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I recently read an article about military folks having job security during the credit crunch. The soldier’s wife who wrote it stated how grateful she is that her husband has a safe job during these difficult financial times.

I can see where she’s coming from, I really can. But the whole thing saddened me. The thought that people we love are more valued than ever risking their lives to “bring home the bacon” in case the depression/recession worsens made me think, isn’t it time we re-evaluated our whole social structure?

Are our marriage problems really going to be resolved or kept at bay because our significant other is still paid to be part of an organisation whose purpose is to kill other people? It is a very sad day indeed when we are saying “thank God for war.” (Because it means “I’m all right, Jack.”)

I’m not blaming that woman or her husband. I’m sure they are lovely people, and he is a brave guy whom we would dub a hero. It isn’t them, or the countless others who must be in similar circumstances.

We need a whole shift in our cultural and political thinking.

The fact is there is enough food and shelter for everyone on this planet. There is only one world with lumps of land on it that somebody sometime claimed chunks of for themselves and then became prepared to kill other people if anyone else tried to get it from them, or had some fundamental belief about how to live that wasn’t shared by the folks on a neighbouring lump of land!

Now that the credit crunch is here, shouldn’t we be looking at sharing everything: land, food, shelter, oil, resources in general? Then we wouldn’t need money and we wouldn’t require war!

Add that to the global warming problem, (had you forgotten that?), and we have surely long passed the day when we simply throw open the doors and our arms and declare “Everyone’s welcome everywhere!”

It is said that Hell is a place where everyone is made to stand around a gigantic cauldron of delicious food that bubbles away eternally. Everybody has a ladle strapped to their wrist that makes it impossible to bring the food to their mouth.

Heaven is said to be exactly the same, except that there everyone feeds each other.

Wouldn’t we have happier marriages if we were happier people? Doesn’t it make you feel good when you make someone else feel good? You can make them laugh, sort out their boy/girlfriend problems, give advice about how to cook a dinner, send a card or an email … the ways to make people happy are without number, and every one of them will make you feel good. Most of them cost nothing too.

So why do we think that if you have a husband, wife or partner who risks his or her life in the business of taking the lives of others makes our existence better? How can that solve anyone’s marriage problems?

Someone else’s husband may not be coming home in Afghanistan or Iraq or somewhere that “we” don’t like right now. This is not the way to a happy marriage or to resolve marriage problems!

Call me naive and utopian, but frankly, all the other choices seem pretty dark right now.

Anyone else got any thoughts?

Trevor Emdon is a self improvement author, life coach and workshop leader. He is a trained mental health professional & NLP practitioner.

For advice, free articles and more about heartbreak recovery, visit his website www.trust-in-relationships.com