In some articles that I have written so far, I mentioned, that we human beings like to walk in the path of least resistance; thinking that is going to be better, not realizing that the end result is going to be worse.
Today’s society constantly pounds that we have the right to be happy and loved, indeed we do, but not at the expense of everyone else’s suffering. The worst of all is that we are not going to be happy or loved either. In a divorce there are no winners, everyone loses.
If we could understand that our happiness doesn’t depend on anyone but God, our relationships would be released of the pressure of trying to make someone happy or looking for someone to make us happy. A human being will never fill the expectations of another person, because we are imperfect. Since most people are not concern with the other person’s defects at the beginning of a relationship; we venture to think that a perfect relationship is possible. We build our lives around a person or expectations that are unattainable, due to our lack of understanding of God’s love. Sooner or later reality is going to hit us and all of those defects that we overlooked at the beginning of a relationship are now going to be over magnified; but not because they are indeed big.
It is vital to understand that happiness is an interior state that is subject to our relationship with our Creator. True happiness comes from the acceptance of who we are; with our virtues and defects, and that can only be accomplished by understanding God’s love; He loves us just the way we are. God’s love and acceptance becomes the motivation for our changes. As we change our level of interior happiness, self love and self acceptance increases. This releases the burden we tend to put on other people to feel happy and loved. We are already being loved by the most perfect love, God’s. We have already accepted who we are, and we are motivated to be better. We now go into our relationships not with the objective of having someone to feel happy and to love us; but rather to complement them and to grow together.
God’s teaching of his love for us helps us love the other person without any conditions. Our acceptance in turn is going to become their incentive for their changes. Changes most of the time don’t happen overnight. True changes are part of a process that in some cases may take years, but patience is part of unconditional love. It is essential to understand that true patience is not passive but rather active. In other words vigilant, as long as we see a genuine desire to change on the other person and ourselves; we should feel confident. When the other person stops evolving, we should revise the cause; the root of the problem might not be the other person, but us; we have to be honest with ourselves.
Some of us have reduced marriage to a union of two physical bodies; when in reality is the union of two complete human beings that have soul, spirit and body. Therefore spiritual growth is at the core of a happy and loving marriage. We already have the parameter of true love; therefore when our marriages are failing we should be very concern, and ask ourselves if we are behaving as mature beings in the spirit. If we let our flesh take control; our passions, prides, traumas, grudges will destroy ourselves, our families and our society. Sometimes, I think that we are not realizing that we have a part in the chaos of today’s society. The disintegration of marriage is causing the suicide of teenagers, the lack of role models for our children; boys and girls learn and soundly grow when both parents know how to love and respect each other. The high consumption of drugs and alcohol and teenagers that don’t know how to relate to others, etc…
As we can see the consequences of a divorce can be devastating, and we are not even mentioning the pain and the traumas that the divorced spouses are going to end up with. Lack of knowledge and spiritual growth keep us from foreseeing the effect that a divorce is going to have in society. Most of us are egocentric and only think of ourselves when problems arise in our marriages. We want the easiest way out, not realizing that it is the costliest.
All possible valid reasons for a divorce and/or an annulment; such as infidelities, physical, emotional and mental abuse, etc… would be easily avoided if couples were spiritually mature before they get marry or at least if they work at it with honesty when they begin to have problems. Unfortunately most people get married totally ignoring what it takes to have a successful marriage.
True feelings are the purest expression of a spiritually developed intelligence, due to the fact that feelings are not only sentiments, but well thought out decisions. In my opinion divorce should never be an option, and this is something that each of us has to understand, but that depends in the level of spiritual maturity that we have achieved. Although, it sounds strong we should consider divorce a total failure of our intelligence and feelings.
