More

A magazine from the publishers of Ladies Home Journal is called More. It's a lifestyle magazine whose target demographic is middle-aged women. More's motto is "Life in Full Bloom." (An ad inside reads: "You're not 25 anymore. So what?") Recently I read through an issue, trying to figure out how editors in New York are trying to figure out this particular group. Based on this bit of research, I conclude that middle-aged women are deeply preoccupied with divorce.

Up front, in the Editor's Letter, Susan Crandell (age 49) muses about what it's like to be 25 today: "What does 25 feel like now? I look around at the younger women I know: They haven't married once, much less twice…" Next was a photo-essay called "Here Come the Brides," with eight photos of women and dresses, accompanied by wedding memories. Christy, age 47: "I stored my first gown at an aunt's house, and the very week my husband and I separated, she called to say that it had decomposed." Amy, age 51: "I was a baby when I married the first time, and I wore a baby's dress. The wedding lasted longer than the marriage, but I kept the dress because I love it." Mary Ellen, age 41: "Looking back, I can honestly say that the second time is better."

Next was a "life and love" advice column, in which Olivia Goldsmith, the author of The First Wives Club, advises a woman who is dissatisfied with her 20-year marriage: "When my marriage ended, I turned it into a best-selling novel. Being independent can be wonderful!" Next was a feature called "Up in Smoke" about…you guessed it: "Your marriage is in flames, and you don't want to be toast. Who you gonna call?" The answer is a "diva of divorce," a high-powered woman divorce lawyer. Next was a short column called "The Case for Prenups": "You choose what makes sense to the both of you - when you're favorably disposed to one another, rather than when you're at each other's throats during a divorce." (I like that "favorably disposed.")

Then came a travel piece, called "We'll always have Paris": "The last time I saw Paris, I was married to the wrong man, but we stayed in the right places." Finally, there was a feature story about Betty, age 49, and Ken, the "man who loved too much." Betty "had dated occasionally in the eight years after the breakup of her marriage, but nothing had clicked." Then she met Ken, who at first seemed handsome and wonderful - Betty quickly fell in love - but who eventually turns out to be a liar and a fraud whose favorite pastime is seducing "40-something divorcees" - women "who have everything in life but a man." Ken is a pretty awful guy who "never steals money - only hearts."

I am continually surprised at how the culture of divorce - the constant expectation, discussion, and rationalization of divorce - has penetrated virtually every corner of our society. A real estate agent in East Hampton, Long Island, tells the New York Times what it's like to sell vacation homes to the rich: "They've gotten to a point where they are in their prime earning years, their kids are in college, and they need houses that are big enough to accommodate several generations and kids from multiple marriages." Later in this letter I’ll mention that, from a marriage perspective, there is some encouraging demographic news from the 2000 Census. But we have spent decades confecting a culture of divorce that now seems dense and monolithic.

Sources: More, March 2001. Blaine Harden, "Wowing Them With Excess in the Hamptons," New York Times, July 18, 2000.

First published Spring/Summer 2001.