My mom and stepfather are getting divorced. This makes me sad for my mom, but also incredibly sad for...love. Because their story was a real life example (as opposed to movies and books) of how love can happen with the person you least expect and overcome differences in culture and social judgment.
My mom is in many ways your typical church-going, life-meddling Korean mother. She is also pretty atypical in that she doesn't conform to the Korean community's narrow view of happiness. That is, she doesn't live to please other people and usually cares less what people think about her (i.e. that she is divorced, that she remarried a non-Korean - and a Latino no less! Although she's as materialistic as the next good Korean, especially when it comes to cars and purses). I don't think she was always as open-minded as she is now. When she was married to my dad they were both pretty conservative in that typical way you'd expect first generation Korean Christians to be. But I think my parents' divorce made them both realize that life is too short to be unhappy or stifle your happiness by trying to conform to your community's norms. And for that, I am SO thankful - I have a very open dialogue with both my parents (that is, when I speak to them, which is not really that often. But when we do talk, it's pretty much as open as it could possibly be).
My stepfather is a college-educated Peruvian who owned his own contractor business in the DC area for over 20 years. He has a mentally handicapped daughter to whom he is a wonderful father and a feisty miniature pinscher that he adores. He did very well for himself but he's not a materialistic man - he drives a big red truck where my mom drives a boat of a Mercedes.
They are so different. They come from completely different worlds. They don't speak the same first language.
Which is why their story was so cool to me. You would never expect them to be together, but when you saw them (when they were still happy), you could see that it just...worked. It gave me hope for that faulty institution called marriage. Because honestly, I kinda think marriage is a hoax that most people are willing participants to. Which is not to say I don't want to get married, because I do - I want to, need to, believe that two people can love each other and stay together for a lifetime (I think there's a line like this in "Juno" where the dad replies, "you have to find someone who sees you, really sees you for who you are and STILL thinks the the sun shines out of your butt"). But I have to say, I just don't have any good real life examples to show me that can happen. My parents are divorced. My aunts and uncles are divorced. My grandparents are de facto divorced. The uncles and aunts and friends' parents that are still married are SO unhappy but don't get divorced because they don't want to deal with the stigma. Two of my friends/acquaintances are already divorced (at 28). I have friends and colleagues that are married but are cheating on their spouses. I look at these relationships and think: love can't last forever. It just doesn't. Sure, I know people who have been together for years and are still happy. But they're all still in the less than 10 year stage. I don't know a single relationship over 10 years that is happy and healthy. I just don't know what a good relationship looks like in the long long term.
The news of my mom and stepfather's divorce crushed me, just a little bit.
It also got me to thinking: maybe love is nothing more than the decision to stay. To make the conscious decision when things get really rough, when you can't stand the other person, that you are going to STAY and stick it out. Not stick it out in a begrudging way because you feel forced to or because you don't want the stigma of divorce, but because this is a person you once fell in love with, a person whose ass you once thought the sun shined out of, a person you vowed to stay faithful to.
"The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love." - Tom Robbins
My mom is in many ways your typical church-going, life-meddling Korean mother. She is also pretty atypical in that she doesn't conform to the Korean community's narrow view of happiness. That is, she doesn't live to please other people and usually cares less what people think about her (i.e. that she is divorced, that she remarried a non-Korean - and a Latino no less! Although she's as materialistic as the next good Korean, especially when it comes to cars and purses). I don't think she was always as open-minded as she is now. When she was married to my dad they were both pretty conservative in that typical way you'd expect first generation Korean Christians to be. But I think my parents' divorce made them both realize that life is too short to be unhappy or stifle your happiness by trying to conform to your community's norms. And for that, I am SO thankful - I have a very open dialogue with both my parents (that is, when I speak to them, which is not really that often. But when we do talk, it's pretty much as open as it could possibly be).
My stepfather is a college-educated Peruvian who owned his own contractor business in the DC area for over 20 years. He has a mentally handicapped daughter to whom he is a wonderful father and a feisty miniature pinscher that he adores. He did very well for himself but he's not a materialistic man - he drives a big red truck where my mom drives a boat of a Mercedes.
They are so different. They come from completely different worlds. They don't speak the same first language.
Which is why their story was so cool to me. You would never expect them to be together, but when you saw them (when they were still happy), you could see that it just...worked. It gave me hope for that faulty institution called marriage. Because honestly, I kinda think marriage is a hoax that most people are willing participants to. Which is not to say I don't want to get married, because I do - I want to, need to, believe that two people can love each other and stay together for a lifetime (I think there's a line like this in "Juno" where the dad replies, "you have to find someone who sees you, really sees you for who you are and STILL thinks the the sun shines out of your butt"). But I have to say, I just don't have any good real life examples to show me that can happen. My parents are divorced. My aunts and uncles are divorced. My grandparents are de facto divorced. The uncles and aunts and friends' parents that are still married are SO unhappy but don't get divorced because they don't want to deal with the stigma. Two of my friends/acquaintances are already divorced (at 28). I have friends and colleagues that are married but are cheating on their spouses. I look at these relationships and think: love can't last forever. It just doesn't. Sure, I know people who have been together for years and are still happy. But they're all still in the less than 10 year stage. I don't know a single relationship over 10 years that is happy and healthy. I just don't know what a good relationship looks like in the long long term.
The news of my mom and stepfather's divorce crushed me, just a little bit.
It also got me to thinking: maybe love is nothing more than the decision to stay. To make the conscious decision when things get really rough, when you can't stand the other person, that you are going to STAY and stick it out. Not stick it out in a begrudging way because you feel forced to or because you don't want the stigma of divorce, but because this is a person you once fell in love with, a person whose ass you once thought the sun shined out of, a person you vowed to stay faithful to.
"The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love." - Tom Robbins
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