Ready, Aim, Divorce

With all due respect to the truly sad and hurtful divorces, there are some marriages that end with happy divorces and others that are funny. No where more evident than in country music. Songs like "She got the goldmine, I got the shaft" by Jerry Reed. Or Tammy Wynette's D-I-V-O-R-C-E. When you can smile in the face of adversity, you're either insane or you've got life licked!

When one-in-two marriages ends in divorce, the market for divorce cards may be the best investment of the times. That some of them will be funny or ironic is just a perfect fit with the times when there are so many cards for all other occasions that are not PC.

Now, I hear, the new wedding license is printed on flash paper so you can make it disappear the first time your spouse annoys you.

I think the most telling statistic of all is that the odds of couples who have lived together before marriage making it for the long haul are no better than that of those who cohabit for the first time afterward must be the all-time most telling factoid of the importance of knowing and understanding your partner before making a permanent commitment. Nobody seems to know what will happen after the "I do." My own theory is that the moment you get married, you begin to become all the worst characteristics your parents possessed ... unless you learn to deal with your issues before you say "I do."

Frankly, I have little good feeling about a generation that complains about anything being a worthwhile investment of time and effort. Meals have to cook in 45 seconds. Medication has to produce instant relief of all symptoms. Movies have to have happy endings. Work has to have all the elements of play. Bodies (especially those of a significant other) must look like the airbrushed vision of the latest screen god or goddess.

People complain when the person that has been their virtual prisoner for 25 years leaves with half of "their" possessions. They complain when their partner gains a pound when they can no longer see their own shoes when they look down, let alone their own ... never mind.

Frankly, I feel sympathy only when someone has been had by another's capriciousness, insensitivity, outright lying and cheating or violence, not when they bring down the house of cards they created upon themselves.

Divorce like all other high crimes and misdemeanors often has a perpetrator and a victim ... or many more than one victim. Yet, if you were to ask me what my views are on getting married, I would come down firmly in the camp of marriage being the best solution society has come up with overall and until someone comes up with something better, it provides more satisfactions than any other relationship ... despite the fact that it is hard work keeping a marriage on healthy ground.

Unfortunately dating is not the best example of what marriage will be. It always amazes me how people don't realize that there are phases of a relationship. Partying and drinking in your 20's is hardly representative of marriage, although the ones that never get beyond that are really in trouble.

Serious counseling would be quite useful before and during engagement. The whole wedding planning can distract people and create a very false idea of what is ahead. Too much energy is spent on the party. ( I did it too but sure wish that the emphasis was on relationship building rather than fun city!).

Thanks for your sound input Milt T

Celebrating divorce may seem inappropriate to some because we insist on always seeing divorce as a failure. Milt suggests that our high rate of divorce is characteristic of a culture where avoidance of hard work, insistence on perfection for everyone but ourselves, and a demand for instant and total gratification is the norm. That curmudgeonly disapproval isn't so cute after you've made a visit to the nearest women's shelter and seen women who saved their lives by running from their marriage. Moreover, our traditional attitudes toward divorce need to change because they don't just affect the adults involved. Kids are made to feel like failures too when clucking tongues talk about "broken homes." It may very well be that Mommy or Daddy fixed the family when they got a divorce. So if divorce cards make everyone feel a little better about the situation, good for them!

As far as I can tell there is not one thing funny about divorce. Sending cards about the issue only adds to the negativity of the expereince despite how certain you are that you are doing the right thing. Yes, divorce is a normal part of our lives, but not a good part. Make the divorce as acrimonous as possible and then move on. No reminders needed. It is over.