At what cost personal happiness?

Those of you that have gone through a divorce will understand what I'm talking about. Those that haven't, or those that think a break-up is as bad as a divorce, read this for a preparatory guide.

I'm not going to discuss the feelings, emotions, actions, etc., on the part of the people actually going through the process. No, this is a reactionary piece to those around the people going through the divorce. Something I noticed while going through the process was that people, even long-time friends, start looking at you differently. As if something intrinsically changed in you, that you are longer you, that you are some new being. And, honestly, this is partially true, for no longer will you be thought of as a collective whole, as "Reed and Sue," but now only "Reed." This look is an amalgam of confusion, well-intentioned sympathy, judgment, and jealousy. (insert collective jaw-dropping here) Yes, I said jealousy. (waits patiently) Okay, pick up your jaws, you know I'm right.

It was about two months or so after filing for divorce that I started to notice the looks, and I began to recognize the jealousy in some people's eyes. It was the standard, "wow, he's getting/got a divorce, I wonder if he had kids, I wonder how he's going to make it, I wonder what happened between them," but I also started to notice "....man, I wonder if I could every do that."

I understand that this post will predispose people against me, that there are those that will read this and think I'm a horrible person. But we as a society have placed such a stigma on divorce that it has become one of the epitomes of life-changing events, right up there with death and the Phillies winning the World Series or the Devils beating the Red Wings. We are to assume that all marriages cannot end, save only for extreme cases. Apathy, though, should be declared as one of those extreme cases; hatred is not the opposite of love, apathy is. When the relationship has become so entrenched that only routine is holding it together, that only habit is keeping the relationship alive, mayhaps it's time to take it off of life support.

It is a very personal decision to determine that in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one person to dissolve the marital bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them.

At what cost, then, personal happiness?