LAS VEGAS— Come hell or high water, people flock here to untie the knot.
Divorce is simply about the villain and the victim. It is who got cheated and who got left—the agony of the dumped. How dramatically love can turn around will always be a conundrum.
In this city of quickie divorce, layers of emotional smog pollute the atmosphere in any divorce lawyer’s office. The time a divorcing couple spends in a courtroom is brief. After the judge denies alimony, mediation where offers and counteroffers are tendered—follows. However, discussing private matters in crowded hallways is not exactly the best place for dramatic partings. Some cry out and lament “extortion!” The corridor minuet is simply all about the payoff or some equivalent symbol of revenge — like a demand that the mate burns in hell for eternity if such a request were enforceable.
Here, divorce is a real life-altering event. Couples argue over custody and the division of estates, whose value depends on who is counting or hiding assets. Some try and fail miserably to keep as much mud off of their public images, especially tabloid fodder celebrities, but there are only two emotions that people feel in a divorce case: anger and guilt, played by gladiators in a melodrama of greed, hurt, outrage, shock and disbelief. Believe me, gentle readers, I know what I’m rattling about.
It is said that the freedom to luxuriate in self-pity is one of the consolations of a marriage gone wrong. Whether one is ending a marriage of long standing, in which ones were mostly happy, or a miserable and shorter relationship, one needs time to grieve the ending, as time and space generally heal wounds.
People choose the wrong partner, or cheat on him or her because they’re bored or begin to loathe the spouses they once adored. Lying, tricking and obfuscating when all that are at stake are half their net worths and their emotional equilibrium.
The soon-to-be former wife is surely saddling him with tremendous legal bills; the scorned woman will use whatever she can and subscribe to such a strategy as well, when it is expedient and sometimes bordering on what is considered ethical.
The catalogue of fear and insecurity that bedevils these disgruntled and miserable uncoupling couples are as deep as the Grand Canyon and just as hard to fill up. “I’ll be financially ruined and no woman wants to date a pauper.” “I’ll become a bag lady. I’ll lose contact with my children and they’ll never forgive me.” “He will get off easy because he has hidden money in offshore accounts.” “She will skip town and run away with my kids.” “He will marry an obnoxious bimbo who’ll be an influence on my children…” These fears are enormous, but the deadliest is, “I’ll be alone and die!”
On the other hand, no one can ever discount the possibility that people can be positively transformed by the crucible of divorce. A woman who has never had control of finances and can’t even balance a checkbook—much less, manage investments—will learn to become her own person. Women start out scared, but at the end, they become both psychologically and financially stable.
But for the Moonlighter and the late Mr. de Leon, divorce was never considered during the decades of an almost blissful marriage, despite our countless quarrels. Murder—oh so many times, but to divorce was definitely out of the question!
