DIVORCE? NO. MURDER? YES!

The late Ruth Bell Graham, outspoken wife of evangelist Billy Graham was once asked if she had ever contemplated divorcing her husband. Her reply: “Divorce? No. Murder? Yes.”

All of us know couples whose long-term relationship is so turbulent, that it would not surprise us to learn that one had done the other in. Either one could have done it; either one could have been done in. Yet a mysterious cohesive hostility seems to keep them together short of homicide.

Nineteenth century Russian Count Leo Tolstoy famously began one of his novels, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” According to author Daniel Goleman, Tolstoy’s marriage was among the latter.

“A week before their wedding, Tolstoy then thirty-four, shared his personal diary with his fianc