Success or Failure?

There's been a high volume of celebrity divorces in the news lately. While this isn't necessarily a big surprise, given Hollywood's marital reputation, there are several considerably lengthy-by-H-Wood standards marriages that have recently bit the dust.

Comedian George Lopez and his wife ended their 17 year marriage.

Former country crooner Billy Ray Circus and his wife of 17 years called it quits.

Randy Travis and his wife of 19 years are finished.

Courtney Cox and David Arquette's eleven year marriage has apparently been in flames for several years.

I know most of us would say who cares about celebrity marriages? The thing is we should care. While Hollywood seems to be not so much its own planet, but its own universe, it is a reflection of our society and vice versa. So if folks who seem to have it all, fame and fortune, especially the fortune that we all assume would/should/could make life easier, (Never does, does it?) can't get marriage right, what are our chances? Our meaning those of us either married, or once-married, who do not have the means to simply jet off to a tropical destination when marital bliss has become a little blah. (Not that I'm making light of marital troubles by calling it blah but allowing blah to represent any number of issues that plague even the best of marriages.)

What the blah are we doing wrong?

Are we going in with expectations too high or too low?

Does society put too much pressure on couples to be perfect in all respects including the mountainous and completely unnecessary acquirement of the McMansion, the 2.5 kids and x-amount of cars parked in the drive to wash and wax on a lazy Saturday afternoon? (This is seemingly always followed by every bird in the neighborhood stopping to finish the job, why is that?)

Do we not understand that loves grows and matures? That love is not about constant sweaty palms and pitter-patter of hearts whenever we see our significant other?

Or maybe we need to redefine a successful marriage? After all, people no longer stay in occupations for decades, sometimes by choice, often not by choice with closings, layoffs, and the like. People also have a tendency to move from one location to another throughout the duration of their children's young lives. More so now then they ever did in the past.

Is marriage simply becoming a reflection of our mobility or is it our perception of what constitutes a success and what makes a failure? Maybe Margaret Mead had it right. Rather than to peg each of her marriages as failures she was able to look at the positives. She obviously never gave up on love or a lifetime commitment. I mean, I highly doubt she went in with the assertion if things didn't work out there was always the option of divorce.

At least, I hope she didn't, I sure didn't go in the last time with those thoughts, did or would you?

Let's try a new approach. Instead of saying George Lopez and his wife's marriage failed let us say they did a phenomenal job in staying together for nearly two decades when many marriages don't last three years, especially under the weight of Hollywood standards.

Yet, we're afraid to try that, aren't we? Marriage is such a time-honored tradition. Who wants to mess with tradition? Or the joy, as one friend shared on a message board that he witnessed one evening.

"There was a couple at the bar celebrating their 46th wedding anniversary," he wrote. "Another couple overheard and secretly paid for their dinner. Random acts of coolness, for the world."

Maybe that's the real problem. We don't expect to witness random acts of kindness anymore than we expect to witness 46^th wedding anniversaries. Why? It is because we all expect to fail?

And if that couple at the bar celebrating 46 years of the ups and downs that is the reality of marriage divorce tomorrow, are they still a success or are they a failure?

* originally published Opinions by Bob Nov. 3, 2010

The mother of two munchkins, Bethany J. Royer is an independent contractor and writer currently studying psychology with Florida Institute of Technology. She is actively seeking a publisher for her first completed novel while working on a memoir about her personal trials and tribulations with divorce.

She blogs prolifically at motherofthemunchkins.blogspot.com and can be reached at themotherofthemunchkins@yahoo.com.