Divorce Matters

It’s difficult to overstate how profound getting divorced is. What’s amazing is that, in these strange, postmodern times, some people try to convince themselves to downplay or minimize it – as if to fully register its impact would be too devastating, too humiliating, even just too much of a hassle, and not worth the effort.

It’s worth the effort.

And yes, right away I’ll concede that a divorce can occur that may very well mean that two people, not meant to be together, have mutually agreed the marriage should end.

 

Even that divorce is huge.

 

But most divorces are messier. A divorce is a seismic event for anyone honestly trying to have a good life. It’s an end and a beginning. It’s a tragedy. It’s liberation. It’s a chapter of a fairy tale, or of a nightmare. It’s a failure. It’s the culmination of a “script.” It’s a form of death. It’s a truth – about oneself, the other, and the way the world really is.

 

Divorce is many things – and for our purposes, here, it’s an opportunity. The premise is that it’s possible to speak honestly and intelligently, with heart, about divorce, and not have it be too self-pitying, self-indulgent, self-justifying, humorless, or otherwise devoid of awareness and emotional honesty. 

 

Yes, grieving is necessary, and some of that can be raw, and take awhile, but what’s next in our lives depends on how open we are to seeing, and trying to understand, what we were “up to” as we moved through the marriage – and arrived here.