Marriage has served as the basic economic and social unit of society.  It is the institution which passes on the culture to the next generation.  Even cats do this! I understand that kittens learn to use a litter box because they are taught to do so by their mother.  If the kitten is taken away from the mother too early, you get to try to teach the kitten to use the litter box.

    Marriage as an institution is under attack in our culture as anyone can tell by the news.  The results of marriage decay are devastating.  For starters, children of broken homes such as by divorce or illegitimacy have higher crime rates, divorce rates, and suicide rates.  Try to picture the results if this process is not reversed.

    ”Marriage vs. ?” is an article comparing the advantages and disadvantages of various possible living arrangements between men and women.  The information is from the secular psychological and sociological literature.

    Does sexual experimentation in teens have other negative consequences than sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s) and pregnancy (what more would you want)?  How about “Depression: A New Sexually Transmitted Disease?”  Apparently, for girls, depression doesn’t lead to sexual experimentation; sexual experimentation leads to depression.  Read the article for the full story.

    Now, let’s get practical.  What can we do for current marriages?  

1.  If you are planning to be married, find a church with a marriagesavers.org program.  Do this even if you aren’t religious.  Couples going through the program get ‘marriage insurance’ with a divorce rate less than 5%, versus the usual approximately 50%.  The above Marriage Savers web site also provides much valuable information on the subject of marriage in general.

2. Strengthen current marriages.  Go to the internet and Google “marriage encounter” to obtain a list of ‘marriageencounter’ websites associated with various churches.  Marriage should be for a long time so why not make it even better.

3.  If a marriage is troubled, Marriage Encounter may not help, or may even be harmful.  Therefore, another program was spun off.  Go to retrouvaille.com (notice the “u” in the spelling) to arrange for a marvelous healing weekend.  The program has an amazing 80% success rate, even reconciling people who have already separated or divorced!

4. Ladies, want to have a marriage that makes you happy?  Get and study Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s book (yes, the Dr. Laura) “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands”, Harper Collins publisher.  Men are emotionally much simpler creatures than women.  This makes women in control of the relationship.  Give him what he needs and he will try amazingly hard to give you what you want.  It’s not manipulation.  Ladies, you may not at first like what you read but as a man I can tell you, Dr. Laura understands us. Men should read this book too.

    While there are no perfect marriages, divorce is almost never the sensible solution except sometimes when you are dealing with Abuse, Addiction, or Adultery.  Divorcee is terrible on the children, not only at the time but even when they become adults.  Although not always, remarriages after divorce fail at a higher rate than first marriages.  All this and much, much more are covered in materials mentioned on this web page.  Don’t submissively absorb your knowledge and feelings about love, marriage, and family from Hollywood and/or television.  Check out the sources above.