Divorce is much worse for children than living in an unhappy home. Also, counselors encouraged unhappy people to think of themselves. Divorce was supposed to free them from their unhappiness. Now, new research done by the Institute for American Values is showing that this also is a myth.

"According to the survey conducted by a team of family researchers, unhappily married adults who divorced were no happier five years after the divorce than were equally unhappy marrieds who remained together. And two-thirds of unhappily married people who remained married reported that their marriages were happy five years later. Even among those who had rated their marriages as 'very unhappy,' nearly 80 percent said they were happily married five years later. These were not merely bored or dissatisfied whiners. They had endured serious problems, including alcoholism, infidelity, verbal abuse, emotional neglect, depression, illness, and work and money troubles."

The divorced sample also showed slightly more depressive symptoms and more alcohol consumption than the married group. The results of the studies show that 64 percent of unhappy couples that stay together will be happily married in five years. By contrast, only 19 percent will be happy in five years if they divorce and remarry.

It's worth noting how unhappy couples turned their relationships around. Of course, it required effort. The study highlighted three successful techniques: enduring (taking one day at a time and working through problems); assertively tackling the problems (setting aside private time with each other, seeking counseling from clergy or professional marriage counselors, getting help from relatives and even threatening divorce); seeking personal happiness (individuals found other ways to improve their happiness, which lessened the impact of shortcomings in their marriage relationship).

"The capstone of this research is [a] New Yorker cartoon: A man stands with his arm around his wife's shoulders and explains to another couple, 'Our divorce wasn't working.'"

If you are unhappy in your marriage, don't be taken in by the misconception that divorce is the solution. You can find a lengthy summary of the Institute for American Values study in a press release posted on their Web site at www.americanvalues.org.

—Source: Mona Charen, "Happy Marriages and Unhappy Divorces," Jewish World Review, July 19, 2002.