Adultery and divorce - Adultery is one way to get a divorce in a covenant marriage, one of the very few ways.

Heavily promoted by the "marriage movement", covenant marriages are viewed as a solution to spiraling divorce rates. Requiring greater legal and moral imperatives than traditional matrimony, covenant marriages, in the states that permit them, are much more difficult to break than normal marriages. The only sufficient grounds for divorce in covenant marriages are adultery and abuse. Otherwise, couples must wait at least two years and seek marital counseling to try and break a covenant marriage.

This extra level of commitment prior to taking vows may actually reduce high divorce rates. Preliminary results from a five year study by the University of Virginia suggests that divorce rates among covenant marriages are as little as one-third that of normal marriages. This study will conclude in 2005, and the numbers may change.

Couples have been slow to commit to the promise of covenant marriages. Only three states permit them by law (Arkansas, Louisiana, and Arizona), and in those states the percentages of covenant marriages are negligible. Even in Louisiana, where 53% of the population is Catholic and covenant marriages are closely aligned with the Catholic concept of marriage for life, only 2% of couples opt for covenant marriages.

With the current backlash against non-traditional marriages, proponents of covenant marriage may find renewed support among state legislatures and the general public.