My First Divorce

I found out on New Year’s eve. In an email. Just a couple of sentences to tell me that the “fairy tale” was over. As was the marriage. I felt completely sideswiped.

But after five years of writing the Vows wedding column at The New York Times, it was inevitable that one of the couples would eventually get divorced.

I found myself taking the news to heart. I remembered the wedding vividly — the buoyant bride with a radiant expression on her flushed face, the earnest guitar-playing bridegroom eager to start a family. I know the divorce statistics in the U.S. but statistics are cold comfort when a relationship ends. I had so many questions: When did the feelings change? Or were they never real to being with?

Though I’m a single man who has yet to wed, I consider a marriage vow to be a commitment “till death do us part” (which might explain why I’m still single). I felt personally disappointed, as if in selecting people for the Vows column I was also determining which people would sustain their relationship. Finding out this couple’s marriage had failed made me feel like I had also failed, and it made me question if I had been accurate in my “reporting” of their love.

At the Times, it makes no difference if you’re writing an article about a wedding or a Page One story, you’re expected to do thorough investigating and rigorous fact-checking. But can love be fact-checked?

Read More: The Huffington Post