Brangelina and the real risk of easy divorces
LudicrOus as it sounds, the news that Angelina Jolie is seeking a reconciliation with estranged husband Brad Pitt — three years after she filed for divorce — could provide us with a salutary lesson.
For it comes in the same week that reforms to our own divorce laws to make ending a marriage less acrimonious were announced.
Yes, Brangelina are a stupendously silly Hollywood couple — they split in hysterical haste after Jolie accused Pitt of drunkenly yelling at their son Maddox aboard their private jet.
We don’t know what really lay behind the break-up that’s devastated their six children, or whether Jolie’s hopes of a reconciliation are even true.
What we do know, however, is that countless couples divorce in haste, only to regret it years later.
i applaud some of the changes in the proposed reforms. But my deep concern is they’ll make a hasty divorce far easier because they reduce the time it takes to finalise a separation, if only one partner wants it, from two years to less than six months.
The point is that most marriages end as a result of adultery. And the desolation, despair and anger of the ‘wronged’ spouse takes years, not months, to resolve.
coming to terms with the reasons for the affair, if it can be understood or
forgiven at all, certainly can’t be done in six months.
Looking back at my own divorce, when my then husband said his affair was a ‘cry for help’, i was blinded by self-righteousness and vilified him for what i saw only as his betrayal.
it was years before i accepted that my working ten hours a day, six days a week, didn’t leave room for me being his loving young wife.
i never once considered why he might have sought solace in the arms of another woman. i never thought for a moment that i might have been equally culpable for the end of our marriage.
i was wrong. And that galls me to this day, even though i accept we were never meant to be together for life. The blind fury you feel eases with time — and this gives marriages a better chance.
sting once hinted at this when he said the secret of his 27-year marriage to Trudi styler was that they never wanted to get divorced ‘at the same time’. in other words, time overcame one side’s bitterness.
Perhaps this is what Angelina now realises. if so, she’s giving us a stark warning about the very real dangers of this push for easier divorces.