Divorce is Easy: Only people who have never been divorced say this

In the thousands of times that I have sat across the desk from an individual contemplating ending their marriage, I have on only two occasions, had a person acknowledge that they fully expected the relationship to end this way. The point being, everyone is surprised when they end up in a divorce lawyers office. Everyone is surprised when their relationship is the one that ends in some fashion other than “death do us part”. No one expects it, because everyone believes it when they say, “In sickness and in health”, “For richer for poorer”. We humans are imminently hopeful beings. We want it to work. We know the statistics, yet we march down the aisle and say those words. Each one of us who has done so, did it and said it, and believed it, and had total confidence that WE were the couple that would beat the odds. We heard what the personal skeptics said, the ones who told us we were too different, it would never work, we were too young, too old, too naïve, and did it anyways. Because we believed it. We would be different.

The shock of ending up in my office is overwhelming. I get it. I did it. I was a disaster when I unexpectedly ended up in the office of one of my colleagues as a client, after 19 years of marriage. I was the same as any of my clients. Shocked, ashamed, bewildered, disoriented and numb.

Every study on the subject tells us that half or more of marriages end in divorce. Everyone knows it. It doesn’t help to ease the pain of that moment.

Pundits and many religious teachers say that there are so many divorces because it has become too easy. That myth likely began when states like California began “No Fault” Divorce. Which just means, if you ask for a divorce, you get a divorce. Period. Who did what to who, is not a consideration in the granting of a divorce. “Dissolution of Marriage” is the legal term. Changing the verbiage has not made it easier. Changing the burden of proof, to “Irreconcilable Differences” (That’s the fancy term for No Fault) has perhaps in some ways shortcut the litigation, but the pain is the same.

The grieving process is what it is. There is no court order or legal process to change the way people do it, and everyone grieves the end of the marriage that they expected to last until death. Even if they are relieved to be away from a person who was a danger, aggravation or nuisance, the grieving still must happen. The bargaining, the anger, the sadness, it all happens. Everytime.

It is not ever “easy”. Some cases move faster and with less drama and legal activity than others, but I have yet to see one in which it was “easy” for the parties.

The purpose here, it to help people appreciate this. I am occasionally frustrated, when I have this conversation, one on one, for the umpteen thousandth time. I keep thinking, if only people knew. It takes a great deal of courage to make an appointment with a lawyer and actually show up to talk about this. I am certain that there are many people who are having this emotional process going on and think they are the only one. The only one plagued by the failure, the shame, the disarray that occurs in the life of one grieving the loss of relationship, and I want to help them know that it is a process, with stages, and there is something better on the other side.

It is notoriously, one of those awful times in life, that the only way out is through. If I could speak to those people, I would tell them to talk to someone, a lawyer, a therapist, and explore the options, take a step, start the process, of whatever it is you need to do. It can’t get better through inaction.

I believe that any marriage can be saved, but we all know that many just are not. It is not the end of the world, it just feels like it. Divorces happen because people are human and flawed. When two flawed humans come together, not only do they not fix each other, sometimes they make each other worse. In and through it all, humans keep signing up and walking down that aisle. The death of that expectation and hope of “forever”, is anything but “easy”.