Over and over I feel brought back to face the central issue of what is behind failure and success in marriage, and I cannot escape the fact that at the root of every divorce is selfishness, unfaithfulness, arrogance, deceit, abuse, and sin.

So often people fall into the most cruel of all errors and that is the sin of laying the blame for marital breakup at the hands of the faithful spouse who has wept before God countless hours crying out for help. So often people in the church have behaved with the utmost arrogance and cruelty toward those who suffer. Pastors perform adulterous weddings sometimes out of cowardice, but always with utmost irresponsibility and indecency lying to God, calling "holy matrimony" that which Jesus Himself has called unholy and adulterous.

On the one hand, people cry out, "thou shalt not judge" as they judge God wholly unworthy of respect, trust, and obedience and judge the children and the faithful unworthy of faithfulness.

For some reason some people seem to feel that God's Word needs to be filtered, corrected, brought into greater enlightenment through what they regard to be a higher form of education. And all this time, the victims of adultery and divorce suffer. Not only must these victims suffer loss as a widow suffers, but they suffer the utmost rejection and betrayal from the one on earth to whom they trusted their heart most. As these victims of adultery and divorce spent years praying for their families and their marriages putting up with abuse, praying for it to be overcome, living out lives of the utmost faithfulness, upon the breakup of the family, they are forced to suffer the utmost shame, slander, abuse, belittling, all from an unfaithful spouse who seeks to justify his or her unfaithfulness somehow hoping to shed some of his or her share of the responsibility for the failure in marriage.

Here are just a few really quick tips or reminders for saving marriages. Recommended Reading: 50 Secrets of Blissful Relationships

• Surrender your situation to God completely and go over the possible outcomes of your situation surrendering all of those possibilities to God, too, knowing He will bring about whatever it is that's best in the long run even if your spouse doesn't.
• Pray and think about everything you can think of to thank God for. This will help keep your mind on the good things in life and help keep an attractive and confident smile on your face.
• Put away all deceit, manipulation, power struggles and such. Don't rely on sin or abuse or sacrificing your character to avoid the outcome you don't want.
• When you find that something doesn't work or makes things worse, stop doing it
• Think about what you're doing when things are going well with your spouse. Think about what you were doing just before your last fight ended and you made up, and do that. In short, think of what worked before and do that.
• Use the "as if" technique. Imagine your spouse was not doing what you detest and that your spouse was doing what you love instead. How would you respond or behave if that were the case? Act that way -- as if your spouse were doing what you like.
• Put away worry--that's a part of surrendering to God. Think of what the worst thing is that could happen and how you would get through it with the grace of God and know that if He can help you handle that, He can help you handle anything.
• Do things you enjoy. Enjoy time with friends of the same sex.
• Don't share your problems with a close friend of the opposite sex. It can make you feel vulnerable and lead to an emotional or physical affair. See Break Free From The Affair
• When you pray, take time to listen to God, too. Read the Bible.
• Tell everyone you know about this web site and other resources that might help them have great marriages
• Go to a couple's seminar such as I Still Do or Retrouvaille or something put on by NAME Online or Marriage Savers or Restore Ministries or Rejoice Ministries or Divorce Busting. If you're in central California, contact me at this web site if you wish as I can present a Marriage Breakthrough Video Seminar from Michele Weiner-Davis, founder of Divorce Busting.

A thought:

Some say marriage is the union between a man and a woman, but what is the difference between being married and shacking up? What is marriage, really? Is it when a couple wears a white dress and tuxedo in church and says their vows? Are they married if a red or blue dress or tuxedo is worn? Is it when vows are exchanged? Does there have to be a priest or pastor or religious leader to make a marriage valid? Are a couple married when the marriage license is signed? Prior to the first governmental marriage license were all couples unmarried and living in sin? Were Adam and Eve married? If not, then why did God tell them to be fruitful and multiply?