Some people say that getting a divorce is a very good feeling. They feel free again. They feel happy that they are not answerable to any third party. They enjoy the fact that they no longer have a spouse who will try to control each have every aspect of their lives. However, getting a divorce can be a stressful thing as well. If you have a spouse, you can delegate certain unpleasant activities to him or her without any difficulty whatsoever.
There is absolutely no doubt that we, as a species, have become less empathetic of the problems that our fellow human beings face. This is a development that has taken place in recent times. In the past, people made it a point to show courtesy to each other even if they did not know each other well. A family where the male earning member had lost his job would invariably receive assistance from the community. Of course, there is assistance was not completely based on charitable intentions.
Friends of mine who have never been to a sporting event in their lives have been affected by the recent suicide of footballer Gary Speed. I think it shocked everyone that young man who had a lovely family, a great job and everything to live for could be so gripped by depression that he saw taking his own life as the only way out. He’s not the only sportsman who has been affected by mental illness, although many hide their disease as it’s seen as sign of weakness to admit to suffering from anxiety or depression – and sportsmen really don’t like to show any weakness. In fact, men in general are very bad at asking for help which is probably why suicide was the third highest cause of death among young men aged 15 to 24. Women tend to be better at talking about their feelings and emotions, and asking for help, whether they’re suffering from depression or wanting accidents at work compensation.
I hate the movies sometimes, and here’s why: yes their job is to make things a bit more glamorous, but do they really need to rub salt into an already septic wound? In this case, and for the purpose of this article, the wound is that of divorce. And it is set to seep for a very long time, while the evil movie industry people dance around thinking of ways to capitalise on our misery.
One of the ways they do this is by producing heart-wrenching movies which they know will appeal to the recently divorced, and the other way they do this is by making movies about people who are either on the verge of divorce or trying to struggle and cope with divorce. But the sad truth of it all is that divorce can be really quite depressing. If we heard about the reality of it as much as we do the reality of happy marriages, the world would be a very different place (it’d be grimmer for a start..).
From that point on it was a game of her asking question after prying question, and me trying to give shorter and shorter answers…
You hear all sorts of things on the bus. Most of them completely un-work-outable and abstract – “Did you know that dogs really can look up? It’s just that they choose not to.” – and some of them just plain boring – “apparently grouting bathroom tiles keeps you really fit. I’ll be sure to let Bob know about that.” But sometimes, just sometimes, when not hearing things about DIY or what’s happening in every soap under the Sun, you hear things which are baffling in a good way, such as what I heard last Wednesday when I listened in to an intense conversation between a professor-type and his friend.
according to the professor-type, middle-age is getting fashionable due to cultural things like Twitter making people seem hip whatever age they are
They were talking about middle-age (and quite rightly so. Both were prime examples of being middle-aged, and I have to say that sitting behind them I felt extremely youthful. Then I wished I hadn’t been sitting so close because maybe their personas would rub off on me or something). To begin with I tried to take my mind off it by thinking about the sexy Lace Fabrics the women in the Cotton Traders catalogue wore, with smiles, but then I found myself being intrigued and the women vanished as my ears locked in to what these two were saying. It went something like this: according to the professor-type, middle-age is getting fashionable due to cultural things like Twitter making people seem hip whatever age they are.
Soon as I got home I got me a Twitter account (a right difficult pain in the bum which took me an entire evening to work out) and told the world about the exciting day I had had. It wasn’t hard to explain it in only a few words…
But this what the professor type did give me hope, at least. For I was middle-aged…middle-aged and now HIP where I had once been square! It was a day which I hadn’t seen coming and one which I would forever cherish.
The problem was, the next morning I woke up and felt absolutely bloody awful and un-hip again. I’d obviously over-stretched my middle-aged-bones somehow. Besides that, my brain hurt what with all the thinking I had been doing recently.
So, dear middle-aged un-dynamic people out there, listen up: there’s nothing to fear. The pain goes away eventually and then you are back to being your cool hip self. But you must have a Twitter account. If you don’t have that then clearly you will never be cool, and more fool you!
When I was growing up, divorce was frowned upon. And I mean frowned upon. For anyone out there who is not familiar with italics, those ones I just did symbolise the following things: hatred, anger, denial, frustration, and a complete inability to accept what is going on.
Which is what my parents were doing when I told them me and my partner were getting divorced. My dad, in particular, was being his usual head-burying self. He simply refused to believe that I was getting divorced. In his mind, he just could not accept that.
Of course, he had no choice to accept it after a while. As it became very clear that I was single and divorced, he could hardly pretend I was happily married, or even married.
So it always strikes me as more than a bit strange when people make divorce out to be some hilarious thing. Something that’s just brilliantly funny.
it does seem almost like a bad joke which everyone is in on. It does make you wonder why you would ever bother getting married
Because let me tell you this: divorce is anything but brilliant funny. In fact it’s pretty much horrendous…all those raw emotions circling you like sharks. The blood in the water? That’s the taunting from everyone else.
If I could, I am telling you: I would use my computer skills – if I had any – to turn a Free Antivirus into a global virus that would wipe out peoples computers. Especially those who made online jokes about divorce!
I suppose in many ways this was all very inevitable, though. When you consider that so many people get divorced now, it does seem almost like a bad joke which everyone is in on. It does make you wonder why you would ever bother getting married in the first place. Why not just skip straight to the divorce at the end and be done with it? That would make much more sense, I think, and besides that you could avoid the happiness, too, and just get a straight hit of the pain and misery.
OK, so I am actually more bitter than I thought; but you shouldn’t be surprised about that, really. After all, I’m just representing the numbers. I’m just another statistic.
And now I have just annoyed myself; even now, by trying to break the myth, I am only adding to the tradition of mocking and being all bitter about divorce.
There in lies the problem, my friend: once divorce sinks its ugly fangs into you, you’re bitter forever, right up until the last word!
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