Don’t buy into popularity of unhitched culture.
by Diane Medved
This article was posted on usatoday.com on October 23, 2013.
The books just keep coming: Collaborative Divorce,
Happy Divorce
,The Good Karma Divorce, The Creative Divorce
. Reading the articles and books, you might get the idea that The Good Divorce is a sacrament, not a disaster.
One typical story featured a family gathered together comfortably: the ex-husband with his new wife, his old wife with her new husband, their son and
his new baby. Now they’re just peachy, they insist, and experts agree.
Constance Ahrons, who coined the phrase “good divorce,” thinks split families should meld seamlessly, without stigma, into our social fabric. The message
seems simple: With the right attitude, divorce can lead to a relatively pleasant mélange of happily combined relatives. But that wasn’t what I
saw in my years counseling divorcing couples.
A year later, most divorced couples claim they’re stronger, better and smarter.
So why not “good divorce”?
Heartache, financial loss and time detangling bring irreparable setbacks. Lots of spouses get dumped. Eighty percent of U.S. divorces “are unilateral,
rather than truly mutual decisions,” notes researcher Maggie Gallagher. Still, healthy people can wade through the hurt and make the best of the
situation.
That doesn’t ameliorate the damage. Children, who never have a say in their parents’ parting, become collateral damage and dismissed with the dubious
phrase “kids are resilient.” Judith Wallerstein, whose landmark 25-year study of divorced families convinced her of its ongoing harm, found that
“many of these … children forfeited their own childhoods as they took responsibility for themselves, their troubled, overworked parents; and
their siblings.” The trauma peaks in adulthood, she cautions, undermining love, sexual intimacy and commitment.
Divorce mars the lives of in-laws and unsettles otherwise contented bystanders; it unsteadies society, destabilizes neighborhoods and brings awkwardness
in social encounters.
Yet a “culture of divorce” has grown as new technologies gave us feel-good instant gratification, demoting the virtues of duty and obligation. Americans’
attention span shrank from reading tomes to watching TV shows to three-minute YouTube videos to six seconds of a Vine.
Our notion of commitment became shorter, too. Marriage pledges are now really “hopes,” easily revised by a Facebook status change. The New York Times’
“Vows” page recently began a new column called “Unhitched,”
each week highlighting one couple’s divorce.
Stripped of connection to paternity, marriage has become optional. The latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal that
48% of women cohabited with a partner as a first union, The overall out-of-wedlock
birth rate topped 40% in 2011.
Years ago, tempted cartoon characters paused to consider the coaxing of an angel perched on their right shoulder and a devil on their left. The conscience
angel urged, “Do your duty! Do what is moral and right! Defer gratification!” The self-centered devil whispered, “Do what feels good! Follow your
heart! Get what you want, right now!”
Granted, not all marriages can survive, like the hopeless cases where an abusive or addicted spouse won’t get help. To overcome problems, both partners
must want to stay married; the hitch is that our non-judgmental culture greases their paths out the door instead of encouraging deep introspection.
I learned two lessons counseling divorcing couples. First, a rejected mate usually requires at least half as long as the marriage to recover. Second,
recovery occurs not when a spouse “feels good” about the former mate, but when she’s indifferent.
Our accept-it-all milieu grants so much leeway for individual happiness that relationships have no backbone with which to stand. The little devil perched
on society’s slumping shoulder gloats, “You can have a good divorce! Do what you want, and do it now!” That angel guy is so old-school, he can’t
even text his apologies to the kids whose lives turn upside down.
Diane Medved, a clinical psychologist, is author of The Case Against Divorce.