That ugly, vicious thing we call divorce

I don't get divorce.

Much of this is due to my parents, I'm sure. They were married my entire childhood, and still are. They've fought over money and they've dueled over how to raise the kids, but they've never parted ways. Sometimes my mom gets aggravated over my dad's sense of humor, and sometimes he zones her out, but here they are in their late 60s, and they're still together. They celebrated their 44th anniversary just this year.

And here I am in my late 30s, and it seems like one couple after another whom I've known is coming apart. They swore to be there for one another, never to part, and that foundation of love that they laid is splitting. My best friend and his wife married 17 years ago. They're separated. My other best friend and his wife married 12 years ago and divorced last year. And now another friend writes, after more than 20 years, "We're divorcing. He won't even consider reconclilation."

Why?
Why?
Why?

Divorce is an ugly, vicious thing. It takes lives that have grown together like flowers whose stems entwine one another so closely that you scarcely can tell where one begins and the other ends, and it tears them apart. Staying married isn't easy -- I doubt anyone alive can possibly begin to explain just how much work, hard work, marriage is, and how much it hurts sometimes -- but God knows it's worth it.  When my heart was torn from me and I dropped into the volcano, it was my wife who saved me. When her mother died and drought came to my wife's life, I was there for her.

Marriage hurts, but in the end, it makes me far stronger than anything else does. I've been short on hope, but I made it through because my wife was at my side. I've lost friends, but I survived because my wife stood by me. I've lost jobs and I've seen dreams die, but because my wife was with me, I came out on top. I lost a son and though it was like the sun was extinguised and all life had vanished from the world, I found the strength to keep moving -- because my wife gave it to me.

How on earth do couples who swore to love one another all their lives, until the bitter parting of death, give that up?

When my friends Myron and Jessica separated two years ago, I told a friend of mine about it. I wished I hadn't. Jon is in his late 20s, but when he heard that two people he had never met were divorcing, I saw the pain in his eyes. His parents had divorced when he was 9, and he's never forgotten.

I have no anger, no harsh words for people who divorce. I know that their pain is deep and beyond expression. All I have is grief that anyone should have to go through such an experience.



Copyright © 2009 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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courtship in kyrgyzstan

So, like anybody else with insomnia would do, I'm spending needless waketime on the Internet, surfing the blogs of friends. One of them has a link to her friend's blog, and she in turn links to a Frontline story about Kyrgyzstan:

With his translator and friend Fatima Sartbaeva, a young Kyrgyz woman, as his guide, Lom sets out on a journey of discovery, driving deep into the countryside to a small village just outside the ancient city of Osh.

Petr and Fatima arrive as a wedding is about to begin. Women are busy making traditional Kyrgyz bread for the occasion, and men sit in chairs outside, talking and sipping tea. The groom confesses he has had some difficulty finding a bride, but he is hopeful that "this one will stay."

When the bride does arrive, she is dragged into the groom's house, struggling and crying. Her name is Norkuz, and it turns out she has been kidnapped from her home about a mile away.

Read the entire story

Disturbing, isn't it? Still, I find myself thinking of parallels in history and literature. The Western custom of a groom carrying his bride over the threshold of their new home has its roots in a Roman custom, which in turn grew out of the legendary "Rape of the Sabine Women" in the eighth century B.C.E., when the men of Rome abducted women from the surrounding tribes so they could have wives and families. The Bible recounts a similar event undertaken by the surviving men of the tribe of Benjamin, at the tail end of the book of Judges.

The article notes that some women in Kyrgyzstan see the tradition of bride kidnapping as an important part of their culture, and doubtless it has enabled men to obtain "wives" without having to pay expensive brideprices.

I find the end of the article disturbing, because of the moral relativism it suggests. Abduct a woman from her family and village, harrangue her over several hours into accepting a marriage as her lot in life, and then make that her identity over the next several months, and sure, she'll accept it.

But that's not acceding to anything, is it? That's a survival instinct present in us all, one that leads us to identify with our captors and see their happiness as our own.

I find it disturbing, and I hope that the practice comes to an end, however ethnocentric, closed-minded and judgmental that may make me.

Can we protect traditional marriage from its defenders?

Fear not, traditional marriage! The Republican Party is coming to rescue you from the chance that loving gay couple soon may enjoy equal legal protection.

Yes, U.S. senators Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and David Vitter (R-La.) are co-sponsoring the Marriage Protection Amendment, which would make marriage constitutional only for heterosexual couples. Larry Craig was charged with lewd conduct on June 11, 2007, after allegedly soliciting a police officer for gay sex. Vitter was identified that July as a patron of a brothel owned by the late Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

 Irony really is dead.

How on earth can you propose a constitutional amendment to "defend the institution of marriage" when your own peccadilloes have robbed you of any claim to the moral high ground? To put it another way, it's (not) great that they want to defend marriage from including couples; but who's going to defend it from them?

My mind would boggle if I still had one left.