Friends Don’t Let Friends Divorce

Among the long-overdue projects around the house I swore to tackle this summer, the one I managed to complete was redoing my address book. Over the past months, several of my loved ones either had moved or changed jobs, and my aging organizer was crying out for a clean slate. Armed with a new pen, a new planner and a full cup of coffee, I got to work.

Many thoughts came to mind as I paged through the names of the various people in my life. The dominating one being “Wow--forgot to send them a Christmas card last year--will add them to the top of the list.” And so I continued to move from A through M down to T, inking in the addresses and phone numbers, with mixed feelings of guilt, nostalgia and the determination to be better at keeping in touch.

When I came across the number of a friend who recently had divorced, I stopped and put my pen down. The former husband, who shares custody of their son, would be keeping the house, and hence the old address. I was suddenly faced with a dilemma. Do I keep the old information? Do I send the former husband a Christmas card? Or do I banish him completely, out of loyalty to my friend and her new husband?

I thought back to when their marriage was failing. The affair, the discovery, the all-out shock. I had had endless “what-to-do” conversations with my friend, but in truth didn’t know how to help her. She was about to become a “one in two marriages fail” statistic, and there wasn’t a darn thing I could do about it. Or was there?

When we receive that golden foil-lined envelope inviting us to the wedding of a friend or loved one, the reaction is typically one of celebration and joy. We pick out a great outfit to wear to the wedding, hire the sitter well in advance and anticipate the new union with enthusiasm. We sip champagne at the reception, ooh and ahh over the bride’s gown, and throw rice at the getaway car.

And then we go home.

In a word--we love weddings. It’s the rest of the marriage that we’re not really interested in. Sure, we want to come by the new house and enjoy the shiny built-in barbecue by the pool. We huddle around the first baby all the way until preschool. We love the beginning of a family--the newness, the freshness, the promise of happily ever after. But when the strain of real life sets in, and a couple’s marriage starts to sour--are we still there waiting with bated breath to be a part of it all? I think, probably not.

Sadly, when divorce is announced, we often sit on the sidelines and do nothing. If a couple’s marriage is in trouble, we figure that’s their business.

But this is a reasoning whose time has expired. If we witness the exchange of vows, which specifically state “for better or for worse, until death [not divorce] do us part”--then we owe it to the couple to help them hold up to that agreement. We also owe it to the community.

So much of the talk of divorce has centered around the acknowledgment of today’s new blended family. There has been an explosion--and rightly so--for support of the single parent. But in our attempt to embrace the new divorce culture, supporting married couples tends to get sidelined. They think that because the marriage is still in place, then all must be fine. And if it’s not--well, that’s fine too.

We need to be proactive in taking care of marriage; all it takes is some basic maintenance. Churches that offer premarital counseling to engaged couples could offer follow-up meetings after the wedding. Parishes often have support groups for the widowed, separated and divorced--but why not married couple support groups? And friends who danced the “Macarena” at your reception should be tapping you on the shoulder when you keep offering that cute new secretary a ride home.

There will always be the cliche that marriage is “just a piece of paper.” So are PhDs, driver’s licenses and the deed to your house. The truth is, our society sometimes expresses value on paper. To minimize matrimony because it is recognized in print belittles those of us in the trenches working hard at our marriage on a daily basis.

This past Labor Day I called up my mom, divorced five years from my dad and wished her what would have been a happy 35th anniversary.

This was my way of defending the value of marriage. She was gracious in understanding my intention. Maybe for some, marriage is just a piece of paper. But then again, so is divorce.