I am really becoming over the top disgusted with the divorce is cool trend permeating the culture today. Two recent stories from cnn.com have been caught in my craw. I have encountered several others, but these two hit culture right in the fun button to reveal how society in general is seeing marriage as an inconvenience to a good time. Even to the point of glamorizing divorce as an answer to rejuvenating ones life or re-energizing ones career.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/03/18/divorce.celebrations/index.html
If just discussing divorce in public seemed taboo a few years ago, the growing trend of divorce celebrations is helping lessen the stigma surrounding the end of marriage.
“Yes, it’s sad and it’s painful, but it’s not failure,” says Christine Gallagher, the owner of Los Angeles event company The Divorce Party Planner and the author of a book by the same name. “It’s part of life, and yet it’s the only major event for which we have no ritual.
“A celebration communicates that divorce is OK — life-affirming, even.”
Now even Super Heroes can revamp their careers and experience a renaissance such as when Spidey and Mary Jane’s marriage hit the skids.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/01/17/spider.man.single.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
“When we first did it, the reaction was, ‘How could you do this? This is a terrible thing to do,’ ” said Quesada, who invented the story line that turned Spider-Man into Single-Man.
“But with the first issue of ‘Brand New Day’ (this week’s comic book in which Spider-Man returns to single life), our letters very quickly changed to people saying, ‘This is fantastic. This is the Spider-Man we remembered. We didn’t know what we’d been missing.’ “
I really don’t know that I need to write a commentary, it is pretty in your face stuff. This attitude is invading the church as well. “Sin now and ask for forgiveness later” seems to be the mantra of the new narcissism, after all it is about grace right?
“Let’s just invite the devil over for coffee… you know… friendship evangelism.“
What a sad posting. I had never heard of a divorce party. Don’t plan on ever going to one. It’s pathetic that people would celebrate divorce in any way.
The most aggravating item in the above post was the quoted part from a cnn link. That someone would write about divorce not being a failure but is instead a “life-affirming event” is just wrong. I don’t want to hurt people by saying this, but divorce is failure. Somewhere in the relationship – before or after the wedding – both sides failed. I know it’s usually one side that is more responsible than the other, but still divorce involves failure.
As far as life-affirming events I can think of many more that are much better than divorce.
I definitely understand where you are coming from with this blog but I have to say that I have a slightly different mindset, which is very interesting for a person whom was brought up Roman Catholic in catholic school being taught that divorce is unacceptable. If I have learned anything in my life so far it is that there are very few absolutes if any in terms of people and their relationships with one another. I understand that when you get married you promise to be with one another for the rest of your lives but people change and things happen and I am a firm believer in you can’t help how you feel. I would rather two people divorce and move on with their lives then spend the rest of them miserable. We only get one shot at life why waste even a minute of it, because you will never get that minute back. I work for http://www.firstwivesworld.com, it is an online community of support and help for women navigating through the various stages of divorce and life thereafter and I love what I do and I have seen a whole new world of women whom feel like they are getting a whole new shot at life once they get divorced. The celebration is more about getting yourself out there and healing. A divorce is a very turbulent time in a person’s life and why do it alone? Celebrate your life and the idea that you were able to get yourself out of something that wasn’t so ideal and begin again. Check out our website and see all of the amazing women whom have given themselves new starts and how fantastic their take on life is now.
http://www.firstwivesworld.com
Just my two cents
Ann Marie