#also if you are recently separated or divorced go watch this kdrama and save yourself a few months of therapy bills

[he-is-lightning-in-a-bottle]

I am getting a lot of asks about Misha's separation, so I figured I'd collect what I want to say in a single post rather than turning into an ask blog.

There's an excellent kdrama called Matrimonial Chaos starring Bae Doo Na (you may remember her as Sun from Sense8) and Son Seok Koo (who played her Sense8 love interest, Inspector Moon). In it Doo Na's character has divorced her husband and is writing a children's book based on her own relationship with her ex-husband, who she still co-habitates with because of their financial insecurity.

One day, in a thinly veiled attempt to determine if she and her ex are going to reconcile, her editor asks her how the book will end.

She says, "I feel like it should have a happy ending, but--"

"What is a happy ending?," her editor interrupts. "Living together again? Getting back together? Is living together really a happy ending?"

"Huh?"

He turns to her and very deliberately asks, "Why do you think parting ways isn't a happy ending?"

And the message is clear: people get divorced for the same reason they get married -- to be happy.

My husband and I were married for 24 years before we separated during the beginning of the pandemic last year. It's not a shame. It's a damn success story.

24 years when the average marriage only lasts 7! 24 years of growth and commitment and excellent communication and polyamorous loving. 24 years. 3 brilliant children.

People want to give me condolences, but I know I deserve congratulations.

The truth is, relationships are hard work. I still love my husband, and he still loves me. We literally separated at a time when our marriage was the best it's ever been.

But because it was so good, we had the grace to acknowledge that romantically, we had simply grown apart. We knew through decades of experience that the little and big ways we unavoidably kept hurting each other weren't going to change. We were just different people than we had been, and that's okay.

It's better to separate and stop the hurt. If you really love your partner and see that some fundamental part of who you are keeps hurting them, some part of you that you either can not or will not change, then isn't giving them the freedom to go and heal the most loving thing you can do?

In another scene in Matrimonial Chaos, they say, "There is no sin in drifting apart, only in beating each other up over it."

So, please, for the love of all that is holy, give the man some space. I'm sure Misha and Vicki did the best they could with what they had for as long as possible (because that's what we all do). Stop acting like their separation is the death of love or some terrible tragedy or writing RPF in your heads when the truth is you don't know him.

I know we sometimes feel like we do, but that's just our parasocializing brains being stimulated. We don't know jack, and we really don't even have enough of a window into their lives to even speculate.