Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are the main reasons for increased divorce rates?“

The enveloping reason for increased divorce rates is due to natural human evolution. Our times are characterized by exiting the animal level of development and rising to the human level. In other words, nature is urging us to connect as a single global interdependent framework of humanity.

Since there is a growing need to connect as a single global system, we find our personal connections breaking more and more. Nature wants us to look beyond the family framework in order for us to later return to it on a different level, i.e. where we feel humanity as a single family.

In our individual lives, we experience a feeling of being in love, where we are overtaken by powerful emotions, excitement, inspiration, and a seeming perfection that was worth striving for in order to be together and upon which we could build a family. However, over time, we lost this feeling. Why, then, do we naturally fall in love if later that feeling dissipates?

What we need to understand is that we are in a system that nature runs. In this system, nature wants us to discover true eternal love, i.e. as love exists in nature itself. In the process, it wants us to detach from the conceptions and feelings of being in love that we experience temporarily in our current reality. We thus need to change our instinctive attraction to the other sex, which is fueled by natural passion and hormones, to a more goal-oriented connection.

We form the connections we currently know because we live for our children or our shared household. Moreover, being together is convenient because it lets us support each other as we grow older. Today, however, we need to find a new deeper kind of connection. We thus see more and more cases of divorce because we are in this transitional era where we already start feeling an increasing lack in the traditional frameworks that once held us together, that there is an additional and more sublime drive that we need in order to sustain and grow a happy family in our times.

If we can tap into this drive, which we have yet to accurately identify, we can set ourselves off on a path to discover a completely new feeling that emerges in a more goal-oriented connection to each other. We can then springboard from our increasing distaste toward our current frameworks to seek connections on a whole other level: a much stronger and warmer family-like connection among all humanity. If we enter such a sensation, then we discover a fulfillment that we have never felt before. It is as if we float freely, becoming very light and feeling an eternal thrush of life permeate us.

While we have the opportunity and the ability to determine these new goal-oriented connections through connection-enriching education, we see how these explanations go largely unnoticed. Nature thus prods us from behind by means of pain and suffering, and we find all kinds of connections that we once held shattering, with divorce being a key indicator of our broken connections in relation to the family. The purpose of this increasing feeling of detachment we feel, including the increasing divorce rates, is in order for us to get sick of our separation and develop a sincere new desire to connect on a whole other level. Eventually, we will make motions to connect in this new way, since we will find that otherwise we will be cornered. When we start connecting as nature requires us to, we will then discover the beauty in such connection.

Therefore, together with the increasing irreconcilable hatred and disagreements that break up more and more families, there surfaces a new sincere need for love. If we all understand the sublime fulfillment that true love brings, then we will want to have these feelings in our families. We will then return to the family after we learn how to love the entirety of humanity, and we will then wish to share a deeper and more uniquely personal and internal version of this connection with a spouse.

Based on New Life episode 19 on February 2, 2012 with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, Oren Levi and Tal Mandelbaum Moshe.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

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New Life 1308 – Concession, The Means For Better Communication In A Couple
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

The internal psychology of a man and a woman is totally different and this is the reason for all of our communication problems. Successful communication depends on one’s ability to work above the ego and make concessions. Making concessions unconditionally means investing all of one’s powers in serving one’s partner.

We love when each one tries to feel, live in, and fulfill the desire of the partner. We show the other we are trying even though it’s hard, that we are willing to make the effort anyway. It is a kind of a game that becomes real as you get used to it. A person who develops the attribute of making concessions discovers the force that connects and ties all parts of creation as one.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1308 – Concession, The Means For Better Communication In A Couple,” 5/30/21

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New Life 1307 – Why It Is Difficult For Men And Women To Communicate
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

A woman is usually more warm and emotional and a man is more practical. A woman is made of different forms: she is 25% mother, 25% little girl, 25% woman and 25% man. A man does not give birth and so he doesn’t change. He is a reserved, limited creature. Complementation is built on the feeling that each side wants to connect with the other because they see a real gain in life as a result of the connection. A couple should get used to speaking about everything and expressing what they feel with words. We need to learn to connect to each other carefully and gently, to gradually open our hearts and develop love between us until we finally merge correctly as two opposites and feel as one body.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1307 – Why It Is Difficult For Men And Women To Communicate,” 5/23/21

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Comment: Let’s talk about first love. You know, the first feeling is that you froze, something happened to you! Something skipped a beat, and you are ready to give everything and all your life, just not to break away. Just for her. This object is everything!

I remember the girl Tanya. I remember my first feeling when I looked at her like that! I wanted her to pay attention to me. And all the time I was looking for a place to be closer to her. All the time, just for her to pay attention! She didn’t.

My Response: This is natural. It’s the same for everyone.

Comment: This feeling is given to us.  It is unforgettable. Not in 20 years, 40 years, or even in 80 years does a person not forget it.

Answer: No, until the end.

Question: Do you remember your first love?

Answer: I also met her here in Israel when I was about 60 and she was the same age. She became very ill and died. Her husband called me and told me that Luda had died.

Question: Was it your unanswered love? In childhood?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Why is the first love not realized? Why? Such a feeling!

Answer: So that you can always dream about it. About the very feeling of love, about this feeling. And if you were to connect, you would ruin that feeling. In this way, the Creator places it among people, and it is in this spiritual form that you strive for, but it is unattainable.

Question: So it’s like the Creator says, “Remember this all the time”?

Answer: Yes. It’s sitting somewhere in you.

Question: That is, this feeling when you are ready to give everything, you forget yourself, you dissolve in the other?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Is this what gets into a person’s heart? Like a splinter. And is it there all the time?

Answer: Yes. And everyone has it.

Question: Whom do I love? I love her at this moment of the first love?

Answer: No, you don’t even see her as a matter of fact. You are looking at her not with the right eyes. You were just shown that there is some spark in her that attracts you, and that’s all. And you want to see that spark all the time.

Question: Is it in order for me to always look for that kind of love?

Answer: You don’t even have to look for it, you are just tied to it.

Question: So this is all happening for me to know that such love exists?

Answer: Yes. So that you know what striving means.

Question: And so you would strive for this?

Answer: Yes. But, as a rule, no one gets marrieds to their first love.

Question: Is there an upper force behind this, the Creator?

Answer: Of course, this all goes according to the upper program! This is very well thought through, we are brought up in this way.

Question: Can we say that this means that the next sentence will be: “The Creator is love,” “God is love”? Is that what He wants to tell us?

Answer: It’s at the end. This is after you have lived one and maybe more than one life, and have accumulated a few more such impressions from your first loves. Then you will feel what it really is—true love.

Question: Will I then feel that I did not relate to her, but it was all to the Creator?

Answer: No, of course, not to her.

You haven’t even seen her. There was a spark placed in her for you, for which you were striving all the time. Otherwise, there is nothing.

Therefore, it is very, very rare that people meet for the first time (at school or somewhere else), fall in love, get married, have children, create a family, and live the rest of their lives together. I’ve seen a few cases like this, but… I’ve always been very interested in looking at them.

As a rule, they have many children. Interesting. And they somehow understand each other very, very clearly.

Comment: These are happy couples.

My Response: Yes. This is very rare.

The first love is given, so that we realize that we need to seek eternal, upper, true love. Not a person to a person, and not a person to a party, and not a person to the motherland. Only to the Creator. Through other people—love for the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/1/21

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Question: Why in many cultures and religions does a woman rank lower than a man?

Answer: It is because all cultures and religions are egoistic and since the male part is similar to the Creator and the female part is similar to the creature, so the woman is supposedly in a lower rank.

Comment: I suppose that in some areas women have more of a prerogative than men. For example, during pregnancy, only the woman becomes the “mistress of the house” of the fetus and can decide from her own freewill whether to have an abortion or not, without asking the man.

My Response: We are not talking about prerogatives that nature has determined for us. Whether a man or a woman, we do what we want with our body; this has no pertinence to us.

Question: What are the left and right reins in spiritual work and what is the whip if I want to control and manage my “horse,” the ego?

Answer: There are many components here in the cart, in the wagon, in the person and in the reins. This is a complete system that is called a spiritual Partzuf. This entire system is actually a metaphor for the soul, and we will learn about it.

Question: How should a man support a woman in a relationship, and vice versa, how can a woman support a man?

Answer: It is simply up to them to understand each other and to try to give the other the opportunity to learn and support him or her. I would not want to talk about more than that, otherwise you will ruin everything. You might begin by helping each other in such a way that nothing will be left of your group, it will seem to you that this is so simple. The wisdom of Kabbalah exerts such enormous forces among us that you simply have to be careful! In no way should you make definitive movements.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/3/19

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Will women save the world?

Question: Knowing how huge male egoism is and how much it has become hardened in the process of evolution, will women save the world?

Answer: Yes, women will save the world. If they want to, men will bend under it everywhere and always.

When I visit different countries, special communities and peoples, I always wonder who is in charge of their family. Who rules: a male voice (“I am the master!”) or a female voice?

The man replies: “Of course I am!” But as soon as his wife takes a look at him, everything becomes clear. And so it is everywhere, in all cultures. It comes from a spiritual root.

Women need to give men the right direction in life. After all, they can run away anywhere, and women, as a mother, must control them a little on the way to the Creator. Men need it.

If it were not for women, men would make this world a complete sandbox, or numerous tourist routes, or races, football, anything except a normal life with the right development. This is indeed the case. Therefore, the feminine part is very important, especially in Kabbalah.

We can see how much in the last 100 years a woman has rushed forward, become independent, strong, broke through to all the authorities, and so forth. All this is precisely because we are moving toward the correction of a world in which female power, strength, her quality and devotion are necessary to achieve the highest goal.

So, men, listen to the women. In each group, try to increase the strength of the female part as much as possible. Women should be promoted and try to exploit their consistency to make the group more stable.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/3/19

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How does a woman influence a man?

Question: If a man studies the wisdom of Kabbalah and scrutinizes what he studies and his wife does not object, then he is the receiver of the light. Can we say that when a woman studies the wisdom of Kabbalah and the husband objects, but then changes his mind after a while, is it the woman who influenced him?

Answer: A woman influences a man much more than a man influences a woman. When a woman studies the wisdom of Kabbalah her husband will certainly follow her, but when a man studies the wisdom of Kabbalah, his wife will not always follow him.

We can see this in every country and in every nation, it is the same everywhere. A man eventually listens to his wife.

A woman who studies the wisdom of Kabbalah can bring the family in the right direction, whereas the husband cannot because he has to “steal” time from the family from time to time in order to engage in what he loves.

This is the reason that I ask the women to pay attention and to make sure that the men will be able to study properly.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/3/19

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Spiritual Understanding in the Family

Question: Did you discuss the relationship between a man and a woman with Rabash and if so what was his opinion?

Answer: No. The only thing I can say is that his wife, on the one hand, understood what he was doing, but on the other hand, she did not engage in it herself.

They were born at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was a completely different time, a different era, a different society.

Comment: But you write in your memoirs about Rabash that he and his wife had a very strong bond.

My Response: Indeed, there was a strong inner bond between them. They both felt each other, although they did not engage in spiritual activities together. This is all a matter for the future. Therefore, I do not advise you to impose such interactions in families now.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/3/19

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Each Develops on Their Own

Question: What do a husband and wife need to take into account if they begin to study Kabbalah together? How should they help each other and what should they avoid?

Answer: I don’t think that when they study Kabbalah they will immediately want to help each other. Each of them will experience their own states.

It takes a very long time, months, and even years before they begin to understand the possibility of studying together, of putting their spiritual forces into it together. It will take years before they feel that they both have one soul. It is no simple matter.

It will not happen in a day. We are just beginning this path so it is best not to disturb one another. In the beginning each one develops on their own.

Children, for example, cannot play with each other before the age of three. They play on their own, each with their own toys, and if you offer a child to play with someone else, he will not understand it. They don’t have the perception of society yet.

It is the same when we study Kabbalah. When we begin to study Kabbalah, we do not feel others. It overtakes us and seizes each one separately. So we should not disturb each other during this time, but instead try to allow each one to develop independently until we reach a certain level of maturity.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/3/19

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Is it Possible to Create Harmony Between a Man and a Woman?

Question: Is it possible to create some kind of harmony between a man and a woman if he is engaged in Kabbalah and she is not, and they seem to have different interests and goals?

Answer: On a purely everyday level, if they value their family and children, then of course they can. But at the same time, everyone will have to sacrifice something.

The problem is that it is much more difficult for a man who studies Kabbalah to give up and pay attention to his wife and children. After all, Kabbalah takes a lot of time and most importantly thoughts, feelings, and heart.

But this all applies to the transition period. I think that this will very quickly turn into a normal situation in all of humanity and people will begin to understand their nature.

All the same, now the family has such a vague image that there is nothing wrong if the husband is engaged in Kabbalah, attends some circles, watches lessons at night. Is there anything different in other families? Today, every family is disfigured in its own way.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 3/3/19

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