Madden Mischief

Isn’t it better to erase words off blackboards in our minds we’ll regret later having said?  

Whether you were married in a church or before a justice of the peace, isn’t marriage a kind of religion to practice, to believe in, hold sacred?

Words uttered in anger can provoke horrid outcomes, excommunications from that marital faith we’ll regret for as long as we live apart and so will the innocent victims, those beloved bystanders, our children.

Far too often threats become harsh realities destroying not only faith in a once-loving relationship but the blessed fruit that had come, entire families, especially the precious, most venerable offspring from faithful marriages, innocent children.

I know!  I came home from school one day and saw my dad angrily packing bags and stuffing both his violins into cases as he and my mom had had a terrible row after she saw him with another woman. 

He was now packed and leaving her—us!  I’ll never forget how upset I was that tumultuous day. Then years later, he unfortunately came down with Parkinson’s causing tremors in the worst of all places for a violinist, in his once so magical, so musically adept and sensitive hands and prolific fingers.  And my mom and dad reconnected, thank God.  I was sad for my dad but happy again to have parents united.

Divorce Tremors

In 2024, the U.S. divorce rate, while ebbing from previous years, was still around 43% for first marriages, 60% for second marriages and 73% for thirds.  So, better watch what words you fire at your loved one in the heat of an argument.

If it’s your second or third marriage, best to tippy toe through disagreements.  Too often threats come true and yes, one of the deadliest, most disruptive outcomes is divorce!

When husbands and wives argue, they should be mindful that while diminishing, divorce is still far too popular.  If you occasionally disagree, do it like my wife Rita and me, respectfully and with true love.

So, go slow

No matter how angry, one should never say to the other: if you do that or don’t do that, “I’ll leave you” for words can have outcomes. 

Take time to digest whatever it is, then talk nicely without threats and rancor.

If your spouse says something he or she wants to do that you find reprehensible, it’s better to say “Please, if you do that, you’ll make me unhappy” or “you’ll greatly disappoint me,” or “Do you want to break my heart?”  

Or if you want to dig deeper, you could say, “I’ll find it hard to forgive you” or “that would be so unkind . . .  you will hurt me so deeply” instead of resorting to a retort with such finality and severity as “I’ll divorce you,” which is tantamount to vowing “I’ll murder you in cold blooded court.”  

WOKE’s ups and downs!

Too many marriages in America are like the word WOKE beginning sincerely then winding up the opposite, on the rocks, smashed to pieces, mired in bias and prejudice, murdered in cold court.

WOKE started as meaning Black people’s awareness of their history and their power to resist injustice.  Then repeating it, singing it, deploying it, WOKE became a ripe target for the pernicious mutations it has now undergone. 

Today, WOKE’s become a derisive term and for some a divisive stand-in for diversity, equity, inclusion, from where it began in uplifting Blackness.  And in Florida WOKE’s become almost an outlaw, which I’m sure Stonewall National Museum and Archives would testify as they don’t just hear it, but sense it!

During arguments, once happily married couples might have become too accustomed to sling overkill phrases, hurl verbal threats like “I’ll leave you,” which too often became ugly realities.   Say something often enough and you become more accustomed to carrying it out.  Words carry consequences.  And as a wordsmith, I know this well as one of my books, WORDSHINE MAN, tells how to make writing less biting, more inviting!

So, let’s be conscious, especially during intense marital arguments that you don’t  use a sledgehammer to pound a tiny nail into that sweet, soft piece of fly wood with whom you took off and happily married. Avoid phrases with ugly outcomes, that can turn into definitive upheavals.  End using them as threatening, theatrically or rhetorically, as it could very well backfire in spades.

So WOKE with the best extinguisher of any fire—a smile.  Let the smile be not just your umbrella, but the envelope carrying your promise never to do or say anything so hurtful that it might lead to an action from witch neither of you will ever fully recover emotionally, while it will devastate your children—divorce! 

Tom Madden is an author and communicator who loves words and wordplay as he helps his PR clients to use the right words in media interviews his daughter   Adrienne Mazzone arranges.  She is president of the PR firm he founded when he left NBC, TransMedia Group.

Be sure to check out Madden’s current book PlanetaryLifeguard, Blowing the Whistle on Climate Change before our weather storms out in a rage and divorces us from our safer, more secure and happier lives.  And you’ll want to read his soon upcoming new work, book 7 titled: As America’s Hippest, Is Catholicism Now Coolest?   That’s a seven-word title.