This week, something I heard during a sermon stayed with me.
The speaker described a study about couples who were having difficulties in their marriages. As I understood it, one group spent time with couples who had worked through their problems and stayed together. Another spent time with couples who had divorced. According to the account shared in the sermon, divorce was more common in the second group.
I don’t know the details of that study, and I wouldn’t assume that the friendships alone caused those outcomes. But the example made me think about how much the people around us can influence what we see as possible.
I’m not saying divorce is bad or that staying married is always the right decision. Every relationship has its own circumstances. What caught my attention was how other people’s experiences might shape the way we approach our own choices.
When we’re struggling, we often turn to the people close to us. We hear what they went through, what they tried, and what they would do in our situation. Their experiences become part of how we understand ours.
That can happen in marriage, but also in parenting, business, and everyday life. If everyone around me responds to a problem in a certain way, I might begin to see that response as the obvious choice. I may not even notice how much those conversations are shaping my thinking.
It makes me want to be more aware of whose advice I’m taking and why. Are they listening to my situation, or seeing their own experience in it? Am I considering different perspectives, or only hearing the one that supports what I already feel?
I don’t want to surround myself only with people who agree with me or have made the same choices. I want people who care enough to listen, be honest, and help me think clearly—even when their lives look different from mine.
The sermon left me with a question: how much of what I choose comes from what I believe, and how much comes from what has become familiar through the people around me?