A friend of mine broke up with her boyfriend last week. They’d been together a year, and while all parties have since come to the conclusion that it was for the best, it was pretty traumatic for her for a while. I’ve been doing my bit as the dutiful friend - listening, giving advice, handing her tissues, handing her margaritas - the usual.
Not to blow my own horn, but she mentioned a couple of times that she didn’t know what she’d have done if I (and others) hadn’t been around to help her through it.
Break-ups always suck but it’s even worse if you have to go through it alone. It’s even worse if you live together. It’s even worse if you’re engaged. I’m speaking from experience so far but it’s also not too much of a leap to imagine that it must just suck beyond the pale if you’re actually all the way married. Divorce sucks the most of all - or so I’m told.
Now, I’ve never been divorced. I would be inclined to attribute that to my age - I’m 24, therefore I am un-divorced (and un-married, for the record). Turns out, my age has nothing to do with it. The average marrying age for women in England is 29 - and that’s only five years away for me. And plenty of women get married younger than that.
I’m not talking about Britney Spears and Peaches Geldof - I’m talking about real, flesh and blood, sane women who, y’know, wear pants occasionally*. And where marriage statistics dare to tread, divorce statistics invariably come lumbering after. For every thousand marriages in 2007 where one or both partners fall within the 25 - 29 age-bracket, there were 26.8 divorces - that’s more than twice the national average for any other age group.
So imagine having to go through a divorce, by yourself, before the age of 30...
Before you all go leaping out the nearest window at the very thought (and before I go a’leaping with you…) - be assured that help is at hand - in the form of .www.wikivorce.com
Yeah, I know - www.wikivorce.com ? Give me strength. The homepage is designed half Wikipedia, half Google rip-off - and features guides to a “low cost divorce”, forums for “help in this difficult time” and a calculator - presumably for working out what will happen if you take your husband, add some hussy from your local pub and subtract her panties (basically, this equals you signing up to www.wikivorce.com!!)
Oh and they have sponsored links from and are predominantly funded by law firms - go figure.
But then, I took another look and I realised that if you are going through a divorce (at any age) then this site is damned, fucking useful. Divorce is complicated and expensive - a low cost guide would be very helpful. Divorce is upsetting and, emotionally speaking, a right pain in the ass - forums where you can reach out and get advice from other people who have been there are probably a Godsend to most users (they have live chat as well - also helpful in these situations).
It might be sponsored by law firms, which raises a few questions (and eyebrows) - but they also offer a range of comparison tools, bi-weekly online legal clinics where users can seek free legal advice from real lawyers and the aforementioned calculator - which is actually for figuring out how much a divorce is going to cost you - which is much more useful.
It’s easy to mock services like this - it has a *really* stupid name and the homepage is really badly designed and so on - but that doesn’t detract from its usefulness to those that need this kind of help. It helps to make the process of getting divorce smoother and easier for regular people.
I’m not talking about dumb-ass celebri-tards who appear to have drawn inspiration for their marital history from the life of Solomon Grundy (slept with him on Monday, married on Tuesday, cheating by early hours of Wednesday morning.).
I’m talking about kids who get forced into arranged marriages by their parents. I’m talking about people in abusive relationships. I’m talking about people who sober up a year out of college and realise they actually have less in common with their high-school sweetheart than they originally thought. These people shouldn’t be trapped in loveless or damaging marriages just because they don’t know their options.
So I’m glad that sites like www.wikivorce.com exist - for everyone out there who wants another shot at happily ever after. I would still recommend a name change - like www.keepatit-maybeyou’llgetitrightnexttime.orgor for example….
*The word “pants” here can be read with the American translation for Peaches and the British translation for Britney - such a versatile word!