They don't like to think about how it happened to their parents or how it changed their friends, and they can't bear the thought of what it would do to their children. And so it gets pushed down into the collective subconscious, where it rustles about like a monster under the bed. But like every nightmare, divorce has its fascinations. There is hardly a married person I know who has not confessed to me, in a whispered aside, that they have been tempted by divorce. Just my presence in a room full of married friends is enough to make people uneasy, especially if I appear happy or talk about what I do in my free time when my children are with their father.
Marriage is complicated, and sticky with hurt and disappointment.
Divorce, from the outside, looks simple, neat. Someday the monster will break out, sowing destruction in its wake, but it also will sweep aside all that is old and knotted and unfixable. The monster will bring renewal because there will be nothing left to do but start again and make it better. For thousands of unhappy people, this has actually worked. Divorce has liberated them, given them a chance for a startling rebirth, a chance to correct debilitating mistakes made early in life and restabilize children shell-shocked from the marriage wars.