The phrase I hate to hear

"We're getting a divorce."

I just cringe to even think the sentence in my head.  But last night, the dad of one of N's classmates said it, and so I've had it running in my head on an endless loop.

I don't know this parent well, really at all.  The mom and child had been over to our home for a couple playdates, and she and I had talked but we weren't confidantes by any stretch of the imagination.  I knew there were some issues, perhaps fairly serious issues, but the divorce thing still throws me.

Those kids.  I just hate, hate, hate it for the kids.  I'm 36 years old and would be devastated if my parents divorced.  I don't think a person is ever prepared for their parents to not want to be together as a family.

Hearing those words is like hearing that someone's child has leukemia.  Most of the time I can live in la-di-da land, thinking that everything is running smoothly.  But when you hear about situations like this, it brings it home that THIS, TOO, COULD HAPPEN TO YOU.....or me, that is.

I always wonder if the couple has been in therapy or sought therapy.  How long have they been having problems?  What was their relationship like at the very beginning?  Were the issues that determined the split the same issues they had not worked through earlier in the marriage?

Lord knows, I don't know anyone's business like I know my own, but I often have the impression that couples don't spend a whole lot of time working to save their marriage.  It often appears that the couple splits up and before very much time has passed, each person has moved into new relationships.  And I often wonder if the individuals had invested half as much time into their old relationship as they are in their new relationship, would the marriage have lasted?

Of course, some relationships can't be salvaged.  Some relationships probably shouldn't be salvaged.

And I wonder what exactly was it that split the couple up?  Money?  Sex?  Infidelity?  Just plain old tired of each other?

When I was a teen, I used to look at my parents' marriage and think, "I never want a marriage like theirs. It isn't romantic."  And now, into the teens in my married life, I think, "I see why my parents' marriage wasn't romantic."  Romance is fleeting.  It comes and goes.  My parents are friends, partners.  And the foundation of that is much stronger than romance or sex.

Love is such a fickle beast.  It changes.  It is complex.

And I have to wonder how much of a role love plays in keeping a marriage together.  It is there and needed, for sure.  But sometimes I wonder if the couple has to both place a really strong value on the act of marriage itself.  Not the love part, but the promise part.  The commitment part.  The "putting up with stuff" part (and I don't mean abuse or addiction or things of this nature).

A friend of mine recently went on a date with someone new, and I couldn't help but momentarily wax nostalgic about the thrill that was going out with new people before I married.  But I quickly remembered the stress, the anxiety, the disappointment when things didn't work out as I wanted.  The worry that the new guy in my life would find me weird or disgusting or boring.

The understanding that, warts and all, D stays with me is a powerful thing.  He chooses to be with me rather than seek something newer and nicer, that gives better performance (D once had a Corvette that he rubbed with a cloth diaper in loving strokes, so I think the wording is appropriate).

I cannot imagine what divorce is actually doing to this couple/family I know, when it is tearing up my heart just thinking about it.