The fleeting nature of happiness seems to be getting proved over and over all around us these days. Friends, couples we have known only as couples, are coming apart at the seams; hidden things are being spilled into public view for all to see.

A pair of longtime friends, J. and R., had dropped off our radar screen for a few months; we knew they were having problems with their teenage daughter, so we left occasional messages offering our support. Then, during the summer, we heard from J, — she and R. were breaking up because R. had been involved in an affair–a homosexual affair.

Yesterday, another one of our friends confided that she was asking her significant other to leave because of his drinking problem. The problem was obvious; we had recently had dinner with them, and he was drunk when we arrived. It was also long-lived; he had a history, but on the surface it had seemed he was making good on promises. Then he quit his job, and all pretense of control was gone.

And then, another couple we know that is in the middle of relocating seemed to come a bit unglued. She left town suddenly, to go to their new house, already bought, leaving him with the kids ; he had to drop them with a neighbor because of work.

Meanwhile, a couple we know from church and our kids' school has been seperated for months; we only found out this week when the rigors of the new school year and soccer practice tore away the illusion of normalcy they had been painting for all but those closely involved.

I am no stranger to this. I've been in an untenable relationship, that I stayed in because I felt obliged to by honor and faith and only left when it was clear that it was necessary to preserve the health of my sons and myself. I count myself more fortunate every day that I did, and that I found a relationship and a marriage that work in the wake of that disaster.

But there are always strains placed on relationships from the outside that challenge. If you're lucky, and patient, and prepared, you can get through many of them. But for some, as Yeats said, “Things fall apart; the center will not hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” The artifices that people build to deal with daily life, to plaster over differences rather than communicate about them, inevitably collapse under their own weight.

Sometimes, the collapse is a good thing-it forces change that is necessary, and clears the air for things to be rebuilt more strongly. But often, the crisis that brings on the collapse is too much to get beyond to make repairs; the resolve to make things right is washed away in the emotion of the moment, and all that remains is the jagged hole.