. You very well may still love the person but the feeling you had before is gone and people change. Some straight up don't love each other and they divorce.

It makes me sad. I feel like for every 1 happy relationship I see, there are 10 unhappy ones.

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It's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be. People are generally more effusive in the negative sense, and it's really easy to extrapolate some isolated issue as being in the "unhappy" camp.

Marriage is only "hard" because people were lied to about what is was going to be. Your spouse is going to drive you crazy. That's just a function of living in a shared space, having a shared life and them not being you. It's also very easy to classify someone's marriage based on what little information you have. I would avoid this.

Ya we were young but I do not use that excuse. Even after the cheating I was willing to truly forgive, go to counseling, and make the marriage stronger than ever but she was done. Probably didn't help that it was her coworker that she had the affair with and I got both of them fired. Honestly I hardly remember the first 30 min when I found out but essentially she was planning on leaving me and already told her mom and sister that we were getting a divorce. For the two weeks prior to me finding out I was freaking out trying to get her into counseling since it was out of nowhere. She obviously never expected me to read her Apple Watch. Out of pure rage I called her boss. Not a joke she actually jumped on my back when I pulled the watch out. Pure panic and fear on her part. Her sister and her husband still talk to me today and they are not on her side but that will change as time goes on. She does deserve forgiveness...but damn that was tough.

She's not doing well, took a huge pay cut for a new job, lives with her sister in law, we sold the house, no kids, each walked away with about 20K, no debt. It's just one of those horrible things where you just look at the person and know they clearly didn't understand the concept of marriage or the influence of people/society on your worldview. Just to be honest, leading up to this our life was very normal. We had some fights and i did sometimes cuss at her which I regret but that seems to be typical. I take some blame but when I talk to people who have been married for much longer I think to myself that she really was just nuts and jumped off the deep end because nothing between us was that bad.

Awful time...I found after the Clemson game. Didn't watch one football game this past season. Feeling better now, have my own place, really looking forward to the summer and upcoming season...just to get back to normal.

I gripe some but I sure would miss her if she were gone, and I can't imagine trying to get used to another one. I have read that divorce is harder on most people than the death of a spouse, and I believe it. If there's children it appears even worse. I do sympathize with those who have to go through it. Now that Tammy Wynette song is my ear worm and it's horrible.

Again, sorry you went through that. It must have sucked. But based on what you're saying it sounds like you two not being together is for the better. Good thing y'all didn't have kids.

I don't have any sympathy for cheaters. It is the ultimate betrayal. Based on your story it doesn't sound like she's truly sorry either.

I hope you've found peace. Go on a big trip with your new-found freedom.

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But based on what you're saying it sounds like you two not being together is for the better. Good thing y'all didn't have kids.

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One thing to be clear on, though: Not being together being best is only if one assumes that people refuse to change. This definitely sounds like the case in that story, but I think this thrown out many times: "it's best we are apart because we would have been miserable together".

No. Best is fixing your situation and remaining together. Best is repentance. Best is working your way to contentment in the other person. This is not "stay together for the kids".

diehard03 said:

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But based on what you're saying it sounds like you two not being together is for the better. Good thing y'all didn't have kids.

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One thing to be clear on, though: Not being together being best is only if one assumes that people refuse to change. This definitely sounds like the case in that story, but I think this thrown out many times: "it's best we are apart because we would have been miserable together".

No. Best is fixing your situation and remaining together. Best is repentance. Best is working your way to contentment in the other person. This is not "stay together for the kids".

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Idk in this situation. I think cheating is always grounds for ending a relationship. The only exception is if it was a one time thing and the offender is truly sorry and repents like crazy. Even then I still think the non-offender has the right to leave the relationship.

You should read Hosea sometime.

diehard03 said:

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But based on what you're saying it sounds like you two not being together is for the better. Good thing y'all didn't have kids.

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One thing to be clear on, though: Not being together being best is only if one assumes that people refuse to change. This definitely sounds like the case in that story, but I think this thrown out many times: "it's best we are apart because we would have been miserable together".

No. Best is fixing your situation and remaining together. Best is repentance. Best is working your way to contentment in the other person. This is not "stay together for the kids".

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Both of you are correct. It's better to repent and keep the commitment but if her worldview is truly that much different then there's nothing that would have made her stay. Ultimately it comes down to modernity and the options that each individual has. It's really Just a selfish mentality. When the relationship didn't give her what she wanted she decided to move on because that's all anything is to her and people like that. I can tell you this much she got a real dose of humility when it surfaced and her firing. Who knows maybe it saved her.