Harsh? Perhaps. But true. The fact that divorce is treated as a failure gives us permission to say the difficult things we didn’t say before. If we’ve already failed, there’s nothing to lose. So we can tell the truth.
Several clients come to see me when they are contemplating divorce. Many tell me that ‘they knew it was wrong on their wedding day’. Yet its only now – at the point of divorce – that they are able to voice that.
The problem is that there is too much pressure to be undilutedly happy about weddings. Its the fairytale syndrome. Honest discussion about the challenges of a relationship don’t sit well with our collective – and deep seated – expectations of a wedding.
Snow White didnt tell the prince that she wasn’t sure she had an appetite for queenly duties; in fact, she enjoyed the freedom of her life with the seven dwarfs. And the prince didn’t tell her that in truth, he found the whole rescuing malarkey a right pain in the proverbial, and he hoped she didn’t expect him to rescue her every time she got food poisoning.
Perhaps its time for us to accept a little more honesty as part of a fairytale wedding.
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Jackie Walker
07/07/2010
Love this Vena. The truth so often hidden is what appears when the chips are down, when the veil of wedded bliss is lifted. There are no fairytale endings, only beginnings.
We kiss many princes who turn into frogs, it’s truly more rare to kiss a frog and him turn into a prince!