"Just Leave"

If you look at Reddit data from 2010 to 2025, the most common piece of relationship counsel has steadily shifted toward the exit. In 2010, about 31 percent of the advice given was some version of “end the relationship.” By 2025 it’s nearly half. Meanwhile the constructive options have stalled or declined. Advice to communicate dropped from roughly 22 percent to around 15. Suggestions to compromise fell from about 7 percent to under 4. The internet’s instinct when relationships hit difficulty is increasingly simple: leave.

That trend reflects something larger than Reddit. It reveals a cultural instinct that treats hardship in relationships as proof that the relationship itself is the problem. Difficulty gets interpreted as incompatibility rather than as something that might actually grow a couple up. Marriages have dry and difficult seasons. Anyone married long enough knows that. Couples who stay the course through those seasons often come out the other side with something deeper and more durable than what they started with.

Part of the problem is the expectations people bring into marriage. Many walk in assuming their spouse will meet nearly every emotional need and supply the sense of fulfillment they’ve been looking for. When real life fails to deliver, disappointment sets in fast. Then the internet steps in and names the obvious solution: walk away. A wiser framework says the opposite. Lower your expectations of the relationship and raise your commitment to the person.

There is another problem underneath all this. People are seeking counsel from anonymous strangers online. Communities like r/relationship_advice are full of people whose lives you know nothing about. You have no idea whether the person advising you has ever sustained a healthy relationship. You cannot ask if they are still married, whether they have raised children, or whether they have actually walked through difficulty and built something lasting. All you get is a verdict from the crowd. And the crowd is increasingly inclined to give the same verdict every time.

Proverbs says there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors. But it assumes those counselors are real people with wisdom worth weighing. The people best suited to speak into your marriage are the ones who know you, love you, and have some skin in the game. A pastor. A mentor. A couple in your church who have been married thirty or forty years and have weathered storms of their own. Those voices are worth listening to.

The internet often is not.

I will say this means the church has to step up. There is only so much we can do, and there are always people who would have us try to do everything. But the health of your marriages should be near the top of our priorities. Just consider how much attention the epistles give to marriage and the household.

I’m working through what the best approach is for us at East River. There are a lot of ways to go about it, but all of them involve getting married couples together. Especially younger couples spending time with older ones. That kind of proximity and example does a great deal of quiet work over time.