Earlier this year, Hugh Jackman posted a lovely tribute to his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, on Instagram: “I love you Deb. Today is our 27th wedding anniversary. 27 YEARS!! I love you so much. Together we have created a beautiful family. And life.”
This week Jackman, along with his wife, made a different sort of statement in People magazine. “We have been blessed to share almost 3 decades together as husband and wife in a wonderful, loving marriage,” the couple began. “Our journey now is shifting and we have decided to separate to pursue our individual growth.”
What? Sure, couples get divorced. But since when do people in “wonderful, loving” marriages get divorced?
As with Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas’s divorce statement, Jackman and Furness’s implication is that marital breakdown is just one of those things in life that cannot be helped. It’s not even a sad thing, necessarily. Just a change in direction. A “shift” in life’s journey. One that may allow for more “individual growth.”
The problem is that once you’re married — and especially after you have children — growing apart from your family is not “growth” at all but alienation. We are, each of us, defined by our connections to others. Some of these connections are unchosen, as in our parents and siblings. And some are chosen, as in our spouses, or – as in the case of Jackman and Furness — their two adopted children. But whether chosen or not, once these bonds have been created, they cannot be undone.
As my colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty put it in a recent episode of The Editors, the marriage vows are true regardless of how things turn out. A bond exists between spouses, as expressed in the marriage vow, “till death do us part.” Either their relationship will be primarily one of love and cooperation, or it will be defined by antagonism and distance.
It is perhaps not surprising that a culture that doesn’t understand marriage doesn’t understand divorce.