WHAT'S the difference between a celebrity divorce and an ordinary one? Whe divorce lawyer Laura Wasser was asked that question some time back, she replied: “Very little”. Wasser is currently divorce lawyer for Angelina Jolie, who is separating from Brad Pitt. And while everything about that couple's situation may look extraordinary, from their gargantuan complex family of three adopted and three biological children through to their past relationship histories, their divorce is quite an ordinary act.
Strip away the rumours, the speculation, and all you’re left with is two people, at least one of whom finds the other unlivable-with any more, and who are initiating a process that is likely to bring grief and pain, not just to them, but to their children. No talk of multi-million divorce settlements, future film projects or political ambitions, is going to make it seem that situation seem glamorous.
“Divorce is the great equaliser,” Wasser has said. “You can hack off or add on several zeros to the income or the size of the estate but in the end everybody has the same anxiety, sadness and anger when a marriage ends. Everybody is just as worried about his or her children.”
When it was revealed that Jolie was filing for a divorce from Pitt, and that the Brangelina alliance was about to be surgically severed, unsurprisingly there was a frenzy of gossip. People were talking as if a momentous event had occurred.
But though it looked extraordinary, really this was just one of the many break-ups that takes place on an average day in the United States, where one divorce occurs every 36 seconds.
So much about the way the story of this divorce has come out and been reacted to has seemed familiar. Pitt and Jolie may be two megastars attempting some kind of PR damage-limitation, but what they really look like is a couple badmouthing each other to friends and neighbours. This gossip storm, while astonishing in scale, feels like the scandalous tittle-tattle around a local divorce writ-large.
Firm facts are few. The only details we really know are that Jolie has filed citing “irreconcilable differences” and is looking for sole physical custody of the children. Her attorney, Robert Offer, says she has made the decision to divorce for “for the health of the family”.
Meanwhile there have been claims that the divorce had something to do with the way Pitt was parenting and stories that he is being investigated following an alleged incident on a plane in which he reportedly got into a drunken argument with their 15-year-old son Maddox.
And from this soup of rumours, the tabloids and wider media are manufacturing a grand tale of divorce, one that conforms to the patterns we know occurs when a marriage breaks up. The result is one big media up-chuck of all things divorce, a mish-mash of possible grounds and triggers, all thrown at the Brangelina brand as if to see what sticks. Read the online outpouring and you get a stream of what sounds like the sort of thing you might hear at the school gate after a neighbourhood couple has parted ways.
Most of the stories are speculative, or based on quotes from unnamed sources, yet nevertheless exploring the possible causes of this break-up: drugs, a possible affair, differing parenting styles, different ambitions, petty jealousies, the influence on Angelina of a “coven of friends”, whatever happened on that plane flight from France. None of this sounds that out of the ordinary (save, perhaps, that private plane). You could probably come up with the list yourself by analysing the major causes of relationship break-up.
Drugs or alcohol rumours – tick. Drug and alcohol addiction is one of the classic categories of unreasonable behaviour used in English courts as grounds for divorce. Research by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in the United States found that marriages where one partner drinks heavily are more likely to end in divorce.
Affair rumours – tick. Because we all know that affairs are the most media-titillating causes of divorces, and actually a 2011 survey found 25 per cent of couples in the UK still divorce on these grounds.
What happened to Brangelina is statistically commonplace, even ordinary: an everyday personal disaster. But it’s not quite true that all divorces are the same. What marks them as different is whether there are children involved and how they are handled.
In this matter, the attitudes of the couple are crucial: whether they, as Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin did, “consciously uncouple”, or go for a savage all-out battle over children and possessions. Pitt and Jolie don’t appear off to a good start. Jolie’s statement that she’s going for sole physical custody of the children reads like a battle cry or a, possibly-warranted, protective aggression. All in all, it bears the warning signs of a really nasty fight.
No-one wants this for them – just as no-one would want it for a friend or neighbour. But most of all we don’t want it for the children. And that is what makes this relationship implosion a particularly relevant and poignant story of our times. We can all survive the break-up of Brangelina – but what about those six kids?
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