As I’ve previously explained, there is a very common misconception that our society no longer believes in sexual morality. While this misconception is understandable, it overlooks the new sexual morality which has replaced the old one. The new sexual morality inverts the natural order. Now instead of lifetime marriage being the moral place to pursue sex and romantic love, romantic love is the moral place for sex and marriage.
You can see this new view with the huge social push to position couples who embrace divorce as demonstrating the height of virtue. The Huffington Post published an article earlier this week gushing over a couple who took a “divorce selfie”. Since marriage vows have no moral meaning, divorce doesn’t involve breaking any vows. Divorce (they rationalize) should be about celebrating the fact that there once was romantic love, not about the destruction of a family or a failure to honor a solemn vow made in front of God and their closest family and friends. The ex husband in the divorce selfie explains:
Here’s to the most friendly, respectful, and loving split imaginable. We smile not because it’s over, but because it happened…
…we also wanted to let people know that this didn’t have to be a negative experience. We are choosing to move forward with love. We’ve been separated a year, and throughout that time, we’ve both been committed to preserving our friendship.
…
To share that kind of bond with another is one of the most divine gifts given to us…
I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to love and be loved in return. I truly smile because I lived in that beautiful sunlight of love for a bit.
Back in March Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin announced their divorce as a “conscious uncoupling”. The Daily Telegraph and countless other media sources were delighted with this new and more enlightened approach to divorce. More recently Jewel and her husband announced that they were engaged in a “thoughtful and tender undoing of ourselves.”
Ty and I have always tried to live the most authentic life possible, and we wanted our separation as husband and wife to be nothing less loving than the way we came together. For some time we have been engaged in a private and difficult, but thoughtful and tender undoing of ourselves. Allowing ourselves the time and space to redefine what we are to each other with love rather than malice.
We have been so aware that it is easiest to use the inertia of anger to leverage two souls apart who have been bound together by so much living. By a child. But we did not want anger to burn the ties that bound us. Instead we have chosen the much more difficult task of undoing ourselves stich by stich, and releasing each other with love so that we may take on our new form: dear friends and devoted co-parents of our beloved son Kase. We have no desire to damage ourselves and each other in the process. Who better than each other to bear witness to the heart ache of redefining our family? And who better as ally, while we learn to redraw ourselves in whatever new shape we find as separate people who are still striving to be the best versions of ourselves- as humans and as parents.
This new moral view is so ubiquitous that no one seems to notice what should be obvious. If the ideal divorce is one where no one is to blame, then the ideal marriage is one where the vows have no moral meaning.
See Also: Lovestruck
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