When marriage doesn’t work, be authentic

Have you noticed how almost everything written about divorce, either in print or online, is illustrated with that generic photo of a wedding cake split down the middle, the miniature bride and groom cleaved apart, toppling towards a chasm of iced sponge? Of course you’ve noticed. It’s as lazy and ubiquitous as white jeans in a tampon advert.

People who seek divorce — ordinary people, I mean, not speeded up celebs who marry for weeks rather than years — should be applauded, supported, respected. It shows more guts and emotional intelligence to hold your hand up and acknowledge that something has run its course / is no longer working / is causing unhappiness, than the alternative of waiting until death to finally extricate yourself from something terminally dysfunctional. Why would anyone alive want to remain in a dead relationship?