My goodness. What a week it’s been for marriage on the Left Coast. Laura Dern and Ben Harper. Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman. David Arquette and Courteney Cox. Welcome to the Singles’ Club, gang.

I don’t feel any more for them than I do for the usual suspects, the non-celeb couples breaking up. But I don’t feel any less for them, either. People are people. And nobody, nobody, nobody wants to find out that her ex-husband has blabbed on-air that she and said ex hadn’t had sex for four months before he got served by a waitress (intriguing move, Arquette—hang in there, Courteney, I hear the Seychelles are nice this time of year).

I sigh when I read of the Hollywood splits. I feel a little ill, though I don’t know them, will never know them. I’m not surrounded by a lot of real-life splits, out here in my rural-ish, insular corner of the U.S., and I can’t help but sit up and pay attention when I hear of any couple parting ways. It’s not regular news around here. I don’t wish divorce on anyone I know, and I don’t wish it on anyone I don’t know. There are very real people behind those Botoxed brows and airbrushed Hollywood faces. Their splits don’t hurt any less; they just have more money to pour into distraction and forgetting.

I wonder what it is in us that makes us want to couple up, beat the odds, swear off all others, until death do us part. I am not sure we are as clever a species as we wish to believe. When my ex-husband and I were waiting in line to procure a marriage license at City Hall more than ten years ago, we noticed a slip of paper tucked behind a glass partition. On it, a phrase was scrawled in ballpoint ink: “HOPE TRIUMPHS OVER EXPERIENCE.”

A dubious win?

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