The Day That Changed Everything
“I want a divorce”…four words that shook me to my core, ones that I never imagined I
would hear after fifteen years together. I said nothing in return. I was speechless and numb.
Thoroughly shaken and breaking inside, I rose up from my seat, went into another room
and proceeded to sort through all we owned together. Within a few days, I was ready to
load a few boxes of my belongings and clothes and leave everything else behind. He could
deal with what was left as the material items just reminded me of his betrayal, the one
offence according to my beliefs that I would never be able to forgive or forget. My love,
adoration, and respect died for my soon-to-be ex-husband that day and there would be no
way back for us. I, like many other divorced or soon-to-be divorced individuals, had to
learn in the months and years to come-how to cope, survive, and rebuild my life .
Divorce is a bitter pill; undermining ones sense of who they are, their belief about their
safety and security, and one’s understanding about love, family, relatives, commitment,
and certainty. The world as an individual knows and lives will turn upside down, forever
changed. Divorce contributes to an individual’s perceptions of failure and questions one’s
self worth. One goes through the lowest of the lows and the highest of highs, learning to
sink or swim and hopefully flourish again. This is an opportunity for individual growth,
discovering who their true friends actually are, finding out who and what they want to be,
and how they want to live their lives.
The National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, both report that
50% of marriages end in divorce, and as of 2009, states the divorce rate is at 3.4 per 1,000
population, while the marriage rate is 6.8 per 1,000 (“FastStats ”). CBSNews.com notes
that “America’s divorce rate began climbing in the late 1960’s and skyrocketed during the
’70s and early ’80s, as virtually every state adopted no-fault divorce laws” (“Divorce rate”).
The no-fault divorce law was first enacted in California by Governor Reagan, which
“eliminated the need for couples to fabricate spousal wrongdoing in pursuit of a divorce…,
but no-fault divorce also gutted marriage of its legal power to bind a husband and wife,
allowing one spouse to dissolve a marriage for any reason, or for no reason at all”
