November 11, 2024 • 36 mins
Jim discusses the tragic end to his 36-year marriage and how he believes the "divorce industry" is cashing in on destroying families, especially inside the church.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, hello everybody, and welcome to the broadcast. Jim
Paris here, I'm going to do something a little bit
different on this episode, and I'm going to start doing
this more often. Instead of every episode just being me
talking about the news, which I know people love that,
I want to talk about some personal things happening in
my own life, and I want to talk about some
(00:22):
things happening in the culture. So here we go. So today,
what we're going to talk about is the divorce industry.
And this is a multi billion dollar industry. Let me
say that again, multi billion with a B. And I'm
(00:44):
going to direct this today towards both men and women,
but I want you to know at the get go
here that this is from my perspective as a man.
So maybe if I had a co host who is
a woman who has been through divorce, she might have
a different take on it. So that's how I'm going
(01:04):
to try and address this. And the first thing I
want to do is start by pointing out that divorce
is as common in the church as it is in
our culture, which is really shocking because to me, marriage
vows are like right up there with the most important
(01:26):
decisions and promises you could ever make in your life.
In fact, our very salvation as Christians is compared metaphorically
in scripture to marriage. We are considered the bride of Christ.
That's how we enjoy our salvation, and that's how we
enjoy our path to heaven. And that metaphor obviously representing
(01:51):
the most important part of our Christian faith, which is
that we can be saved, is what in the Bible
is the comparison is made to marriage. And so wow,
how did divorce become an option that we just put
(02:12):
on the table. So for me, yesterday November tenth would
have been my thirty eighth wedding anniversary, and I was
kind of depressed yesterday. I was thinking back of the
day when I got married and thinking, wow, how could
(02:33):
I have ever predicted or ever imagined that thirty eight
years later I would be divorced from my wife Anne,
And it was hard to at my brain around, you know,
But things happen. And this episode is not about trashing
my ex That's not my intention at all. It's really
(02:57):
if it's about trashing anything, it's about trashing this industry,
which is it's destroying so many lives and continues to
destroy so many lives, and I want to start by
saying I did not have a perfect marriage. I was
not a perfect husband. No, I never cheated. I never
(03:17):
hit my wife. I don't even remember ever raising my
voice to my wife. I was not addicted to drugs
or alcohol. I was always a really good earner, as
people know, and always was I thought, you know, a
good husband, quote unquote, But I did not do well
(03:37):
in one particular area, which was arguing I was not
a good I was not good at conflict with my
with my wife, and she was not good at sincerely apologizing.
So this was kind of like a match made in hell,
because what would happen is we would have a conflict
(03:59):
and she would do something that I had a really
big problem with. I would confront her and she would
not apologize, or at least it wouldn't be a sincere apology,
and so we would end up kind of in this
stalemate of this on resolved thing. And especially when things
happened that were repeated over and over again, I felt like, Okay,
(04:24):
she is not getting it. She's not getting how upset
I am about this one thing. And we would have
what many people say, in marriage, you don't have different arguments.
You just have the same argument over and over again.
And we got along really, really well. They're just like
a couple of areas that we just could not ever resolve.
(04:47):
And I made the mistake when we got to those
impasses of bringing up the word divorce. I was wrong
for doing that. Should never have crossed my lips. And
my wife she was right on the ball. She said,
we don't use that word. We don't use the word divorce.
We can't do that. It's it's not an option. And
(05:09):
so she was always that staunch believer that no matter what,
we're going to make it through these these downtimes, these
valleys in our marriage, which is why I was so
surprised and devastated that she was the one that decided
to go and file for divorce. And it took me
(05:32):
by such surprise because I always thought that if I was,
you know, if I was apologizing, if I was pleading
for another chance to work things out, if I was
pleading to go to counseling, that she would absolutely provide
me with additional grace. Because I always looked at it
(05:53):
from the standpoint, you know, her her prior position that
you know, I was on the other side of that,
I was thinking, wait a minute, what happened to divorce
is not an option? And divorce did quickly become an option.
And I want to explain to you how it happened,
because now that we are about yeah, we're exactly three
years out from when my wife left me, I can
(06:15):
look back at it now and see really exactly what happened.
And let me start by saying this that we all
go through at various stages in our life. We go
through these periods. I don't you call them downtime depression,
reliving childhood trauma. Maybe maybe we're going through a quote
(06:38):
unquote midlife crisis. Maybe for women, it's those hormonal changes
that take place. So there are a lot of these
different scenarios. And when you're married for a really long time,
I mean I was married thirty six years, So you
got to remember, like, if you put that in perspective,
you leave home usually when you're eighteen or nineteen years old, right,
(06:59):
So I was with my wife for double the number
of years that she was with her immediate family, her
siblings and her parents. I mean that's a really long time.
And when you're with someone almost four decades nobody's going
to have a perfect track record. Everybody's going to have
personal times where they're not feeling good about themselves. Maybe
(07:23):
they feel like a failure in their career, or they're
just you know, dealing with other issues, and that can
affect your marriage. It can also be just because you're
a jerk, because sometimes we're all jerks and we do
things that cause problems in our marriage. But over this
long period of time, you know, there are these ups
and downs and kind of this this give and take.
(07:43):
But something happens, and I'm going to tell you what
it is. This is what happens when the marriage starts
to become completely hopeless. This is when one person decides Nope,
divorce now is an option, and divorce is something I'm
going to start looking at. Let me tell you where
(08:05):
it starts. It starts with just a passing thought like,
you know what, I'm not happy right now. And let
me share with you how this goes into a funnel
in the Christian community and in the church, and how
this thought actually turns into a divorce, because this is
exactly what happened in my own situation. So you have
(08:28):
this thought that you know what, I'm not happy. Maybe
there's someone out there that is better looking, as a
better lover, is a better partner, has more money, whatever
it is that you think would be better for you
and would make you have it. So that kind of
that thought kind of crosses your mind and then you
think about it, and then maybe you see an episode
(08:49):
of Oprah and it's talking about how you deserve to
be happy, or any number of these shows. Maybe you
pick up a book, one of these inspirational motivational books
that say, hey, look, you know you need to focus
on yourself. You need to start working out at the gym,
and you need to start setting goals, and you need
to start, you know, cutting people out around you that
(09:10):
aren't happy. You start basically buying into this new age
philosophy that you deserve to be happiness happy, and life
is all about happiness and if the partner that you're with,
if you're not happy, it's probably because of your partner.
And so you start you put that on the table.
(09:30):
And then here's where it really begins to accelerate. One day,
what's in your mind becomes the spoken word. One day,
you decide to say something to someone and the people
that you choose to tell are going to be carefully selected,
(09:51):
and let me tell you how this works. So let's
say that you're a woman and you're now transitioning from
the thought of divorce to maybe speak the words of
divorce to someone, and you remember that you know what,
your mother never liked your husband. Guess what that's going
to be the first person you go to and you're
(10:12):
going to say, Mom, I'm thinking about divorce. And depending
on where mom is spiritually, since she didn't like your husband,
she's probably gonna be right on board with this idea.
And then think about it like this too. You'll start
to share it with your friends, in particular your Christian friends,
(10:33):
and you'll get different reactions. You'll get some that will
react right away and say, oh, you need to go
to marriage counseling. You need to do a marriage encounter.
This is terrible. You too, can't split up. I love
you both so much. I don't want to see this happen. Okay,
that person, you're not going back to them again. But
(10:53):
you share it with another person and this woman says, oh,
I don't blame you if you're in a bad marriage,
because I was in a bad marriage and I got
rid of my guy. So you begin to find your
circle of people that will cheer you on for the divorce.
This becomes your support system. And now every time you
(11:18):
go to coffee, every time you do a little Facebook
messaging or have a chat on the phone or do
some texting with these people, the very first thing they're
gonna bring up is, hey, how are things with you
and your husband? And they're gonna be hoping and praying
for some good gossip. They want to hear what did
(11:41):
he do? And when you don't have the goods, when
you say, well, really, we kind of had a good week,
nothing really happened, you're not gonna get a lot of feedback.
So what you're gonna do is you're gonna start looking
for things. Yeah, he did it again. He came home
from working on or late, didn't call, and I had
(12:01):
dinner on the table. He did it again. He didn't
pay one of the bills on time. We just got
a late charge. He was disrespectful to me the other
day at a restaurant. Whatever the guy did, right, you're
gonna give that and they're gonna say, oh wow, you
need to get rid of that guy. And these people
(12:24):
generally are divorced women who, for whatever the reason is,
are are getting some kind of a benefit out of
cheering you on to divorce. I don't know if it
is just misery loves company. I don't know if it's that.
(12:44):
I don't know if it's projection. You know that is
their husband was a bad guy in their mind, so
they're gonna project that onto your spouse and say, well,
my guy was terrible. Your guy sounds just like my guy.
You need to get rid of them. But especially as
women get older, a lot of women that are divorced
(13:04):
they don't have anyone, So another divorced woman in the
circle is kind of nice. Like, you know, you always
hear the plus one, like, who's your plus one going
to be at the Christmas party? Who's your plus one
gonna be for this? Or for that? You know, who
are you going to go to a movie with on
Friday night? Hey, it's nice to have another divorced woman
(13:25):
in your circle to do stuff with. I get that,
but it is a is an ungodly motivation. It is
an odd godly perspective. And I'm gonna say this categorically.
Anybody that you go to to share your marriage problems
(13:47):
with whose first thought is divorce. Run from that person.
I don't care if they are a counselor, a pastor,
a close friend, a Christian friend, anybody who is not
saying no, don't get divorce. Divorce is not an option
(14:07):
for Christians unless there's something horrible going on it. Yeah,
horrible stuff. Right, So your husband's a drug addict, he's
an alcoholic, he's beating you up, he's abusing the children,
he's involved in dangerous activities that are bringing you know,
danger to the home. Those are things you know that
that obviously are deal breakers. And I don't mean it
(14:29):
in any way suggests that divorce can never happen. But
we've now kind of boiled it down to make it
just I'm unhappy and I'm gonna kind of blame that.
I'm my partner, and that's my reason now for divorce.
And I'm going to get into that in a minute.
Why you have to turn your spouse into a villain,
because just admitting you're unhappy as the reason isn't going
(14:53):
to work. But I'm just gonna tell you this right now.
And there are people on TikTok, people on social media.
There's one guy following TikTok. I really like a lot
of the things he has to say, but he does
like these open mic deals where people can come online
and ask their questions. Within thirty seconds of them describing
(15:16):
their situation right away, he's talking about divorce and them
moving on and them healing and them signing up with
him for counseling. And I'm just saying, those people you
need to run from, because any godly counselor is going
(15:36):
to have you go through every possible every possible counseling
marriage encounter, reading books, going to seminars, taking a trial separation.
They're going to have you doing everything, including traveling to
Mars and back before you give up on your marriage.
(15:59):
The number one Wow that you've made in your life
maybe only second to your salvation decision. But that's not
what's happening. In fact, I can tell you a story
that early in our marriage. We were married at this
point about I think ten years, ten or twelve years,
(16:20):
and I came home one day and we were having
some problems, and I noticed on the counter, and my
wife didn't even realize that she had done it, but
there was a business card for an attorney for a
divorce attorney, and I said what is this? And she
got real quiet. She hid it in her purse right away,
(16:40):
and then she told me that I'm not talking to
an attorney. I'm not at that point. But one of
my friends at church, I shared whether we were having problems,
and she gave me this card. Can you imagine being
a Christian woman in a church and carrying around business
cards a divorce lawyer to give to your friends that
(17:04):
are going through trouble, rather than saying, hey, let's get
you with the pastor let's get you with the marriage
and family. You know a counselor here at the church.
Let me give you some money out of my tithe
for you and your husband to go on a weekend.
Let me buy you a gift card for you and
(17:24):
your husband to go out to dinner. Let me get
you a great book about how to save your marriage.
Let me help sponsor you to go to this special
marriage retreat instead of any of that. Hey, guess what
I got for you. I got a business card for
a divorce lawyer. This is what is happening right now
(17:46):
in the church, and I want to tell you the
craziest story. You're going to say, Jim this is not true,
and I'm not going to mention the name of the
person or the church, but I want to tell you
this just happened a month ago here in my community.
One of the largest churches in my community just hosted
(18:08):
a special event and it's all women at this event,
and it's this radical agenda. So the speaker is this
author who she's the front person for this organization that
historically was all about marriage and family. However, after thirty years,
(18:32):
she divorced her husband. She has all these public things
she's aired about him being a bad guy, and then
two years later she remarried this guy, and then she
divorced him a second time. Then a couple of years later,
fast forward, she got married again and made such a
(18:56):
big deal out of it that she brought a film
crew with her to France to film her wedding and
all the activities. She had one of these travel weddings
where she transported people and it was all in France,
and they made a like a like a video out
of it that she shows at her events. And my
(19:20):
point is this, I don't know what's going on with
this lady, but for a major church to be hosting
her when she's so recently twice divorced from the same guy,
and she writes books about how people need to have
better spiritual awareness of people that they're getting into relationships with.
(19:46):
And so here's her with this guy for thirty years
who apparently has all these major character flaws. So she
divorces him, and maybe rightfully, so maybe after thirty years,
if what he's done is supposedly, if it's true, probably
she should have divorced him. But then two years later
she goes back and remarries this guy. So now she's
(20:07):
got thirty years of experience with him, and now two
more years of experience with him, and she remarries and
divorces him. Then you know, out of the frying pan,
into the fire. She's not remarried somebody else and is
making a big, you know, spectacle out of it. I
don't know. I'm kind of one of those people where
(20:27):
after your first marriage, with the white dress and all
the trimmings and all the people and the party and
the band and the dinner that kind of the other marriages,
you just kind of keep a little bit lower key.
That's just me. But anyway, this lady is kind of
like the one that everybody is following for marriage and
(20:50):
relationship advice. And I scratched my head and I'm like,
sounds to me like somebody that probably shouldn't be shouldn't
be the expert out there, But what do I know?
Oh and more and more, what we're seeing is motivational
type writing, which is what this lady does, kind of
(21:12):
being the sprinkle Bible versus through motivational writing and then
tell you this is a godly book. And I don't know,
I just personally resist this cultural idea that we are
all supposed to be happy all the time and if
(21:36):
we're not, Exhibit A is our spouse. And that's where
you start trying to find your happiness, is getting rid
of your spouse. Because I'm here to tell you that
divorce is a horrible thing. It is a terrible thing,
and it is such a traumatic experience that I believe,
(22:00):
other than people that have been off to war, who
have PTSD and all of that, other than that, I
believe that divorce is one of the top reasons of
suicide among men in this country. And when you think
about it from the man's side of it, you know,
(22:22):
here's a man gets married and let me say this.
Most of the divorces that I'm aware of in the
Christian community, like people I know, eighty percent of the time,
ninety percent of the time, it's the woman that files.
So that might help you understand a little bit about
my perspective here. That And I'm not saying that every
time someone files, they're wrong for filing, because I'm sure
(22:44):
there's a lot of times where it's justified, where there
is absolute biblical grounds for filing for divorce. But just
to think back, like four years ago, I can remember
we went to a small group dinner at a burger
place over by the beach, and I can remember the
five couples that were there, enjoying this wonderful night. We're
(23:07):
at the beach, We're ordering burgers and fish and chips,
that kind of thing. And I remember the five couples
sitting there, And I can tell you right now that
three and a half four years later, that three of
those five couples are now divorced, including me. And it's
hard to wrap your brain around. And these were all
(23:30):
long term marriages twenty years, thirty years in my case,
thirty six years. Something is happening. Something is happening, So
it starts as a thought, then you speak the word,
and then you start sharing with people, and you only
(23:54):
continue to share with those that you're getting positive reaction from.
That are basically what we call a in psychology, you
call it a confirmation bias, which is, Okay, this person's
not on board with my divorce idea, so I'm not
going back to them again. But this person over here is,
so I'm gonna keep sharing with them. And then you
(24:17):
get you get sucked into this business of divorce, and
it is a multi multi billion dollar business. We talked
about the seminars, we talked about the books, but now
(24:37):
you get into the counselors that are getting paid one
hundred and fifty two hundred dollars an hour. And my
wife was sent to a counselor. When she came back
from the counselor, sh had all of these like strange ideas.
I mean literally, I knew it wasn't her. I knew
(24:58):
it was not my wife. I knew this was these
were ideas that someone was putting in her head. For example,
at the time she left me, I was about eighty
ninety percent a full time college student. And the reason
that was happening was because she wanted me to get
my teaching credential so that she could retire, so she
(25:21):
was the one. Really it was at least fifty percent
her idea that I do this. Well. She comes back
then after leaving me, saying that a man should support
his wife, and I was in school and that made
me not a godly man, a godly husband. And I said,
(25:42):
wait a minute, I'm doing this with your full support.
In fact, you were equally, if not more enthusiastic about
me doing this than I was. And she just, you know,
shrugged that off. And I could tell that she was
getting ideas and information from other people, and that these
other people probably didn't have the whole story, so they
didn't have the context of it. Because anybody that would
(26:06):
ever think of me as a deadbeat guy who looks
at my career, written over thirty books owned, who knows
how many companies employed, who knows how many and thousands
of people over my career, I mean, just google my
name if somebody somewhere says, hey, you need to get
(26:26):
rid of this deadbeat guy, and they and my name
is in that sentence. Somebody doesn't have all the information, right,
but this is the feedback that I would get and
then she would say things to me and immediately it
would be contradicted. So I'll give you one other example.
So she said to me, watch the movie Fireproof and
(26:46):
write me letters. Well that sounded like her. That sounded
like my wife, that she would love that. You know
the movie fire Proof. I've seen it, so I watched
it again. Then I started writing her these letters. Ten
things I like about you. Remember this trip we were on.
Here are my great memories from that, all these things.
I started writing her a letter. I wrote her a
(27:07):
letter every single day for thirty days, and at the
end of the thirty days, I got a letter from
her lawyer saying that my letters were harassment and that
I needed to stop or they were going to get
a restraining order against me. Now I knew that was
not my wife, you see, So something was happening. There
(27:30):
was some degree of manipulation going on by counselors, lawyers,
friends of hers that were encouraging divorce. And I saw
something on Facebook the other day that I thought was fascinating.
It was this really simple post, but I couldn't stop
thinking about it. And this is what it said. It
(27:51):
said everyone is a villain in someone's story. Wow, everyone
is a villain in some way story. You gotta just
stop and think about that for a second. So, if
you're not happy in your marriage as a Christian, you
just can't get divorce for that reason. You absolutely cannot
(28:13):
get divorce for that reason. So you got to come
up with something. If your husband's not an alcoholic, a
drug addict, if he's not beating you, if he's not
abusing the kids, if he's not you know, involved in
crime or doing something dangerous, you got to come up
with somebody. He's not cheating, he's not you know, having affairs.
(28:34):
What can you come up with? So here's the new catchphrase,
and here it is. I'm gonna say it. People are
gonna get upset with me, and I want to elaborate
on this. But the new catchphrase here it is emotional abuse.
Emotional abuse. So my wife finally, when she told me
why she was divorcing me, she said it was because
(28:57):
of emotional abuse. I asked her for examples. She could
provide none. Out of curiosity, I asked her how long
has this emotional abuse been taking place? And she said
from the very beginning. I said, you mean all the
way back to the day we were married. She said yes.
(29:19):
I said, you mean all the way back to when
we first started dating, and she said yes. And that's
when I knew it wasn't legitimate, and I knew there
was somebody putting this into her head because we were
so happy, we were the best of friends. And I mean,
(29:40):
I don't think she would have ever married me if
she wasn't in love with me and happy with me.
And if she did, I can't explain that. I mean,
the idea that she felt this way even the day
we I said, even our wedding day. She said, yes,
but you could never really actually define it. And this
(30:00):
is when I knew this was not her. Somebody was
putting this into her head. And one of the other
kind of strange things I will mention to you that
kind of goes along with us is she would very
frequently tell me how much I reminded her of her father.
She would say, you're just like my dad. You even
(30:23):
got a little mustache like my dad. That's before I
had my beard. And she said, when you go go
to the grocery store, you know all the cashiers by name.
When we go out to the restaurant, you refer to
the waiter and the waitress by their name. You're so friendly,
and you're funny, and you're just like my dad. She
said that for years, for years, and then all of
a sudden, when this divorce idea came into her head,
(30:48):
I was no longer like her dad. I was nothing
like her dad. And she started comparing me to another relative,
which I won't mention that she never liked, that she
had all this of issues with, and said that I
was like them, And I knew this wasn't her. That somehow,
in the counseling and talking to, you know, one of
(31:12):
our pastors who I lost all faith in, and then
this counselor that they sent her to, I knew this
wasn't her. Somehow she had started getting like sucked into
this whole divorce thing. And then she got involved in
a Wednesday night group of a bunch of angry women
(31:33):
and that fueled it even more. Then she ended up
with a law firm that is called the woman's law firm,
that won't represent men. They're all for the women, but
won't represent men. And this is this is the cycle.
This is how in this women's law firm, they do.
(31:56):
They do workshops, they do zoom meetings, all these things
to show you how you can basically screw your husband,
how you can get half of all the money and
get alimony and get child support, and on and on
and on, and how you can stand up for yourself
and do all these things. This is an industry, and
(32:20):
it starts with a thought. It then becomes a spoken word.
It then gets supported by all of the pro divorce
people that you can find in your network, who start
pushing you towards groups and books and seminars. And then
you end up at a woman's law firm. You end
(32:41):
up at a church cheering this expert who's got it
all figured out, who married and divorced the same guy
twice and just got married again, and she's got it
all figured out, and we need to get rid of
our bad husbands, and rah rah rah. And then you
end up it all. You end up at the woman's
law firm. Then you end up in two or three
(33:06):
years of divorce court. And so what happened in my
divorce was basically, my wife chose to involve my three kids,
my three adult kids. So the first counselor that we
went to said, I want you to both make a
promise that you'll keep your kids out of this. He said,
(33:27):
that's just my one kind of ground rule, and she said, no,
I'm not going to promise that. So things didn't go
well with that counselor, and she got my kids involved
in every little battle of our divorce, and it got
to the point where my kids have now disconnected from me.
(33:50):
I no longer have any relationship with any of my
three kids. So I lost my marriage of thirty six years,
and I lost my three kids who basically now hate
me because they believe that by me fighting back in
the divorce, that I was a bad guy. So how
this would go is her lawyers, would you know, would
(34:14):
hit me with something, and then my lawyer would hit back,
and then she'd call up all three of the kids
and say, you're not going to believe what he did today.
And that went on for about two years to the
point where my kids said, we're done with you. We
don't ever want to hear from you again, we don't
ever want to see you again, including the fact that
(34:35):
my oldest daughter just had a child about three months ago,
and I was told months in advance, even before the
child was born, that I would never see my grandchild.
So this is where this dark tunnel takes you, and
(34:55):
it leaves me in a really dark place, but it
also leaves my wife in a really tear terrible place.
So it starts with a thought, It then becomes a
spoken word. It then becomes that group of people surrounding
you that are cheering you on towards the divorce, who
are mostly divorced women, who push you towards the seminars
and the books and the workshops, and the lawyers and
(35:20):
the Christian counselors that want you to get divorced, and
all of these people are making all this money. You
end up with a woman's law firm, You end up
in divorce court, and you end up in three years.
You end up destroying your relationship with your husband of
thirty six years. You end up alienating the three kids
(35:41):
so they don't have a dad anymore, and even adult
kids need a dad, and you end up a lonely
person at the end of all this, And all you
can think back to is when it first was a thought.
Maybe it's shouldn't have become a spoken word. And with
(36:03):
all your friends that cheered you on, you all sit
together without a spouse, wondering maybe things could have been different.
I'm Jim Parris. That's all I have for you this week.
All right, hello everybody, and welcome to the broadcast. Jim
Paris here, I'm going to do something a little bit
different on this episode, and I'm going to start doing
this more often. Instead of every episode just being me
talking about the news, which I know people love that,
I want to talk about some personal things happening in
my own life, and I want to talk about some
(00:22):
things happening in the culture. So here we go. So today,
what we're going to talk about is the divorce industry.
And this is a multi billion dollar industry. Let me
say that again, multi billion with a B. And I'm
(00:44):
going to direct this today towards both men and women,
but I want you to know at the get go
here that this is from my perspective as a man.
So maybe if I had a co host who is
a woman who has been through divorce, she might have
a different take on it. So that's how I'm going
(01:04):
to try and address this. And the first thing I
want to do is start by pointing out that divorce
is as common in the church as it is in
our culture, which is really shocking because to me, marriage
vows are like right up there with the most important
(01:26):
decisions and promises you could ever make in your life.
In fact, our very salvation as Christians is compared metaphorically
in scripture to marriage. We are considered the bride of Christ.
That's how we enjoy our salvation, and that's how we
enjoy our path to heaven. And that metaphor obviously representing
(01:51):
the most important part of our Christian faith, which is
that we can be saved, is what in the Bible
is the comparison is made to marriage. And so wow,
how did divorce become an option that we just put
(02:12):
on the table. So for me, yesterday November tenth would
have been my thirty eighth wedding anniversary, and I was
kind of depressed yesterday. I was thinking back of the
day when I got married and thinking, wow, how could
(02:33):
I have ever predicted or ever imagined that thirty eight
years later I would be divorced from my wife Anne,
And it was hard to at my brain around, you know,
But things happen. And this episode is not about trashing
my ex That's not my intention at all. It's really
(02:57):
if it's about trashing anything, it's about trashing this industry,
which is it's destroying so many lives and continues to
destroy so many lives, and I want to start by
saying I did not have a perfect marriage. I was
not a perfect husband. No, I never cheated. I never
(03:17):
hit my wife. I don't even remember ever raising my
voice to my wife. I was not addicted to drugs
or alcohol. I was always a really good earner, as
people know, and always was I thought, you know, a
good husband, quote unquote, But I did not do well
(03:37):
in one particular area, which was arguing I was not
a good I was not good at conflict with my
with my wife, and she was not good at sincerely apologizing.
So this was kind of like a match made in hell,
because what would happen is we would have a conflict
(03:59):
and she would do something that I had a really
big problem with. I would confront her and she would
not apologize, or at least it wouldn't be a sincere apology,
and so we would end up kind of in this
stalemate of this on resolved thing. And especially when things
happened that were repeated over and over again, I felt like, Okay,
(04:24):
she is not getting it. She's not getting how upset
I am about this one thing. And we would have
what many people say, in marriage, you don't have different arguments.
You just have the same argument over and over again.
And we got along really, really well. They're just like
a couple of areas that we just could not ever resolve.
(04:47):
And I made the mistake when we got to those
impasses of bringing up the word divorce. I was wrong
for doing that. Should never have crossed my lips. And
my wife she was right on the ball. She said,
we don't use that word. We don't use the word divorce.
We can't do that. It's it's not an option. And
(05:09):
so she was always that staunch believer that no matter what,
we're going to make it through these these downtimes, these
valleys in our marriage, which is why I was so
surprised and devastated that she was the one that decided
to go and file for divorce. And it took me
(05:32):
by such surprise because I always thought that if I was,
you know, if I was apologizing, if I was pleading
for another chance to work things out, if I was
pleading to go to counseling, that she would absolutely provide
me with additional grace. Because I always looked at it
(05:53):
from the standpoint, you know, her her prior position that
you know, I was on the other side of that,
I was thinking, wait a minute, what happened to divorce
is not an option? And divorce did quickly become an option.
And I want to explain to you how it happened,
because now that we are about yeah, we're exactly three
years out from when my wife left me, I can
(06:15):
look back at it now and see really exactly what happened.
And let me start by saying this that we all
go through at various stages in our life. We go
through these periods. I don't you call them downtime depression,
reliving childhood trauma. Maybe maybe we're going through a quote
(06:38):
unquote midlife crisis. Maybe for women, it's those hormonal changes
that take place. So there are a lot of these
different scenarios. And when you're married for a really long time,
I mean I was married thirty six years, So you
got to remember, like, if you put that in perspective,
you leave home usually when you're eighteen or nineteen years old, right,
(06:59):
So I was with my wife for double the number
of years that she was with her immediate family, her
siblings and her parents. I mean that's a really long time.
And when you're with someone almost four decades nobody's going
to have a perfect track record. Everybody's going to have
personal times where they're not feeling good about themselves. Maybe
(07:23):
they feel like a failure in their career, or they're
just you know, dealing with other issues, and that can
affect your marriage. It can also be just because you're
a jerk, because sometimes we're all jerks and we do
things that cause problems in our marriage. But over this
long period of time, you know, there are these ups
and downs and kind of this this give and take.
(07:43):
But something happens, and I'm going to tell you what
it is. This is what happens when the marriage starts
to become completely hopeless. This is when one person decides Nope,
divorce now is an option, and divorce is something I'm
going to start looking at. Let me tell you where
(08:05):
it starts. It starts with just a passing thought like,
you know what, I'm not happy right now. And let
me share with you how this goes into a funnel
in the Christian community and in the church, and how
this thought actually turns into a divorce, because this is
exactly what happened in my own situation. So you have
(08:28):
this thought that you know what, I'm not happy. Maybe
there's someone out there that is better looking, as a
better lover, is a better partner, has more money, whatever
it is that you think would be better for you
and would make you have it. So that kind of
that thought kind of crosses your mind and then you
think about it, and then maybe you see an episode
(08:49):
of Oprah and it's talking about how you deserve to
be happy, or any number of these shows. Maybe you
pick up a book, one of these inspirational motivational books
that say, hey, look, you know you need to focus
on yourself. You need to start working out at the gym,
and you need to start setting goals, and you need
to start, you know, cutting people out around you that
(09:10):
aren't happy. You start basically buying into this new age
philosophy that you deserve to be happiness happy, and life
is all about happiness and if the partner that you're with,
if you're not happy, it's probably because of your partner.
And so you start you put that on the table.
(09:30):
And then here's where it really begins to accelerate. One day,
what's in your mind becomes the spoken word. One day,
you decide to say something to someone and the people
that you choose to tell are going to be carefully selected,
(09:51):
and let me tell you how this works. So let's
say that you're a woman and you're now transitioning from
the thought of divorce to maybe speak the words of
divorce to someone, and you remember that you know what,
your mother never liked your husband. Guess what that's going
to be the first person you go to and you're
(10:12):
going to say, Mom, I'm thinking about divorce. And depending
on where mom is spiritually, since she didn't like your husband,
she's probably gonna be right on board with this idea.
And then think about it like this too. You'll start
to share it with your friends, in particular your Christian friends,
(10:33):
and you'll get different reactions. You'll get some that will
react right away and say, oh, you need to go
to marriage counseling. You need to do a marriage encounter.
This is terrible. You too, can't split up. I love
you both so much. I don't want to see this happen. Okay,
that person, you're not going back to them again. But
(10:53):
you share it with another person and this woman says, oh,
I don't blame you if you're in a bad marriage,
because I was in a bad marriage and I got
rid of my guy. So you begin to find your
circle of people that will cheer you on for the divorce.
This becomes your support system. And now every time you
(11:18):
go to coffee, every time you do a little Facebook
messaging or have a chat on the phone or do
some texting with these people, the very first thing they're
gonna bring up is, hey, how are things with you
and your husband? And they're gonna be hoping and praying
for some good gossip. They want to hear what did
(11:41):
he do? And when you don't have the goods, when
you say, well, really, we kind of had a good week,
nothing really happened, you're not gonna get a lot of feedback.
So what you're gonna do is you're gonna start looking
for things. Yeah, he did it again. He came home
from working on or late, didn't call, and I had
(12:01):
dinner on the table. He did it again. He didn't
pay one of the bills on time. We just got
a late charge. He was disrespectful to me the other
day at a restaurant. Whatever the guy did, right, you're
gonna give that and they're gonna say, oh wow, you
need to get rid of that guy. And these people
(12:24):
generally are divorced women who, for whatever the reason is,
are are getting some kind of a benefit out of
cheering you on to divorce. I don't know if it
is just misery loves company. I don't know if it's that.
(12:44):
I don't know if it's projection. You know that is
their husband was a bad guy in their mind, so
they're gonna project that onto your spouse and say, well,
my guy was terrible. Your guy sounds just like my guy.
You need to get rid of them. But especially as
women get older, a lot of women that are divorced
(13:04):
they don't have anyone, So another divorced woman in the
circle is kind of nice. Like, you know, you always
hear the plus one, like, who's your plus one going
to be at the Christmas party? Who's your plus one
gonna be for this? Or for that? You know, who
are you going to go to a movie with on
Friday night? Hey, it's nice to have another divorced woman
(13:25):
in your circle to do stuff with. I get that,
but it is a is an ungodly motivation. It is
an odd godly perspective. And I'm gonna say this categorically.
Anybody that you go to to share your marriage problems
(13:47):
with whose first thought is divorce. Run from that person.
I don't care if they are a counselor, a pastor,
a close friend, a Christian friend, anybody who is not
saying no, don't get divorce. Divorce is not an option
(14:07):
for Christians unless there's something horrible going on it. Yeah,
horrible stuff. Right, So your husband's a drug addict, he's
an alcoholic, he's beating you up, he's abusing the children,
he's involved in dangerous activities that are bringing you know,
danger to the home. Those are things you know that
that obviously are deal breakers. And I don't mean it
(14:29):
in any way suggests that divorce can never happen. But
we've now kind of boiled it down to make it
just I'm unhappy and I'm gonna kind of blame that.
I'm my partner, and that's my reason now for divorce.
And I'm going to get into that in a minute.
Why you have to turn your spouse into a villain,
because just admitting you're unhappy as the reason isn't going
(14:53):
to work. But I'm just gonna tell you this right now.
And there are people on TikTok, people on social media.
There's one guy following TikTok. I really like a lot
of the things he has to say, but he does
like these open mic deals where people can come online
and ask their questions. Within thirty seconds of them describing
(15:16):
their situation right away, he's talking about divorce and them
moving on and them healing and them signing up with
him for counseling. And I'm just saying, those people you
need to run from, because any godly counselor is going
(15:36):
to have you go through every possible every possible counseling
marriage encounter, reading books, going to seminars, taking a trial separation.
They're going to have you doing everything, including traveling to
Mars and back before you give up on your marriage.
(15:59):
The number one Wow that you've made in your life
maybe only second to your salvation decision. But that's not
what's happening. In fact, I can tell you a story
that early in our marriage. We were married at this
point about I think ten years, ten or twelve years,
(16:20):
and I came home one day and we were having
some problems, and I noticed on the counter, and my
wife didn't even realize that she had done it, but
there was a business card for an attorney for a
divorce attorney, and I said what is this? And she
got real quiet. She hid it in her purse right away,
(16:40):
and then she told me that I'm not talking to
an attorney. I'm not at that point. But one of
my friends at church, I shared whether we were having problems,
and she gave me this card. Can you imagine being
a Christian woman in a church and carrying around business
cards a divorce lawyer to give to your friends that
(17:04):
are going through trouble, rather than saying, hey, let's get
you with the pastor let's get you with the marriage
and family. You know a counselor here at the church.
Let me give you some money out of my tithe
for you and your husband to go on a weekend.
Let me buy you a gift card for you and
(17:24):
your husband to go out to dinner. Let me get
you a great book about how to save your marriage.
Let me help sponsor you to go to this special
marriage retreat instead of any of that. Hey, guess what
I got for you. I got a business card for
a divorce lawyer. This is what is happening right now
(17:46):
in the church, and I want to tell you the
craziest story. You're going to say, Jim this is not true,
and I'm not going to mention the name of the
person or the church, but I want to tell you
this just happened a month ago here in my community.
One of the largest churches in my community just hosted
(18:08):
a special event and it's all women at this event,
and it's this radical agenda. So the speaker is this
author who she's the front person for this organization that
historically was all about marriage and family. However, after thirty years,
(18:32):
she divorced her husband. She has all these public things
she's aired about him being a bad guy, and then
two years later she remarried this guy, and then she
divorced him a second time. Then a couple of years later,
fast forward, she got married again and made such a
(18:56):
big deal out of it that she brought a film
crew with her to France to film her wedding and
all the activities. She had one of these travel weddings
where she transported people and it was all in France,
and they made a like a like a video out
of it that she shows at her events. And my
(19:20):
point is this, I don't know what's going on with
this lady, but for a major church to be hosting
her when she's so recently twice divorced from the same guy,
and she writes books about how people need to have
better spiritual awareness of people that they're getting into relationships with.
(19:46):
And so here's her with this guy for thirty years
who apparently has all these major character flaws. So she
divorces him, and maybe rightfully, so maybe after thirty years,
if what he's done is supposedly, if it's true, probably
she should have divorced him. But then two years later
she goes back and remarries this guy. So now she's
(20:07):
got thirty years of experience with him, and now two
more years of experience with him, and she remarries and
divorces him. Then you know, out of the frying pan,
into the fire. She's not remarried somebody else and is
making a big, you know, spectacle out of it. I
don't know. I'm kind of one of those people where
(20:27):
after your first marriage, with the white dress and all
the trimmings and all the people and the party and
the band and the dinner that kind of the other marriages,
you just kind of keep a little bit lower key.
That's just me. But anyway, this lady is kind of
like the one that everybody is following for marriage and
(20:50):
relationship advice. And I scratched my head and I'm like,
sounds to me like somebody that probably shouldn't be shouldn't
be the expert out there, But what do I know?
Oh and more and more, what we're seeing is motivational
type writing, which is what this lady does, kind of
(21:12):
being the sprinkle Bible versus through motivational writing and then
tell you this is a godly book. And I don't know,
I just personally resist this cultural idea that we are
all supposed to be happy all the time and if
(21:36):
we're not, Exhibit A is our spouse. And that's where
you start trying to find your happiness, is getting rid
of your spouse. Because I'm here to tell you that
divorce is a horrible thing. It is a terrible thing,
and it is such a traumatic experience that I believe,
(22:00):
other than people that have been off to war, who
have PTSD and all of that, other than that, I
believe that divorce is one of the top reasons of
suicide among men in this country. And when you think
about it from the man's side of it, you know,
(22:22):
here's a man gets married and let me say this.
Most of the divorces that I'm aware of in the
Christian community, like people I know, eighty percent of the time,
ninety percent of the time, it's the woman that files.
So that might help you understand a little bit about
my perspective here. That And I'm not saying that every
time someone files, they're wrong for filing, because I'm sure
(22:44):
there's a lot of times where it's justified, where there
is absolute biblical grounds for filing for divorce. But just
to think back, like four years ago, I can remember
we went to a small group dinner at a burger
place over by the beach, and I can remember the
five couples that were there, enjoying this wonderful night. We're
(23:07):
at the beach, We're ordering burgers and fish and chips,
that kind of thing. And I remember the five couples
sitting there, And I can tell you right now that
three and a half four years later, that three of
those five couples are now divorced, including me. And it's
hard to wrap your brain around. And these were all
(23:30):
long term marriages twenty years, thirty years in my case,
thirty six years. Something is happening. Something is happening, So
it starts as a thought, then you speak the word,
and then you start sharing with people, and you only
(23:54):
continue to share with those that you're getting positive reaction from.
That are basically what we call a in psychology, you
call it a confirmation bias, which is, Okay, this person's
not on board with my divorce idea, so I'm not
going back to them again. But this person over here is,
so I'm gonna keep sharing with them. And then you
(24:17):
get you get sucked into this business of divorce, and
it is a multi multi billion dollar business. We talked
about the seminars, we talked about the books, but now
(24:37):
you get into the counselors that are getting paid one
hundred and fifty two hundred dollars an hour. And my
wife was sent to a counselor. When she came back
from the counselor, sh had all of these like strange ideas.
I mean literally, I knew it wasn't her. I knew
(24:58):
it was not my wife. I knew this was these
were ideas that someone was putting in her head. For example,
at the time she left me, I was about eighty
ninety percent a full time college student. And the reason
that was happening was because she wanted me to get
my teaching credential so that she could retire, so she
(25:21):
was the one. Really it was at least fifty percent
her idea that I do this. Well. She comes back
then after leaving me, saying that a man should support
his wife, and I was in school and that made
me not a godly man, a godly husband. And I said,
(25:42):
wait a minute, I'm doing this with your full support.
In fact, you were equally, if not more enthusiastic about
me doing this than I was. And she just, you know,
shrugged that off. And I could tell that she was
getting ideas and information from other people, and that these
other people probably didn't have the whole story, so they
didn't have the context of it. Because anybody that would
(26:06):
ever think of me as a deadbeat guy who looks
at my career, written over thirty books owned, who knows
how many companies employed, who knows how many and thousands
of people over my career, I mean, just google my
name if somebody somewhere says, hey, you need to get
(26:26):
rid of this deadbeat guy, and they and my name
is in that sentence. Somebody doesn't have all the information, right,
but this is the feedback that I would get and
then she would say things to me and immediately it
would be contradicted. So I'll give you one other example.
So she said to me, watch the movie Fireproof and
(26:46):
write me letters. Well that sounded like her. That sounded
like my wife, that she would love that. You know
the movie fire Proof. I've seen it, so I watched
it again. Then I started writing her these letters. Ten
things I like about you. Remember this trip we were on.
Here are my great memories from that, all these things.
I started writing her a letter. I wrote her a
(27:07):
letter every single day for thirty days, and at the
end of the thirty days, I got a letter from
her lawyer saying that my letters were harassment and that
I needed to stop or they were going to get
a restraining order against me. Now I knew that was
not my wife, you see, So something was happening. There
(27:30):
was some degree of manipulation going on by counselors, lawyers,
friends of hers that were encouraging divorce. And I saw
something on Facebook the other day that I thought was fascinating.
It was this really simple post, but I couldn't stop
thinking about it. And this is what it said. It
(27:51):
said everyone is a villain in someone's story. Wow, everyone
is a villain in some way story. You gotta just
stop and think about that for a second. So, if
you're not happy in your marriage as a Christian, you
just can't get divorce for that reason. You absolutely cannot
(28:13):
get divorce for that reason. So you got to come
up with something. If your husband's not an alcoholic, a
drug addict, if he's not beating you, if he's not
abusing the kids, if he's not you know, involved in
crime or doing something dangerous, you got to come up
with somebody. He's not cheating, he's not you know, having affairs.
(28:34):
What can you come up with? So here's the new catchphrase,
and here it is. I'm gonna say it. People are
gonna get upset with me, and I want to elaborate
on this. But the new catchphrase here it is emotional abuse.
Emotional abuse. So my wife finally, when she told me
why she was divorcing me, she said it was because
(28:57):
of emotional abuse. I asked her for examples. She could
provide none. Out of curiosity, I asked her how long
has this emotional abuse been taking place? And she said
from the very beginning. I said, you mean all the
way back to the day we were married. She said yes.
(29:19):
I said, you mean all the way back to when
we first started dating, and she said yes. And that's
when I knew it wasn't legitimate, and I knew there
was somebody putting this into her head because we were
so happy, we were the best of friends. And I mean,
(29:40):
I don't think she would have ever married me if
she wasn't in love with me and happy with me.
And if she did, I can't explain that. I mean,
the idea that she felt this way even the day
we I said, even our wedding day. She said, yes,
but you could never really actually define it. And this
(30:00):
is when I knew this was not her. Somebody was
putting this into her head. And one of the other
kind of strange things I will mention to you that
kind of goes along with us is she would very
frequently tell me how much I reminded her of her father.
She would say, you're just like my dad. You even
(30:23):
got a little mustache like my dad. That's before I
had my beard. And she said, when you go go
to the grocery store, you know all the cashiers by name.
When we go out to the restaurant, you refer to
the waiter and the waitress by their name. You're so friendly,
and you're funny, and you're just like my dad. She
said that for years, for years, and then all of
a sudden, when this divorce idea came into her head,
(30:48):
I was no longer like her dad. I was nothing
like her dad. And she started comparing me to another relative,
which I won't mention that she never liked, that she
had all this of issues with, and said that I
was like them, And I knew this wasn't her. That somehow,
in the counseling and talking to, you know, one of
(31:12):
our pastors who I lost all faith in, and then
this counselor that they sent her to, I knew this
wasn't her. Somehow she had started getting like sucked into
this whole divorce thing. And then she got involved in
a Wednesday night group of a bunch of angry women
(31:33):
and that fueled it even more. Then she ended up
with a law firm that is called the woman's law firm,
that won't represent men. They're all for the women, but
won't represent men. And this is this is the cycle.
This is how in this women's law firm, they do.
(31:56):
They do workshops, they do zoom meetings, all these things
to show you how you can basically screw your husband,
how you can get half of all the money and
get alimony and get child support, and on and on
and on, and how you can stand up for yourself
and do all these things. This is an industry, and
(32:20):
it starts with a thought. It then becomes a spoken word.
It then gets supported by all of the pro divorce
people that you can find in your network, who start
pushing you towards groups and books and seminars. And then
you end up at a woman's law firm. You end
(32:41):
up at a church cheering this expert who's got it
all figured out, who married and divorced the same guy
twice and just got married again, and she's got it
all figured out, and we need to get rid of
our bad husbands, and rah rah rah. And then you
end up it all. You end up at the woman's
law firm. Then you end up in two or three
(33:06):
years of divorce court. And so what happened in my
divorce was basically, my wife chose to involve my three kids,
my three adult kids. So the first counselor that we
went to said, I want you to both make a
promise that you'll keep your kids out of this. He said,
(33:27):
that's just my one kind of ground rule, and she said, no,
I'm not going to promise that. So things didn't go
well with that counselor, and she got my kids involved
in every little battle of our divorce, and it got
to the point where my kids have now disconnected from me.
(33:50):
I no longer have any relationship with any of my
three kids. So I lost my marriage of thirty six years,
and I lost my three kids who basically now hate
me because they believe that by me fighting back in
the divorce, that I was a bad guy. So how
this would go is her lawyers, would you know, would
(34:14):
hit me with something, and then my lawyer would hit back,
and then she'd call up all three of the kids
and say, you're not going to believe what he did today.
And that went on for about two years to the
point where my kids said, we're done with you. We
don't ever want to hear from you again, we don't
ever want to see you again, including the fact that
(34:35):
my oldest daughter just had a child about three months ago,
and I was told months in advance, even before the
child was born, that I would never see my grandchild.
So this is where this dark tunnel takes you, and
(34:55):
it leaves me in a really dark place, but it
also leaves my wife in a really tear terrible place.
So it starts with a thought, It then becomes a
spoken word. It then becomes that group of people surrounding
you that are cheering you on towards the divorce, who
are mostly divorced women, who push you towards the seminars
and the books and the workshops, and the lawyers and
(35:20):
the Christian counselors that want you to get divorced, and
all of these people are making all this money. You
end up with a woman's law firm, You end up
in divorce court, and you end up in three years.
You end up destroying your relationship with your husband of
thirty six years. You end up alienating the three kids
(35:41):
so they don't have a dad anymore, and even adult
kids need a dad, and you end up a lonely
person at the end of all this, And all you
can think back to is when it first was a thought.
Maybe it's shouldn't have become a spoken word. And with
(36:03):
all your friends that cheered you on, you all sit
together without a spouse, wondering maybe things could have been different.
I'm Jim Parris. That's all I have for you this week.
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