SAVING MARRIAGES: MARRIAGE SAVERS HAS MIXED SUCCESS LOCALLY

Joni and Mark Oberhauser knew that divorce wasn't possible for them once they committed to marriage, so the Cape Girardeau couple planned nearly 18 months of counseling to help them develop a better relationship.

"We had to determine that divorce was not an option and that we would work through our problems and not say that word," said Joni Oberhauser.

The couple will be married three years in June and expects their first child in February.

But for many couples, divorce is still an option. Only 56 percent of couples in the United States were married and living with a spouse in 1998, the latest figures available from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Several area churches are working to keep the divorce rates down in Cape Girardeau County and Southeast Missouri through participation in the Marriage Savers program, which was developed in the 1980s to help curtail rising divorce rates across the country.

The Cape Girardeau Ministerial Alliance joined the program in 1996 when it developed a community marriage policy that required couples to undergo four months of marriage counseling and mentorship before being married in a local church. Nearly three-fourths of the city's churches have adopted the policy.

"We've got a good percentage now that have the policy and that does require counseling. That's a major success of the effort," said the Rev. Roy Jones, director of missions for the Cape Girardeau Baptist Association. Jones has been an advocate of the Marriage Savers program.

While the divorce rate has declined by 1.5 percent in 19 years nationwide, there has been an increase in Cape Girardeau County. Most of the 133 cities that developed a community marriage policy show an average 6 percent drop in divorces, said Michael J. McManus, Marriage Savers founder.

"Where groups of pastors take a common stand to do a better job in marriage preparation, strengthening existing marriages and saving trouble ones, divorces come down dramatically," he said.

Yet in Cape Girardeau County, the number of divorce filing has risen from 383 in 1998 to 520 in 1990, which amounts to nearly a 36 percent increase. There was just a 17 percent increase in divorces between 1995 and 1996, with 343 couples divorcing in 1995 and 402 divorces in 1996.

Great expectations

Society makes marriage and divorce too easy, said Alison Staggs. She and her husband, Greg, were counseled by a pastor at Cape Bible Chapel, a nondenominational congregation where they attend.

Talking with a pastor helped the couple realize that their expectations for marriage and the reality of marriage might not always match up, she said.

"You can't spend money like you did when you were getting ready for the wedding. The reality is that you get up and go to work and then have to cook supper and clean the house," she said.

Marriage isn't a blissful experience all the time, she added.

Couples have to talk about those things beforehand. Marriage counseling helped most with the issues that John and Mendy Bechtold hadn't fully contemplated like methods of communication and what that conveys to a partner, the importance of finances and talking about credit.

"There were issues we didn't think about," said Mendy Bechtold. She and her husband have been married four months. "We talked a lot about expectations and what you expect from your partner and what they expect from you. You might not know about what those expectations are, so if you talk about them now instead of later" it helps avoid problems, she said.

The Bechtolds were married at Lynwood Baptist Church, which adopted the marriage policy. The Bechtolds had both group counseling sessions and one-on-one meetings with a minister.

Even though the church requires counseling, it was something the couple would have done anyway. "It helps you build your marriage," Mendy Bechtold said.

The Oberhausers agreed. Counseling helped them learn more about communication and how to fight fair, how to develop a budget and how to divide household chores.

But they also talked about spiritual issues. "We talked about praying for each other and having God be the center of our relationship because then everything else is petty in comparison. We should be living for Christ and not for ourselves because, if we did, then we'd be putting each other first all the time," Joni Oberhauser said.

Before and after

Mike Parry, minister at Fruitland Community Church, advocates counseling before and after a wedding. He performed the Oberhausers' wedding ceremony.

With counseling both before and after a wedding, couples are held accountable and have an opportunity to talk about problems and issues as they come up in the marriage, Parry said.

When couples announce an engagement and ask a minister to perform the wedding, "they've got no frame of reference, and when you say something they say Well that won't happen to us.'"

The Oberhausers usually went to sessions with Parry with topics that had come up, but he also posed questions to them. "We would meet every couple of months, but he never said how many times we had to meet," Joni Oberhauser said. "We came in with the understanding that we would consistently and regularly meet."

Having mentors is another element to the Marriage Savers program but one that hasn't begun in earnest yet in Cape Girardeau County. Some churches, however, do offer Bible study classes just for young married couples, Jones said.

Marriage Savers can work both before and after a wedding, McManus said. Churches can sponsor Marriage Encounter retreats and marital inventories for couples.

"Couples whose marriages once nearly failed can be trained to tell the story of their recovery to those now considering divorce and save 80 percent to 90 percent of them," McManus said.

Vows are important tools in keeping couples together 'for better or worse' because it is a "vote to God, to each other's family and between the couple," McManus said.

STATE OF BLISS

Number of marriages recorded in Missouri according to the National Vital Statistics Report (www.cdc.gov/nchs):

1997: 43,585

1998: 43,795

Divorces

1997:25,257

1998: 25,799

Marriage licenses issued in Cape Girardeau County according to county records: 1998, 616

1999, 668

Divorces filed in Cape Girardeau County

1998, 383

1999, 520