Dear Dahling,
For a while, I had this weird pattern of meeting men who were divorcing, and all broken up about it. They were questioning all sorts of things, including the meaning of love. They were emotionally unavailable and broken inside. And they were also beautiful in their brokenness, because, as Leonard Cohen says, the cracks are where the light gets in.
I will share briefly that there was this one man who was a sweet and gentle person totally caught off guard by the new single life he was about to lead. His two daughters meant the world to him. His relationship to them, and his love of them, was the most sacred thing he ever experienced in his life. And the advice I gave to him—though I have no way now, of knowing whether he followed it—was to save money on attorneys and instead make an agreement with the kids’ mother, so they could put the money into the children’s future. Because the problem with expensive attorneys who “get you what you want” is that they deplete the money intended for your future and your children’s future, and give it to their own children or their law practice, just to keep doing the same to other families who are desperate, searching, and angry. What you get in making an agreement and cutting costs is what is called adulting—treating others with civility and decency. Then, your children get to live in a world where adults act with civility and decency, and demonstrate the power of resilience, forgiveness, and adaptability. Isn’t this all quite an amazing gift to give to kids, and so affordable, too?
Hmm.
I share this with you because the movie A Marriage Story—written and directed by Noah Baumbach—nails the divorce process, and a relationship’s intimacy, and a relationship’s unraveling, with freakish precision. And an added benefit to this story, which makes it easier to watch, is that the husband and wife—Charlie and Nicole—still have some kindness and compassion and tenderness toward each other, which a lot of people in these situations do not have. This makes the film all the more gripping and cathartic.
In reality, what the film captures is not really a “marriage” story. It is A Divorce Story, but when you share children with a person, you seem to stay in some form of integration or partnership, for better or worse, for a much longer period of time than a paper marriage. Maybe even the rest of your lives, in some fashion or form.
It is such a sad thing, to watch a marriage dissipate—and also healing, too, when people decide to stop imprisoning themselves to something dead and draining. This is, I guess, why the movie makes me cry and also brings me some comfort in its universality. There is an operatic beauty to its truth. I think about it all the time as one of film’s examples of perfection in writing, directing, acting, and story.
Love is different than money, and it is different than law, and different than business, too. It is different than artistic creation. And yet, love is also woven into all these elements, like lace or a thread that keeps shining and sparkling even when you do not expect it to. In explorations like this film, we see how the love and connection of a relationship can be turned and twisted into something else entirely when manhandled by a world obsessed with materiality.
What A Marriage Story does, in the beauty of its story, is show the kind of intimacy a deep love entails, and the difficulty of putting love into paper form for outsiders to dip their toes and fingers and pocketbooks and opinions into. That is family law for you. Charlie and Nicole loved each other. They grew in different directions, eventually, and their feelings and desires began to change. Being together in any physical way would therefore be a kind of death, a stopping of vitality and healthy existence. So then came the cameras and the suits and the evaluators for a game of real-life chess.
Oh gosh, dahling-cakes, the reality of life is that people do change. The reality is that sometimes, what we think is love, or a worthy and good partner, may not be true love or a worthy or lasting partner. We can’t know it all before we know what we know.
So, have you ever wondered why we marry to begin with? What is it all about? Is this joining of bodies and souls and minds, and hearts, and money, really necessary to live a rich and fulfilling life? Have you questioned this, or do you think—like so many people—that a long marriage is the end goal to checking the box of “what is supposed to happen” before you head off to heaven, whatever heaven is to you?
Is there a way to love someone and enjoy the process of a potential forever, without sharing a bank account and having lawyers and judges have more say than you do in decisions about what happens in the event you break up? Ick. Talk about government in your bedroom and your private parts.
And lastly, when we make decisions about ending legal relationships, do the ends justify the means? Because that spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle—who is like an elf from another land or a character in Lord of the Rings—points out something very helpful in his book A New Earth. He says the “how” of doing things really matters, not just the end result. We have to pay more attention to our approach, and not just our goal and vision. In the chapter called “Your Inner Purpose,” Tolle says:
“The unconscious assumptions behind all such action is that success is a future event and that the end justifies the means. But the end and the means are one. And if the means did not contribute to human happiness, neither will the end.”
Therefore, my little cherub, we can look at movies to teach us very helpful things. Step always with love, love, love, even when love means letting go.
And if you find yourself forgetting what each step should be made of, and heading backwards into polluting what’s around you, well—keep saying sorry and trying again.
We can only know what we know when we know it.
Hugs,
Ms. Wonderful
Interview with creator Noah Baumbach from the NY Times here.