Archive for the 'Divorce' Category

“Teaching May Be Hazardous to Your Marriage”: Social scientists and the myth of male weakness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 30, 2008
in Academia, Divorce, Older Men & Younger Women, Teaching and Youth
. 33 Comments

Reader and blogger Treifalicious sends me a link to this PDF file of a 1999 study on college professors and divorce. Published in the journal of Evolution and Human Behavior, it’s melodramatically entitled Teaching may be hazardous to your marriage.

The abstract:

Kenrick et al.’s experiments demonstrate that men who view photographs of physically attractive women or Playboy centerfolds subsequently find their current mates less physically attractive and become less satisfied with their current relationships. What then would be the
cumulative effect of being exposed to young, attractive women on a daily basis? Would there be any real consequences to the men’s dissatisfaction with their relationships? Secondary school teachers and college professors come in contact with more young women at the peak of their reproductive value than others do. The analysis of a large, representative data set from the United States indicates that, while men in general are less likely to be divorced than women, and secondary school teachers and college professors in general are less likely to be divorced than others, simultaneously being male and being a secondary school teacher or college professor statistically increases the likelihood of being divorced We contend that the contrast effect that Kenrick et al. find in their experiments is cumulative and has real
consequences.

It’s an almost laughable study, save for the fact that it’s, well, so bloody infuriating. Here’s the initial premise:

Few occupations and professions afford greater opportunities to come in contact with
women in their teenage years than teachers in secondary and postsecondary schools. These
teachers experience the cumulative effect of exposure to young, attractive women who are at
their peak reproductive value more acutely than people in most other occupations.

I suppose that’s true enough, though I can’t say I think much of the term “peak reproductive value.” No offense intended to teenage moms out there, but in my experience, those who choose to make babies in their thirties often (not always) have more “valuable” resources (time, patience, finances) than those in their “peak” reproductive years.

But then the study’s authors lose me completely. They note that those who teach are slightly more likely to stay unmarried after they divorce, though the difference with the general population is barely significant. But then this whopper:

We believe that there are two possible interpretations for this finding. First,
subsequent to divorce, male teachers and professors may remain unmarried because they prefer
to pursue a series of affairs with female students without marrying them. Second, they may remain unmarried because, due to the cumulative contrast effect, any adult woman they might meet and date after their divorce would still pale in comparison to the young attractive women with whom they come in daily contact.

“Pale in comparison”? Continue reading ‘“Teaching May Be Hazardous to Your Marriage”: Social scientists and the myth of male weakness’

Three divorces, four successful marriages

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 20, 2008
in Divorce and Marriage
. 12 Comments

Ariranha has a blog post up that, very kindly, quotes at length from my old essay on being the King of Starting Over. Ariranha is going through a painful divorce herself (the subject of my original post), and mapping out her own short and long-term responses to the end of a fifteen-year marriage. It’s difficult and painful work, and she makes this excellent point:

And while in one sense I want to “keep looking forward and not look back,” as my mother says, I cannot escape the conclusion that I absolutely must spend a great deal of time “looking back.” I must do the autopsy, conduct the postmortem of this marriage. How else will I know what in me must be improved? How else will I get a handle on the dynamic and challenges I bring to a relationship? How else will I avoid dooming myself to the exact same situation, years down the road? There is a difference between honest reflection on your past, and becoming mired in the bitterness and pain of it. There is more ambiguity than the false dichotomy of looking forward or looking back. I think you have to look back. And even once you have spent enough time surveying the past, I think you still have to check it from time to time. I think it boils down to this: Attend to the road ahead, but don’t forget to check your rearview mirror.

Bold emphasis mine. She’s absolutely right. To one degree or another, we chose the partners we married, and we chose to stay with them up until whatever point one or the other of us (or both) decided to leave. Marriage, I’ve often felt, is like a movie with two directors, two screenwriters, two lead actors, and no editors. In the end, there’s a reason why you chose to write this other person into the movie of your life, and a reason why he or she did the same. Put another way, while we can be momentary victims of abuse or infidelity in a marriage, those of us who enjoy a reasonable degree of prosperity are more often volunteers for the suffering we both endure and inflict in the course of what will be an unhappy marriage. Learning how to break that cycle for ourselves, and how to make better romantic and sexual decisions, is a vital part of any post-mortem.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’ve been divorced three times. That doesn’t mean I’ve had three failed marriages. Marriage is, in the modern world, a particularly effective vehicle for personal growth. (That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other excellent vehicles.) A marriage is a failure if it inhibits the growth of either party; it is a success if it becomes the catalyst for individual and mutual transformation. Though all three of my divorces were painful, all three of my former marriages were, to my mind, ultimately successful in accomplishing the goal of facilitating the personal growth of the two parties involved. None were failures. I was not and am not a failure, and neither were my ex-wives. As loth as I am to buy into the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, in the case of my fourth, final, and happiest marriage I can say that my happiness and my maturity are in no small way directly due to the lessons I learned as a consequence of the first three.

Three divorces, four successful marriages. That’s how I see my past.

Grief, Remorse, and Judgment: the myth of a “right response’ to abortion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 28, 2008
in Abortion, Christianity, Divorce, Favorite Posts 2008 and Feminism
. 51 Comments

In response to my post on Tuesday, I got an e-mail from a reader who wrote that while she had come to the point where she no longer believed in banning abortion, she still considered herself pro-life. Reflecting on how she had been raised (in a conservative Christian household), she noted that she had always been taught that women who undergo abortion will invariably experience regret and depression. Faced with the reality that that is not always the case, my reader writes that she finds it harder not to judge women who don’t experience regret.

One of the hallmarks of traditional sexism is its insistence that “good women” feel certain feelings and not others. “Good girls” are expected to be interested in romance, but not in sex — especially not the latter when it is disconnected from the former. Good girls are allowed, even encouraged, to daydream about marrying their handsome boyfriends; they are discouraged (via shame) from lusting after the hot water polo players in their Speedos. These messages about what the right emotions are for women (compassion, tenderness, romantic longing) and what the wrong emotions are (ambition, horniness, anger) are taught early, usually long before puberty. And the grip of this dichotomy of good and bad feelings can be intense, lingering for a lifetime, passed on to the next generation.

I know a lot of folks who feel as my reader does. In this world view, shaped both by sexism and popular Christian teaching, remorse and regret are prerequisites for forgiveness and understanding. A young woman who has had an abortion will have no trouble finding sympathy in even the most conservative circles if she says the right words. For example, this will do nicely:

“Oh, I was so confused and scared! I had no idea what to do. I I just wanted it all to be over with, and I had nowhere else to go, so I called up the clinic and I went and ‘took care of it.’ I cried afterwards for hours; it hurt so much. At first I felt numb, and then I felt relief, and then I felt this awful sense that I had done something terrible. Every day I ask God to forgive me. I regret it so much, and I wonder if I’ll ever stop feeling so horrible.”

Say that in private — or better yet, tearfully in front of the congregation — and you can expect the outpouring of warmth and forgiveness given to a Prodigal Daughter. The pastor will use you as an example, mingling admonition with a reminder about God’s grace and a wildly inappropriate but inevitable reference to Rachel the Matriarch weeping for her children. Folks will hug you and pat you and say soothing words. “We’re praying for you, sweetheart.” “Jesus loves you.” “You are forgiven.” “Thank you for speaking out; you may have saved another girl’s baby today.” And on and on it goes. Continue reading ‘Grief, Remorse, and Judgment: the myth of a “right response’ to abortion’

On “settling” and the indispensability of passion: a reply to Lori Gottlieb

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 9, 2008
in Divorce, Favorite Posts 2008, Marriage, Memories, Sexual ethics and transformation and Sexuality
. 33 Comments

The March 2008 issue of The Atlantic has one of those sure-to-start-a-heated-discussion pieces: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. The author, Lori Gottlieb, is exactly my age: forty, on the nose. She’s a single parent, having conceived her young son with donor sperm. Lori begins:

About six months after my son was born, he and I were sitting on a blanket at the park with a close friend and her daughter. It was a sunny summer weekend, and other parents and their kids picnicked nearby—mothers munching berries and lounging on the grass, fathers tossing balls with their giddy toddlers. My friend and I, who, in fits of self-empowerment, had conceived our babies with donor sperm because we hadn’t met Mr. Right yet, surveyed the idyllic scene.

“Ah, this is the dream,” I said, and we nodded in silence for a minute, then burst out laughing. In some ways, I meant it: we’d both dreamed of motherhood, and here we were, picnicking in the park with our children. But it was also decidedly not the dream. The dream, like that of our mothers and their mothers from time immemorial, was to fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).

Gottlieb anticipates that this last sentence will arouse howls of indignation, but she pushes blithely ahead. She’s writing, it seems for younger women, and she’s offering what is only a slightly different spin on the by-now ubiquitous bromide that “feminism hurts women by suggesting that happiness is possible without a man.” I mean, it’s not as if there aren’t dozens of books and articles out there aimed at headstrong young women warning that if they don’t get hitched and start breeding early, they’ll miss their chance at the deepest and most satisfying source of happiness that the be-ovaried can ever know. It’s an old trope: the wiser older sister figure presenting her own story of woe as a cautionary tale. (And yeah, I know I sometimes do a similar thing here on this blog.) What’s interesting — and particularly galling — is Gottlieb’s hook: she urges smart young women to marry “Mr. Good Enough”. Continue reading ‘On “settling” and the indispensability of passion: a reply to Lori Gottlieb’

A note on Blair’s conversion, and on missing Rome

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 26, 2007
in Christianity, Divorce, Faith and People
. 10 Comments

Like most who have followed the life and career of Tony Blair, I was not surprised in the least by his decision to be received into the Roman Catholic Church, a decision made formal in a private ceremony last week. Long-affiliated with the fine old Christian Socialist Movement, his theology seemed to have been moving towards Rome for some time. (When Blair’s son Leo was born in 2000, a number of years younger than his other children with his wife, Cherie, there were very public rumors that the couple did not practice any form of artificial birth control, in keeping with Catholic teaching.)

I’ve had mixed feelings about Tony Blair for years now. But I wish him well, of course, as he moves forward on his spiritual journey. A great many Englishmen and women before him have “returned to Rome” before him, and he goes in fine company.

A little bit of me — just a little — is envious. My own religious peregrination has been fitful and dramatic, but it started with a late adolescent conversion from the atheism of my parents to Roman Catholicism. I was baptized and confirmed at the 1988 Easter Vigil, where I took the confirmation name Thomas. For a brief time, I seriously considered the priesthood — so great was my enthusiasm for the Church. My first marriage was solemnized with a full mass at St Paul the Apostle in Westwood, one of the larger Catholic parishes in West Los Angeles. During the first year of that marriage, I was a regular and enthusiastic communicant.

It was the end of my first marriage that, for me, made staying a Catholic untenable. Though we agreed on little else during the divorce process, my first wife and I were committed to not seeking an annulment, despite pressure from some of her Catholic relatives to get one. What had been done might now be undone, but we weren’t going to deny it had been done in the first place! And with the divorce came the bar from the eucharist. No more wafer and wine made into bread and blood for me, at least not in the Roman style.

I drifted away from Christ for the next few years after that 1992 divorce. When I came back, it was as a Protestant of one kind or another: an Anabaptist, a non-denominational charismatic, an Episcopalian. But here’s the rub: often, whether I’m at a Mennonite, Episcopal, or evangelical worship service, I find myself feeling as if what I’m participating in is somehow incomplete. There are churches, and then there is The Church. And while all the churches are somehow part of the Body of Christ, there is still for me a sense that the truest Church is Roman. Though I very rarely attend Mass any more, I admit that I feel something when I do that I have not felt anywhere else — and I have worshipped in more than my share of elsewheres.

I’m blissful in my fourth marriage. The chances of reconciling with my first wife are zero. I would never dream of raising our future children in a church community that didn’t see their parents’ marriage as being as licit and good as any other. As I understand it, the price of being allowed to become a regular communicant in the Catholic church would mean leaving my wife — or enduring a chaste marriage for the rest of our lives. I’ve checked this out with a few of my friends who know their canon law: without an annulment of my first marriage, or without a commitment to chastity within my current one, I’m going to have a hard time gettin’ to the communion rail. That price is much too high to pay.

It’s odd — I was a Mass-going Catholic for less than five years. That’s not even an eighth of my life. And yet Rome has a hold on me that nothing else has. And when I see the once-married Tony Blair received into the Church, my happiness for him is not untinged with envy.

Anesthesia is not recovery: a note on breaking up and healing

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 24, 2007
in Divorce and Relationships
. 2 Comments

I have a weak spot for the sort of pop psychology studies that end up being spread around by the internet; I justify that interest by telling myself that regardless of their reliability, many folks clearly believe in them — which makes them worth reflecting on for that reason alone.

In reality, breaking up doesn’t feel that bad is this week’s attention-grabber:

“We underestimate our ability to survive heartbreak,” said Eli Finkel, an assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University, whose study appears online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Finkel and colleague Paul Eastwick studied young lovers — especially those who profess ardent affection — to see if their predictions of devastation matched their actual angst when that love was lost.

“On average, people overestimate how distressed they will be following a breakup,” Finkel said in a telephone interview.

That makes good sense.

What I wonder is, how much of that “ability to survive” is a testament to the reality that the relationship wasn’t particularly significant? How much is attributable to our ability to grow emotional scar tissue? After all, as any veteran of divorce will tell you (and I am a thrice-decorated veteran of that agonizing process), it’s often tough to distinguish between numbness and recovery.

Folks often ask me about how I “survived” three divorces. I get that question a lot, especially from those who are in the midst of their first (and, one hopes, their final) divorce. “How could you go through this again and again and not be permanently devastated?”, they inquire. Some of that resilience and willingness to begin again is a result of grace, surely. And some of it is also attributable to stubbornness. (See my post last year on “the king of starting over”.)

But let’s be honest: ending a marriage (or any other significant, long-term relationship) is desperately painful. It’s agonizing, crazy-making, soul-scarring. When I was going through my second and third divorces, I remember thinking to myself “How could I ever have put myself back in this situation? How did I forget how much this hurts?” (It’s a question I also ask myself around mile 23 of every marathon, and I’ve heard from some of my female friends that they ask themselves the same thing when they give birth for the second or third time.) And of course, the answer is that most of us have not only a great capacity to endure pain, but a great capacity to forget. Time is just slow-acting Percoset, sweet anesthesia coming at its own maddening pace.

But anesthesia and real recovery aren’t the same thing. The absence of pain is not always a reliable indicator of good emotional health. I know plenty of young people who move serially from relationship to relationship, and I know them well enough to know that their post-break-up insouciance isn’t an act. But for many, the real pain comes months or even years later. Sometimes, we need a shot of anesthetic to get us out of an unhealthy relationship. Two or three weeks after the break-up, we’re smiling and laughing and feeling on top of the world; three months later, we’re curled pathetically on the couch, sniffling in misery. The lag time between the separation and feeling the hurt is often quite substantial (and, in my experience, it’s a good deal longer for men than for women.) And during that lag time — the period between leaving the dentist’s chair and the novocaine wearing off — it’s easy to underestimate just how much the loss of a love really did hurt.

Do I feel today the pain of three divorces and a half-dozen other serious break-ups? No. But in order to move forward, I had to go back (in therapy, in spiritual retreats, in writing) and look carefully at each of those many past relationships. I needed to feel the pain — and cop to the pain I inflicted. It took a lot of work to make sure that I wasn’t mixing up numb forgetfulness with genuine healing.

And I suspect that some of the folks in this little study will discover that they’ve been mixing up those very things.

“Why not rather be cheated?” A note on lawsuits, divorce, and Anglican court battles

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 27, 2007
in All Saints Pasadena, Christianity and Divorce
. 25 Comments

In a rather surprising ruling, the 4th Circuit of the California Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles yesterday. For those not in the loop, three conservative parishes within our diocese have broken away over the issue of homosexuality; in opposition to same-sex unions and the ordination of non-celibate gay clergy, these parishes have sought to leave the diocese — and take their church property with them. Yesterday, reversing a lower-court ruling, the appellate justices said that the church buildings belong to the diocese, not to the rebel parishes. Y’all can leave, in other words, but the bricks and mortar stay.

It’s a setback for the break-away traditionalists in California, and perhaps nationwide. Though the Times reports that the rebels haven’t decided on whether to appeal to the state Supreme Court, I can’t imagine that they won’t. The stakes are much too high to let things come to a tidy end here.

I have mixed feelings, of course. On the one hand, I’m a strong supporter of same-sex blessings and of the full integration of non-celibate gays and lesbians into holy orders and into the full, rich life of the Anglican Communion. I’ve also known Bishop Bruno for years, going back long before his stunning upset victory in the 1999 bishop coadjutor election. (You’d have to know a lot about dull diocesan politics to know what a shocker that was. He beat the favored candidate of All Saints Pasadena, and it took a couple of years to patch things up between the new bishop and the largest parish in the diocese. Let’s just say that there were some very, very disgruntled people at All Saints when Jon was elected; they’ve become “gruntled” since.) So as the bishop’s friend and admirer, I support him in his decision to do battle.

On the other hand, I know a thing or two about divorce. And having managed to get through three divorces without any serious legal fights, I know that the smart thing to do is to be generous towards those with whom you are ending a covenanted relationship. In the end, as my third wife and I agreed when we split, “it’s just money.” And no, neither of us had so much cash that we could afford to be recklessly cavalier about the subject — we just both knew that new houses could be bought, new silver patterns selected, new retirement accounts opened. Adding my three divorces together, I’ll reckon I walked away from somewhere around half a million dollars (most of it in real estate, of course). Could I find good use for $500,000 today? No doubt! Would it have been worth a nasty court battle, or two, or three? No.

I love what Paul says about lawsuits in 1 Corinthians 6:5. It was a great comfort to me during my last divorce, which was amicable and kind and generous on all sides:

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?

So many people say “I’m not going to court over money, it’s the principle of the thing.” But Paul is truly subversive here; he calls on us to allow ourselves to be wronged and cheated rather than turning to secular courts to resolve our disputes — particularly our disputes with fellow Christians.

Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? That’s the question I ask equally to both sides in the property dispute between the church and its traditionalist rebels. It’s the question I would pose to Jon Bruno, and to the vestries of the three renegade parishes. I would urge the rebels to abandon their property rather than sue to keep it; I would urge my friend Jon to let the dissenters take that same property rather than sue to get it back. If both sides act with glorious generosity, who knows what good might come of it?

Wilcox gets it wrong again

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 11, 2007
in Divorce, Marriage and Men and Masculinity
. 25 Comments

I’ll blog this next week, but I nearly fell over after reading this gem from W. Bradford Wilcox, the sociologist and allstar cheerleader for traditional marriage:

Marriage also binds children to their fathers, who usually find it very difficult to maintain consistent and positive relationships with their children without the support and encouragement of their children’s mother.

That’s world-class woman-blaming, that. Dad is distant, preoccupied, unavailable? Whose fault is it? Brad gives you one guess. Poor clueless men, we need a woman’s support and encouragement to connect with our own children — and if we aren’t connecting, then y’all know who’s to blame.

I’m off to the gym to work out some wrath, and then home to a spinach salad and some journal grading.

“…then query whether religion has any real influence on anybody at all”: Divorce, faith, and new beginnings

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 13, 2005
in Christianity, Divorce, Faith and Marriage
. 19 Comments

In response to my previous post, dear XRLQ writes:

I’ve heard the overall divorce statistics are roughly the same between nominal Christians and nominal non-Christians, but I’ve never heard it was the same across denominations, which would be more than a little odd since some think the Biblical proscription against divorce establishes a mortal sin, while others think it was one of God’s little April Fool’s jokes, and most others fall somewhere in between. If divorce stats really are evenly spread among these groups, then query whether religion has any real influence on anybody at all.

First off, the statistics.  As Lynn reminded me, the best recent study on Christians and divorce is that done by George Barna (himself an evangelical) in 2004.  A summary of the results is here.  Here’s part of Barna’s report:

Although many Christian churches attempt to dissuade congregants from getting a divorce, the research confirmed a finding identified by Barna a decade ago (and further confirmed through tracking studies conducted each year since): born again Christians have the same likelihood of divorce as do non-Christians.

Note:  Barna isn’t talking about nominal "Christmas and Easter" Christians; he’s talking about those who have had a "born-again" experience.  He notes that Hugo is not as anomalous as some might think:

Multiple divorces are also unexpectedly common among born again Christians. Barna’s figures show that nearly one-quarter of the married born agains (23%) get divorced two or more times.

And for those interested in denominational figures, Barna notes:

The survey showed that divorce varied somewhat by a person’s denominational affiliation. Catholics were substantially less likely than Protestants to get divorced (25% versus 39%, respectively). Among the largest Protestant groups, those most likely to get divorced were Pentecostals (44%) while Presbyterians had the fewest divorces (28%).

While there are many different Presbyterian churches, I’m struck that what is considered a "moderate mainline" denomination reported fewer divorces than the Pentecostals, the fastest growing wing of global Christianity, and one usually associated with a strict adherence to Biblical mores.

But while statistics have their place, I’m struck by XRLQ’s remark: If divorce stats really are evenly spread among these groups, then query whether religion has any real influence on anybody at all.   

Oh, XRLQ, I do query.   But from my vantage point, I don’t see the high divorce rate among evangelicals and "born-agains" as evidence of a failure of religion to truly impact people’s lives.  After all, as I’ve written before, I think divorce can be, in some instances, a positive and healthy experience — even if it is rarely, if ever, the best possible outcome for a marriage.  The fact that two people who belong to a church choose to get divorced does not prove that the church has failed them, nor does it prove that the husband and wife are "bad Christians."  Indeed, the question we have to ask is, "How did your faith affect your decision to get divorced?’  And then the follow-up: "How did your faith affect the way you and your partner divorced?"

The latter question is vitally important.  My most recent ex-wife and I divorced while we were both active members of All Saints Pasadena.  While few folks in the community sought to intervene to save our marriage, many offered us counsel on how to go through the process gracefully and lovingly.  Though I am not in contact with my ex, our divorce was civil and kind. Comparing this most recent divorce to my earlier ones (which took place when I was "unchurched"), I can say with complete and utter certainty that my faith empowered me to be a far more thoughtful, patient, and loving "ex-husband" in the divorce process than I would otherwise have been!  It was my faith that helped me to not to say vicious and unkind things; it was my faith that helped me though the painful process of moving out and setting up a new life.  If there’s such a thing as a "good divorce", my third wife and I had one — and our personal beliefs and our church community helped us to make it so.

My faith also allowed me to believe that things could and would be radically different this time, with my new wife.  I fell head over heels in love with she to whom I am now married very quickly, not long after the end of my previous marriage.  As crazy as I was about my gal, I was terrified as well.  Heck, being divorced three times by one’s mid-thirties is an embarrassing statistic even by Los Angeles standards!  I also was afraid that in some sense I didn’t have what it takes to make a marriage work; that old fear that I was "broken" and "toxic" resurfaced.

But in the three years since then, I’ve been surrounded by love and embraced my extraordinary spiritual mentors, both at All Saints and elsewhere.  From the ashes of another brief marriage, my faith helped me to pull out of a morass of self-pity and begin the hard work of looking at myself and making necessary changes.  Without God, without a community of others to love me, I would long since have given up.  Without "religion", without "faith",  I wouldn’t be stupefyingly happy with this amazing wife I have; I’d likely be an aging skinny bachelor, living on TV dinners and having a series of superficial and unsatisfying "relationships" with a series of no-doubt totally inappropriate women!

So, when XRLQ suggests I ask whether religion makes a difference, I have to say, "Heck, yes!"  While my faith may not have been a prophylaxis against the end of a marriage, it was the key to a graceful and civil divorce and the cornerstone of my personal rebuilding project in the aftermath of great pain.  It is the foundation of the candid, challenging, and incredibly fulfilling relationship my wife and I have built together over the last couple of years of our courtship.  For all of this, I am immensely grateful to a God who loves me without conditions and far more than I deserve!

So yes, we Christians divorce right alongside everyone else.  Yes, our most conservative and impassioned believers have no lower divorce rate than those who have a more subdued or lukewarm faith.  But Barna’s figures don’t tell us the whole story.  And while I don’t think anyone has done a study on the willingness of divorced Christians to remarry after multiple divorces, I wouldn’t be surprised if the research were to show that the deeply faithful were more likely to believe in the possibiility of a fresh start.

Hall and Oates and more on divorce

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 19, 2005
in Divorce and Marriage
. 39 Comments

A follow-up to last week’s post on the "good divorce."  Swan asked:

I understand that it’s not a good idea to go into the specifics of your divorces. I don’t expect you to do that.

I would expect you to make clearer though what your interpretation of these passages is. You seemed to say that even though an exception like adultery may not have applied to your case (even if it did, you didn’t HAVE to divorce) and even though you talked things through with a counselor (at least the third time), that divorce was still the best option.

So I’m not saying that divorce is never ever acceptable, and I don’t think many churches are saying that, I just think that many people, even Christians, make the decision to divorce too easily. And from what you’ve written, you seem to be one of them, and you seem to be defending that position.

I also want to make it clear that people who are divorced shouldn’t be treated as second-class citizens at church in any way. It’s real and it happens, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for not so good reasons. And in any case it’s tough and people need support, not judgment afterwards. We have a divorce recovery group at our local church for example, and people freely say that a marriage is their second and are not treated any differently because of it. If it is seen as a fault, it’s clear to everyone that everyone has has faults, and that everyone needs encouragement, not condemnation, and that it is best to learn from our experiences.

I’m sorry if I’m misinterpreting what you are saying, but if so, maybe you could be a bit more specific about what’s good and what’s not in general terms.

Let me begin by recommending a very fine article on the subject of divorce and public ritual in last month’s Episcopal Life by a Rev. Jennifer Phillips.  Very sensible.

I’m wary of saying that divorce is necessarily the "best" option.   When one has made a commitment to another human being, surely the "best" option is to continue to honor that commitment.  But to twist an old phrase, we can’t let "the best be the enemy of the good."   The fact that divorce falls short of the mark doesn’t mean that the experience can’t be a beneficial one for both parties, and in some instances, more beneficial than staying together might have been.

When I was going through one of my earlier divorces, a friend reminded me of the famous Hall and Oates lyric from the 1970s ballad "Do What You Want, Be Who You Are"  (appropriate title for our discussion, and yes, I liked Hall and Oates back in the day):

"It ain’t a sign of weakness girl, to give yourself away
Because the strong give up and move on
While the weak, the weak give up and stay"

Let me be explicit here:  by quoting those lines, I’m not trying to argue that those who stay in struggling marriages are always necessarily weak.  The songwriters — and others — create a bit of a false dichotomy: either you stay in an unhappy marriage, or you leave.  The third option, and one that I have seen work, is to have the two spouses fight like hell to transform their relationship.  Sometimes, the marriage is transformed, and that’s a blessing.  But yes, I’ve seen plenty of people stay in miserable marriages which are never transformed, and I’ve seen them diminished as a consequence.  Nothing sadder than seeing a loved one — man or woman — grow smaller as a result of their relationship.  Few of us can say we’ve never seen that!

(Parenthetically, I know I’m not exactly helping to burnish my evangelical credentials by quoting Hall and Oates rather than Scripture!  Pace, fellow believers.)

I’m also wary of the notion that those who do transform bad marriages to good ones over years of struggle are somehow more virtuous than those of us who do choose to end marriages that have reached the end of their usefulness!  Ultimately, I suppose, I think all of us acknowledge that there’s a real mystery as to why some marriages thrive and others fail.  All of our simplistic, pop psychology analyses fail to capture what, to paraphrase another oldie, "goes on behind closed doors."  If there’s one contemporary truism that does hold merit, it’s that ultimately, no one outside the marriage can fully grasp what it’s like to be in it. 

So, Hall and Oates get it at least partly right, I think.   Every one of us, ultimately, Christian or not, defines that "tipping point" past which a marriage ought not be saved differently.  Scripture gives us some very general guidelines; various ecclesiastical traditions give us others.  No Christian — heck, no sensible human being — thinks divorce ought to be the first choice when one hits a difficult patch.  But at times, it takes real strength and genuine courage to acknowledge that to stay together would do both people (and perhaps the wider community) more harm than good.

It is right and proper to grieve the end of any marriage.  But grief is not always a sign that one has made a bad choice.  After all, look at all the tears shed when a child is sent off to college or graduates from high school.   Leaving a safe and familiar environment can be a scary thing; leaving behind precious memories can be sad — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t often the right thing to do.  We need to do more than comfort the grief-stricken survivors of divorce.  Sometimes, we ought to remind them that they may well have made a good choice, one that reflects strength rather than weakness.

Saturday afternoon, and fourth time’s the charm

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 6, 2004
in Divorce and Marriage
. 8 Comments

I’m home from a run, and tired.  I’ve got the Cal football game on in the background (we are trailing Oregon, disturbingly), and am settling in for a quiet weekend of grading, napping, exercise, church, and playing with the chinchilla.

I’m not in a blogging mood, but did want to respond to this query by Fred in the comments below my previous post:

I hope this is not too personal, but four is a lot of times to get married. Is that something that you’ve ever written about?

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve been married and divorced three times, and am engaged to be married for the fourth time.  I’ve often contemplated writing in more detail about these past marriages, but several things continue to hold me back:

First and foremost, I have the highest respect for my fiancee.  As I’ve mentioned before, I zealously guard her privacy here on the blog.  I don’t even mention her name (it is an unusual one), and though I did so in the past, I no longer post pictures with her in them.   She has her own life, and I want to protect her from those who might be curious about our relationship after reading my posts.  It takes courage to take on a thrice-divorced man, after all.  Thus, for obvious reasons, I leave off details of my sexual and romantic past in order to honor her. 

I don’t know if any of my former spouses read my blog, though it is entirely possible that they have stumbled across it.  I have no contact with any of them, but from a distance, I wish them well and have no desire to write or say anything in public that would place them or our marriages in an unfavorable light.  And of course, I have students who read this blog — and while I think a small amount of personal disclosure is often helpful in humanizing a professor, too much can make folks more than a little uncomfortable.

Here is what I can say:

I have always believed in marriage.  From the time I was a teenager, I expected to marry young.  (My first was shortly after turning 23.)  This certainly was not the norm in my family, but for whatever reason, I felt called to commit early on.  Of course, there was a huge disconnect between my desire to commit and my ability to live into that commitment in mind, body, heart and spirit!   Though there were related issues that cropped up with all three of my wives (who were markedly different women), I can say that my own behavior improved enormously over the course of these three marriages.  My third divorce was far more loving and civil and kind than the first two — and there is much to be said for a graceful, gentle separation.

Some info I can provide: Aside from the four-legged variety, I never had children with any of my first three wives; that made divorce much easier in each case.  Each marriage made it to a first anniversary; none of the three made it to a second.  The first wedding was Catholic, the second two Episcopalian, and my fiancee and I are keeping our current wedding plans private.

To sum up, I don’t think experience is always the best teacher.  I don’t think I am necessarily wiser about life and love than my friends who got married once and have stayed wed.   But everyone’s journey is different.   Though I would never hold myself up as a model of virtue, I do know that the bitter experiences of my past have made me gentler, kinder, more patient and infinitely less judgmental than I was when I was young.  Someday, when my future kids ask me about the women I was married to before their mother (they will surely ask, I know kids), I will simply tell them that it took their father a long, long time to discover what kind of man he wanted to be.  And he had to find out who that man was in order to be ready to marry a woman as marvelous as their mother.  And that’s all the information they are going to get.

And folks, that’s as much as I’m sharing on the blog.

Gays, divorce, and consistency

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 15, 2004
in Christianity, Divorce, GLBTQ and Sexual ethics and transformation
. 1 Comment

Since I consider it great sport to read the “other side”, I often visit Touchstone Magazine online. A fine piece appears in the current issue, penned by the Rev. Robert Hart. He takes to task his fellow conservatives in the Anglican world for focusing on homosexuality as the chief dividing point between left and right. Rather, he argues, the real battle for marriage needs to be over divorce. Writing about the continued controversy over the gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, Hart says:

The way home for the conservative Episcopalians is to place Robinson’s homosexuality in its proper context, as a part rather than the sum of his life of sin. If they wish to be credible in their opposition to homosexuality, they must reject all deviations from the path of sexual purity and teach chastity of life for all persons. They must affirm marriage as a covenant and as a sacrament in which the words “as long as you both shall live” retain their full meaning.

They must oppose Robinson’s “ministry” not only because he is a practicing homosexual, but also because he is unfaithful to his wife. They must oppose the continued public ministry of all clergy who are notorious for living immoral lives. They must demand the resignation of all divorced and remarried (read adulterous) bishops who have “put away the wife of their youth.”

After all, what the homosexualists have been able to do is to base their arguments upon a foundation already laid for them. That foundation has included relaxation of the moral laws about sexual behavior. It has also included the confusion of sex roles ever since women were first “ordained” in the Episcopal Church. The conservatives have accepted these things, but hope now to credibly and effectively oppose the homosexualist cause. This cannot be done.

Of course, what should have happened long ago is this: Mr. Robinson ought to have been defrocked, and if unrepentant still, excommunicated. Why? Because he is an openly “gay” man? No, because he is an unrepentant and notorious sinner. The discipline should have been the same had he left his family to live with another woman.

(All bold emphases are mine). Good on you, father! I don’t have much time for Hart’s theology, but I honor his consistency. I like his prophetic voice, too. To oppose gay unions while approving second (third, fourth, etc) marriages, and to oppose gay bishops while accepting divorced straight ones “cannot be done“, Hart says. And though I come to radically different conclusions about Christ, His church, and human sexuality, on that point I agree with him completely. (There are over a dozen divorced and re-married bishops in the Episcopal Church, including the bishop of Los Angeles, my friend Jon Bruno).

Will my conservative readers (perhaps even Kendall Harmon himself, should he be willing) tell me where Rev. Hart is wrong?

Corinthians and “I love you”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 4, 2004
in Christianity, Divorce and Youth ministry
. 2 Comments

Youth group last night was cool. We had only 16 kids instead of our usual 25, but that was nice and gave it a more intimate feel. We spent the evening on 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, a passage that even biblically illiterate Episcopalians can’t help but know. (One of the girls shrieked with delight when we turned to it, “Hey, this was in the movie A Walk to Remember. Well, whatever works).

We spent some time going through it line by line, talking about what came easily to us and what was harder. The heartbreaking thing for me was that for several of them, the hardest thing about love is believing “Love never fails”. Most of these kids are children of divorce; two of the girls in the group have had their parents divorce within the past year. They’ve seen human love fail time and time again. They’ve heard — vaguely — that marriage represents the union of Christ with His church. (They aren’t really clear on the theology). And their trust that any kind of love “never fails” is low indeed.

So we had some tears and a few laughs, and some gentle reminders from the youth leaders that God’s love is different indeed than any other love that they have known. And in the end, we closed in a prayer circle, and on the spur of the moment, I had each kid (and adult) say his or her name. “My name is Debbie”, the first person said; each person in the circle then repeated, one by one, “I love you, Debbie.” We did that for each of us. I’m sure it’s done elsewhere, but it came as a flash of inspiration to me, and it was more powerful than I had realized. Several more kids were in tears at the end, saying that they had never heard those words said to them with such genuine feeling and by so many people. A cheap sentimental exercise? Maybe. But it worked, and it left me feeling incredibly blessed and grateful that I am allowed, in a small but significant way, to be part of so many young lives.

So who’s the real threat to marriage?

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 18, 2004
in Christianity, Divorce, GLBTQ, Marriage and Youth ministry
. 5 Comments

Conservative Christian blogger Donald Sensing had this very intriguing post the other day, arguing that Christian traditionalists should not fight to block gay marriage. Here’s an excerpt:

Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one another because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is controllable. The fundamental basis for marriage has been thus been technologically obviated. Pair that development with rampant, easy divorce and the removal of social sanction for divorce, and talk in 2004 of “saving marriage” is pretty specious. There’s practically nothing there left to save. Men and women today who have successful, enduring marriages ’til death does them part do so in spite of society, not because of it.
If society has abandoned regulating heterosexual conduct of men and women, what right does it have to regulate homosexual conduct, including the regulation of their legal and property relationship with one another to mirror exactly that of hetero, married couples?

Bold emphasis is mine. A few years ago, as I was getting ready for my most recent marriage (the very phrase is embarrassing to write), my youth group at church threw me a party. All the kids, especially the girls, were eager to hear the details of the wedding plans and so forth. I remember their excitement so well! I also remember their bewilderment and sadness when they learned (through the rapid-fire church gossip mill) that that marriage had ended some eighteen months after it began. I remember at least one girl crying about it, and I know that she was crying as much for herself as for me and my ex; I know that she was grieving her own crushed hopes. Kids want so badly to see adults (especially those who like me are youth ministers and teachers) in happy marriages. They want to believe it is possible to spend a lifetime with one person in wedded bliss; they want to believe that the wonderful fairy tale can happen for them, too. Each divorce among the adults they know, love, and trust, is thus a cold and bitter infusion of reality. I have no doubt divorce has lasting effects, and I grieve that.

And I know that my divorce did far, far more damage to the kids in my youth group than all the gay and lesbian marriages in San Francisco could possibly ever do. Is that an argument for gay marriage? Not necessarily, of course. But as Sensing rightly points out, we all need to take the plank out of our own eye first. And those of us who have endured and suffered through failed marriages have humongous logs of timber protruding from our retinas. Let’s see if our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters can make any less a hash of marriage than we have.

Phyllis and Del; Hugo is conflicted again

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 12, 2004
in Christianity, Divorce, GLBTQ, Marriage and Politics
. 8 Comments

In San Francisco today, two of the legendary figures of contemporary American lesbian history were wed: Phyllis Lyon, 79, and Del Martin, 83. Mind you, this was no “domestic partnership ceremony”. This was a legal wedding under Mayor Gavin Newsom’s new administration — they become the first gay or lesbian couple in America to be issued a marriage license that is indistinguishable in every way from those issued to straights.

My own feelings are, of course, mixed. On one hand, I am thrilled! Whatever the courts do, whatever happens in Massachusetts or in Canada or even with the constitution, I feel a hopeful sense of inevitabilty about the coming of full legal equality for gays and lesbians in American society. But frankly, my heart and my theology are at two different places on this issue. Though I am fairly certain Paul did not have the likes of Phyllis and Del (together since the early 1950s, and co-founders of the legendary lesbian club, the Daughters of Bilitis) in mind when he wrote his letters to the Romans and the Corinthians, there is a substantial part of me that is still convinced that homosexuality falls just short of God’s best. (Of course, there is another part of me that thinks that first part needs to take a far broader and more inclusive view of Scripture. No wonder I still am on the rolls at an Episcopal church, even as I worship and work with my adopted Mennonites).

I’ve been divorced and remarried and divorced again; I hope to never go through the agony of another divorce. But the state will let the likes of me keep getting married and divorced over and over, and these days, even my Mennonites would let me do so. (The number of divorced and remarried conservative evangelicals I know is growing all the time). Phyllis and Del have been together more than five decades, and I am darned sure they could teach me and a whole lot of other folks a good deal about love, about commitment, about patience, about fidelity, about hope, about faith, about sacrifice.

So, bring on the court battles. Bring on the amendments, the referenda, the debates. But as someone whose heart is so often divided, I just hope that the great fight to come is fought with kindness and consideration and with understanding on all sides. I hope my gay and lesbian friends are willing to see that those who oppose gay marriage are not always motivated by hate, but instead are often motivated by a thoughtful desire to protect what they see as a unique foundation stone for civilized life. In the same way, I hope that those who oppose gay marriage can see that many gays and lesbians are already capable of loving, committed, monogamous, long-term relationships — and they desire simply to have what is already present recognized by the state.

I am offering up a prayer of thanksgiving for Phyllis and Del this afternoon. I am also offering up a prayer that in this as in all things, God will make His will known. Because all the experience, reason, scripture and tradition I have encountered in my life as a scholar and a Christian have not convinced me that I can say what His will on this matter is.