Do half of all marriages really end in divorce? It’s probably the most often quoted statistic about modern love. It’s basically in line with saying that half of all new shoes will give you hammertoes or that 50% of babies will grow up to be ugly. While a large percentage of couples still call it quits despite their vows of “for better or worse”, the fact is the divorce rate in the United States is actually on the decline—about 40%.”

Why is that? What is it that makes couples throw in the towel and call it quits? Steven and Sophia had two very good reasons—infidelity and addiction. On the surface, this was a family that looked like they had everything going for them. Their family portrait could have been chosen for the cover of the March Issue of Parenting Magazine. Behind closed doors, it was quite a different story. The smiles faded, the voices elevated, and the knot that got tied at the marriage ceremony was working its way loose.

Steven’s upbringing was what you might call uneventful. Hard-working parents who provided for their children. There were alcoholic beverages in the kitchen cabinet but they sat right next to the soda pop and Steven never gave it a second thought. Sure, he had tasted alcohol when he was 13, but it wasn’t until his freshman year that he’d felt he crossed the line. “I took a hit of marijuana and got hooked immediately,” Steven remembers. “I quickly became more interested in getting high then doing my school work so I dropped out.”

Steven moved to Texas to get away from the “pot heads” but turned to alcohol to make up for the loss of weed. “At the age of 19,” Steven recalls, “I had already received two DUIs, neither of which slowed down my drinking.” That’s when he met the love of his life, Sophia.

They were a match made in heaven, or so they thought. Little did Sophia know, Steven was a ticking time bomb—ready to go off at a moment’s notice. His drinking increased, but it was all behind the scenes. Sophia had no idea how bad it was getting—until she got the phone calls. The hospitals and police kept calling. He’d been found once again, passed-out—drunk.

The elephant in the room was clearly visible. It was time to do something. They both decided that marriage counseling and a 30-day rehab program for Steven was a good start. They had no idea at the time, but they had just released the floodgates of hell. That wedge in their marriage was about to split them right in half. The 30 days in rehab was about as long as Steven could last without a drink. He fell right off the wagon that took him out of rehab and dropped him on his head. If that wasn’t bad enough, the marriage counseling took a turn for the worse. There was intimacy on an emotional level, but it wasn’t between Steven and Sophia. Sophia was now embarking on an emotional affair with their counselor.

“I thought I could handle this emotional affair I had begun with our counselor,” says Sophia, “I figured that after a while I would feel normal and my conscious would die—but it didn’t.” When Sophia was with her children, there were flashes of hope, but the reality of the situation would rear its ugly head and thoughts of suicide entered the equation. “I literally had to kneel down, look my children in their eyes, and recognize that I was fulfilling my own needs instead of theirs,” Sophia explains.

Their marriage was unraveling at a rapid pace and their children were hanging in the balance. Sophia broke it off with the counselor and turned to alcohol to numb the pain. Now they were both drinking away their marriage—and at an alarming rate. By the grace of God, they tumbled upon some information about the Teen Challenge family center.

When they arrived at Teen Challenge, Sophia recalls, “I wondered where I was and how I got there.” It was as if they were awaking from a coma. Steven goes on to say, “Honestly, my plan was to come here for 6 months, or until I got back on my feet, and then we’d move on.” Steven doesn’t stop there, “I had no hope for real change, but God had other plans for me and my family.”