The fairy tale is over: Shania Twain is splitting from her husband, Robert "Mutt" Lange. Wait, don’t slam your browser down on me, I'm going somewhere with this (I'm only a scandal monger when I have the details).
Canadian country singer Twain and record-producer Lange have been married for fourteen years. The couple met at Fan Fair in 1993, after Lange heard her debut album and hit up her record label for Twain's number. They married six months later and many criticized the move as an attempt by Twain to further her career.
In response, Twain wrote what would become her first Billboard 100 top ten hit, the Grammy Award-winning song, "You're Still The One."
It almost feels like the end of an era. OK, fine, a decade. I was fifteen when the song came out ten years ago. I had been involved with a few boys, but I was just starting my first significant emotional relationship. I remember seeing the music video and thinking, "one day, I will have that. One day, I will meet a man and fall in love and we will live happily ever after." You know, the stuff Disney told us with every movie during our formative years.
"And they lived happily ever after," is a convenient end for a writer.
In the preview for the Sex And The City movie, New York's favorite single gal, Carrie, is seen reading a bedtime story to her friend Charlotte’s daughter.
"'Cinderella and the prince lived happily ever after,'" she reads, then pauses. "You know, things don't really happen like this in real life, I just think you should know now."
The movie promises a twist to the traditional happy ending, hinting--not at all subtly--at perhaps a more realistic conclusion. I don't buy it. Sex And The City hasn't had its stilettos on the ground since the book (if then--bear with me).
Sequel or no sequel, the writers will make it work in the end like a proper Disney story.
Because reality, for all the "reality" TV on our televisions, doesn't sell very well. How many of us didn't detest Téa Leoni’s character in Spanglish? She’s too real, too messy, and hits too close to home. We gravitated toward Paz Vega's Flor, whose mentalité is nothing like that of most of us, no matter how much like our mothers we have become.
I think we need less stories about what happens between the first kiss and the altar and more about what happens after that, before the reconciliation or divorce court.
I came into marriage completely unprepared. I had no idea what I was getting into. I really thought nothing would change, that the title of wife was just that: a title. I thought my relationship would remain exactly the same as it was, with just that and a few other minor differences.
I didn't know better. I mean, I had nothing to go by. Carrie ends up with Mr. Big. And they live happily ever after, obviously. Right?
I had a pretty good example of a stable marriage. My mother and father are still together. Divorce, for the most part, is uncommon in my family. But there are a lot of fairy tales there. Deep valleys of hardship are suffered alone and left undiscussed. Trouble in a marriage, you see, is a dirty, shameful thing.
It's not like a divorce where you can point fingers, go insane, even make a video and put it on YouTube about how horrible your ex is (which, while tacky, it isn't shameful, especially not when you are the lover scorned). But when you're still together, expressing your concerns on issues could tarnish your partner and, by grace of union, you. So we say nothing.
Essentially, we are fighting the biggest battles, climbing the tallest towers and slaying the meanest dragons in silence. I think we need an attitude adjustment.
Maybe if we talk more openly about what's really going on in our heads and in our marriages, we'll find a more successful way to truthfully communicate to our partners as we make our way through the uncharted territory that is the Gen Y marriage.
And maybe then Gen Z will be able to stand on the shoulders of giants, see further, plan better, know better and, who knows, maybe actually live happily ever after.
Tags:
love, relationships, divorce, marriage
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