"Dinner With Friends"

One often-overlooked aspect of the impact divorce has on all involved is the impact it has on mutual friends. Donald Marguilies, one of America's best contemporary playwrights, wrote a play a few years ago called "Dinner With Friends" that explored this situation. It was performed locally at Actors Theatre of Louisville and went on to win a Pulitzer. It also became a great HBO film a couple years ago.
The play involves four best friends -- two couples. One couple is getting a divorce. The man, Tom, has been having an affair with a stewardess, and has decided to leave his wife for the woman. In this snippet of dialogue, he has just told his friend Gabe that he was miserable throughout the entire marriage:

Tom: Well sure. But, honestly? Most of the time I was just being a good sport.

Gabe: A good sport?!

Tom: You know what I mean ...

Gabe: Wait a minute. You were faking it?! You mean to tell me that all those years -- all those years, Tom! -- the four of us together, raising our kids together, the dinners, the vacations, the hours of videotape, you were just being a good sport?

Tom: No ...

Gabe: Then what, Tom, I don't get it. I was there, as well as you. This misery you describe, the agony. Gee, I thought we were all just living our lives, you know? Sharing our humdrum little existences. I thought you were there, wholeheartedly there. And now you're saying you had an eye on the clock and a foot out the door?

Tom: You've got to stop taking this so personally.

Gabe: How would you take it? You say you were wasting your life, that's what you said.

Tom: I don't mean you and Karen. I don't mean you, I'd never mean you; you're my best friend, I've got to be able to say this stuff to you. I'm talking about my marriage.

Gabe: But it's not that simple, Tom. We were there. Karen and Danny and Isaac and I, we were all there, we were all a big part of that terrible life you had to get the hell away from. Isaac's totally freaked out by this, by the way.

...

Tom: I just want you to be my friend. That's all. I want you to be happy for me.

...

Gabe: We had a vow too, you know, not a marriage but something like it.

Tom: Yeah?

Gabe: We were supposed to get old and fat together, the four of us, and watch each others' kids grow up, and cry together at their weddings ...

Tom: It's not like I'm dead, you know ...

Gabe: I guess I mean, I thought we were in this together. You know? For life.

Tom: Isn't that just another way of saying misery loves company?

It's all there -- the confusion, the refusal to admit (on Tom's part) that he's done wrong -- instead it's just his right to be happy. And of course Gabe is being selfish -- it's all about him. But I think there is more to it than that -- or at least that Gabe isn't entirely wrong to make this about him, and his relationship to his own wife. You get that sense as you watch the play that the breakup of their friends' marriage has a scary effect on Gabe and Karen. They will have to cling to each other more closely, and answer questions about the strength of their own union.

Meanwhile, Karen has some of the same issues with Beth -- a woman who has been cheated on, but, as it turns out, had an affair of her own several years ago, and has now taken up with the guy again. This is a fact that Karen and Gabe discover accidentally. They discuss it:

Karen: I thought it seemed a little too convenient, her white knight surfacing all of a sudden. Why didn't she ever tell me? Who would she have confided in if not me?

Gabe: People don't usually go around discussing their affairs, do they? Otherwise they wouldn't be affairs.

Karen: She could've told me this afternoon.

Gabe: How could she? She's spent all these months portraying herself as the wronged woman. Her credibility would've been shot to hell.

Karen: What does this say about our friendship? What were all those years about?

And of course Karen is right. SHE has been cheated on, as a friend. But don't we all do this? I don't mean to say we all have affairs, but we all hold back little bits of ourselves. We refuse to be authentic and honest in ALL of our relationships. And the decay of one relationship can have a chilling effect on every other one, as the people who thought they knew us best realize that they didn't know us as well as they thought they did -- that we didn't trust them as much as they thought we did.

Watch this movie/ play. Read the script. It's very insightful.