I just spent an hour and several hundred words all trying to get to this point: I am never surprised when I hear about people divorcing. In the past six months there have been several divorces and separations in the immediate vicinity. None have surprised me, even among the couples who were picture perfect on the outside.
Partly, this is because I know that it is absolutely pointless to guess what goes on behind closed doors. I make no assumptions about the couples I know, nor do I make assumptions about the content of anyone else’s thoughts. It takes discipline; sometimes it is tempting to guess, to analyze, suppose, and figure, but I learned the hard way many times over that I am better off leaving other people’s lives for other people to live.
At the same time, I also wonder if there isn’t some cynicism tucked into my lack of surprise. I wonder whether in an environment in which we have the luxury of dedication to spiritual growth, the expectation that a relationship can be fulfilling in that way after decades and decades of growth is unrealistic. This is not to make any generalizations about the state of marriage. (When it comes to affairs of the heart, the only safe generalization is that there are no safe generalizations.) There are people who make it work, I think.
I remember reading years ago, during a particularly romantic time in my life, that the idea of one soulmate in a lifetime is outmoded, and that one can have many soulmates over the course of a lifetime, depending on what one’s soul is up to at any given time. I remember finding the concept liberating and depressing at the same time. Who wants to unsoulmate someone, or worse yet, to be unsoulmated?
Divorcing is among the shittier of life’s experiences, and it is not that I am unsympathetic. It is the opposite actually. I wasn’t married long, but there is something about ending a marriage that is just different, destabilizing in a unique and awful way. I can hear it in the voices of people going through it and it brings me back to the moments in my life during which the only thing that made any sense was crying.
I don’t have a snappy conclusion to this post. Aside from being curious and possibly a tad glum about my own detachment, I am also concerned that this lavender nail polish just doesn’t work with my skin tone. That this is my greatest worry at the moment is a comfort.
