On the culture of divorce that proselytizes its adherents:
indignant scrutiny among the older generations, who seem to have conveniently forgotten the past 30 years, in which almost everyone I know has been emotionally pummeled in some way by divorce
aging boomers seem shocked and befuddled that someone would choose to avoid the whole swampy mess of broken vows and failed traditions that they’ve left in their wake
The frequently asked question has resonance:
what do your parents think?
How long this has been going on, the meaty statistics:
As if the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s never happened. As if at least one-third of marriages don’t fail.
The money shot:
If marriage is risky, doomed and expensive, well, why bother?
The generational disease:
But the fact that my parents divorced well — and they really did — doesn’t grant them immunity from their actions. The fact that my uncles and aunts and grandparents and family friends felt they had absolutely no choice other than to divorce doesn’t change the outcome. They still got divorced, all of them. They still showed my generation, by example and by forcing us to go along with their example, that marriage was something easily and amicably exited from.
What the disease made acceptable, even proper:
Marriage, they said, was not that big of a deal. Premarital sex is fine. (Or at least that’s what they implied when they presented their boyfriends and girlfriends at the breakfast table — before we were even out of high school.) Families, they said, do not need to stay together if things become too boring.
The grass isn’t really greener:
I would have more sympathy for divorced people if their lives had improved by getting out of terrible marriages that (apparently) couldn’t be survived for another moment. But the ones I’m familiar with continue to associate with flawed human beings.
The marriage-divorce revolving door:
When my parents divorced in the late ’70s, we children went along with it like troupers. When they started bringing home boyfriends and girlfriends in the ’80s, we ultimately accepted these new people into our family. Sometimes, the new people went away. And we dealt with the divorces and separations all over again. And accepted the new people all over again. Fine. Exhausting, but fine.
Trying to break the cycle:
I’ve seen firsthand the pain and futility of divorce culture and I don’t intend to relive it, or to drag my children through the nightmare of watching their parents flirt with strangers.
Unmarriage-ness shouldn’t bear a stigma:
My decision not to marry does not indicate a desire for a life of debauchery and half-formed commitments…no fantasies about coasting through the next 50 years on the coattails of a weakened and disparaged contract that, thanks to boomer innovation, now includes options like pre-nup clauses.
The notion of marriage is impractical, nostalgic, outdated:
Our parents, on the other hand, seem to believe in marriage more than they do in monogamy. Like I said, that’s fine. Every generation has its torch to carry. But when this particular generation, which grooved to its own beat and stomped on every tradition that seemed too square, too inhibiting or just plain boring, turns around with nostalgia in its eyes and questions my choices, I have to protest.
Everybody doesn’t want a divorce, right?
My generation would just as soon steer clear of the fatuous, feel-good mess of getting divorced and remarried. The tradition that was passed down to us — in which divorce is a logical and expected conclusion to a marriage — is one we would just as soon pass by.
No solutions offered here; we’re trapped on the turnstile of vows made and unmade:
For better or worse, you contribute to the culture you live in.