I'm not sure why we're supposed to be "shocked" that Danny DeVito's and Rhea Perlman's marriage has ended. I mean, intellectually, I understand it's because they were together for 40 years, and because we collectively subscribe to forever fantasies that elide unromantic realities like human beings change. Or don't, when they need to.
And I also get that our exhibitionist-voyeuristic, celebrity-obsessed, no-boundaries garbage culture conspires to make us feel like we know something intimate about the relationships of famous people, and I get that we believe in increasingly cacophonous invitations to insert ourselves into other people's private lives even when it's not those people themselves doing the inviting.
Still.
We should tell those narratives to fuck off and stop being shocked!
The truth of a marriage lies between two people alone (or any long-term partnership, between whatever number of people)—and parts of what holds it together, or tears it apart, reside secretly in individual hearts, bindings or fissures that are unknowable, or indescribable, even to the person in whom they reside.
No one knows everything about any relationship, even the people in them. Which is what makes loving another person terrifying, and what makes it exhilarating.
And also makes other people's relationships none of our business.
My best to Rhea Perlman and Danny DeVito, and may they find whatever they need.
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