Changing Normal: Learning to Accept Divorce

It's time to stop stigmatizing divorced people and their families

I recently attended a dinner party with four other adults. We were all divorced. And it seemed so natural. So normal. As we talked about our exes (without malice), our children (without guilt) and our lives (without self-pity), it occurred to me, we are the norm in Los Angeles and every other cosmopolitan city. Are we that atypical everywhere else?

The answer of course is no, and we're becoming more typical every year. Fifty years ago, the divorced person was a societal deviant. Now the happily married person is. (Does anyone even use the term happily married anymore? Or has it become an oxymoron?) I'm not saying everyone who's married is miserable. But long-married couples are praised more for their fortitude than for their wedded bliss.

I'm not much for sociology and I don't pretend to know how to fix the institution of marriage. But if Tiger Woods and other celebrity infidels teach us nothing else, it should be that "as long as you both shall live" is a relic of another time.

Yes, I know, making divorce easier will only make it more prevalent. But we can't put that genie back in the bottle, so why not at least make the outcome of divorce a bit less stigmatizing? Instead of treating divorced people (and by extension, their children) as the outliers, why not accept them as another "norm?"

For starters, let's stop labeling marriages as "successful" or "failed." Some will last. Some won't. So let's take the stigma of "failure" out of it. Sixty years ago, society viewed someone who'd held more than two jobs since high school as a career failure. Today we aren't surprised to see seven or more job changes in a career, and two or more careers in a lifetime. Similarly, where society used to look askance at women who had more than one or two sexual partners in a lifetime, we now see sexually inexperienced women as the anomaly.

If our thinking can evolve in those areas, we should be able to do the same with marriage.

Next, let's throw terms like "broken home," "abandonment issues" and "deadbeat dads" into the dust bin of history. The only thing these terms accomplish is to stigmatize kids and make them feel worse about themselves. To the extent that children of divorce may have heightened feelings of alienation or unhappiness, wouldn't it be better to remove the stigma as much as possible and help the children of divorce feel more typical and less "not normal?"

If our culture would cut divorced couples a little slack, maybe they can start cutting each other some slack and make things more pleasant for everyone involved—especially their kids.

In my own two-home family, after a few strained years at first, we've arrived at the point where I can occasionally join my ex and our kids for dinner in her home and she can sit and watch a TV show with us in mine. Our kids' birthdays and Hanukkah are shared events. We sit together at school functions and share small talk with other families afterward. Do Mom and Dad still occasionally bicker? Yes. So do married parents. But mostly their mom and I show respect for each other as co-parents. Thanks to our fairly evolved (and somewhat warped) senses of humor, we can even joke openly about our divorce and make it okay for the kids to laugh about it too.

For those who may think me naïve, believe me, I don't mistake my ex-wife's civility for anything else. There are still hard feelings and points of tension for both of us. But just as adults learn to put on our best face for difficult bosses and unpleasant situations, we've learned to handle the awkwardness of co-parenting by making respect and friendliness the rules of engagement.

Are the kids perfectly happy with the arrangement? No. Yet, after three years, they seem as happy and emotionally stable as their one-home friends. Of course, time will tell. No one gets through childhood unscathed, but I believe it is possible to diminish the long-term impact of divorce on children.

In my ex's and my case, our kids will hopefully learn to deal with our divorce as an inconvenience rather than a lifelong handicap. They'll learn that their mom and dad's love for them is not conditional on our love for each other. They'll see that marriages sometimes end, but that former spouses can move on without being crippled by bitterness and rage. They'll learn that happy families come in all shapes and sizes, and two-home families can be just as normal as traditional households.

Mostly, I hope they'll come to learn they are resilient and can handle the ups and downs of life as it comes to them.

And my ex and I have learned that what was keeping us somewhat bonded during those last few years of marriage—our mutual adoration for our kids—still binds us today.

Do I recommend divorce? No, just as I wouldn't recommend getting fired or losing a limb. But life happens. It's what you do with it that counts. My kids, my ex and I are learning to make the most of the hand we've been dealt.

It'd be a lot easier if our culture would stop telling divorced people we've already lost.