Back in the old days…

when you betrayed your husband and chose to get a divorce due to the fact that you were too selfish to repent, you went off covered by a suitable cloud of opprobrium.

These days, when you do it, you not only can lightly remark that “I would not be able to replace the romantic memory of my fellow transgressor with the more suitable image of my husband” (because as Woody Allen says, “The heart wants what it wants”) but you can even write pieces for extremely high-paying national mags in which you can do the full “Otter” from Animal House and make your perfidy and scumminess the basis for some Deep Thought like “isn’t the idea of lifelong marriage obsolete?“

I’m reminded yet again of C.S. Lewis ghosts in The Great Divorce, whose drive, again and again, is to extend Hell. It is not enough that they damn themselves. They cannot rest until the universe joins them in their damnation. Hell is every bit as evangelical as Heaven. Only Heaven is full and overflows with joy, while Hell is a bloated spider that seeks to suck all this exists in.