Al and Tipper Gores' surprise separation announcement has exposed "An Inconvenient Truth." In today's environment, it's very hard to keep a marriage together for a lifetime.
There doesn't seem to be much support encouraging the continuity of marriage if you take the temperature of commentators. The New York Times had someone call divorce an iconic baby boomer event.
On one of the morning TV shows, their so-called experts said that it doesn't matter that Al and Tipper may be divorced since the kids are now older. Hmmm. With rationed time, it now means that elderly parents see their adult kids half as much for holidays and get togethers and adult kids have to choose between parents.
Ironically, the announcement was made at the peak of wedding season when couples will walk down the aisle making the commitment to love each other through thick and thin, sickness and health, richer or poorer.
As one reader wrote, "When young couples see that the Gore's (and many others) can't quite make it work, what hope is left for them?
It is a good question.
We live in a culture where there are two major values when it comes to marriage. To some, personal happiness is more meaningful than anything else and to others a sense of family connection with all its problems trumps the frenetic pursuit of personal happiness.
As my colleague, Dr. Mark Banschick, author of The Intelligent Divorce wisely explains, "the person who is more selfish will think, I need to be happy, my marriage will make me happy or I will find another relationship that will make me happier."
The other competing value is more traditional.
The person thinks I'm part of a family and a clan that demands my loyalty and through my commitment to that clan I find happiness. I take pleasure in the sweet moments and the history.
"In 2010, every person in marriage is wondering which value trumps the other," says Dr. Banschick. "When you're fortunate, those values are both lined up like the stars in heaven and when they're not, you have some tough choices or choices are made for you."
Because we spend our days with divorcing couples, we have data from the frontlines. Are there many people who have divorced and found happiness again? You bet. I'm one of them. And my husband's ex-wife is a valued member of our family.
But make no mistake, freedom creates other hardships and handcuffs.
Society benefits from marriage because children can flourish when they have both parents at home and don't have to shuffle between two households carrying both their Batman backpacks and their parents' emotional baggage. Staying married is also less economically destructive because one house is easier to support than two. Even those who divorce and can easily afford the transition acknowledge years later how much they didn't realize how meaningful their history was together.
Your partner becomes your historian. Remember going to see that Sting concert? Wasn't that cliff side restaurant by the sea so beautiful? When you remarry or repartner, the pictures of your previous life get edited out.
There is no doubt that some people should get divorced. And sometimes you can have two good people who are not good together. But many others opt out too early.
A major study done at the University of Chicago by Linda Waite found that in most so called unhappy marriages, almost 8 out of 10 who avoided divorce were happily married five years later. Furthermore, the researchers also found that two-thirds of unhappily married spouses who stayed married reported that their marriages were happier.
But Al and Tipper Gore had a risk factor that creates potential divorces. They were high school sweethearts. According to the National Marriage Project, those who marry in their early 20's have a higher risk of divorce than those who marry later. They don't know what they're not missing and how difficult it really is to partner with anyone. Perhaps this will be a separation and not a divorce though less than 8 percent recouple.
Yet a marriage that lasts 40 years should still be viewed as a success. Al Gore, the former Vice President, Oscar winner for "An Inconvenient Truth" and Nobel Peace Prize winner along with his wife Tipper should also be awarded a prize for conducting this announcement with disciplined dignity. No affairs, no dirty laundry being aired. No one knows what Tipper's tipping point was or his. Yet there are ways to divorce that honors the time together and the family you've built together. You may not be married but you are always parents. Class vs. crass.
So should the vows of upcoming brides and grooms be changed to "As Long As It Lasts" or remain "Till Death Do Us Part?" I have written how "Till Death Do Us Part' should be eliminated from marriage vows because it sets the expectation that you have failed if you can't reach that goal, which few do when we are living now into our 80's and beyond.
However, Dr. Banschick and I have seen the benefits of sticking it out for the long run. No marriage is fun and fulfilling all the time. But those who invest in it and patiently ride the waves do find deep happiness that their families also take pride in. These couples are saying, we have grown together, we know what bothers us and frankly we don't care. We're family and there's a love here bigger than anything that bothers us.
And as to why Bill and Hillary Clinton are still married? They obviously have a bond that is deeper than the wounds.
Follow Jill Brooke on Twitter: www.twitter.com/divorcemama
Andy Borowitz: By 5-4 Vote, Supreme Court Decides Gores Must Stay Married
Mark Goulston, M.D.: Al and Tipper, Say It Isn't So
Darryle Pollack: Al, Tipper and the State of the Union
All of this is to say, our son, who is five, is a central priority for both of us. He gets a huge amount of our energy and focus. But our extended family is carefully crafted around the idea that my former wife and I are good coparents but incompatible in the world of cohabitating.
I truly believe that its time to take the stigma off divorce and celebrate divorce as a potentially cooperative and collaborative way of moving past marriage into a new phase of life.
I know my former wife is happier now and so am I.
It is hard on the families when divorce occurs; everyone loses - especially the children and the grandparents. But people adapt and life goes on. Some lucky married people just happen to find in each other a person who is steady, forgiving and faithful and whom they adore all their lives. But for many others, marriage turns out to be chronic struggle with unhappiness and worst of all, boredom. Married people should feel free to step away from a life that doesn't satisfy.
I also think people simply put up with less than they used to years ago - for older generations, once you got married you just had to stick with it no matter what, because that's just what was expected of you. Conversely, people put up with very little today and few (by comparison) have the determinAtion you have. When times get tough, people are outta there!
I really don't think it's any harder to keep a marriage together today than it was 50, 100, or 500 years ago. The difference now is that we have choices that weren't available to our predecessors. We no longer have to be bound by socioreligious and other constraints -- we don't have to fear the wrath of society should we divorce.
As many happy tales of long-lasting marriages in a foregone era as there are, we forget that there are many more about women being locked into abusive relationships, with little opportunity to leave and few ways to sustain themselves. Men, too, were bound in unhappy relationships.
I am personally not a fan of marriage, but know of many happy couples who feel fulfilled being married. To me, though, it seems like an outdated institution and its roots in religion don't appeal to me. I'm glad my friends have the choice to get married -- and divorced -- and I'm happy that I have the choice to stay single. To me, that's progress.
Kudos to Al & Tipper Gore for making it forty years and then deciding to amicably split so that they can live out the rest of their lives doing what fulfills them most.
< begthequestion.info >
or please see: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/begs-the-question.aspx
"The Right Way to Use "Begs the Question
Begs the question is actually a term that comes from logic, and it's used to indicate that someone has made a conclusion based on a premise that lacks support (1, 2). It can be a premise that's independent from the conclusion (3) or in a simpler form, the premise can be just a restatement of the conclusion itself (4, 5).
For example, let's say Squiggly is trying to convince Aardvark that chocolate is healthful, and his argument is that chocolate grows on trees, so it must be healthful. Aardvark could rightly say there's no proof that something is good for you simply because it grows on a tree. Some things that grow on trees are poisonous--Chinaberry tree fruit, for example (6). So Squiggly's argument is based on a faulty premise.
Aardvark could correctly say that Squiggly's argument begs the question. What does growing on trees have to do with being healthful, anyway?"
Another way to remember what "begs the question" means is to think of "the question" as "The Question," meaning, "where's the support for your argument?"
No offense meant to anyone...