From The Editor's Desk

Marriage Insurance

BY BETH ROBERTSON
G-V MANAGING EDITOR

Faith Community Church Pastor Dane Skelton submitted the following column on marriage. With 3.6 divorces per 1,000 in 2006, we thought readers might find Skelton’s observations of interest.
Why couples should invest in their marriage before they pay for the wedding.
Upon my arrival in South Boston I was immediately immersed in crisis counseling ministry with five couples whose marriages were failing. Only one of those marriages survived. I later learned that 60 percent of first time marriages end in divorce often with catastrophic consequences for the couple, their children and the culture. Thus I became committed to learning everything I could about how to help struggling marriages. One of the best books on the subject is “Marriage Savers,” by Michael J. McManus. Eleven years of marriage counseling have convinced me that the best way to prevent divorce is to lay a good foundation. This is what I call Marriage Insurance. It’s a summary of what I learned from McManus along with my own observations. I offer it to you here in hopes that you will share it with couples you know who are contemplating marriage.
Risk Management For Marriage
Since divorce is so rampant and its results are so devastating, why aren’t we doing more to manage the risks? Good question. But what are some of the risks we could simply avoid?
Building on the Wrong Foundations
‘Eromania: the risk of building on passion. Jim Talley, singles minister for 15 years at First Baptist Church Modesto, CA, said many couples are “being swept into marriage by ‘eromania’ (romantic love) and never took time to develop the skills required to make a relationship work.” Premarital sex is often part of ‘eromania.’ But it creates instability in the relationship. “It is like trying to build the second floor of a building on a few sticks in the ground. There is guilt, an unrealistic expectation of marriage, when neither made that commitment, and an intensity in the relationship without a foundation of friendship and commitment to hold it up.” Eromania clouds the judgment of couples, papering over often-serious conflicts that will emerge with force when the ‘zing’ of sex wears off.
Cohabitation: the risk of building on convenience.
Cohabitation, the practice of couples living together for convenience or “just to try it out” without the legal commitment of marriage, increased 700 percent since 1960. Yet it is the single highest risk to successful marriage and the best predictor of divorce ever documented. Cohabitating women are 80 percent more likely to separate or divorce than were women who had not lived with their spouses before marriage. Studies show that those who cohabited first were less happy in marriage. The National Survey of families and households, based on interviews with 13,000 people concluded “about 40 percent of cohabitating couples in the U.S. break up before a marriage. Marriages preceded by cohabitation have a 50 percent higher disruption rate than those without. So the divorce rate for cohabitating couples is 75 percent. The odds of the marriage ending in divorce are 4:1.
Spiritual Emptiness: The risk of building without Christ.
Those who are active in practicing their faith are more than twice as likely to stay married as the non-religious. Seventeen percent of couples attending church once a year or less will separate or divorce after five years versus only 7 percent of those who attend monthly or more often. In the U.S. only 14 percent of those attending church monthly get divorced. Only 3 to 7 percent of those couples who attend church regularly and pray together end in divorce. Clearly, God gives the power to live the life of love to those who trust Him.
How to buy Marriage Insurance
Weigh your relationship’s strength and weaknesses. The best way to do that is through a premarital couple’s inventory like PREPARE PREPARE, Premarital Personal and Relationship Evaluation, consists of 165 questions, takes about 30 minutes to complete, and is computer scored. It profiles the couple in 15 areas, assessing relationship strengths and growth areas for each category. Its primary value is not in gathering new information but in helping couples talk about areas of strength and areas that will require some work, negotiation and accommodation.
Learn effective conflict resolution skills.
Working through a pre-program like PREPARE with a counselor or pastor can put you light years ahead in this area. A total of 57 percent of marriages that failed in 1989 did so due to poor conflict resolution skills.
Avoid pre-marital sexual involvement. Sex is a beautiful and powerful gift God has given us. But it is more than a physical high. It is part of the blending of souls, of making two people one. (We recognize this in legal terms when we say it “consummates” the marriage.) The Apostle Paul, who wrote the famous passage on love (Love is patient, love is kind ... 1 Cor. 13) also wrote something we already know to be true emotionally and statistically: that sex outside of marriage is a type of fraud (see 1 Thess. 4:3-8). It is “taking: the most intimate part of a man or woman without the vow to “give” your self away in the meeting of all his or her other needs. It is also contrary to God’s command and pattern: that the marriage bed is to be kept sacred. Thus it is a sin. Asking God to bless a marriage built on cohabitation is asking him to bless something he opposes. This sets the marriage up to fail because 1) Guilt before God makes it difficult to bring him into the relationship and 2) Self-sacrifice is at the heart of all lasting marriages. Self-control before marriage is the best preparation for a clear conscience and for self-sacrifice in marriage.
Build your marriage on a mutual commitment to Christ.
Jesus Christ not only sacrificed himself to serve us. He gives us the power to live the life of love that the best marriages are built on.
A wedding is but a day, but a marriage is for a lifetime.
The average couple spends $16,000 on a wedding but not a dime on preparing to be married for a lifetime. Prepare well.