Her husband said: "I don't really think it's all that bad. We've got a lot going for us: the kids are doing fine, we go to church, my wife is active in the church, God is blessing our business. Our marriage is better off than a lot of other folks' I know."

Yet the simple truth is: the marriage is in trouble, and for all practical purposes, this husband and wife are emotionally divorced. They are together, but for all the wrong reasons.

Where did they learn to do marriage that way? Probably from their own parents. We do have a tendency to perpetuate -- generation after generation -- those same patterns of relating, communicating, and sparring which we saw in our parents. We tend to perpetuate those patterns even when we know that their marriage was less than ideal.

Why? We do so simply because that model of marriage is the one to which we are most exposed.

Where will children learn of marriage if not in the home where they are raised? What other models are available to them?

Television provides an abundance of models. Older shows such as Ozzie and Harriet, My Three Sons, and Father Knows Best portrayed family life in a more favorable light than most modern productions. Family life was more stable. Problems were much more simple. Father was always given the prominent place, even if he was usually seen as something of a klutz.

Ozzie, Fred, and Bob Anderson could never fix anything around the house. Their faculties of reasoning and deduction always seemed lacking. Mother's primary role appeared to be to keep Father on his pedestal, no matter what.

Yet, such caricatures are not realistic portrayals of life. Everything is more complicated now than in the fifties. Wives and mothers are not nearly so likely to be that dependent upon, or protective of father. Such fiction is an entirely inadequate model for contemporary marriage.

However, the portrayal of marriage in current television programming is no better. Marriage is too often cast in the light of competition between spouses. One is a public defender; her spouse is a police captain. The nature of their professional relationship is adversarial. One is a highly influential attorney; his spouse is a high-powered corporate executive.

Most often, marriage appears to be for convenience sake, not for keeps. The emphasis is upon husbands and wives being friends instead of husbands and wives: working together toward intimacy; co-operating in unity; holding values sacred and instilling them deliberately in their children.

According to modern media, the crucial problems for today's families deal with cell phone coverage; choosing the right cat food for a finicky cat; avoiding dirty, soapy residue on clean dishes; and whether you should choose Mac or PC.

Obviously, modern television is out of touch with where families are and what marriage is all about! By the same token, many of the traditional models of marriage have proven to be just as empty.

In our efforts to protect traditional views for tradition's sake only, we have too willingly debated the roles and functions within marriage almost to the total neglect of concern over right relationships in marriage and family.