Is it a surprise when couples who think "If marriage doesn't work, I'll bail out", end up in divorce?

Some of my friends got married with the mutual understanding that they could bail out if it didn't work. In nearly every one of those families, they are divorced today. From what you say, I guess that doesn't surprise you.

Not at all. Marriage succeeds only as a lifetime commitment with no escape clauses. That kind of determination was common for earlier generations.

Let me share how my father felt about my mother when they married in 1935. Forty years later, he and I were walking in a park and talking about the meaning of commitment between a husband and wife. With that, he reached into his pocket and took out a worn piece of paper. On it was written a promise he had made to my mother when she agreed to become his wife. This is what he had said to her:

I want you to understand and be fully aware of my feelings concerning the marriage covenant which we are about to enter. I have been taught at my mother's knee, and in harmony with the Word of God, that the marriage vows are inviolable, and by entering into them I am binding myself absolutely and for life. The idea of estrangement from you through divorce for any reason at all (although God allows one - infidelity) will never at any time be permitted to enter into my thinking.

I'm not naive in this. On the contrary, I'm fully aware of the possibility, unlikely as it now appears, that mutual incompatibility or other unforeseen circumstances could result in extreme mental suffering. If such becomes the case, I am resolved for my part to accept it as a consequence of the commitment I am now making, and to bear it, if necessary, to the end of our lives together.

I have loved you dearly as a sweetheart and will continue to love you as my wife. But over and above that, I love you with a Christian love that demands that I never react in any way toward you that would jeopardize our prospects of entering heaven, which is the supreme objective of both our lives. And I pray that God Himself will make our affection for one another perfect and eternal.

If that is the way you approach the commitment of marriage, your probabilities of living happily together are vastly improved. Again, the Scriptures endorse the permanence of the marital relationship: "Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate" (Mark 10:9).

Is it possible to love someone and not feel it?

It certainly is - because love is more than a feeling. It is primarily a decision. Married couples who misunderstand this point will have serious problems when the feeling of love disappears for a time.

Couples who genuinely love each other will experience times of closeness, times when they feel apathetic, and times when they are irritated and cranky. That's just the way emotions operate.

What, then, will hold them steady as feelings bounce all over the landscape? The source of constancy is a commitment of the will. You simply make up your mind not to be blown off the limb by fluctuating and unreliable emotions.

You have said that the natural progression of a marriage is to become more distant rather than more intimate. Why is that true?

The natural tendency of everything in the universe is to move from order to disorder.

If you buy a new car, it will steadily deteriorate from the day you drive it home. Your body is slowly aging and dying. Your house has to be repainted and repaired every few summers. A business that is not managed carefully will unravel and collapse. A brick that is placed on a vacant lot and left there long enough will eventually turn to dust. Indeed, even the sun and all the stars are slowly burning themselves out. We are, in a manner of speaking, in a dying universe where everything that is not specifically being protected and upgraded is in a downward spiral.

The principle that governs this drift from order to disorder might be called "the law of disintegration." (Engineers and scientists sometimes call it "the law of entropy.") The only way to postpone or temporarily combat its influence is to invest creative energy and intelligent design into that which is to be preserved.

Not so surprisingly, human relationships also conform to the principle of disintegration. The natural tendency is for husbands and wives to drift away from each other unless they work at staying together. To provide another analogy, it is as though they were sitting in separate rowboats on a choppy lake. If they don't paddle vigorously to stay in the same neighborhood, one will drift to the north of the lake and the other to the south. That is exactly what happens when marital partners get too busy or distracted to maintain their love. If they don't take the time for romantic activities and experiences that draw them together, something precious begins to slip away. It doesn't have to be that way, of course, but the currents of life will separate them unless efforts are made to remain together.

I wish every newly married couple knew about the law of disintegration and actively protected their relationship from it.