The Sad Psychology of ‘Green Grass’ Divorces

You’ve heard the phrase: the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. It refers to a completely normal aspect of human psychology wherein we consistently overvalue those things we don’t have in our lives, and consequently undervalue the things we do have. It’s occasionally (and quite cynically) restated as familiarity breeds contempt. This is a concept that Michigan divorce attorneys are intimately familiar with, as there is no greater trigger for all of that contempt to surface than the proceedings of a divorce.

Exposure to Grass is Bad for Your Marriage
Not the kind you smoke — though realistically, that’s probably true, too — but the on-the-other-side kind of grass can really eat away at your happiness. Here’s an example:

• Say you wake up and log onto Facebook and find that your high school friend just married his high school sweetheart after reconnecting eight years later and proposing to her by having a replica of the One Ring engraved with “Marry Me” in Elvish. It might not be your thing, but assuming it’s her thing, how freakin’ romantic is that? Your proposal wasn’t that precisely customized to your obscure interests!
• Then you put some DVRed TV on in the background of your workplace, and you half-watch as Jane the Virgin gets wooed repeatedly by the insanely hunky hotel owner with the smile to kill for. Your spouse doesn’t woo you anymore…in fact, they haven’t really put any wooing effort in for years!
• Then you get home after work, and you find an email from Uncle Dennis about how he just celebrated his 50th anniversary by taking Aunt Kathy to Istanbul and tasting fresh hand-ground cumin straight from the basket at the Grand Bazaar. Your last trip was before the kid was born, and it was a cruise ship to Alaska that your father paid for!

…Do you see what’s happening here? The chances are enormously high that there are aspects of your relationship that are better than those of your high school friend, of Jane, and even of Uncle Dennis. But you’re not thinking about those, because you’re only seeing the greenest of the grass — the part they choose to celebrate (or, you know, put on TV for dramatic purposes).

The Illusion of Choice Creates the Illusion of Unhappiness
One of my employees talked recently with his 97-year-old grandmother, at length, about her youth. She was born to a recently-immigrated farmer in South Dakota, and grew up literally hitching plows to mules before dawn every morning. She married a boy from the same town, because he was the one of the half-dozen age-appropriate boys that was interested in her. She had no options for jobs, no options for mates, no options for places to live, and essentially zero choice in any of what we would consider the ‘big’ choices in her life. And yet she has been happy with that man for her entire life, even though he passed away a decade ago. She is happier today with the memory of her husband than many younger people are with their actual spouses!

What’s the difference? Modern Americans put a huge amount of value on their right (and thus implicitly their ability!) to choose. Yet it turns out that having more choices doesn’t lead to greater fulfillment — it leads to more anxiety. The more options we feel like we can choose between, the more likely we are to believe that we could have made a better one. (Or, if we haven’t chosen yet, that we need more information before we can choose.)

Ultimately, this means that “green grass” divorces are often completely unrelated to the actual attributes of the people getting divorced. All it means is that one of the people involved has spent far too long worrying that somehow they ‘missed out’ on something by choosing the spouse they did. In reality, what they’re missing out on is the happiness that they can get by fighting through it and sticking with their decision.