15 July 2014 - QA 1

Please talk on the subject of divorce. When is it a good thing? Or is it always to be avoided?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Now, I have no experience on this.
You should ask yourself, have you put your 100% to make the marriage work? Have you done all that you could to please your spouse and make them happy, and still it has not worked?

Marriage means sacrifice. Sacrificing your desires for the good of the other and for the sake of the whole family. Marriage is compromise.
If you only keep thinking about your own wants then no marriage will work. You should see what ‘We’ want. How ‘We ‘ can progress and bring happiness to the family. Only if you keep your attention on that, will the marriage be successful.

So if you have done your 100% and still it doesn’t work, and you find that you are totally incompatible, then instead of being in hell and both suffering, with a good understanding you say, 'We cannot get along so you walk your way and I walk my way. Let’s be friends and be happy'.

So, one must part with this understanding. There is no point in living in a furnace all day and all night. But not like this gentleman who said that they had been married for forty years and suddenly after forty years, they realized that they we were never compatible.
He is already seventy years old, and has been married for forty years and now he says,' We were never compatible'.
Never mind, bear for another five to ten years. Anyway, they say marriages are made in heaven, so when you go up there, you can resolve it.
My dear, when you go through a bad phase in your life it appears like everything is dark and nothing was right at any time. But if nothing was right, you could never have tolerated it for forty years. Something must have been right somewhere that kept you going.