Is there anything more surreal than announcing your divorce on your blog and having 39 people ‘like’ that on facebook and 194 people tweet it?
January 20, 2012 by blue milk
Is there anything more surreal than announcing your divorce on your blog and having 39 people ‘like’ that on facebook and 194 people tweet it?
I read about the first 10 comments on Jon’s blog and they were all asking if the kids should be left with Heather (who apparently deals with mental health issues) and why he is looking for somewhere to live while she gets to keep the mansion.
I don’t think I could live my live that publicly. Sometimes I think I am already too public just because people know my name…
That is saddening–and yet! not at all surprising. I am in her boat, and I have to agree with you re: letting it all hang out like that.
I’m a regular reader at JD Roth’s site, where “my way to be married is the only way” fights pop up on a pretty regular basis. I think because the personal finance blogosphere is so full of people blogging as home businesses because they don’t believe in women working. There are 510 comments on his post there, including a couple subthreads where someone jumps in to say “if you had pooled your finances you wouldn’t be getting divorced” or “marriage is forever! People should never get divorced! People these days!”.
I don’t find the “likes” that disturbing – they’re often the facebook equivalent of hugs or just “i heard you”s. I do find the retrograde politics around marriage, parenthood, and divorce really disturbing, as well as the apolitical understanding of what “traditional” marriage is – sometimes I think I should just make a macro that says “it was the traditional-marrieds of the ’50s who made up the giant divorce crest of the ’70s” and paste it in over and over.
Mostly just makes me curios about just what happened between the two of them. If they are going to live their lives so publicly, then why stop at the reasons for their divorce? I do understand why, they don’t want to hurt their children or make the divorce worse somehow, but then why share all the “I love him/her like mad” stuff when things are good? Seems disingenuous to me.
Given the nasty legal cesspit that divorce can turn into, it seems only practical/prudent to be a bit vague about the details when writing so publicly.
My strongest emotion here is that I’m really sad for them both – they have both said many times that keeping their marriage together was really important for them. Funny isn’t it, they seem to have so much but it isn’t enough.
I cried when I read dooce’s post the other day, because I care about what happens to her, but more because *everything* she has depends on (a) running a company at home, with her husband, and (b) being entertaining. If she loses everything because their relationship came to its end, that would be a very sad story indeed.
Yes, I agree, must be a HUGE amount of pressure.