Broken marriages: their reasons and how mixed families co-exist

In her first marriage, Stephanie Rodden was looking for "someone to complete me," she said.

Rodden didn't know she already was complete. She and her first husband were married three years until they did what many couples do: They divorced.

"We were more like roommates than a married couple," she said.

Rodden, a hairstylist from Jackson, found her second marriage caught up in complicated logistical problems that required her and her husband to live apart for long periods of time, but they have a better understanding of each other's needs, she said, and better communication has provided a healthy and much happier marriage.

"I know I'm already complete and don't need him to fill a void," she said in a message to the Southeast Missourian. "We share each other's complete selves and guide each other to be our best selves. We don't try to 'fix' one another."

Marriage is a complicated relationship that fails nearly as often as it succeeds, but divorce across the United States is declining after peaking in the 1980s. The same holds true in Cape Girardeau County.

The Cape Girardeau circuit clerk's office provided data showing between 2001 and Jan. 31, 4,723 divorce cases were filed, ranging from 326 to 422 each year.

A total of 7,790 marriage licenses were filed with the county recorder's office between 2001 and 2013, which means for about every two marriages, one divorce was filed.

Total marriages, both locally and across the country, have been declining over the last 30 years.

Stephanie Rodden and her husband Matthew Rodden met by coincidence and hit it off right away.

As the two struck up a conversation, "I kind of knew, at that moment, that's it. He's the one," Stephanie Rodden said.

The couple has been married for more than four years, and are expecting another child to join the two children Matthew has from a previous marriage and one child Stephanie has from a previous marriage.

The Roddens have found a system that works and has allowed them to keep in touch with each other and their children.

Patrick Tankersley, a marriage counselor at Faith Based Counseling, said he spends much of his time helping couples work through details on how to live out a marriage, instead of living in its facade.

Without premarital help or counseling, some couples don't know how to get through the day in and day out of marriage, he said, and need guidance on enhancing their marriage for the long-term.

"I've been in one 30 years, and I'm still working," Tankersley said about living out his marriage. "It's an ongoing process. I'm a fellow struggler."

Fixing a marriage is not a one-size-fits-all answer because every couple is different, he said.

What Tankersley does is try to help couples "connect the dots."

"I really try to understand in the mind of these individuals what they really think would mean success for their marriage," he said.

Some couples are not as good with spatial intimacy, which includes managing a household and paying bills, as they are with social intimacy or the nurturing friendship of a romantic relationship.

Stephanie Rodden's previous marriage of three years was not the sacred bond, fairy tale-like romance she has now.

"We were more like roommates than a married couple," she said of her ex-husband. "We loved each other, the love was there, but it wasn't that in-love kind of attraction."

Communication

Tankersley estimated nine times out of 10, couples he works with have trouble communicating, and he helps them find ways to be better communicators with each other.

There are so many technological avenues of communication the younger generation has thrown at the older generation, it becomes a matter of challenging couples to set aside time to communicate with each other and shut out all other communication, he said.

The Roddens are accustomed to keeping their relationship functioning over a long distance -- more than 900 miles, to be exact.

Matthew Rodden works in retail management, a job that requires frequent travel.

After he and Stephanie Rodden bought a house in Jackson and moved in together two months after they met, Matthew moved back to his hometown of San Antonio for a job opportunity and to be closer to his children who live there.

The plan was for Stephanie and her son to join Matthew in Texas, but custody issues prevented the move and prevented Matthew's children from moving to Missouri.

After learning how to live together, Stephanie Rodden and her husband had to adjust to living apart for about four years.

"It was rough being apart for so long," she said. Matthew moved back to Jackson last August.

The couple shared a journal during their time apart; they would trade when Matthew came home to Jackson every other weekend. They are on their third journal.

Finances

Trae Bertrand and Allen Moss, lawyers in Cape Girardeau who represent clients in divorce cases, cited financial problems as one of the leading causes for a divorce in their experience.

Financial problems create stress in a marriage, which snowballs and can break down a family, Moss said. A lack of quality time spent with each other makes it easy for a couple to lose their connection.

"That usually is a perfect storm," he said.

Because people's standard of living is so high, along with their expectations, finances can cause couples to lose their day-to-day function, Tankersley said.

"Younger couples today want it all, and they want it all today," he said.

"Why they can't stay married many times is because they have so many wants and desires and they have to work all the time and they, they just don't have any time. ... They don't know how to say no. They don't know how to get out of debt. They don't know how to stay out of debt."

Children

When children are involved in a divorce, some couples can be civil and work out custody arrangements. Others are not able to move past their negative feelings to each other.

With the exception of last year and 2001, Cape Girardeau County each year saw more divorce cases involving children than those without.

"Unfortunately, only about half the time do I feel like parents will set aside their differences and truly work together for the benefit of their children," Bertrand said.

How a couple lives out their marriage and handles their relationship matters not only for them, but also for their children, Tankersley said.

"If you don't teach them and live it out, how are they going to know in the next generation?" he asked.

"How are the kids going to know if everybody's abandoning ship and giving up? The kids need to know how to live it out, and the best way to know is to be around people, again, who are your heroes."

Stephanie and Matthew Rodden hope their children pick up on their example.

"We want the kids to experience that kind of love and hope they honor themselves the way we honor each other through all the parts of life," Stephanie Rodden said.

Moss said he has seen a "drastic change" in his 20 years in a private practice in the number of divorces involving couples with children where custody arrangements are made between the couple.

When he first began his private practice, Moss estimated about one third of divorced couples were able to reach an agreement on custody arrangements.

"That's totally flipped," he said, guessing between 80 percent and 90 percent of divorced couples work out custody arrangements. "Part of that has been that the court has made use of mediation a lot" where the two parties are able to discuss their options and hear the "cold, hard facts from a person that's not their advocate."

"Mediation has really been successful," Moss said.

The former spouses of Stephanie Rodden and her husband are flexible with their family's situation, she said, and they all have a fairly close relationship.

Samantha has 50/50 custody of her son, and Matthew travels to San Antonio every other weekend to visit their children.

"It's not easy, it's really not easy, but you got to try to cooperate for the kids' sake," she said. "You just do what you got to do, and hope that there's some understanding there."

It's important for divorcing parents to put all other issues aside and do what's best for their children, Moss said, because children love and need love and affection from both their parents, not one or the other.

"Mom and Dad may be divorcing each other, but they're not divorcing themselves from their children," he said.

Bertrand and Moss said they have not noticed a trend in an increase or decrease of divorce cases, but Moss believes when the economy is bad, the number of divorces drops because the procedure is optional and couples may choose to separate and divorce at a later time.

Tankersley said he has found couples who challenge themselves by learning to say "no" to their wants and learning to live a simpler life are happier and feel more in control of marriage and their lives.

Over the years Stephanie and Matthew Rodden spent living 900 miles apart, the two learned to treasure little things, effect conflict resolution -- it's difficult to fight when there are hundreds of miles between you -- and put patience to good use -- lots and lots of patience.

Stephanie Rodden didn't think the typical movie romance existed in real life.

"I never thought that that was real," she said. "But, we've got it, and I think that's why were still together after all of this. Because we always come back to that moment of, it's just us. It's just this feeling, this love."

ashedd@semissourian.com

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