Diffuse ugly divorces by making marriage harder

By Kathleen Parker
Commentary

Published in The Orlando Sentinel, Dec 20 1998

If divorce were a horse, we would have to shoot it just for being so ugly.

A divorce, of course, was never pretty, but today's divorce needs an exorcist. Men and women who once thought they loved each other don't just split the equity and run anymore. They try to destroy each other.

So reports The Boston Globe in a story about the growing divorce market, replete with how-to books, videos and workshops. Many offer advice not only on how to survive a divorce but how to ensure that your once-beloved doesn't. As one book author put it: "Loss of love is a catastrophe. Revenge is all that's left to you."

Would that equal energy were being directed toward the marriage industry.

The impetus behind this new market trend, not surprisingly, is women. Tired of eating dust when hubby walks, women have begun researching divorce like a post-holiday sale. They want a deal: the money; the house; the kids.

Men, meanwhile, aren't exactly sitting around, tanning their ring fingers. They want to relinquish with less money; they want custody of the children; and the house goes to the highest bidder.

It was inevitable as the battle of the sexes heated up that divorce would become the bloodiest battlefield. If all is fair in love and war, divorce is the Normandy Beach of American culture. Anything goes: subterfuge, deceit, covert operations, spies. Neither side takes prisoners, except, of course, the children.

A peek at a few of the 1,629 book titles listed under "divorce" in the online bookstore Amazon.com tells the story: Divorce: A Woman's Guide to Getting a Fair Share, by Patricia Phillips andGeorge Mair; Don't Settle for Less: A Woman's Guide to Getting a Fair Divorce and Custody Settlement, by Beverly Pekala; and my favorite, Divorce War! 50 Strategies Every Woman Needs to Know to Win, by Bradley A. Pistotnik, a Kansas lawyer.

Pistotnik tells women to use psychological warfare and "control your husband by being alternately loving and indifferent to keep him in a state of continual concern," or "hire a detective to prove your husband has a bad character, and pay for the services with your husband's money." Kind of makes you misty-eyed, doesn't it?

In fairness, divorcing women and children in the past have suffered disproportionately, at least financially. Yet, given the expectation today that divorcees go to work, though they may have been full-time homemakers previously, women face punitive loss of their children when courts assign custody to the father.

Men are familiar with the fate. Until recently, except in rare cases of abuse or abandonment, women were awarded the children. Now one in six single-parent families are headed by fathers, according to a recent Census report. Meanwhile, courts have persecuted fathers for failure to pay child support while allowing women to move their children so far away that regular visitation is logistically improbable.

In light of the toll that hostile divorces take on children, mightn't we try another tact? Instead of focusing on the jugular approach to divorce, why not try a more sensible approach to marriage?

People, after all, are rendered idiotic under the pall we call "love."

Given that the explosive issues in divorce are always the same -- property, money and children -- why not diffuse them before marriage?

Under my dictatorship, moony-eyed lovers would have to undergo a prenuptial obstacle-training course, during which they sort through all the significant marital issues: children and how to rear them; money and how to spend/save it; property and who gets what in the end.

If they don't know the answers, then they might consider that they're not ready for marriage. They may be ready for "love," for sex, for travel, for champagne, for a bicycle built for two, but they're not ready for marriage. Prenuptial agreements aren't fun, but neither is divorce. And marriage, after the blush of lust fades, is work.

Were soon-to-be-weds forced to sort out the important issues as a prerequisite to a marriage license, chances are many people would end up fighting, see their intended for who they really are, and decide not to get married. Which would be a good thing for marriage, not to mention the children whose lives are wrecked every day by parents who, alas, fell out of "love."

[Posted 12/18/1998 9:50 PM EST]