In the wake of the split of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt
this week, I’ve taken notice of a trend: everyone
is a marriage expert. From memes of Jennifer Anniston’s smug face to statements
like “Karma is a bitch, if he cheats with you, he will cheat ON you.” Everyone
has something to say about this. And, yes. I know. There are a hundred or more other
important news events that I could write about right now, but I’ve been struck
today by my anger and frustration over this. I guess it’s just that marriage by
itself is just so fucking hard. Double the hard by adding kids to the mix.
Triple the hard, I can only assume, by being a celebrity. I was talking about
this with the woman who was combing head lice out of my daughter’s hair
yesterday. (Which is another story for another post…now is just too soon.) She
wanted to gossip about it, and I just said, “I can’t imagine how hard it must
be for all of them.” She looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I said, “I
recently went through a divorce and it was terribly hard, and no one knows who
the hell I am. All you want to do in a divorce is to shelter your children from
all of it. I can’t imagine being so much in the public eye that shelter isn’t even
an option.”
Furthermore? When did every human being on the planet become
such a sanctimonious asshole about marriage? Puh-lease. “Oooh. You got what you
deserved!” Is this really what people think? What about, sometimes you don’t
know what people are going through? How about, you don’t have a clue what is
happening – or not happening, as the case may be – behind closed doors? What
happens when people change, during the marriage, or as a result of it, and then
the relationship is suddenly not what it was when it started? What if maybe
having children changes the entire nature of the relationship? What if there are
suddenly not enough hours during the day to nurture children, and to nurture a
marriage, and maybe the two spouses don’t know how to connect anymore after the
disconnect happens? Maybe you wake up one day and you don’t know who the
person sharing your bed is anymore? What if the way you were raised, and what
you saw as an example of marriage happens to shape your own marriage? What if
you become someone you didn’t like as a result of being married? Maybe becoming
that person was to try to fit in, to try to soften your edges, or to try to
connect with a new, extended family that is nothing like your own? What if maybe some
marriages just don’t work and that’s actually not a bad thing?
I just love how everyone has opinions about this, but I would
ask if the same people would want their marriage or relationship under the same
kind of scrutiny? Would you want someone to watch you navigate the days and
weeks and months after a marriage fails and comment on that, too? Because let
me tell you what that’s like. It’s fucking awful, no matter what happened, or
how blame is laid, or how “amicable” you think you are with your partner. And
guess what? I bet Brad and Angie will find out pretty darned quickly who their
friends are. Not the friends who smile and wave as they pass on the
street. I’m talking about the
friends who come over to sit with you as you cry. The friends who bring over a
pizza and braid your kids hair because you just don’t know what you’re going to
feed them tonight, and man, who doesn’t like having their hairs did? I hope
they find friends who take them out of town for a weekend, or who welcome them
into their homes when they just need to get away. I hope they find the friends
who want to go out and NOT talk about how life as they knew it will never be
the same. I hope they find friends who will ask how they’re doing, and actually
mean it, and will actually stick around for the long answer. I hope they find
friends who aren’t scared by the random crying that comes during those first
weeks and months. I hope they find friends who, a year from now, will still be
there, and will be able to say, “Man. That fucking sucked. But you survived,
and your kids are happy and healthy, and look! You are ok!” I guess I just wish that people would
stop and think about these things before making blanket statements about
marriage. Guess what? People do stupid shit. We are all human, and we ALL do
things that could make a marriage fail. Most of us are just lucky enough to do
our failing outside of the public eye.
