March 4, 2021
I’ve mentioned before how I still sometimes consume Christian content, usually podcasts.
I was listening to one my usuals and the host was interviewing a guy who’d just released his book. His book was about wisdom and how to gain it (spoiler alert: you can only gain real wisdom from being mentored by people who’ve been Christians longer than you). He had a few decent things to say, but at this point in my life you can’t convince me that any meaningful wisdom can be gained from only listening to people who believe the exact same things as you.
Throughout the conversation, he kept dropping little comments that really irked me. Here are some examples:
- “I had the pleasure of learning from men who’d been married to one woman for their whole lives.”
- “There was a guy I knew who was in a really bad place because of divorce.”
- “Men sometimes come to me and ask how to gain wisdom and I tell them to first dive into why they got divorced.”
In a conversation that was supposed to be about wisdom, there sure were a lot of Freudian slips that revealed his underlying belief that being a divorced man left you with some kind of black mark. He was implying that men who had been divorced were somehow “damaged” or “broken” or “less than” men who had not been divorced.
I whole-heartedly disagree with this.
Divorce is an important topic in the faith deconstruction community because it’s a very real possibility for many who are leaving the faith.
Since the Church urges people to marry way too young, the deconstruction community is filled with people finally admitting that perhaps if their religion hadn’t had such a strong influence over their lives then they might not have ended up marrying the same person (or married at all).
And that’s okay.
Many couples come out just fine on the other side of a faith deconstruction. Sometimes, one person deconverts while their spouse continues to believe, they accept each other, and it works. Other times, the spouses deconvert at the same time and continue on with their marriage grounded in themselves rather than religion. They finally feel like they’ve chosen each other instead of God choosing them for each other.
But sometimes marriages that encounter a religious deconversion don’t have a fairytale ending. And, once again, that’s okay.
It doesn’t help either that secular society isn’t that much different from the Church when it comes to the stigma surrounding divorce. Instead of saying that divorce screws up God’s plan or breaks God’s laws, they tend to view divorce as “giving up” and people who get divorced did so because they “didn’t try hard enough.”
So when a couple that got married young while in the Church eventually leaves, they move from a religion with a shame-based view of divorce to a new world with a slightly less shame-based view of divorce.
The truth is that sometimes two people just need to break up. People are not robots. Their desires shift. They grow. They uncover their buried authenticity. There should be no shame in admitting that things have changed.
I understand the sentiment when couples say things like, “Divorce isn’t an option for us” or “We’re going to do whatever it takes to make this work.” It’s sweet and all, but saying these things doesn’t necessarily make them true. Divorce is technically always an option for any couple. On top of that, one or both of them probably isn’t literally willing to do whatever it takes to make it work. Everyone has a limit.
I think divorce is a brave thing to do.
- Divorce means one or both parties got honest with themselves, spoke their truth, and took action regardless of the resistance from the Church or society.
- Divorce is someone taking control and taking responsibility no matter what difficulties may arise.
- Divorce means no longer settling when someone knows they deserve something more.
- Divorce, in some circumstances, means no longer tolerating certain behaviors from a spouse.
I understand that shame is only one part of the equation when it comes to divorce. There’s also an element of fear, particularly for men since divorce is often disproportionately harsh to men. That’s outside the scope of this article and I’ll cover it in a future one because overcoming the fear of divorce is just as important as overcoming the shame.
All in all, divorce still gets a bad rap in the modern era, despite how common it is. I may be going out on a limb here, but I have a feeling that those who project shame onto the idea of divorce are probably the ones in dire need of a divorce themselves…
Did divorce come up for you and your spouse after one or both of you left the Church? How did it all turn out? Let me know in the comments (if you’re comfortable sharing, that is).