How to Avoid a Bad Marriage & How to Make a Good Marriage Great By CBN News
With love and romance in the air, many couples wonder if they should be tying the knot. Well, the odds stack up so high against some couples, they should probably avoid holy matrimony. For many others, though, there are ways to divorce-proof your marriage.
Popular New York City Pastor Tim Keller and his wife Kathy co-wrote bestseller The Meaning of Marriage and a new devotional to go along with it – The Meaning of Marriage: a Couple’s Devotional.
They help couples make their union a life-long hit. And they guide singles on how to avoid a bad marriage.
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HIGH RISK FOR A DOOMED MARRIAGE: UNDER 18, PREGNANT, NO HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA
For instance, Tim pointed out, “There’s a certain kind of marriage that’s very high risk. If you marry before the age of 18, if you have not finished high school and you’re getting married, if you have a baby with the other person before you get married – those marriages characterized by those things are very, very, very fragile and they break up at a high percentage.”
You may have heard the odds of most marriages breaking up is about 50/50. But your odds go way up if you’re not in a high-risk category.
Or as Tim put it, “If you’re over 18; if you have not had a baby with the other person and you’ve finished high school, your chances of, statistically, getting a divorce go way down. So it’s really probably not fair at all to say, for most people, that you’re more than likely to get divorced.”
DOWN ONE OR TWO MARRIAGES? THIRD TIME’S NOT LIKELY TO BE THE CHARM
The Kellers point out why divorce is the wrong turn on a bumpy road.
“Second marriages, third marriages, are far more likely to end in divorce,” Kathy told CBN News, “If you can’t figure out how to fix it in your first marriage, you’re going to be even worse the second and the third time around. So it’s far better to stay in a marriage that has sharp edges, that has difficulties, and work them out.”
