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A photo from the author’s own divorce ceremony, supplied. (Additional design by Tina Tiller)
A photo from the author’s own divorce ceremony, supplied. (Additional design by Tina Tiller)

SocietyAugust 15, 2024

Hear me out: Divorce deserves its own ceremony

A photo from the author’s own divorce ceremony, supplied. (Additional design by Tina Tiller)
A photo from the author’s own divorce ceremony, supplied. (Additional design by Tina Tiller)

If we mark our weddings with elaborate rituals, why can’t we do the same when marriages end?

Last month would have been my ten-year wedding anniversary. According to brides.com, the traditional gift for a decade of marriage is tin or aluminium, which symbolise the “strength and resilience of your marriage”.

My marriage was crushed like a tin can on recycling day after three years and four months of incremental misery, and we were legally divorced by 2019. Still, I felt there was something significant about the passing of this metallic milestone. The problem is, society sucks at dealing with the end of a relationship. While weddings are a multi-million dollar industry, divorce is rarely celebrated, or even acknowledged, in a publicly recognised way. 

“Living, laughing and leaving” require a lot of moral support. (Photo: supplied)

According to Stats NZ, 7,995 couples were granted a divorce last year in Aotearoa. That’s about 150 divorces per week. Most of us will know someone who’s been through a divorce, or lived through one in childhood, yet we never come together to acknowledge this process. We love to get dressed up and cheer for the start of a marital union, but where is our solidarity at the dissolution of romance?

Of course, people get divorced for all sorts of complex reasons, which makes it slightly harder to respond to than the general jubilation of a wedding party. For some of us, divorce is a hard-fought freedom from the trauma of abusive relationships. For others, it’s a tragic trainwreck of despair. Sometimes getting divorced is a perfectly amicable process. But it’s always an administrative burden, and one that tends to leave us richer or poorer – a cruel subversion of the pledge we make on our wedding day.

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In his cheerfully provocative book Religion for Atheists, writer and founder of The School of Life, Alain de Botton, makes the case for borrowing from religious rituals to improve our secular lifestyles. While some may take offence at the idea of replicating – or bastardising – spiritual practices, I think he’s onto something with this idea.

Friends with benefits: we can learn to ritualise our darker days collectively. (Photo: supplied)

Most contemporary weddings draw heavily from pagan and religious traditions, as do many of our favourite national holidays. Religion for Atheists posits that religious rituals offer a blueprint for processing difficult feelings. According to de Botton, “religions are wise in not expecting us to deal with all of our emotions on our own. They know how confusing and humiliating it can be to have to admit to despair, lust, envy or egomania.” In the creation and propagation of rituals, he argues, religions give us “lines to recite and songs to sing while they carry us across the treacherous regions of our psyches.”

That’s why I decided to mark my would-be anniversary with a DIY divorce ritual. I wanted to share both the sadness and the strength I’ve gained from the end of my relationship with the people who have helped me build my best post-marriage life. Unlike my traditionally Christian wedding, I didn’t have a playbook for my vows or venues – nor did I have resources from the bank of Mum and Dad. Instead, I drew from three core pastimes that have nourished our humanity for generations: feasting, laughing, and reciting poetry. 

With a budget less than the average child’s birthday party, I hired a community hall and set about scavenging decorations. The ‘ceremony’ began with a potluck dinner (dresscode: formal). From there, we alternated between quiet reflection and hen-do levity. One friend read the poet John O’Donahue’s ‘Blessing for the end of a relationship’; two teamed up to write a sex-themed quiz.

Halfway through the night, I tried to normalise the sharing of “confusing and humiliating” experiences through the ancient art of bingo. All you need is a long list of the things that you wish you hadn’t done and are willing to read in public: the winner is the first to tick off nine regrets to which they can relate. 

Show me a person with no regrets, and I’ll show you someone who needs therapy.

Undoing or redoing some of the rituals of my wedding proved another source of inspiration. We danced to a playlist of classic breakup bangers. My parents, who ‘gave me away’ to my husband, penned a brief speech that claimed me back into the clan. I wore a white dress and an op-shopped veil that I bought for a recent festival. We cut a cake, we popped champagne, and I promised to look after myself “in sickness and in health”. 

With a divorce rate of 7.6 divorces for every 1,000 estimated existing marriages and civil unions in Aotearoa, I fear it’s only a matter of time before capitalism declares the end of love a market worth mining. One day, we’ll have magazines and dress shops dedicated to the art of untying our overpriced nuptial knots.

Until then, I think we ought to write our own rituals. We may not grow up dreaming of divorces, but we can turn them into transcendental memories.  

Keep going!
RIP to the quick, Elvis-officiated Vegas wedding.
RIP to the quick, Elvis-officiated Vegas wedding.

SocietyAugust 15, 2024

Help Me Hera: Is it selfish to RVSP ‘no’ to my good friend’s fancy Spanish wedding?

RIP to the quick, Elvis-officiated Vegas wedding.
RIP to the quick, Elvis-officiated Vegas wedding.

I can afford it, but not by heaps, and I’d love to go, but I’m unsure how much she values my presence. Help!

Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nz

Dear Hera,

About a year ago, one of my best and oldest friends announced her engagement (very cool!). I still live in Wellington, which is where we’re both from and where her family lives, but she’s currently living in London. Last week a wedding invitation arrived, revealing in a very casual manner that she’d be having her wedding in a random, far-flung small town in Spain at a veeery expensive-looking venue. Horror.

Financially, she lives a different life to me. Both her and her fiance earn high salaries, as do most of her friends and family – so making a complicated trip across the world for a one-day event is probably not a huge burden for most of the people around her. I earn an OK salary, but with rent and other expenses, there’s not a whole lot leftover – and I’m pretty open and honest about that. While I could technically afford the trip, if I went, it would be the one overseas holiday I can afford to take for the next two years. 

I’m also unsure how much she really values me being there as she hasn’t asked me to be in the bridal party, nor did she give me a heads up ahead of the invite being sent or acknowledge that it’s a big ask. 

While I’m excited for my friend to get married and would LOVE to be there to celebrate, I’m just as excited about other events and achievements in my friends’ lives: graduations, writing being published, birthdays, babies, new pets, dream jobs, overcoming fears, leaving a bad relationship. Because I see marriage as equal to a lot of other life events, the culture of expecting your friends and family to drop a huge amount of money and travel across the globe for your wedding is, to me, insane. 

Still, I feel that she’ll take it as a slight if I say that I can’t go. It would also likely weaken our friendship – which is already weakened by the fact that we live so far away from each other. Am I diminishing the importance of getting married? Am I being selfish if I don’t go to the wedding? 

Help!

A line of fluorescent green card suit symbols – hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades

Wow. Some people are really out there having destination weddings in picturesque Spanish towns, in 2024, the year of our Lord? Is this really how the other half lives? 

There’s nothing better than a good wedding. A friend’s wedding. A stranger’s wedding. An enemy’s wedding. Who cares. Cake. Speeches. Dancing. What’s not to love? Having said that, I would never get married, unless it was the 1920s and I was engaged to the heir of a large pharmaceutical fortune. The cost of joining someone in holy matrimony is frankly insane, and that’s before you even add international travel into the equation. It’s staggering to me that people are willing to drop that kind of cash on a single-day event. That’s a house deposit. Or a sleeper ticket on the Orient Express. I don’t think you’re a selfish person or a bad friend for not instantly logging in to Skyscanner. 

Ultimately I think people should get married wherever they want. There’s a great case for eloping and tying the knot in Las Vegas, or getting hitched in a foreign courthouse on a whim. I don’t think that people need to be having financially crippling family obligation weddings, packed with cousins they don’t like and aunts they’ve never met. Having a quick destination wedding is probably a good way of culling the guest list. In the end, it’s up to the people pledging to spend the rest of their lives together to determine the most meaningful experience for them, and if that’s getting hitched at Bedrock City on a moment’s notice, more power to them. Congratulations, best wishes, and yabadabadoo. 

What isn’t fair is expecting everyone in your life to immediately drop 2k on an international plane fare. Especially in this economy. Especially when half your friends and family live in New Zealand. Being a guest at a wedding is already expensive. Expecting all your nearest and dearest to take a week off work and catch a plane to the other side of the world is frankly delusional. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having a destination wedding, but you have to be prepared that the vast majority of people in your life won’t be able to afford it. I think your friend should have acknowledged that in her invitation to you, and made a point of saying, “I know this shit is expensive, so please don’t stress out if you can’t make it.” The last thing anyone should want is for their wedding to cause financial distress to the people they love. 

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Anna Rawhiti-Connell
— Senior writer

It sucks to miss out on an important event, especially when you no longer live in the same place as your friend and don’t often get a chance to see one another. But if I were you, I would save up for my own holiday. Going to a wedding is great, but if it’s a choice between that and beholding the ancient wonder of Machu Picchu, I know which one I’d pick. 

While your friend’s invitation might be a little tone-deaf, she hasn’t actually done anything wrong. There’s no point stressing out about hypotheticals. If I were you, I would write her a beautiful and genuine letter of congratulations, telling her how happy you are for her, and how much you’d love to be there, but you can’t afford the plane fare, and you hope to find a way to celebrate with her some other time. 

If she’s a normal person, with a working heart and mind, she’ll do her best to respond with grace and understanding. If she kicks up a fuss or gives you the cold shoulder, I would argue that she isn’t such a good friend to begin with, her levels of entitlement are off the charts, and I hope her wedding is ruined by wasps. 

All the best, 

Hera

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