What Is a Life-Saving Divorce?
Not a Frivolous Exit — It Is A Divorce for Serious Harm
The Opposite of “I’m Bored” or “The Grass Is Greener”
A life-saving divorce is a divorce for serious reasons. It’s the opposite of a frivolous divorce. It is not an “I’m bored” divorce, or an “I feel unfulfilled” divorce, or an “I miss the party life” divorce.
What? About half — or more — of divorces? That’s not what I was told either!
I’ve been in church since the day I was born. I was raised by loving Christian parents married more than 60 years. I worked in Christian ministries nearly my entire adult life. Yet no one ever told me this.
Instead, I heard that almost all divorces were about “falling out of love.” That divorcees were quitters. That they lacked commitment. That they just wanted greener grass.
Then my church asked me to help lead a Bible study for single mothers. The women in that room weren’t frivolous. They were faithful. And they were asking the same question I was:
Are destructive marriages more common than we’ve been told?
What the Research Actually Shows
Four Major Surveys on Why People Divorce
We weren’t alone. For decades family researchers have wondered the same thing. Why do people divorce? They’ve done a lot of surveys of divorced men and woman who reported anonymously.
Here are the four significant surveys.
Survey 1: Midlife Divorce — 50% Cite Serious Betrayal or Abuse
In this first survey, the participants had divorced over age 40. Of these, 50% of divorcees mentioned the most significant reason was one of the serious reasons: adultery, sexual immorality, domestic violence, chronic emotional abuse, or abandonment (neglect of duty). [1]
Survey 2: Ages 20–55 — 42% Report Severe Violations
In this survey of participants age 20- 55, about 42% of divorcees mentioned at least one of the reasons above as the issue that caused the divorce. [2]
Survey 3: 58% Infidelity, 30% Domestic Violence
In this study, divorcees could select more than one major contributor to their divorce: 58% of divorcees mentioned infidelity; 30% mentioned domestic violence. (They did not offer drug/alcohol abuse as a choice.) [3]
Survey 4: Nearly 6 in 10 Cite Infidelity, Abuse, or Substance Abuse as the Final Straw
In this study, too, participants could select more than one factor in their divorce. Infidelity was a major contributor in 59.6% of divorces, substance abuse in 34.6%, and domestic violence in 23.5%. When asked for the “final straw,” nearly 6 in 10 mentioned either infidelity, domestic violence, or substance abuse. [4] The graph below is based on data from that study. Click for video explanation of this study, and how it’s been misused.
Nearly six in ten people said their final straw for divorce was infidelity, domestic violence, or substance abuse, according to a National Library of Medicine study
About half — or more — of divorces are for life-saving reasons.
What this shows is that somewhere between 42% and 59% of divorces are for serious problems. So about half of divorces.
For a long time, we in the church have tended to think about divorce, and about people who have gotten divorced, as though only five percent of those divorces happened for good reason. As you can see from these studies, that’s not true.
There is a lot of bad behavior that makes marriages miserable: unfaithfulness, physical or mental abuse, drug or alcohol abuse, refusing to support the family, or simply walking out the door and never returning.
When the desperate spouse says, “I can’t take any more suffering and betrayal,” we call it a “life-saving” divorce. And only that desperate spouse knows how much they can take. No one else has skin in the game, not the pastor, not their parents, not their friends or people at church.
Those who taught us that 95% of divorces are “frivolous” are simply wrong.
Half — or more — of divorces are life-saving divorces.
And if you’re walking beside someone who may need a life-saving divorce, this will help you avoid the common mistakes friends make: How to Help a Friend in an Abusive Marriage.
Footnotes:
[1] Xenia P. Montenegro, “The Divorce Experience: A Study of Divorce at Midlife and Beyond,” AARP the Magazine (May 2004), accessed 1/10/20, https://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/general/divorce.pdf.
[2] Paul R. Amato and Denise Previti, “People’s Reasons for Divorcing,” Journal of Family Issues 24, no. 5 (July 2003): 602-626.
[3] C. Johnson, S. Stanley, and N. Glenn, et al., “Marriage in Oklahoma: 2001 Oklahoma Baseline Statewide Survey,” (2002): 15.
[4] Shelby B. Scott, Galena K. Rhoades, and Scott M. Stanley, et al., “Reasons for Divorce and Recollections of Premarital Intervention: Implications for Improving Relationship Education,” Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice 2, no. 2. (2003): 131-145.
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