… we had shorter life spans.

I was chatting with someone recently who pointed out to me that marriages didn’t last that long back in the old days either, because “till death do you part” was much more frequently the reality. Is it reasonable to say that people would not have trouble committing to being married with someone until death if they knew that person might not live very long anyway?

Think about it – death from childbirth, disease, infection, and so forth is much less common

than it once was. So, nowadays, you see the result: people don’t stay together because their marriage has outlived their “natural” life span. Or, to put it another way, the marriage itself dies before either partner of the couple does.

Divorce happens at such a high rate, shouldn’t our vows be more along the lines of, let’s stay married until we find a mutually acceptable alternative, then equitably divide our assets and get on with our lives separately?

Some people scoff at pre-nuptial agreements, but I think they are ultimately a very sensible and practical strategy for preventing an acrimonious parting in the future.

Or, better yet, why not just NOT get married at all (like TBH and M.) There are many reasons why this is sometimes unbelievably inconvenient, as you can read about at TBH’s blog, and other situations in which it turns out to be an advantage.

I am considering all this in the context of what divorce meant to me as a kid. It was a horrible spectre whose shadow loomed over me, until it finally came to pass and no amount of effort on the part of my own broken kid-sized heart could change the unhappiness that permeated my life. In short, it sucked.

Plus, I have two close friends who are in the middle of horrid divorces with nasty custody disputes piled on top, like the rancid cherry that sat in the jar in the fridge for about 10 years before, as a kid, I decided to pull it out and taste its sour waxy taste. I am also close to a really great kid, G., an almost-adult at 17 years of age, whose philandering dad decided to put a hastey close on his 20+ yr marriage.

All this close up and personal exposure to divorce has really loosened the tight lid on my buried childhood feelings about this topic. There’s a lot of contradictory feelings that go with divorce in my head.

There’s the gladness I feel that one friend has separated from her toxic spouse, but the sadness I feel for the emotional upheaval that her 4 year old (M.) must go through. I am terrified for another little girl (A.) whose parents have split and her mom’s new beau is a drug dealer (supposedly) and the kid seems to have to duck bullets from time to time. Her dad (my friend in this case) is trying to get custody but it’s not easy. And meanwhile, little A., is feeling that manipulative tug that comes when your super strong love of your mom is tested by questions like “who would you rather live with?” and “if you don’t choose me, I’ll never see you again.”

In G’s case, I feel the most affected. After all, it was when I was about his age, or a bit younger that the last remaining bits of glue that had held my fractured family together finally crumbled into a sticky pile of goo. Who can you trust when you’re a teen? Certainly not your self-absorbed obnoxious parents who can’t even run their own lives. They can’t even do a simple thing like behave civilly.

In the end, yes, the dust settles after the wars end. And the kids carry the scars; at least I can look back at the trauma and quietly whisper to myself… hey, I survived this event. At least my parents didn’t die.

UPDATE: I am closing the ability to leave comments on this particular post because I keep getting spam comments on this post. I would love comments on this post, but since it’s an old post and all I get are spam comments on this one post, I’m turning comments off for the post. If you would like to comment, just email me directly! thanks! pann AT thisexaminedlife DOT com