MARRIAGE TRAP, STARRING BEN AFFLECK

Does a ‘marriage trap’ sound different than a marriage between two movie stars?

Edward Hopper painted what looks like a marriage trap.

A couple in a room ignoring each other, trying to find anything to do besides talk.

He reads bad news, she taps a sad note. Looks like a trap to me.

But, what’s really going on?

I was in the local beer joint talking with a sad guy. Why so sad?

Guy: Today I moved out of my house and I’m getting divorced.

Me: Sorry to hear it. Can I ask a question?

Guy: Sure.

Me: Was there another man?

Guy: Yes.

Me: Son of a bitch, why can’t guys find someone else instead of a married woman.

Guy: It wasn’t her, it was me.

That was a marriage trap?

A Drunk Marriage Of One

“I’d probably still be drinking. It’s part of why I started drinking … because I was trapped,” Affleck told Howard Stern, per People. “I was like ‘I can’t leave ’cause of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ What I did was drink a bottle of Scotch and fall asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”

That’s what Mr. Affleck shared with Howard Stern.

Divorced guys seem to have a common need to explain why they got divorced.

And they understand each other better than anyone else, at least anyone married only once.

The guy in the top pic looks like he’s scanning the paper for a reason to go out, come out, do something.

The woman looks resigned to a loveless marriage, but willing to try. She can’t bring herself to face the problem, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The image in this section looks like a hopeful beginning of the end.

“The truth was, we took our time, we made the decision … We grew apart,” he continued. “We had a marriage that didn’t work, this happens, with somebody that I love and respect, but to whom I shouldn’t be married any longer. Ultimately, we tried. We tried, we tried because we had kids. Both of us felt like we don’t want this to be the model that our kids see of marriage.”

A Role Model Marriage? Good Luck

If you’re a successful gambler, and love the thrill of it all, marriage might not be for you.

Stay out late with the boys boozin’ and usin’ and getting home in time to fix the kids’ breakfast?

You’re still asleep when they come home from school?

These won’t be part of your acceptance speech for FATHER OF THE YEAR.

AA group? Yes. Dad group? No.

If you’re a famous Hollywooder, you might not want to marry a famous Hollywood woman.

You’ve got to know one thing before marrying anyone: Is the other person out to prove something and you’re just a part of their overall plan?

If that idea frightens you, then you need to make a plan.

My wife has a plan, she’s always got a plan. I’m not always the first to know.

I asked her to marry me, and we made plans.

Then her mother showed up and made plans with my wife to-be and cut me out. I responded in the most manly way.

I broke up with her privately, then we told Mum.

I played my hand like a fool.

Who accepts a demotion from fiancé back to girlfriend?

Anyone?

From the moment we broke up and told her mom, to an hour later, she had an entirely new life plan.

Without me.

How can that be?

So we marched back to her mom and said the wedding was back on.

She gave me a chilling look and said in her Devon accent, “I could tell it was just cold feet.”

Did I know what I was signing up for? Does anyone?

Blame It All On The Mother In-Law

There’s an unspoken shame when your mother in-law arrives to find you passed out dead-drunk on a ‘very expensive’ couch with your neck jacked at a bad angle and a drool line connecting your face to the silk upholstery.

No one wants some smelly adult, some unshaven galoot, some long-limbed over-stretched movie icon, drooling unconscious and farting a purple cloud.

I can hear Jen’s mom now:

“Your father was not this kind of man. This is not how you were raised. It’s disgraceful. Where are the children?”

Jennifer Garner’s momma:

Her mother, Patricia Ann English, was a homemaker and later an English teacher at a local college.

While Garner did not grow up in a politically active household, her father was “very conservative” and her mother “quietly blue.”

Instead of political blue, I read this as resigned to being married to an a$$hole blue.

Ben Affleck ditched the marriage trap when he decided he wasn’t ready to go ‘quietly blue.’

Is that anything like ‘quiet quitting?’

That’s what you do when your wife wants you to be a better person, when your kids need you to be a better person.

The worlds is awash in stories of drunken dads passed on the floor but still groveling a burger.

No one mistakes Ben Affleck for David Hasselhoff, but you’ve got to believe Ben got lit up more than once by his wife and kids.

And, I hope, his mother in-law. That had to have been awful.

(Affleck) added, “The only real cure for alcoholism is suffering. You just hope that your threshold for suffering is met somewhere before it destroys your life.”

Sounds like the ‘growing apart’ part of the marriage trap.