A friend of mine is in love with France and things French. But over a Santa Fe-style lunch recently (my choice, obviously) this Francophile with a north Texas drawl told me her appreciation of that country was elevated to new levels last spring.
The occasion was a memorable wedding in rural France between an American friend of hers and a Frenchman. Talk about le big bash. The celebration my Dallas-area friend attended not only lasted days, it and what sounded like rivers of champagne flowed merrily from one neighboring town to another.
As my friend gushed over her experience, the cultural parallel that initially sprang to this rube’s mind was le Super Bowl week. In the French countryside, the friends of the honored couple gathered for heartfelt testimonial dinners. And there were lunches, receptions and spontaneous parties, pre-wedding and post-wedding.
My friend crowned her delightful story about joie de vivre with this observation: After so many close friends had engaged in such expensive and time-consuming tributes to the matrimonial union of two people, it seemed to her that it would be almost impossible for the couple to even think about separating or divorcing. The opprobrium would be too much.
In other words, what I saw as Super Bowl-like hype was actually solemnity of purpose disguised as gaiety. The moral appears to be that there is more to tradition than meets the eye. Or, perhaps, that some of us have been playing at life without a helmet too long. I’m not sure which.
As 1997 gets under way, is it any surprise that a growing number of Americans are suggesting that getting married–and getting divorced–is too easy? Indeed, the questioners include people such as myself who have tied and untied the knot.
Turn on the TV some night and you’ll see the usual fare that seems to celebrate selfishness, immediate gratification and infidelity. But occasionally you’ll also see people advising the young about the need to become friends before becoming lovers. As prevailing standards of morality begin to let us down, there will always be those who will remember that we can fall back on traditional ones.
Last year, after I wrote a couple of columns supporting initiatives to make marriage and divorce more difficult, people from across the country communicated with me to confirm how critically important they think these matters are to our society, especially today. But they also said something else. They insisted that the tasks of promoting good marriages, keeping families together or minimizing the familial pain that accompanies unavoidable breakups are interrelated and complicated. Families, churches, professional marriage counselors, judges and legislators must consider the gamut of issues, to be able to help orient those couples seeking advice.
Since noting last year that state legislators have introduced 750 bills relating to marriage and divorce, up from a mere handful in 1994, the move to oblige couples to think more seriously before marrying or divorcing appears to be holding steady. But regardless of what lawmakers do, local churches nationwide are trying to nurture marriage by sponsoring programs such as Marriage Savers, the brainchild of religion and ethics columnist Michael McManus. With 1 million cases of child abuse or neglect reported in 1995, and parents responsible for 80 percent of those cases, there is sometimes no option but to break up families, either through divorce or termination of parental rights. And everyone knows that sometimes the old phrase “irreconcilable differences” has real meaning even where abuse is not an issue.
Yet, the fact that many divorces occur because couples just want a quick fix to their troubles, or because attorneys often have a vested interest in subtly promoting divorce, does not mean that society must necessarily buy into facilitating family disintegration.
What happens when divorce cannot be avoided? As the new year begins, families in pain need to know there is an answer. Suzy Yehl Marta, the founder and president of an organization called Rainbows, based in Schaumburg, Ill., has some excellent ideas for helping the children of divorce cope with parental breakup. Rainbows counseling is available at more than 5,700 sites in 48 states and 10 foreign countries.
Meanwhile let’s hope the French-American alliance, in whose celebration my luncheon companion participated last April, never needs Rainbows’ help. According to my luncheon companion, the couple over there is not only content but happy. Finding themselves in early middle age, they are about to have a baby. Their many friends are deliriously happy for them, and I have a higher regard for the French.
