Westerners generally marry for love, romance and fun. Once the love and excitement dissipate - goodbye marriage and on to the next one.
Love is very important. But all too often, that love is really self love. I don't love the other person but how s/he makes me feel. Once s/he doesn't make me feel so great anymore - Sayonara ["adios" in Yiddish].
In the previous century there was a well known Rosh Yeshiva who was married to the daughter of one of the Gedolei Hador. They were both great people but their personalities didn't mesh well and they got divorced. [In the hundreds of pages of his biography that was published a few years ago, the divorce was never mentioned...]. He remarried another woman until she passed away. Then he became sick with cancer and his first wife remarried him so that she could live with him and take care of him, which she faithfully did until his very untimely passing [his Torah was so incredibly sweet and deep which made his loss all the more painful].
Wow!! Marriage for chesed. Marriage for service. Marriage for care. Not marriage for fun. Taking care of a cancer patient is anything but fun.
מי כעמך ישראל!!!
