Families and Divorce!
Families are everything. In my daily occupation as a Marriage and Family Therapist, I meet many people. People comfortably tell me things they would never tell anyone, even their spouse. I hear and learn many things that only people in a similar profession would know. One thing that has become crystal clear to me is that personal happiness directly correlates to the quality of one’s relationship with family members.
In times past, there was more acknowledgment of this fact. Society pressured people to marry and stay married. As members of the ‘new generation,’ we have been bombarded with misleading and incorrect information about the value of being autonomous, independent, and free of others. This attitude has permeated our psyche and the attitudes and beliefs of many professional mental health workers, the very people supposed to help with relationships. The legal system, at times, is heartless in the way it can mechanically and mindlessly break up families and ignore the needs of a spouse and children.
Forbes Adviser reports that 75% of individuals and couples cited lack of ‘commitment’ as the reason for their divorce. Shocking! Yes.
And more shocking… about half of all first-time marriages end in divorce. Second and third marriages actually fail at a far higher rate. Unfortunately, the Jewish community is not immune to this relationship plague. Anybody with eyes and ears living in a Jewish community can see this for themselves.
Where will it all end, in electronic virtual reality families we can access online?
The personal toll is enormous. Unhappiness is literally ten times greater than even a generation ago. It can be measured in direct proportion to the number of wonder drugs, like Prozac, the highly touted antidepressant used to keep millions of people smiling. Doctors are writing over a million prescriptions a month. In 1993, ten million people worldwide were using Prozac. Its use and the use of similar drugs have continued to expand quickly with no end in sight. Not surprisingly, women make up a disproportionate usage of antidepressant drugs because they are more sensitive to dysfunctional relationships than men as well as socialized to respond differently. The pharmaceutical companies are happy to lead people to think they have been suddenly struck with an unexplainable and incurable chemical imbalance. After all, drug companies make money by selling drugs. Drugs like Prozac have become so common newscasters are joking about putting it in the drinking water like fluoride.
If this all sounds bleak, it is not. The solution is simple, cheap and easy. All we need to do is prioritize families above everything else. We need to realize that long-term happiness and healthy relationships are synonymous. It’s not the size of our house, the car we drive, or the prestige of our career that matters. It is our relationship with the people in our lives that counts. My thousands of clients from all walks of life have taught me this.
What can someone do if they feel there is a serious problem in their family? Try reading books on healthy marital and family relationships. Consult a registered Marriage and Family Therapist or another equally qualified mental health professional (ensure they have been trained specifically to work with couples). Be brutally honest and try to change your behavior and attitude. Observe the behavior and attitude of families that do relate healthily. Most important, don’t give up.
Believe that you can succeed. Nothing comes without effort. Most people spend years training for a technical skill or career, work long hours for financial security, or lovingly devote themselves to a sport or hobby. Likewise, great achievement can occur in family peace and harmony if the appropriate and sincere effort is made.
If you have tried therapy for a marital or personal problem and it didn’t work, try another therapist just like you would another doctor for a persistent medical problem. People readily go to another medical doctor if the first didn’t help. If one mechanic couldn’t fix a problem with an expensive car, would the car be junked? No, the owner would try another mechanic and another until it was fixed!
I am firmly convinced that if we worked as hard at making our marriage work as we do at so many other things in life, the divorce rate would be reduced to a single-digit number. In many ways, life is what we make it.
