There are some things you can do without in marriage – and still have a pretty good marriage. Commitment is NOT one of those things. It is foundational. If you don’t have it, your marriage is toast. But, the good news is, even if you don’t have it right now, you can choose to be committed today and start building this essential piece into your marriage.

There is a lot of content out there about marriage. A lot of people are talking about a diversity of things in the world of marriage. Some of it is helpful. But I want you to think of commitment like one of the crown jewels. You need to protect it, preserve it, and give it special attention. Commitment is one of the core areas at the heart of a healthy, lasting, thriving marriage.

What is Marital Commitment?

Think of words like loyalty, faithfulness, dedication, maybe even focus or integrity.

In the research, there are a variety of definitions that range from vague (“having a long term orientation toward the relationships”[i]) to specific (personal: wanting to stay married, moral: feeling morally obligated to stay married, and structural: feeling constrained to stay married[ii]).

Perhaps you are a little cynical about commitment due to your circumstances or history or even the experience of your parent’s marriage and think it is overrated. You prefer your freedom to being tied to another person.

Ironically, a study in 2002 showed that couples with higher levels of commitment felt less trapped and were more satisfied with their relationships. Higher commitment creates more freedom and more satisfaction.

We have jokes and comments in our society about the “ball and chain” of marriage and how a man is trapped once he’s been to the altar, but this is not the reality. The experience of highly-committed couples is one of greater satisfaction and even a greater sense of freedom because they have that secure base in their marriage.

So the question to ask your self is how committed are you, right now, to your spouse?

The Consequences of Abandonment

The opposite of commitment could be abandonment. This often happens through divorce or infidelity.

How Divorce Affects Spouses and Children

Divorce, in particular, is especially devastating. We have a textbook in our office written for marriage therapists that states emphatically that we just need to get over divorce being a big deal and we need to just accept it as a normal transition in our culture. That is total garbage! The reality is that divorce is devastating.

Here’s what the research says about divorce:

Divorced individuals are unhappier, have more psychological distress and have poorer self-concepts.

Divorced individuals have more problems with their health and greater mortality risk.

Divorce can lead to greater levels of depression and alcohol use.

Children of divorced families struggle in school, have more conduct issues, struggle in social situations, and have lower self-concepts.[iii]

There is also a generational impact from abandonment and low marital commitment. Another study by the same researcher found that marital instability is transmitted across generations because children see the weak commitment of their parents, which becomes the norm to them. So, when they consider their own marriages this is their native paradigm.

In their study, they found that children who had divorced parents had double the likelihood of their own marriage ending in divorce. In looking at this, the reason given for this elevated risk of divorce was because they “hold a comparatively weak commitment to the norm of life long marriage.”[iv]

Serious stuff.

How Infidelity Affects Commitment

The obvious point from the research on this one is that infidelity is a leading cause for divorce, and only a small portion of couples who go through infidelity are able to improve their relationship afterwards. [v]

The consequences of infidelity are a loss of trust,