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Anyone know of an article by a general authority that addresses circumstances when divorce would be considered a right course of action.
At a recent Stake Relief Society Meeting the visiting speaker referenced such an article. It has generated a lot of discussion as our stake seems to have an epidemic of divorces lately.
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OK, I'm feeling fairly desperate. I can see some serious problems with this idea. I can see a possible good outcome. How bad would it be to send this article to my BIL who is wanting a divorce? Some might say it is none of my business, but since we are needed to pick up some of the pieces coming from this it has become our business in some sense, especially if my sister and her children end up living with us.
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No offense, yungmom, but I don't think it is your place to try to convince your BIL to not divorce. If anyone should try, it should be a member of his family.
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Oh, I think that it is anyone who cares about someone genuinely (as most family does about the people who marry their siblings) to speak up with genuine concern when someone is about to do something tragic, specially if and the way prompted, so long as after they say their piece, they shut up about it.
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When my ex (many years ago!!) walked out on me at BYU, I would have given anything for someone, anyone, to have tried to talk some sense into him. Nobody would. They didn't want to "appear to take sides" or to "get involved." In the end, my childhood friend told him off, and he later told me she was the only one he respected because she wasn't afraid to say what was so obvious: that he was being a jerk.
But in that case it WAS obvious. In some marriages it is not. And repeated misguided attempts can be counterproductive. But to say to someone who appears to be driving 90 miles per hour into a brick wall, "Hey, I care, I think you're nuts, but is there any way I can help?" would be something I think the Savior would do.
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My nephew got married less than a year ago to a girl who has been a stand-in mother to his illegitimate daughter for a good 2 years. We were happy to see them make some good choices and provide a good life for this sweet little girl.
Except now they're separated and deciding to see other people.
My husband wrote and sent a very carefully worded, heartfelt email to my nephew about marriage and how important stability is for children, including some great marriage advice from Pres. Monson.
Nephew never responded and probably never read it, but at least my husband will never have the regret of never having said anything.
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Thanks Beefche and Roper for the article links. They were both helpful.
They are not as specific in an aspect that the speaker referenced, but addressed the heart of the matter. So I suspect there is another article out there ...
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In even mentioning this I earnestly wish not to offend. I have seen divorce in my own family so I know something of the complexity, the pain, the accusations, and innocence that inevitably attend it. I do not speak here of specific lives or personal problems about which I know nothing and on which I would not pass judgment if I did. But the general matter of divorce, the abstract matter of divorce, is not only a major social but also a major symbolic problem in our world.
With the divorce rate hitting 50 percent and climbing, more than one million American children live through the trauma of a marital break-up every year. Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University says that "America[ns] . . . of the 70's and 80's are the first generation in the country's history who think divorce and separation are a normal part of family life" ("Who's Minding the Children," Allan C. Brownfeld, from Divorce and Single-Parent Family Statistics, p. 24). That perception is being helped along by catchy new book titles like Divorce, the New Freedom and Creative Divorce: A new Opportunity for Personal Growth.
No one would wish a bad marriage on anyone. But where do we think "good marriages" come from? They don't spring full-blown from the head of Zeus any more than does a good education, or good home teaching, or a good symphony. Why should a marriage require fewer tears and less toil and shabbier commitment than your job or your clothes or your car?
Yet some of you will spend less time on the quality and substance and purpose of your marriage--the highest, holiest, culminating covenant you make in this world--than you will in maintaining your '72 Datsun. And you will break the hearts of many innocent people, including perhaps your own, if that marriage is then dissolved.
"You must [not give] half-hearted compliance [to a marriage]," said President Kimball. "[It requires] all [our] consecration" (Spencer W. Kimball, "An Apostle Speaks about Marriage to John and Mary," Improvement Era, February 1949, p. 74). So every worthy task will require all that we can give to it. The Lord requires the heart and a willing mind if we are to eat the good of the land of Zion in the last days.
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