How Do You Tell When a Marriage is Dead?

Dear Abby gave me the answer

Photo by Eyasu Etsub on Unsplash

There were no divorces in my family until I got my first one. Then my parents got divorced. Then my sister got divorced. Then I got divorced again. It was a landslide.

I think no one earlier was divorced because it just wasn’t done. You got married, and you stayed married. You stayed together for the children. You stayed together because women couldn’t support themselves and/or their children. You’d taken a vow, and vows mattered. But Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote (published in 1923):

I shall forget you presently, my dear,

So make the most of this, your little day,

Your little month, your half a year,

Ere I forget, or die, or move away,

And we are done forever; by and by

I shall forget you, as I have said, but now,

If you entreat me with your loveliest lie

I will protest you with my favorite vow.

I would indeed that love were longer-lived,

And oaths were not so brittle as they are,

But so it is, and nature has contrived

To struggle on without a break thus far, —