Herbert W Armstrong

   In this series of programs, we will tell you something about the problems of the world today, how they will affect you, and their solutions in the World Tomorrow. Ladies and gentlemen, Garner Ted Armstrong.

   You want to follow these simple rules to wreck your marriage, there's a guarantee they'll work—simple rules. Every one of them is easily adapted. Anybody can follow these rules. As a matter of fact, they're so easy to follow, most people have been following these rules without realizing they were rules.

   The first way to wreck your marriage is to marry accidentally. Let marriage just happen to you. Bumble along through life as a teenager and follow the way that most teenagers are today: a way of simple choices of wild abandonment, of going along with the gang, smoking pot as they do, getting in trouble as they do, or rejecting it if they do. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about middle-class America and the Bible Belt society, and those who are church-attending and those who stand for certain morality, and who also marry accidentally, or whether it's those of a big city or a certain ethnic area of a poverty pocket. If you marry accidentally without clear-cut choice, without careful preparation, without maturity, without a decision-making process, without sanction and blessing of home and of parents and certainly of church, then your chances of getting a divorce or of having a very unhappy marriage will certainly be enhanced.

   Rule number two: marry the gang. Don't marry the husband or marry the wife, marry the gang. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, a lot of people sort of date in a gang. They date in a circle of friends, they date in a certain clique, and more and more, as they go together—and going steady is getting to be quite commonplace, clear down into the very earliest grades in junior high school or even the last grade of grammar school anymore—you just become well tolerant enough of each other, familiar enough with one another that you're going together is accepted as a part of the school, as a part of what happens in the hallways, a part of what's around, a part of the scene like, you know what I mean? So, if you marry the gang instead of an individual, it means that gradually, as the time comes when marriage might approach because of age or as an accident happens, which it very likely could nowadays, the way young people live their lives, what you do is marry with your mind sort of focused upon the acceptability in your clique. You marry because everybody more or less expects you to. You marry because another couple of buddies got married and why don't we go along and make it a double or a triple wedding, and we could all go on our honeymoon together. Marry the gang, not an individual. If you don't understand much about the background of your prospective mate, you don't know much about their heredity, about the education of their parents, but you do know the way that one individual fits into your own clique, your own gang, your own group of accepted friends, then you can marry the gang and find out later that once you're married, the old gang kind of falls apart like that old nostalgic song. If you marry the gang and marry the group, marry the clique, you're gonna find out that when the rice has been thrown, the door slammed, you're in there alone—that none of the gang came along with you. That's a sure way to wreck your marriage. Just have an attitude, an idea that it's expected of you, that it's a comfortable thing to do in the clique because you've always done things together. You took the same classes together, went out together, went to the beach together, got in trouble together. Why not marry together? Well, if you want to have a wretched life, you can do that.

   Now, the third rule is to marry too young. And oh, there are thousands of people following that rule today, marrying entirely too young. Marriage during teenage years, when you're unprepared and it's not clearly thought out, is guaranteed—up to 50%, according to current divorce court statistics—to get you a divorce, and that within the first few years. So, if you marry too young, you both have a good guarantee there, an awfully good chance of having a wretched marriage and wrecking it totally later.

   Fourth is to marry without preparation, and that certainly overlaps. That means economic preparation, preparation through education. If you drop out to get married, how are you going to earn a living later? Well, of course, there's always unemployment and the dole. There's always the military, as much as you might hate the idea now, it's waiting there. You can always join it and get some sort of a pay, coming home to your little wife with one or two children while you're off over there getting shot at somewhere. People figure various outs to where they can have their cake right now and eat it too and then not have the responsibility. So, if you marry without preparation, you own nothing. You have saved nothing. You don't own an automobile. And if you do, it's probably an old used one where the upkeep, the maintenance, and the gasoline are costing you more than the thing is worth. So, if you marry without preparation, your chances for a perfectly wretched young married life are excellent. If you marry without putting it off long enough to get yourself on a stable, solid financial base, to prepare by not only having a job but a job that leads to a career, one that is secure, one you like, one you're excited about, one you're enthused with. Or at least, if you're not, one that you're sure enough is the temporary stepping stone that there will be another a little later. Some kind of preparation pays off. Marriages that were unprepared for, not clearly thought out, where no counseling was obtained, where parents weren't involved, where there wasn't ownership, where there wasn't a little bit of savings, where there wasn't an economic base, some sort of definite preparation—it's going to be a pretty unhappy situation. Oh, we think sex and love will solve everything.

   So that brings up rule number five: marry out of compulsion. Marry to give the baby a name, marry because society expects it of you. That is at least that part of society to which some people still adhere or still feel some sort of loyalty toward. Marry because people expect it, because she demands, demands it, because her parents do. And if that's the only rule, if that's the only reason, then you could wreck your marriage. Of course, that takes a good bit of commentary because there are any number of cases where that might be right and where the lessons ought to be learned, should be learned thoroughly, and have not been learned in sufficient time.

   Another rule is to marry someone who has deep-seated emotional problems or physical problems and insist that love conquers all, that marriage will solve your problems. Emotional hang-ups, horrible uncontrollable temper, abuse of drugs, crying jags, feelings of repression, of worry, neuroses, psychoses, fears of this or that, trying to escape a sharp mother's tongue. Marry for these reasons. Marry someone that has a deep-seated emotional problem, maybe every now and then has a physical aberration of some sort. But convince yourself that this thing—sitting by the bedside and holding her hand or his hand and looking into the loved one's eyes—will conquer all the ills. You can be guaranteed a pretty unhappy marriage.

   Now, a rule on how to break up a marriage once you're married, if you're married for all these reasons that are wrong ones, would be to always follow the rule of overlooking your own shortcomings but constantly criticize your partner's.

   First, before I go into this thing of how to wreck a marriage already contracted, let me state that every one of those rules for marriage, for how not to marry, you should call it, can be overcome. Every last one of them could be overcome. Marrying without preparation—well, both partners could get busy and prepare a little too late if they really recognize what their problem was. Marrying too young—well, you know, people inevitably grow up, and sometimes early marriage is one way to do it, the hard way. Marrying the gang—well, you discover very quickly you haven't done that, so why not just forget all the notions of pink fluff, fluff and teenage romance and go on into the hard, cold world where adults really live? Marry accidentally—well, accidents do happen, and once they've happened, you can pick up the pieces and go on. Marry out of compulsion—well, maybe it was a compulsion in this case that was right because the mistake came earlier, and marriage in itself was not the mistake. What happened previously was. And maybe you can still bail yourself out of that situation with correct understanding and kindness and forgiving.

   But once you have been married, if you continue to live with the accident, you continue to live with a lack of preparation, you continue your youthful aberrations and notions, you continue the idea of the gang, and you still don't prepare, then you're going to have all kinds of problems. Now, if you are married, you can follow these simple rules suggested by eminent psychologists to find yourself in the divorce courts very quickly.

   One rule to follow would be to overlook your own shortcomings. And the way you do that is to continually criticize your partner. The best way any little kid finds out laying in a sand pile to destroy suspicion against oneself is to point a finger in the opposite direction. The best way to get around all the things that are wrong with you is to talk about what's wrong with him or her. The best way to answer an argument is to dodge the issue that is brought up by talking about a new issue. "Besides," or "because," or "in any way," or "you always do," or an old remembrance—a convenient drawer of past sins you keep back there in the back of your mind. Or anytime someone levels a finger of accusation that you are the way you are, the way you are doing right now, you go to your convenient drawer that is labeled "tired old sins, tired old faults, perennial problems." You take the drawer out, you sift through there for a particularly juicy little event that you remember way back, and you say, "Well, I remember when this or that happened," and there you go—beautiful. Overlook your shortcomings, justify your own sins by pointing out the shortcomings and the sins of others.

   Rule number two: don't analyze your problems. Take your own ill feelings out on your wife or your husband. And if you possibly can, always do it in front of the kids or in front of relatives or guests. Instead of critically analyzing yourself and admitting what is wrong with you, saying, "Look, I know I'm this, I'm that, I'm the other. I'm slovenly. I'm happenstance about our home. I'm not on time. I'm not considerate. I'm this, I'm that," and begin to actually admit it, put it down on paper and say, "Look, this is the way I am. This is my profile as a mate," admit it to yourself and then say, "I've got to change." No, don't do that. If you want to wreck your marriage, just take your ill feelings of pique, your feelings of hurt—you know, your lip is cranked down, you're about to walk on it—your feelings of self-pity that are so human, so normal, so natural, and what you do is just rise up in spiteful jealousy and anger and take them out on other people. Little kids don't think; they cry. They are a bundle of emotions. They don't act; they react. And you know, a lot of married people are just like that. They don't act; they react. They bumble along accidentally, and when something happens, they react to it. They don't make life happen; they let life happen to them.

   So, if you refuse to analyze your problems and try to overcome them, you'll probably always be taking your ill feelings out on your wife or your husband, and especially you'll try to do it in front of other people so they will see your pique. And you can even share those attitudes and problems with some fellow on the job or some gal where you work or the neighbor lady who was also a frustrated young wife.

   Rule number three on how to wreck your marriage: never share your deepest feelings. "What's the matter?" he says. "Nothing," she says, when obviously by that excruciating look, everything is the matter. "What's the matter, honey?" she says. "Nothing," he snaps as he comes in from the job and slams the door, kicks the cat, and throws the goldfish on the lawn. Well, maybe he doesn't have a lawn; maybe he just flushes them down. But whatever it is he does, she knows by his looks and by his actions that everything is wrong. Something is certainly terribly wrong, and he says nothing. So don't share it. Don't say, "Well, guess what," and expect that the mate would sit down and listen and perhaps even commiserate a little bit if you needed it and deserved it. If you never share your feelings, especially about those most intimate disappointments in life, and just sit down and talk about it in a friendly way, but keep them to yourself and make your loved ones feel alone and isolated, you're guaranteed to head right straight to a divorce court one of these days. Of course, that won't hurt anybody—just both of you very, very deeply and irretrievably. Any children that are involved hideously and enormously, your family and all of your friends, church, home, school, society, and the whole nation. Destroy a home; you destroy the nation eventually. And we're seeing that happen in America. So yes, people are hurt when other people divorce. Don't kid yourself about that.

   Now, if you want some rules on how to have a happy marriage, the complete opposite of these rules that I'm giving you, which you can certainly see by way of analogy, I was thinking, and you can see the opposite of them, then write in for this free book that we have for you on Your Marriage Can Be Happy. Now, this is good advice. It's showing how truly rare it is to find happy marriages today. But it brings you the true perspective of the modern Western marriage crisis. Yes, there are the incredible statistics here, but more importantly, how to make a marriage work. Everybody wants to be happy. It shows why our marriages are a mad merry-go-round. What happened through the media, the new feminism, and the idea of, well, either the pulling and the tugging of one religion or another with regard to birth control, or perhaps the argument from the people that advocate no birth increase. And also these things of trial marriages from clerics and the like—it's all here. Why shattered homes and why family life is falling apart. The story of the very first destroyed home is here. But more importantly, those direct, useful laws of how to have a happy marriage. Now, this booklet you can read in one sitting, and especially let me just appeal to you if you are about to get a divorce. You certainly owe it to yourself. If you're alive, you can do what you want to or the courts. But what about a last-ditch, you know, just give it a chance, one last ditch effort on your part. This booklet can't, I guarantee you, contaminate you in any way. You don't have to believe a word of it. You don't want to believe you're a free moral agent. But you ought to read it. You ought to at least look at it, and it's absolutely free. And we won't ever bug you for this or that or dun you for anything. No bill comes. It's absolutely free of charge, and you're not sent some other literature you don't want. And please believe me, this is a booklet that is written from a completely researched, thoroughly documented, above-board point of view. Your Marriage Can Be Happy. It's a booklet that talks about principles of living, everyday human life situations, and you need it, really, whether you're married or not. You need it. You ought to read it. I don't care whether you're 80 or above; you probably ought to read this so you can talk to other people that might listen to an elderly person about marriage, and it's free of charge, at no price, if you will write to the address which I will give you at the close of this program.

   Now, the next rule, rule number four: expect to live in a continuous state of ecstatic love and never be satisfied with anything less than that. Just believe that the honeymoon is going to go on forever and ever, and believe the honeymoon is going to be a beautiful, delirious Hollywood-type thing where there's nothing but sighs of sheer love and enjoyment and there's nothing that is ever going to come along to disturb that feeling of ecstatic marital bliss. If you expect that, then you're going to be a good bit let down when that type of thing does not continue all that long. And a lot of young married people do expect that, and counselors and divorce lawyers and those that are dealing with it, such as psychologists who talk to people and there are deep emotional hang-ups involved in marriage and why they want to dissolve their marriages, have put that down as one of the major rules. They find that so many people expect the honeymoon to go on forever, and women especially seem to be so totally let down when it does not. And so, petulance and a sulkiness, a disappointment, and there again, feeling alone and isolated, turned off and frustrated enters, and probably that isn't even shared with a mate. And so, you're on your way to a good knock-down, drag-out, and maybe the absolution of your marriage.

   Another rule that was set forth was regarding your mate as a competitor for attention on the job, for earning money, a rival intellectually, and continually compete for attention from the mate and from others, and also continually compete for success. Now, especially if you're in a kind of a job situation where your income is nowhere near enough to even support yourself by any means according to the way you want to live, and you figure the little woman ought to get out and help it. What if she's making more money than you? I admit that's a very rare case, but there are such cases. But if, on the other hand, she has a few women's lib ideas and he's making a little more than she is but doing really about the same kind of work, you ought to write for this book on Your Marriage Can Be Happy and find out about some of these rules. And also this book on The New Feminism ...have Women Ever Really Had Their Rights? And it's free of charge. It's thoroughly researched. It tells about some of the national and some of the smaller organizations that have been cropping up recently on this women's lib, the new feminism movement. Was marriage invented by men to subjugate and to hold women as chattels and to keep them as veritable prisoners in the home? This booklet The New Feminism ...have Women Ever Really Had Their Rights? is free of charge, at no price. The address I will give you in about 10 minutes. If you have a pen or a pencil handy there, you can write down the address which I will give you, and we'll send it to you by return mail as quickly as the mails will cooperate, and we hope that that's going to be speedily.

   Another rule: marry someone who has all kinds of hang-ups in their background, physical as well as intellectual and religious, and marry someone with whom you fairly often disagree. And then when you do disagree, disagree in a volatile and very open, outspoken way, and do so even publicly. Disagree because you enjoy it. You enjoy a good argument, and try to push the mate into an argument as often as you possibly can. You've got a deep-seated emotional problem or a hang-up of some sort, some deep unfulfilled situation that you experienced as a high school student or in college. Well, if you marry with the expectancy that your mate is going to solve all those things for you, the problems that could come your way will be rife, and you probably won't ever solve them all.

   There are a lot of other rules I can tell you. And about any disagreement you reach, always try to prove your partner is wrong. Don't try to prove that you're wrong. Don't try to prove what is the truth. Have as the major thing in your mind a determination to prove that your partner is wrong. And if you can, don't ever clear up a point of difference. Just keep nagging and haranguing on it. If there's a specific point where there is a difference, instead of getting some factual material from an outside source or sitting down and isolating what is that point, saying, "Look, I'm sure there is common ground for agreement here. We're probably both saying the same thing in different language," just keep haranguing, keep nagging at it. That's the worst thing you can do, of course.

   Of course a wife could always try to make the marriage a success by trying to push the husband to some great heights of ambition, some great success story. She could always bring up old Freddie or Harry or George next door—the old thing of which some of the Madison Avenue commercials are made. He drives in with a new car. You feel you've got to do it too. "Why don't you go out and get a job like Harry's got? I understand he got a bonus this year." This type of thing. You can really inspire a husband to want to get out there and fight and rise to all these great heights of achievement and ambition in his life if you push him along a line where he's completely unqualified, totally unfamiliar, and just doesn't care.

   You can refuse to let your wife be womanly by insisting that she change her clothes styles and adopt different mannerisms and try to get her involved in different sports and things to which she's really not attuned. Or you could refuse to let your husband be manly by trying to saddle him with some of the home burdens and try to make of him a part-time babysitter and maybe insist that he share in your wifely chores a little more often.

   Of course, then you can treat your mate like a financial idiot. You can make your wife feel like she's unable to handle a household budget, she doesn't know how to spend money or how to save it, how to find a bargain, or how to balance the books. And you can just give her a little gold here and there and make her beg for every penny. Or, on the other hand, if you're the woman and the husband always has to turn his check over—you know how you got him that far under your thumb. There were all those cute little tricks you pulled on him, so you got him to be a dolt, dope who walks in every single payday and gives it to you and says, "Dear, could you give me a couple of bucks extra this week for a game with the boys?" If you make him feel like a financial idiot, you're guaranteed to have a wretched marital life.

   Then there could be the young newlyweds who always put what mom says ahead of what the husband says or what the wife says. Always bring your parents into your family arguments and family decisions. As a matter of fact, go to the telephone and call mother, check up and see what she would do instead of confiding in your mate, getting his decision. If you do that, you're guaranteed to have a pretty unhappy situation.

   Then you can continually, at least two or three times a day, at least at every meal, at least every morning as he's going off to work, or every evening as you're talking about her meal she prepared—you can correct your mate and work endlessly at changing his or her image and improving your mate, making them different than they really are.

   Of course, you could do all these things all at once by just being selfish, self-centered, and insisting that marriage revolve around your own personal likes and needs and desires. Let marriage be the way you always envisioned it, the way you always wanted it. That's a good way to have a wretched marriage.

   Of course, then you can always throw up all these things you've had to tolerate. You can always tell your mate anytime you have an argument, "Boy, you're this way and that, and I've had to put up with this and that, and I've just had to give up everything." Then you crank out your lower lip and think of a dozen more beautiful arguments. Get that convenient old drawer labeled "past problems, faults, and sins" and throw it all over the room, and there you are—you've got a beautiful problem on your hands.

   Well, you can write for this by return mail. You'll receive it free of charge. The moment we receive your name and plainly printed return mail address on the outside of the envelope, we'll send you the booklet on The New Feminism and the booklet on Your Marriage Can Be Happy.

   Now, we have a free booklet that has been prepared very painstakingly after extensive studies and surveys on young teenagers' dating habits, the subculture of teenagers today, why it is that such a broad generation gap exists between young people and their elders. It talks about dating and dating habits and how the patterns have changed over the past few years. How instead of the traditional date of a young fellow who takes the girl to a certain place for an avowed purpose, just a thing of getting together in groups, the kind of a group party, sitting around waiting for something to happen, and this type of thing has begun to occur. Showing also the tremendous influence of drugs and hallucinogens and various narcotics on young people's minds today. Showing the changing social patterns of teenage and why, in one great manner of speaking, the generation gap has occurred and why there isn't enough communication between young people and their parents. This booklet on Modern Dating, the key to success or failure in marriage, is a wholesome booklet that will give you concrete direction if you're parents on how to school and to educate your children about the right kind of social contacts and leads toward a wholesome and happy marriage.

   Let me tell you this much about Ambassador College in Pasadena, California. In the years—it's about 20-some years now of operation—I imagine there have been several hundred marriages as a result of simple social contact on an undergraduate student level. And upon graduation and later on in life, people who met on Ambassador's campuses married, and they received the kind of teaching that is in this booklet. And as a direct result of that teaching, only one out of those hundreds of marriages ended up in divorce. And that's a sort of an unusual record. When you look at the divorce statistics of today in Los Angeles County, it's generally every other one. In other words, for every marriage license, there is also a divorce proceeding that is instigated. And in the nation as a whole, it's rapidly getting to one out of three, about every third home. Illegitimacy, 40% of teenage brides expecting when they get married. And this doesn't make for happy marriages because 50% of those teen marriages are broken up in the first five years of marriage. And that's demonstrated in this booklet as well by graphs and charts and statistics. Now, the statistics are almost endless, and this is not just a statistical study by itself, but it also shows the part of the automobile and the part that it plays in the new mobile society and the dating customs and practices of young people. And it tells about the right kind of a date. You don't have to agree with it, but you ought to look at it. You ought to read it, and it's absolutely free of charge. There's no price for it.

   Now, the booklet is quite a substantial booklet, digest size, and it's up into 125 or so pages. It shows the whole thing, not only in the United States but in modern Sweden and Denmark and other countries. It shows how in England, that one out of three brides are already expecting at the wedding ceremony. In Denmark, it's every other one. In Sweden, it's two out of five. But the changing customs and habits of some of these libertarian nations, they've been labeled—especially Sweden—have come to be. The booklet is, as I said, free of charge, at no price. If you want it, tell us the call letters of your radio station and write for it.

   Now, also, if you'd like to ask for the current number of the Plain Truth magazine, you will receive an up-to-the-moment publication read by millions of people around the world in five different languages. It's 52 pages, full color, absolutely free of charge, no price for it, and no bill to ever follow. There is no request for money in the literature and no bill to follow. It brings you up-to-the-moment articles on world trends and conditions in the light of today's world news, interviews with top executive leaders of great nations, letters to the editor from around the world. It's a worldwide magazine read by people in more than 100 nations, and you'll want it. There's nothing like it—at least get a sample copy. I remember hearing from one fellow who said he waited 25 years before he wrote for one. And that's caution. Now, you don't want to be that cautious. We wouldn't want to wait that long. So, write in for your copy right now and take me up on it. Find out whether or not it really is free. You know, if you send a letter, nobody can send you to jail for that, can they? So, check and find out if we really mean what we say when it is free of charge. There is no request for money, there is no follow-up whatsoever, no one's going to call on you unless you yourself, of course, request it first. And then it might be a long time trying to do it because we're spread kind of thin. So, the Plain Truth magazine by sending a letter to Box 345, Sydney, New South Wales. Box 345, Sydney, New South Wales. The Plain Truth magazine, free of charge, no cost. The address again in just a moment. Until next time, this is Garner Ted Armstrong saying goodbye, friends.

   You have been listening to "The World Tomorrow." If you would like more information, write to Ambassador College, Box 345 GPO Sydney, New South Wales. That's Ambassador College, Box 345 GPO Sydney, New South Wales.