Filing for divorce online can take about half an hour… If for any reason you’re not satisfied with our service, we’ll refund you in full.
— from Divorce.com
Readers may have noticed that, when I wrote my column about plastic pollution last week, I briefly compared the joys of tearing off plastic wrapping, with the joys of a marriage relationship.
There’s really no comparison. But — as I implied in that column — neither plastic wrapping nor marriage is absolutely necessary, in the larger scheme of things.
In preparation of today’s column, I spent much of the weekend reading ‘Getting Married’ by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, a comedy written in 1908. Or maybe it’s a tragedy? I can’t always tell.
The published version of the script includes a lengthy ‘Preface’ by Mr. Shaw. I had hunted down this particular script because the Preface is the source of one of his famous quotations:
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
In the Preface, and in the script, Mr. Shaw shared his perspective on the institution of marriage, as it existed in Great Britain in 1908 — with a particular focus on divorce, which was difficult to arrange at the time, apparently. In fact, the play is pretty much an extended argument for ‘no-fault divorce’. Back then, in Great Britain, hating the person to whom you were married was not sufficient grounds for a divorce. Hopefully, that has changed.
Here in Colorado, a partner can file for divorce without giving any reason at all. Or any excuse. The only requirement, as far as I can tell, is that you’ve lived in Colorado for at least 91 days before filing. How they came up with a 91-day limit, I can’t say.
And once you file, you have to wait another 90 days for the divorce to be final.
The danger is, of course, that you will fall back in love while you’re waiting.
Luckily, that didn’t happen to me. I sailed through the 90-day waiting period with flying colors.
Truth is, I didn’t want to get a divorce from Darlene, after we split up. Or, to be more precise: I very much wanted to be divorced from Darlene, but I didn’t want to go through all the paperwork.
Happily, Darlene also wanted to get a divorce from me. One of the few times in our marriage we were in agreement.
At first, she was resistant to the idea, because she was afraid she would get stuck with our cat, Roscoe. The two of them never really got along. But once I made it clear that Roscoe would be coming with me, she started to warm to the idea.
Since the kids had already left home, I suspect Darlene didn’t want to be accidentally mistaken for a childless cat lady.
But no-fault divorce is only part of the story, these days. People whom we might think young enough and foolish enough to get married, are avoiding the temptation in droves.
Among young people, age 18-29, 44% have cohabited with a partner — lived in sin, in other words — but only 23% have dared to get legally married. That’s according the Pew Research Center.
Can we blame them?
But that’s only part of the story. Back in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Obergefell v. Hodges, that state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage were unconstitutional.
According to USAFacts.org, same-sex marriage is on a definite upswing.
Of all same-sex couples living together in 2021, around 59% were married, according to the U.S. Census. Expanding beyond marriage, the total number of same-sex households in America nearly doubled from 2011 to 2021, with California, Texas, Florida, and New York accounting for 40% of the increase in same-sex households.
Colorado saw a similar percentage increase, from about 12,000 in 2011, to about 25,000 in 2021. Somewhere in that data is our fearless leader, Colorado Governor Jared Polis and his partner, First Gentleman Marlon Reis, who were married in September 2021, in “a traditional Jewish ceremony”.
I had no idea it was traditional for Jewish men to get married to one another.
My main point in writing about this column — Marriage is Dead, Long Live Marriage — is that there’s a sizable group of Americans striving to keep the institution of marriage alive. If current trends continue, within 200 years, most marriages will be same-sex.
I wonder what George Bernard Shaw would have to say about that?
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.