These days so many marriages end in divorce that our sacred vows no longer ring with truth. "Happily ever after" and "Till death do us part" are expressions that seem on the way to becoming obsolete. Why has it become so hard for couples to stay together? What goes wrong? What has happened to us that close to one-half of all marriage are destined for the divorce courts? How could we have created a society in which 42 percent of our children will grow up in single-parent homes? If statistics could only measure loneliness, regret, pain, loss of self-confidence and fear of the future, the number would be beyond quantifying. Even though each broken marriage is unique, we can still find the common perils, the common causes of despair. Each marriage has crisis points, and each marriage tests endurance, the capacity for both intimacy and change. Outside pressures (such as job loss, illness, infertility, trouble with a child, care of aging parents and all the other plagues of life) hit marriage the way hurricanes blast our shores. Some marriages survive these storms, and others don't. Marriages fail, however, not simply because of the outside weather, but because the inner climate becomes too hot or too cold, too turbulent or too stupefying. Marriage takes some kind of sacrifice, not dreadful self-sacrifice of the soul, but some level of compromise. Marriage requires sexual, financial, and emotional discipline. A man and a woman cannot follow every impulse; they cannot allow themselves to stop growing or changing. Divorce is not an evil act. Sometimes it provides salvation for people who have grown hopelessly apart and were frozen in patterns of pain and mutual unhappiness. Divorce can be, despite its initial devastation, like the first cut of the surgeon's knife, a step toward new health and a good life.