America’s Quiet Divorce
After years of searching for the right person, you finally find the one who presumably wants to spend the rest of their life with you, the person who loves you so much, you no longer have to pretend. But what if it isn’t true.
Marriage is terrifying at its core—the union between two people who can stand before each other fully unmasked.
What if after years of togetherness, through every season of human stress, there is simply no mystery left. He’s seen her without makeup. She’s seen him in stained sweatpants—Both fat, thin, out of shape. Both stressed over problems at work, disengaged, arguing over dirty dishes at the kitchen sink, the unhappiness etched in permanent frowns and tired eyes. When the masks are removed, we are completely vulnerable in front of each other, and we don’t always like what we see.
What happens when we stand before our partner truly known—and they leave us for something or someone better?
Will they still love me when they really know me?
Or am I only lovable in pieces?
Divorce is our worst fear incarnate. After really knowing me, he says, I chose wrong. I don’t want you anymore.
When a spouse leaves, it captures something essential about being human: our deep-seated fear of being rejected at the moment we are most vulnerable.
I have lived it and survived it.
The church provides a spiritual form of marriage. Before the altar, in the colored light of stained-glass windows, believers remove the veil. They are finally seen in a room of witnesses. But if we are rejected, uncared for, or neglected after stripping ourselves so bare, it might lead to the worst pain imaginable—a spiritual divorce.
You went to a place you hoped would be safe and the opposite happened. You were hurt, abused, or mistreated. It is the reason why nearly half of American Christians are now unchurched.
I sat down to talk a bit more about the stigma of divorce in our churches and why it feels like a 'special stamp' of failure. You can watch that here
Debby Handman is a former minister (M.Div), educator, and single mother writing from the misty crossroads of faith and survival in rural Oregon. She is the author of the acclaimed novels House on Sand and The Gambler’s Wife, and her upcoming release, House of Broken Vessels.
