The Anabaptist perspective towards dating and/or courtship?

[Soloist]

all i'm saying, is, the numbers look good on paper, but the reality isn't as good.

So is the reality in the world somehow better?

Not getting divorced is a very good thing. Getting divorced is almost always bad. I’m not sure why anyone would think we need more divorce.

Unhappy marriages are at least a sign that they care to try to work through their problems. The world just walks away from struggles and says "he just was verbally abusive" or "I wanted a career, he wanted a family"

My marriage has had unhappy marriage days... Should I have have divorced? As a hermit, you divorced society

If my wife didn't put up with my weaknesses and I didn't with hers, if we never struggled through our rough spots... Quitters don't prosper. I think that it's better for children to see that love means working through the struggles, and family doesn't give up on each other, be it parents/children, siblings, or whoever. it seems like some of the happiest married older couples we've met have had some very unhappy things that they had to work through.

In no way am I endorsing someone stay in the same house with a physically abusive person against their spouse or children, nor am I saying someone has to stay with someone who is living in adultery. What I am saying is that Jesus must have had some good reason to teach us about the permenance of marriage.

[Szdfan]

all i'm saying, is, the numbers look good on paper, but the reality isn't as good.

So is the reality in the world somehow better?

Not getting divorced is a very good thing. Getting divorced is almost always bad. I’m not sure why anyone would think we need more divorce.

Unhappy marriages are at least a sign that they care to try to work through their problems. The world just walks away from struggles and says "he just was verbally abusive" or "I wanted a career, he wanted a family"

My marriage has had unhappy marriage days... Should I have have divorced? As a hermit, you divorced society

If my wife didn't put up with my weaknesses and I didn't with hers, if we never struggled through our rough spots... Quitters don't prosper. I think that it's better for children to see that love means working through the struggles, and family doesn't give up on each other, be it parents/children, siblings, or whoever. it seems like some of the happiest married older couples we've met have had some very unhappy things that they had to work through.

In no way am I endorsing someone stay in the same house with a physically abusive person against their spouse or children, nor am I saying someone has to stay with someone who is living in adultery. What I am saying is that Jesus must have had some good reason to teach us about the permenance of marriage.

I think you’re minimizing the harm and trauma of verbal and emotional abuse. I was married for sixteen years to a narcissist. What I experienced wasn’t an occasional “bad day,” like all marriages have. What I experienced was unremitting psychological warfare where I had to continuously walk on egg shells, because the wrong look or saying the wrong thing would set her off. If I expressed the wrong opinion, it would set her off. I was frequently the target of manipulation and gaslighting. With all due respect, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You have no idea how dehumanizing and oppressive a verbally and emotionally abusive relationship is.

In the year after I got remarried, I would randomly start crying over nothing, because for the first time I felt safe enough to realize how traumatized I was by my first marriage.

My divorce was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and I’m still living with the consequences of it. If my ex-wife was not a narcissist and capable of change, I would still be married to her. We married for almost 16 years, because I tried to make it work. I walked away when I couldn’t live like that anymore.

My divorce was hard and ugly. It also probably saved my life.

[Josh]

The Bible doesn’t state “go and get divorced if your spouse is mean to you.”

And most divorces are because a couple “falls out of love”. Talking about abuse is a red herring.

[justme]

i'm not saying that divorce is right or wrong. i'm not saying that the reality of the world is any better or any worse.

what i'm trying to get thru to you, is that the stats for plain people are manipulated. of course divorce is pretty much non existent in the plain churches, because the ones who get divorced have left the plain life. and so they don't get counted.

[Szdfan]

i'm not saying that divorce is right or wrong. i'm not saying that the reality of the world is any better or any worse.

what i'm trying to get thru to you, is that the stats for plain people are manipulated. of course divorce is pretty much non existent in the plain churches, because the ones who get divorced have left the plain life. and so they don't get counted.

I had a congregant who grew up plain and whose entire family was excommunicated when her father left and divorced her mother, even though they didn’t have anything to do with it. If divorce means you lose your church and your entire social network, then no wonder there isn’t a lot of divorce in plain communities.

I’m seeing a lot of self-righteousness in this thread about divorce “in the world” and not a lot of willingness to go beneath the surface of what actually might be happening behind closed doors.

[silentreader]

i'm not saying that divorce is right or wrong. i'm not saying that the reality of the world is any better or any worse.

what i'm trying to get thru to you, is that the stats for plain people are manipulated. of course divorce is pretty much non existent in the plain churches, because the ones who get divorced have left the plain life. and so they don't get counted.

It's interesting to go back and read some of the similar threads of 5 years ago.

[mike]

i'm not saying that divorce is right or wrong. i'm not saying that the reality of the world is any better or any worse.

what i'm trying to get thru to you, is that the stats for plain people are manipulated. of course divorce is pretty much non existent in the plain churches, because the ones who get divorced have left the plain life. and so they don't get counted.

I know ex-plain people who divorced, but all but one of them that I can think of divorced some time after leaving. I don’t think it’s fair to count those divorces as occurring among plain people.

[Soloist]

I think you’re minimizing the harm and trauma of verbal and emotional abuse. I was married for sixteen years to a narcissist. What I experienced wasn’t an occasional “bad day,” like all marriages have. What I experienced was unremitting psychological warfare where I had to continuously walk on egg shells, because the wrong look or saying the wrong thing would set her off. If I expressed the wrong opinion, it would set her off. I was frequently the target of manipulation and gaslighting. With all due respect, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You have no idea how dehumanizing and oppressive a verbally and emotionally abusive relationship is.

In the year after I got remarried, I would randomly start crying over nothing, because for the first time I felt safe enough to realize how traumatized I was by my first marriage.

My divorce was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and I’m still living with the consequences of it. If my ex-wife was not a narcissist and capable of change, I would still be married to her. We married for almost 16 years, because I tried to make it work. I walked away when I couldn’t live like that anymore.

My divorce was hard and ugly. It also probably saved my life.

I cannot relate to what you went through. All I can say is what Jesus said and attempt to walk out His teachings.

[Ken]

i'm not saying that divorce is right or wrong. i'm not saying that the reality of the world is any better or any worse.

what i'm trying to get thru to you, is that the stats for plain people are manipulated. of course divorce is pretty much non existent in the plain churches, because the ones who get divorced have left the plain life. and so they don't get counted.

I know ex-plain people who divorced, but all but one of them that I can think of divorced some time after leaving. I don’t think it’s fair to count those divorces as occurring among plain people.

I think you are making something of a semantic argument. If marriages happen within the plain community and they subsequently come apart. The fact that plain churches simply expel anyone who has an unsuccessful marriage doesn't mean they have a perfect record when it comes to family and marriage. It just means they hide the evidence.

My wife is a physician. She would have a phenomenal looking record if she simply purged her panel of every patient who got sick and only kept the healthy and fit ones around to "count"

To get a true count, you should start with every marriage within the plain community and track them for success regardless of where the couple ends up. I suspect if you did that you would still see a much lower divorce rate within the plain world than wider society. But it would not be zero. And you would probably find more unhappy marriages simply because the barriers to ending a marriage are so much higher in the plain world.

[ken_sylvania]

i'm not saying that divorce is right or wrong. i'm not saying that the reality of the world is any better or any worse.

what i'm trying to get thru to you, is that the stats for plain people are manipulated. of course divorce is pretty much non existent in the plain churches, because the ones who get divorced have left the plain life. and so they don't get counted.

I know ex-plain people who divorced, but all but one of them that I can think of divorced some time after leaving. I don’t think it’s fair to count those divorces as occurring among plain people.

I think you are making something of a semantic argument. If marriages happen within the plain community and they subsequently come apart. The fact that plain churches simply expel anyone who has an unsuccessful marriage doesn't mean they have a perfect record when it comes to family and marriage. It just means they hide the evidence.

My wife is a physician. She would have a phenomenal looking record if she simply purged her panel of every patient who got sick and only kept the healthy and fit ones around to "count"

To get a true count, you should start with every marriage within the plain community and track them for success regardless of where the couple ends up. I suspect if you did that you would still see a much lower divorce rate within the plain world than wider society. But it would not be zero. And you would probably find more unhappy marriages simply because the barriers to ending a marriage are so much higher in the plain world.

So if one of your wife's patients stops treatment with her and goes to a clinic in Mexico, then dies a year later, you think that ought to reflect on your wife's record as a failed treatment?

It seems to me that's what you're saying.

Mike is talking about folks that have left the plain churches, and divorced sometime after. I don't see how you can treat that as "plain churches simply expel[ing] anyone who has an unsuccessful marriage" as you put it.