Love and Marriage

I'm seeing an unsettling trend in my own social circle.  I had a friend call me this morning looking for a babysitter to watch her kids while she went to see a divorce attorney.  This broke my heart.  It seems like a lot of my friends are having the divorce conversation these days.  Is this a commentary on our society? Have we reached the point where it is more common to be divorced than married to the same person your whole life?  My marriage is by no means perfect.  The D-word has come up once or twice in the past 7 years, but I had good advice from reliable sources to help me make good decisions.  I have tried to be that for my friends, but there's really no one on earth that knows exactly what you are going through.  I don't know what their daily conversations are like.  I don't know if they are hostile toward eachother.  All I know is that if there is love, then it's worth the fight to fix the marriage. 
I've seen so many cases of dysfunctional relationships caused by pride or misunderstanding.  It's caused by things that can be fixed with communication and therapy. (I'm a HUGE supporter of therapy.) People who are unwilling to change are going to keep having the same relationship problems with every new person they get involved with unless there is some self-improvement happening.  So I tell my friends that if the significant other is not going to therapy, or church, or a guru or something, there's no reason to stay with them.  It's asking for history to repeat itself, which is more painful the second or third time around.  It makes you feel like an even bigger fool for having trusted the person again.  It is possible to forgive someone and not trust them or allow them to continue to hurt you.  The efforts to save the marriage cannot be either one sided or half hearted.  If both are willing to try, there is always hope.  If something can be fixed, it is worth the effort. But if one or both of you are miserable, you're not doing anything for the children by staying together.  I saw my parents fight so many times and how miserable my mother was and I prayed for them to divorce.  They have since repaired a lot of their relationship and I'm glad they stuck it out, but there was a time that their bad relationship made me miserable as well. 
On a related topic, I had a lady come into my work and start airing her life story to me.  She had been divorced in January and had started seeing a man a couple of months ago who had already proposed to her!  I thought it was crazy that she even kept the ring.  You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else fully and freely.  You have to know your own value.  You cannot derive your value from what other people think about you. 
On a vaguely related note, today I learned that all three of Tom Cruise's wives filed for divorce when they were 33 years old.  What a strange coincidence!  Maybe all the glamour of being married to Tom has worn off by that point and they realized what is really important in a relationship.