The Sixth Nonsense

I see happy marriages. They're everywhere. Most of them don't even know they are happy.

As it turns out, my sixth sense for spotting happy marriages only exists on Bizarro World. In the real word, marriages are crumbling all around me and I can't see it.

Aside from the steady steam of stories I hear from friends and family (like my mom telling me which cousin just got left by her husband), there have been two jarring examples of this in the past month.

When I went out to dinner with some work colleagues last month, I had to tell one of them that my wife and I had split up. He seemed surprised, saddened, sympathetic, and embarrassed for bringing it up. (He even apologized to me for "prying." In these situations I often feel like I end up being the one to console them: "No, really, you didn't know, and it's a perfectly natural thing to ask about my wife.") Later on in the evening, after a few beers, I told him more of the details of our separation and impending divorce. I could see he was genuinely concerned for me. He's married with a kid and told me how his daughter was "the best thing that ever happened" to him. I had this nice image of a happy family.

Three weeks later, it was his turn to shock me. I heard from another colleague that he had moved out of the house-- he's getting divorced.

I received another shock this week-- a close friend of a close friend is also moving out of the house he shares with a wife and children for a few months. To respect his privacy, I don't want to go into any details (even on an anonymous blog), but this separation will affect me (and hence this blog) in one important way: He'll be moving into my spare bedroom while he and his wife try to work things out. I really hope they can reconcile.

I take no solace in welcoming new members to the "D" Club. This is not a case where misery loves company. I want to believe in marriage-- I want to believe that people can live happily together, and can work out their differences. I need to believe that we can depend on each other. Each time I hear of another struggling marriage, it chips away at that belief.