LAS VEGAS — Come hell or high waters, people flock here to untie the knot. Here, divorce is simply about the villain and the victim. It is who got cheated, who got left behind and the agony of the dumped. It will always be a conundrum, how dramatically love can go into a turnaround.
In this city of quickie divorce, layers of emotional smog pollute the atmosphere in any of the divorce lawyer’s office.
The time a divorcing couple spends in a courtroom is brief. After the judge denies alimony, the main action on the mediation session is in crowded hallways, not exactly the most special place for dramatic partings…where offers and counteroffers are tendered. Some cry out and lament “extortion!” The corridor minuet is simply all about pay off or some equivalent symbol of revenge, like a demand that the mate burns in hell for eternity, if such a request were enforceable.
Divorce is a real life-altering event. Couples argue over custody, division of estates, whose value depends on who is counting or hiding assets. Some try and fail miserably to keep as much mud off 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 one was mostly happy, or mostly miserable, or a shorter relationship, one needs time to grieve the ending as time and space to heal hurts.
People choose the wrong mate or cheat on them because they’re bored or begin to loathe the spouses they once adored. They lie, trick and obfuscate when all that is at stake is half their net worth 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 strategy as well when it is expedient and some times bordering on what is considered ethical.
The catalog 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 off shore kids 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. That woman who has never had control of finances and can’t even balance a checkbook, much less, manage investments, will somehow learn to become her own person. Women start out scared but in the end, they become both psychologically and financially stable.
But for the Moonlighter and the late Mr. de Leon, during decades of an almost blissful marriage, on our countless spars, divorce was never considered — perhaps MURDER, oh many times — but to divorce was definitely out of the question!
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E-mail Mylah at [email protected].
