My Marriage: The Autopsy

My Marriage: The Autopsy

I CAN UNDERSTAND why having a heart
attack is a popular way to die. There’s a
conciseness to it. One minute you’re
enjoying your chicken nuggets, and then—
boom!—you’re gone.
Divorces are like heart attacks. One
minute you’re legally married, and then—
boom!—you sign some papers and your
marriage is declared dead. The divorce
decree, just like an autopsy, states the
time of death and establishes a cause.
But it’s far less revealing than an actual
autopsy. After I signed the divorce papers
legally ending my 10-year marriage, I
stared at the cause: “constructive abandonment.”
This means that even though
my wife, Rose, and I had been living
together under the same roof, we’d jointly
abandoned our roles as husband and
wife. In other words, the marriage failed
because we failed to be married. That’s
kind of like saying the cause of death was
ceasing to live.
While this may fulfi ll the requirements
of the New York State court, it would
never hold up on CSI.
So I decided to conduct my own marriage
autopsy, with the help of a half dozen relationship
experts. You’re going to want to
hear the results. Why? Because I bet you’re
making some of the same mistakes.