7 More Reasons To Stay Married To Your First Love

There are many good reasons why we should stay married to our first love. Here are just a few. Can you think of any more?

1. Divorce Hurts

Divorce can take the whole family for a loop. Divorce brings about tension and animosity among family members, frustration and confusion, anger and rebelliousness to the truth, and downright selfishness. Younger children, especially, can be devastated by the effects of divorce.

2. Divorce Will Not Make You Happier

In a major new study, statistics show that divorce does not make a person happier. In fact, a study conducted by a team of leading family scholars headed by University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite, the study found that two-thirds of unhappily married spouses who stayed married reported that their marriages were happy five years later. In addition, the most unhappy marriages reported the most dramatic turnarounds: among those who rated their marriages as very unhappy, almost eight out of 10 who avoided divorce were happily married five years later! Wow, now what does that tell you?

3. Most Marriages Are Restorable

In my opinion, divorce can often do great damage to the person who is divorced. In most cases, divorce gives people an easy way out of a restorable situation. Divorce keeps people from being able to handle stresses and trials of a relationship later on down the road and the chances they will divorce again are high. Most marriages are restorable just by putting in the added spiritual effort into them, and that goes for your marriage too!

4. Divorce Is An Unacceptable Decision

I think that divorce is a selfish and one-sided decision from one spouse who is unwilling to put in the added effort that marriage needs. But have you stopped to think about how by divorcing your first love you are breaking apart a creation that God established? God is the Creator and Master Designer of Marriage. There is not an establishment in society that can actually break a contract between you and God. That is why you are considered still married in God’s eyes.

But for Adam no suitable HELPER was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord made woman out of the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man, the man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be untied to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (Genesis 20-24 NIV)

Can you see how choosing to rely on divorce is actually a selfish act? Not only is it selfish but also divorce is often a spontaneous act proceeded out of the unwillingness to accept responsibility for yourself in the marriage.

5. You Can Choose To Work on Your Marriage

When we choose to do what’s right, and truly ask for God’s guidance by removing selfishness from our hearts and minds, and apply “principled acts” of love into the marriage, we realize more of what we have and what marriage really means to us – it becomes more important in our spiritual bank because we actually understand our purpose for marriage. Marriage is not about what you want - it is about the both of you and how you both can serve God in your marriage. In essence, your marriage belongs to God.

6. Marriage Should Be A Lifetime Commitment

For believers, I have to say, there really are no loopholes in marriage for divorce, not even infidelity. If a man or woman is married to an abuser in any form, they can separate from each other for a time, but even that does not justify divorce in God’s eyes. He expects believing couples to work problems out instead of divorce.

Here is a reliable saying, “Don’t get married until you know that you can handle the trials of marriage with a committed heart.”

7. God Wants You To Stay Married?

God does not want us to break apart what He has instituted. In fact, God being the creator of marriage is also the controller of marriage. This is precisely why scripture says, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery”. (Luke 16: 18 NIV)

In God’s eyes and in the contract between you, your spouse, and God, you’re still married! As believers we have options for helping us to stay happily married rather than break up the home front. Those options may include not chasing after the easy outs of society and asking God to give you the perseverance and faith to stick it out with your first love.