I wasn’t that surprised when I saw this article today…

The economic crisis may be doing what pastors, family therapists and matrimonial counselors have long struggled to accomplish: keeping troubled marriages together.

Marriage counselors and divorce lawyers nationwide say more distressed couples are putting off divorce because the cost of splitting up is prohibitive in a time of stagnant salaries, plummeting home values and rising unemployment.

While the stress of economic uncertainty often worsens already shaky unions, it also can make couples more financially dependent on each other, said Pamela Smock, a researcher at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

“Anything of this magnitude that’s going to affect millions of people does not bode well for all sorts of families,” she said. “It could keep unhappy couples together.”

That’s what happened to a client of Robi S. Ludwig, a psychotherapist in New York.

“I had a woman say to me: ‘My God, I can’t stand my husband. Every day I just want to leave him, but I can’t afford it,’” said Ludwig, co-author of “Till Death Do Us Part,” an examination of severely dysfunctional marriages. “So they are deciding to stay together.”

Jeff Grumley, a marriage counselor in Loves Park, Ill., north of Rockford, said he had seen a 25 percent jump in business in recent months as couples tried to save their marriages, and their money. Ten sessions cost about $1,000, Grumley said — not exactly pocket change, but far better than the tens of thousands of dollars a divorce costs.

“I think people feel desperate,” Grumley said.

When my great-grandma and great-grandpa were struggling in their marriage in the tough years after the depression, they couldn’t afford to divorce, either… That’s aside from the social stigma that divorce brought with it in those days.  My guess is that they must have really not liked each other at all if they were actually contemplating a split. 

Rather than give up completely, they decided to plant a little pine tree.  If it lived, they would stay together.  If it died, they’d divorce.  (This is a true story, by the way.)

That summer was a hot and dry one, and the odds were against the little tree and my grandparents’ marriage.  On one particularly scorching day, my grandma happened to look out the window and see my proud and manly grandpa, sneaking a bucket of water down the hill to the little tree.  He carefully watered it and then sneaked back to his farm chores.

This prompted my grandma to start secretly watering the little tree, and something that may have seemed like a silly thing to bet a marriage on turned into a symbol of love that grew tall and wide as their devotion to each other.  They remained married until my great-grandpa’s death in 1982.

Every marriage goes through tough times, but what used to be struggled through and worked on is now cast aside at the first sign of unhappiness. 

I happen to think that this news of people having to stay married and work through tough times is a great thing, and if good things like this continue to come out of our crummy economy, we may just find ourselves going back to what really matters in life, and we just may rediscover where true peace, joy and contentment can be found.  

We could all stand to learn a lesson or two.