Pretty much without exception, divorce is a cruddy option as a means by which to end a relationship. It takes a relationship that was designed since the dawn of time to be a “till death do us part” engagement, and throws it out the window. Of course it is rarely that simple; we normally at least pretend like it is a hard solution, a last resort really.
My parents are married. They got married in 1976 and have stayed that way. My mother is easily, without close second, the most difficult person to get along with that I have ever known. My dad is at least 75% of his way to being beatified at the ripe old age of 51. At this rate, he will have a cathedral named after him well before he dies, and he is not even catholic. Yes, my mom is that hard to get along with.
My dad has never, to my knowledge, considered divorcing his wife. He is not made of that stuff. To be honest, my mom is made of that stuff. If my dad ever got to be as difficult to get along with as my mom is, I would not be surprised at all if she did a cut-and-run-god-wants-me-to-be-happy of her own.
My wife’s mother divorced her husband of 26 years in September. Again, to restate my first premise, divorce always sucks. My mother in law has bought into one of the two oldest ideas in the world, the first being that God doesn’t want me to be happy (think garden of eden), the second that he does. What people mean when the say that God wants them to be happy is that they want themselves to be happy and they have set themselves up as their own God.
The part of divorce that I hate the most is the victim mentality. This mentality is rampant enough in America in general, but among divorcees, it is the worst. “I suffered…” “You don’t understand what it is like…” “Don’t judge me…” You are right, I don’t understand what it is like to bail out on a lifelong commitment. There are exceptions to the rule, in the case of abuse or infidelity, but even then, remarriage is simply not allowed. That is the major sticking point for my wife. My mother in law, who had only been divorced for about 3 months, has already succumbed to her own codependency and found another man, who has at least one major characteristic in common with her now ex-husband.
I love my wife more than I love my next breath. It is easy for me to say that marriage should last until death, because I would rather die than leave my wife. Plain and simple. But just as I, as white man, still have a right to speak out against unfairly preferential treatment of minority groups, I can also speak out against the frivolous ceasement of marriages. Just as the legalization of abortion made it something that people pursued for convenience, the acceptance of divorce has made it something that pursue as an easy out to relationships that are no longer fulfilling our masturbatory desire to feel “in love.”
Again. Divorce.Always.Sucks.
Posted on January 29th, 2007 by Dad
Filed under: Rants
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