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Why I´m Divorced And why you´re next
hartford advocate.com ^ | August 25, 2005 | by Annabel Lee

Posted on 08/30/2005 10:14:07 PM PDT by tbird5

I've seen two movies lately, one very funny ( Wedding Crashers ) and one infuriatingly stupid ( Must Love Dogs ), but both baffling in their lockstep to happily-ever-afterland. Why does romantic love, the kind that doesn't occur in life except fleetingly and disappointingly, still play to the crowds? I give the impecunious boat-builder and the petit bourgeois schoolteacher five years at the outside -- he's not going to keep her in end-tables. And Daddy's Little Girl will have ditched the immature arriviste long before that.

Why, in an era when men and women can barely achieve détente, in a First World where everyone suffers from attachment disorder, are we still ponying up for marriage? On the HBO series Six Feet Under a show I adore because all the characters behave abominably at all times, yet never manage to have more than a millisecond of fun men and women can't stay married or remain faithful from one week to the next. We're not quite that bad, we HBO viewers, but we're getting there.

I'm no historian, but it doesn't take a Paul Johnson (author of A History of the American People ) to tell us why it's so hard to stay married. We live too long. Marriage is a naturally polarizing process that causes one person to detest, over time, what the other person loves. Only after a couple divorces do they move back toward the center, where their interest in one another began. (I knew a man who left his wife because of the endless chintz and throw pillows. I went to visit him once in his new Bauhaus apartment, but he couldn't really talk he was too distracted by trying to choose the right tassels for his new Salamandre curtains.)

(Excerpt) Read more at hartfordadvocate.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: divorce; schadenfreude; themarriagebubble
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Comment #101 Removed by Moderator

To: Motherbear
I have to agree. They say marriage is work, and it is. What so many people don't realize is that working at a marriage is as fun or as dreadful as both spouses want to make it.

Love can be unconditional, and if you're as lucky as I to have the right wife (took two tries), you want to do it. Simple as that.

102 posted on 08/31/2005 4:09:40 PM PDT by Mugwump
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To: tbird5

33 years with the finest girl Texas had to offer. Nope, I'm not next.


103 posted on 08/31/2005 4:12:06 PM PDT by chesty_puller (USMC 70-73 3MAF VN 70-71)
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To: tbird5
"I'm no historian...."

Apparently, you're no sociologist, either......
104 posted on 08/31/2005 5:15:36 PM PDT by rockrr (Gregorovych Nyet!)
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To: DoughtyOne

I agree. I am not one. I married a tough guy in a leather jacket the first time. I was sheltered and only 18. He was abusive. At 20, I packed up my one year old daughter and hitched a ride and got out of there. I paid my way through college and was single for years. I met my husband at a bar on Halloween; it was love at first sight. We married six months later. He is a great guy and I am very fortunate. We have been married for 17 years.


105 posted on 08/31/2005 6:16:51 PM PDT by nyconse
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To: nyconse

Thanks for the details. Nice. I'm happy for you.

Congrats on doing something that many others do, but seldom get kudos for having done. You did it on your own. Outstanding...


106 posted on 08/31/2005 6:22:18 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (US socialist liberalism would be dead without the help of politicians who claim to be conservative.)
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To: DoughtyOne

I appreciate that. LOL


107 posted on 08/31/2005 6:33:40 PM PDT by nyconse
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To: nyconse

And so does my wallet. You were self-sufficient, perhaps the most important thing a parent can instill in their child.


108 posted on 08/31/2005 6:37:26 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (US socialist liberalism would be dead without the help of politicians who claim to be conservative.)
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To: flashbunny
She isn't bitter because she lost her kid and her husband dumped her. Her husband dumped her and she lost her kid because she's a bitter, self-obsessed person.

You have no way of knowing that; you can't know what she was like before the divorce. I don't know if this has ever happened to you--if you've ever been abandoned by a spouse--but most people go through a period of depression, anger, and bitterness after a divorce they didn't want. I've met both men and women who were filled with fury after such an event--it's quite normal. Nobody comes through it all sweetness-and-light. I hope she can get over it.

She created her own mess. She deserves no slack. The only thing she deserves, from the looks of it, is to be alone for the rest of her life so she doesn't inflict herself on anyone else.

How compassionate you are.

109 posted on 09/01/2005 5:11:46 AM PDT by Capriole (I don't have any problems that can't be solved by more chocolate or more ammunition.)
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To: Capriole

"How compassionate you are."

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

She is choosing to be this way. She is reaping what she sowed.

And she is blaming other people for problems she caused.

She is a recipe for disaster. The worst thing that could happen is that she spreads her misery to someone else. She needs to learn to take responsibility for her own situation FIRST.


110 posted on 09/01/2005 5:16:34 AM PDT by flashbunny (Always remember to bring a towel!)
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To: flashbunny

It takes time to get over agony like this. It's hard enough to have a spouse leave one for somebody else, to have finances ruined and a beloved child gone. Harder still is the acknowledgement that one is going to be alone for the rest of one's life, so there can be no comfort for the losses. This is a very sad thing, very hard to accept. As I said, even if she is a true angel the chances are good she'll never be able to remarry. So right now she's giving vent to her feelings in print, which is always a temptation for writers. If she has a really, really good therapist (and they're out there), she might get over it and learn to accept being alone. If she finds faith, she's much more likely to move on to a peaceful life.

I'm going to pray for her peace. Will you join me? Without condemnation or hostility?


111 posted on 09/01/2005 5:32:52 AM PDT by Capriole (I don't have any problems that can't be solved by more chocolate or more ammunition.)
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To: Capriole
As I said, even if she is a true angel the chances are good she'll never be able to remarry.

Well, your faith in human nature (or the supernatural core of human nature, perhaps) is inspirational, but she has shown no glimmer of angelhood.

I'm one of the many men that isn't dating, let alone marrying, women like her any more. Which is why a lot of women my age are already condemned to live out their existence with two cats and a library card -- which is all the better for the children they didn't have.

The true loser in this is the child, a child that she clearly does not love, but instead values as an object with which to punish her hated ex. (No idea whether the ex's feelings towards the kid are any different, but with a mother like this, the child was born doomed). The child, I'll pray for. The mother, you can pray for. Mom probably needs it worse but I'm not that good a Christian.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

112 posted on 09/01/2005 4:59:42 PM PDT by Criminal Number 18F
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To: tbird5

Almost 35 years here. I'm surprised this writer could get someone drunk enough to say I do.


113 posted on 09/01/2005 5:04:48 PM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: Criminal Number 18F
I'm one of the many men that isn't dating, let alone marrying, women like her any more. Which is why a lot of women my age are already condemned to live out their existence with two cats and a library card -- which is all the better for the children they didn't have.

You're wise. People of either sex who are bitter and still emotionally wracked by divorce should not be dating.

114 posted on 09/01/2005 5:39:04 PM PDT by Capriole (I don't have any problems that can't be solved by more chocolate or more ammunition.)
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To: tbird5

My husband and I have been married 12 years and 9 months today. Even during the down times I figured I could work things out with my best friend or try to look for some "imaginary better thing". I love my husband. I can't imagine not having him around.


115 posted on 09/01/2005 5:44:47 PM PDT by HungarianGypsy (They're coming to take me away.....)
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To: jocon307

Isn't that Poe's poem to his pre-teen COUSIN, who later became his WIFE at like age 14? Eeeeew!

Yep. This woman is a downer. I wouldn't even want to be her friend, let alone her spouse. Water seeks it's own level, that's for sure. :(


116 posted on 09/01/2005 5:49:13 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin (Save The Earth. It's The Only Planet With Chocolate.)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

I don't know about the poem, I mean the facts behind the poem. Interesting! He was a pretty troubled guy, old Edger Allen.


117 posted on 09/01/2005 6:36:06 PM PDT by jocon307
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To: Jess Kitting

Works either way.


118 posted on 09/01/2005 8:46:55 PM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
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Comment #119 Removed by Moderator

To: HungarianGypsy
My dad always said "You have to be brave to get old, but then when you consider the alternative it isn't that hard"

Marriage is much the same way, I can't imagine my life without the Wife finishing my sentences and remembering names and dates for me.

TT
120 posted on 09/03/2005 9:50:14 AM PDT by TexasTransplant (NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSET)
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