Nora Ephron apparently gave Meg Ryan two very good pieces of advice, according to an interview the actress gave The Times this weekend. Firstly, to get a round dinner table instead of a rectangular one, which makes for better dinner parties. Secondly, to never marry someone you wouldn’t want to be divorced from, which makes for a better life.
It’s a very sensible piece of advice, which isn’t surprising because Nora Ephron was an extremely sensible woman. But I find myself wondering what it really means, or whether it’s actually possible to divine how someone would be in a divorce before it actually happens.
My ex-husband was married before me. I met him when the break-up was still very new, as such we started dating during the legal divorce process. At the time I thought this was something of a life hack – I was getting to see what the person I wanted to marry was like to divorce.
I smugly told people who asked fair questions about how I handled dating a man who was still legally married, that I was actually rather pleased because I was getting an insight that most people never get into their partner.
Unsurprisingly, given that this was wisdom I came up with when I was barely into my 20s, this transpired to be a very stupid kind of hubris. I hadn’t allowed for the fact that no two divorces are the same just as no two marriages are the same.
But if dating someone through their divorce isn’t actually a silver bullet (colour me shocked) how are you actually supposed to know whether you’d mind being divorced from someone? Meg Ryan, who received the advice, says: ‘“I think she meant, is he gonna be a pain in the prenup? Is he gonna act towards you the way you’ve seen him act towards others? Like, just be careful, OK?”’
Another voice I find continually if surprisingly helpful on this topic is Prince Andrew’ ex wife, Sarah Ferguson. While her marriage was tabloid fodder, and her ex-husband is a controversial figure, she has managed to find a very sanguine balance with her ex-husband, providing a surprisingly impressive example for what a “good” divorce can look like.
The couple still spend large volumes of time together as co-parents and co-grandparents, and Ferguson remained on good terms with the royal family despite the occasional public toe-sucking snafu.
Fergie’s wisdom on navigating divorce is something she calls the “three Cs”: “He supports me as much as I support him. He’s supported me through thick and thin, not just marriage or divorce. We agree on the three Cs — communication, compromise, compassion.”
Now you might argue that if someone is good at open communication, open to compromise and treats you with compassion, that you’d have no business divorcing them. But that’s not really how life works – marriages end for a litany of reasons, sometimes purely because they’re not designed to last forever.
And so if you can find someone who ticks all those boxes then you’re likely to have a nice time with them while the relationship lasts, and a less nasty time if and when it does end.
There’s an argument that it’s not very romantic to be thinking about divorce when you’re getting serious with someone, but I feel the exact opposite. Planning for how you could extricate yourselves while hurting each other as little as possible is not cynical, it’s pragmatic – and it’s a very grown-up act of love.
As I roll into the second year of my legal divorce, I’ve amassed very little wisdom other than that the divorce process requires an enormous amount of reform because its current iteration traps people in legal marriages because they can’t afford to end them. But I will add what little I’ve learned to Nora, Meg and Sarah’s wisdom.
I think a very good starting point is to marry someone who chooses to visit needy friends and relations (good hearted), who always slows down while approaching a zebra crossing (unselfish), and who responds promptly to emails (because in the end, the dissolution of a marriage really does just boil down to replying to an enormous number of emails).
