Imagine if you and your spouse were the only two people on earth. If you were the only two people on earth, there would be no such thing as divorce. Divorce exists, almost entirely, because of outside influences.

We compare our spouse and our relationship to other options. We compare our spouse to other people. We compare our relationship with what other couples have. We compare marriage itself with the option of being single again. And we allow other activities to interfere with our relationship, ie; career goals, social activities, porn, etc. None of that would happen if you and your spouse were the only two people on earth.

Even the arguments you have with your spouse are mainly about options. What to spend money on, where to live, what events to go to or not go to, etc. Some of these issues would still come up if you were the only two people on earth, but far less often. And such decisions would be based entirely on what’s best for survival, whereas in societal life it’s almost always about two things:

1. What other people are going to think about you, and
2. Whether there’s something or someone else that will make you happier.

If you and your spouse were the only two people on earth there would be no one else to impress, and there would be no outside influences to make you think you’d be happier. When there’s an option to go looking elsewhere, you’re more likely to do that, instead of working with what you’ve got.

If you and your spouse were the only two people on earth and you happened to fight about something, you’d almost certainly work it out. Even if you separated for awhile, you’d still help each other out, and eventually would live together again. At the very least, one of you would need the other on occasion, but more likely you’d both need each other regularly. Unless one of you became abusive (which itself would be less likely without outside influences), there would be almost no reason to ever permanently separate.

This little thought experiment shows that most couples would be able to stay together if it weren’t for outside influences. We should keep that in mind when it comes to the influences we allow into our life.