Christmas Night we sat by the fire talking about the highs and lows of 2012 and, as part of the lows, counted six couples in our immediate circle who had either divorced or were in the process of divorcing in 2012.
When one sees a mini-epidemic amongst one’s friends like that, it makes one wonder what’s going on. Why were so many of us able to stay married through those initial years fraught with the stresses of finishing school, starting careers, and buying dinner at Taco Bell with just the change in our pockets? How did we survive the child-rearing years where neither of us got enough sleep, babies got sick, and jobs wobbled? How did we do all this just to end up throwing in the towel in our early 40s? Didn’t the fortitude we supposedly developed during the early difficult years toughen us enough to weather these middle years of marriage?
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