The first pillar for a healthy, lifelong marriage is to choose love. If you're working from a faulty definition of love, your marriage won’t go the distance.

Stats on Marriage and Divorce:

• In 2022, expect the divorce rate to be at least 44.2%. This is based on a marriage rate of 6.1 people per 1,000 total population and a divorce rate of 2.7 people per 1,000 total population.
• Usually, second or third marriages in the United States have a higher divorce
• rate: 60% of second marriages and about 73% of third marriages end in divorce.
• Couples going through their first divorce are around the age of 30. Married couples between the ages of 20 to 25 are 60% likely to get a divorce.
• Ethnicity is one of the notable predictors of divorce. For instance, Asian Americans have traditionally shown the lowest divorce rates of all other races. Currently, it's 12.4 divorces per 1,000 people, with at least one divorce for 18% of Asian American women and 16% of men.
• India has one of the lowest divorce rates globally, estimated to be around 1.1%

Love in Pop Culture

Modern culture depicts love as a feeling that comes and goes. Many couples use this unrealistic standard to measure the quality of love in their marriage. 

According to the 2019 Survey of U.S. adults, the most common reasons to get married are:

• Love – 90%
• Companionship – 66%
• Commitment – 63%
• The desire to have children – 31%
• Finances – 13%
• Legal rights and benefits –10%
• Pregnancy – 6%

Examples in popular culture:

•  The Notebook - forbidden love, root for the affair
•  The Titanic - 
• Spanglish - surprising that the guy made the right choice!
• The Office- Jim and Pam

The Principle: Love is a Choice

The Bible paints a different picture for marital love: Love is a choice, not just a feeling. 

• Make two lists: (1) good feelings you’ve felt in your marriage (2) bad feelings you’ve felt in your marriage. How have feelings affected your marriage, positively and negatively?

Love is based on a promise and is represented by our marriage vows. Mark 10:2-9, Proverbs 20:25

• Proverbs 20:25 (NLT) Don’t trap yourself by making a rash promise to God and only later counting the cost.
• Looking back, do you think you understood the commitment you were making on your wedding day? What promises have proven hardest to keep?
• Mark 10:2-9 (NLT) Some Pharisees came and tried to trap him with this question: “Should a man be allowed to divorce his wife?”
• Jesus answered them with a question: “What did Moses say in the law about divorce?”
• “Well, he permitted it,” they replied. “He said a man can give his wife a written notice of divorce and send her away.”
• But Jesus responded, “He wrote this commandment only as a concession to your hard hearts. But ‘God made them male and female’ from the beginning of creation. ‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.”

The 5 Love Languages: The point is to choose to speak your spouse’s language!

1. Words of affirmation: 
2. Physical touch: 
3. Acts of service:
4. Gift giving: 
5. Quality time:

The Ultimate Analogy

The ultimate analogy for love is how Christ loves his church. He gave up his life for his “bride” even though he didn’t feel like it. Ephesians 5:25-27

• Ephesians 5:25-27 (NLT) For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 
• Holy = “set apart” from all other relationships: yourself, friends, your parents, your kids, and anyone from the opposite sex. Also your job, your hobbies, etc.
• What would your spouse say you need to do to set the marriage apart more?