The internet did what the internet does. It grabbed the popcorn. Messy. Toxic. Cope. Boundaries.
I want to offer you something less satisfying and more true. What you are watching is not a relapse. You are watching two nervous systems that spent three decades wired into each other remember, in public, that the wiring is still there.
That is not a scandal. That is biology doing exactly what biology does.
Though some may not agree with my opinion, we are an interdependent species. From the cradle to the grave, our first job is to be emotionally bonded to somebody. When you co-sleep, co-parent, co-tour, and co-suffer with one person for thirty years, your nervous systems braid together. You do not unbraid that with a court date.
Couples don’t divorce because the love died. They divorce because they got locked into what I call the “Waltz of Pain.” In any conflict, three things fire inside you at once: a negative perception of your partner, a reactive emotion, and an action that comes out of both. One, two, three. That’s your waltz step. Over years, the two of you step on each other’s toes so many times that survival starts to mean leaving the dance floor.
So they leave. And the daily friction stops. The waltz ends.
And then the dust settles, and the limbic system takes over. Your limbic brain is a naked mole rat. It can’t see. It can’t read a divorce filing. It knows touch, smell, voice, familiarity. That’s it. So when Billy Ray picks up a guitar, and Tish is in the room, the mole rat inside both of them knows exactly where it is. Home.
