Beyond Cooperation

I’d entered both marriages with the idea that we were nice people that would always be civil to each other. But then bad things started happening including the death of parents, difficulties with children, job losses and money woes. We were no longer willing to “cooperate” and instead starting blaming each other for the pain.Recently, close friends have expressed the same thing. They entered into marriage thinking it would be “forever”, but instead they are on the brink of divorce. Or I hear of others who are so afraid of divorce that they never marry, choosing to live together and raise children without a marriage bond.I’ve asked many times in examining my marriages, “What happened?”Complex issues surround people who live together. In the last chapter of the Rule of SSJE, the Society of Saint John the Evangelist we are encouraged to “express a shared vision to move beyond the issue of personal cooperation to that of a common spirituality.”I wonder if this appli