I had a friend once, an eternal optimist, who used to say that people should not discard their spouses or relationships, but that they should work with what they have and try to fix things. And for a while there, I bought it. She looked like she was on point, my friend – older and wiser. 

But over the years, with what I have seen and witnessed around me, I have since disabused myself of that notion. It can’t always be easy. It can’t always be possible to “work with what you have” and salvage it. Not if the ingredients were bad to start off with. No, not if you used bad or wrong ingredients in the first place – the recipe cannot, can never, come out right. 

Starting off a marriage with someone you don’t love; someone you don’t have anything in common with; one whose faith and yours are not compatible; someone you don’t really know; someone who is not generous with you; improvident; someone who can’t comfort you; who does nothing for you emotionally … the list goes on. 

Minus love, minus companionship, minus emotional nourishment, minus common interests, minus physical satisfaction – what do you have? Not enough ingredients, absence of essential ingredients, that’s what! With ill matched temperaments; with no understanding of each other; incompatible faiths; and so forth and so forth – what do you have? Wrong and bad ingredients! 

It is a recipe for disaster and you cannot work with it. It is wrong, should never be. Wrong, period!
For a good recipe, you need the right ingredients in the right amounts, in the first place. No amount of creaming or sifting with a bad egg, will make that cake good! If the cake needs eggs, and there are no good eggs, might as well not bake it. 

It’s all in the foundation – silly! Haven’t you heard of multiple story buildings which had to be demolished because the foundation under them was faulty?