The first time I ever saw the movie, "The First Wives Club," I thought it was a funny, if somewhat unrealistic, commentary on the state of marriage and divorce in our society. I couldn't really relate to it, because I was years away from joining that club myself, and I didn't see the situation from the inside. Now that I have joined the club, I have learned some interesting and surprising things, some funny, some not so much.
Club Divorce is a bizarre little group, or not so little group, really, with lots of hidden members, and even a few wanna-bes. Membership has only one criteria, but it is one of the most difficult you will ever have to meet - for one reason or another, you have to fail at the single biggest commitment you will ever make. So, on second thought, I guess it really isn't so surprising people don't brag about it more.
One of the biggest surprises for me has been just how many people I know who have been divorced and I didn't realize it. You can know people for years, and yet not find out until you are going through it yourself that they are divorced. Although we pride ourselves on being a free and open society, practically nothing off limits, it is clear that we are very afraid to talk about divorce in polite company. It's the dirty word of social etiquette, sort of a blot on the character of the person who is going through it, or so it seems.
For anecdotal evidence, there aren't any card lines for divorcing people - you buy something from the "thinking of you" or "support" categories, or perhaps the "cope" line, or just don't send one at all. If there isn't a card to recognize it, how can it be a "real" event, since Hallmark guarantees a card for every occasion? [In all fairness to Hallmark, I went looking for a divorce card awhile back, just to see, and they did have one choice.] But it's not exactly mainstream to discuss divorce in polite conversation, except in abstract, and then only cautiously, despite statistics which tell us that at least half the people in any room have been divorced.
And unlike other major life transitions, baptism, graduation, marriage or funeral, there is no ceremony to mark this life changing event in a person's life. Hallmark is missing a huge a market here, seriously. Hm. More on this later....
It's almost like people are afraid that if they acknowledge the death of your marriage, they might put their own relationship in jeopardy. Thus, we tell divorced people to "move on," to start dating again, to get back into circulation, and as quickly as possible, so they are no longer in that unhappy state, and we can all forget about it. [An aside here, I just have to.... Have you taken a look at the gene pool of available men my age recently? Let's see; well, my ex-husband is one of them. Enough said.]
One of the humorous things I have experienced is a sort of "divorce quarantine," the tendency of married people to think if they talk to you, they will be "infected" with the divorce disease themselves. So they stop talking to you, or tell their partner to stop talking to you, just in case. Ah ha. Because I am having such a good time, I want everyone else that I care about to go through it with me. Oh for dumb!
And while we are at it, I always thought it was a cartoon stereotype that people thought middle aged divorced women are vamps on the prowl, but I have found some misguided people think it's a real phenomenon. You can trust me on this; I don't look at your husband/boyfriend/significant other and want to steal them away. Have you seriously looked at your middle aged titan lately? It's sweet of you to still feel that way about him, really it is. I feel warm and gooey all over, in fact. But I dropped the rose colored spectacles awhile ago, and I see the world in real color! (Or maybe it's black and white. I dunno.) And size. And shape. Don't even get me started on the shape.
So anyway. A story. A few years ago, when my daughter was much younger and we would go for a walk in the evening, she would point out to me that every other walker out there seemed to have a dog or two. She noticed that dog owners were a super special and very exclusive club - they would smile, nod at each other, maybe even stop to compare notes if they had dogs the same size or their dog was especially cute. It was a social event to walk your dog, and my daughter desperately wanted to join the party.
Going through a divorce is somewhat the same, for all that you reluctantly join the party; suddenly, you are a member of this exclusive group, sort of like a facebook group, maybe, where you have this huge thing in common, no matter how different the rest of your lives may be. Like my cousin once said, everyone going through a divorce experiences much the same process, although the details may be different. So true. Divorce blows up your whole life, and putting the pieces together again, albeit in a new pattern, is much the same for everyone.
I don't know if that's reassuring or just sad, but I felt comfort knowing I wasn't alone, and that there were other people who knew how I felt, and what I was going through. So I hope that by talking about my own experience, I will give comfort, and maybe hope, to someone else who may be feeling the same kinds emotions.
The price of admission to the First Wives Club is too high, especially for the kids. But it is good to know that in the end, you will not only survive, you will laugh again.
