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This reminds us that the suffering evoked by spiritual pain is particularly subjective and profoundly affected by social factors. Imagine a culture in which extramarital sex is a routine and expected behavior, as in some contexts it has been. The discovery that one's spouse had an extramarital sexual relationship would likely evoke far less suffering than if the same event occurred in our own society. Suffering has a social dimension. The early medieval philosopher Boethius said, "nothing is miserable unless you think it so." Where we learn to "think it so" is in society.

Contemporary western societies are particularly averse to pain. We have developed the most advanced painkilling drugs in human history, and use them constantly. We are, in Elizabeth Wurtzel's famous phrase,

the "Prozac Nation." Some push for legalized euthanasia because of the exaggerated fear that even the best painkillers will be insufficient at the end of life. It is not too pessimistic to say that we are by now a soft people. The generation that survived the Depression and triumphed over the Nazis gave birth to children and

grandchildren who often think they need narcotics or antidepressants to get through the day. In such a society, our pain tolerance is low indeed.

Less dramatically, the experience of marital suffering is linked to marital expectations or desires.3 Short of objective physical or emotional violence, we suffer in marriage when the experience we are having falls short of our expectations. The question then that must be asked is this: what kinds of expectations of marriage are appropriate to the covenant promises actually exchanged? Excessive desires set the spouses up for the perception of suffering, in situations that would not have been perceived this way in earlier eras.

As any physician or psychiatrist could tell us, the suffering person seeks relief. Whether the pain is physical, spiritual, or both, when we suffer we want it to end as soon as possible. If the pain is bad enough, we will consider nearly any path that can bring relief. If the suffering experienced in marriage is bad enough, people will seek relief as well. This is part of what it means to be a sentient creature, and especially a human. It also speaks to the compelling nature of the needs we seek to meet in marriage. The mistake many people make, however, is in concluding that divorce is the best way to bring suffering to an end—when it may not be the best way, and it may not bring suffering to an end at all.

When Jesus taught that divorce is to be a very rare exception, and that illicit remarriages are adulterous, his disciples said: "If this is the situation between a husband and a wife, it is better not to marry" (Mt. 19:10)—and Jesus never disagreed, only responding with a description of the various ways that people become "eunuchs." When Paul reflected on marriage, he wrote: "Those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this" (1 Cor. 7:28b). These are not especially romantic declarations about marriage.

People need to be taught, as they were in more sober times, that a measure of suffering is an inevitable feature of marriage. Swept away by the candlelight-and-roses vision of marriage promoted by every bride's magazine on the newsstand, we have misplaced this homely truth. Even Christians, whose doctrine of sin ought to help us know better, have forgotten to teach that marriage will not just fail to prevent suffering but actually bring suffering our way. "Not only does marriage fail to mitigate the struggles of life … it actually deepens them, rendering them even more poignant, because more personal."4

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