Divorce is fairly common these days, and I think many times

Host: The evening was heavy with the smell of rain and old wood. The sun had already slipped behind the horizon, leaving a thin orange memory smeared across the sky like the last breath of something that didn’t want to die. A small diner stood at the edge of town — its windows fogged, its neon sign half-flickering, half-giving up.

Inside, Jack and Jeeny sat in a corner booth. Between them, two untouched cups of coffee were slowly cooling, wisps of steam rising and vanishing into the dim air. The radio hummed softly, an old Sinatra song about love and loss, its melody like the memory of a promise no one kept.

Jack stared at the rain trickling down the window, his reflection merging with the world outside. Jeeny was quiet, her hands folded neatly, her eyes fixed on nothing and everything.

For a while, neither spoke. Then she broke the silence.

Jeeny: “Steve Carell once said something I’ve never forgotten. ‘Divorce is fairly common these days, and I think many times people disregard the emotional impact that divorce has on a couple and a family, because it happens so frequently.’”

Jack: “Yeah.” (He smiled bitterly.) “Happens so much, people treat it like getting a new haircut. ‘Oh, you got divorced? Must’ve not worked out.’ They forget that it’s not just a word — it’s a wound.”

Host: His voice was low, not bitter — more like someone who’d said that line too many times in his head before saying it out loud. The lights from passing cars cut through the window, streaking across his face like flickers of lightning.

Jeeny: “It’s strange, isn’t it? How something as intimate as the death of a marriage can become so… casual.”

Jack: “That’s the irony. The more it happens, the less people want to feel it. It’s like we’ve built a tolerance for heartbreak.”

Jeeny: “But pain doesn’t disappear just because we pretend it’s ordinary.”

Jack: “No, it just hides in new places.”

Host: The rain began to fall harder, drumming against the window like soft fists. The diner light flickered, and in that brief dimness, their faces looked older, carved with the kind of sadness that doesn’t belong to a single loss but a hundred small ones that never healed.

Jeeny: “Did you ever watch someone go through it? A divorce?”

Jack: “Yeah. My sister. Twelve years married. Two kids. One day, it just… cracked. She said she didn’t even remember when it started breaking. Just that one morning she woke up and couldn’t find the feeling anymore.”

Jeeny: “Did it break her?”

Jack: “It didn’t. That’s the weird part. It hollowed her out. Like a storm that strips everything from a house but leaves the frame standing. She laughed again. Worked again. But something about her — it stayed gone.”

Host: Jeeny’s eyes softened. She watched the way Jack’s fingers trembled slightly as he lifted his cup, as if holding something heavier than ceramic.

Jeeny: “You talk like you’ve been through it too.”

Jack: “Not marriage. But something like it. Being with someone long enough that leaving feels like peeling your own skin off.”

Jeeny: “That’s what people forget, I think. That divorce isn’t just two people ending something. It’s an entire family being rewritten.”

Jack: “Yeah. Every photo becomes a lie. Every tradition a ghost.”

Host: The radio changed songs — a slow, aching tune with a woman’s voice, low and full of longing. The diner seemed to shrink, its walls pulling closer, holding in the ache of too many untold stories.

Jeeny: “My parents divorced when I was seven. I remember the silence more than the shouting. The house got so quiet, I thought silence was love. Took me years to realize love’s supposed to make noise.”

Jack: “What kind of noise?”

Jeeny: “The good kind. Laughter. Clumsy mornings. Arguments that end in apologies. Love’s supposed to echo, not vanish.”

Jack: “And when it does vanish?”

Jeeny: “Then you grieve it properly. That’s the problem now — people don’t mourn relationships anymore. They move on like nothing happened. They call it maturity, but it’s just numbness dressed up as strength.”

Host: The words hung in the air like cigarette smoke — lingering, curling, refusing to fade. Outside, the rain had turned to a steady curtain, blurring the streetlights into a watercolor of gold and blue.

Jack: “You ever think people get divorced because they were never really married — not to the person, I mean, but to the idea of love?”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But even ideas can break your heart.”

Jack: “So what’s the solution? Stay and suffer? Leave and pretend?”

Jeeny: “Neither. Learn to love with presence. Not promises.”

Jack: “Sounds like something you’d write on a mug.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But it’s true.”

Host: Jeeny smiled, faintly. It wasn’t the smile of someone amused, but of someone remembering pain with acceptance. Jack looked at her — and for a second, the wall of cynicism between them cracked.

Jeeny: “Steve Carell said people disregard the emotional impact. He’s right. We think repetition dulls tragedy. But each heartbreak is new for the person living it.”

Jack: “It’s funny. We still throw parties for weddings, but we don’t hold funerals for marriages.”

Jeeny: “Maybe we should.”

Jack: “What would that look like?”

Jeeny: “A quiet dinner. Two people sitting across from each other — like this — admitting that love changed form, not disappeared. Mourning what was, without hating what remains.”

Host: The rain eased, leaving behind the soft ticking of water dripping from the roof. The air smelled clean again, but the kind of clean that only follows ruin.

Jack: “You think forgiveness fits into it?”

Jeeny: “It has to. Forgiveness is the only way you can walk away and still see yourself in the mirror.”

Jack: “Even when they don’t deserve it?”

Jeeny: “Especially then. Otherwise, you keep carrying their ghost in your chest.”

Host: Jack nodded, his eyes heavy, but not hopeless. He looked out the window at the reflection of the neon diner sign — the letters “OPEN” flickering, fading, returning.

Jeeny: “You know what I think divorce really is?”

Jack: “What?”

Jeeny: “It’s proof that people are brave enough to admit they couldn’t make it — and still hope to find peace anyway. There’s tragedy in it, yes, but there’s also grace.”

Jack: “Grace in failure.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Maybe that’s the hardest kind.”

Host: Outside, a car passed, its tires hissing through the last of the rain. Inside, the diner hummed — soft, steady, like a heartbeat that refused to stop.

Jack raised his cup finally, took a sip, and winced. Cold. He laughed, a sound half tired, half alive.

Jack: “You think anyone ever walks away from love untouched?”

Jeeny: “No. The lucky ones just walk away still believing in it.”

Host: Jeeny reached for her cup, their hands brushing briefly — two people who understood that heartbreak wasn’t the end of love, only its transformation.

The rain outside had stopped completely now. The sky was clear, and in the reflection of the window, the moonlight fell across their faces — two souls caught between loss and renewal.

Jack: “You think people heal from it?”

Jeeny: “Not heal. They adapt. They learn to live with the echo.”

Host: And in that quiet diner, under flickering light and fading songs, the echo of love — broken but still breathing — lingered between them.

It was not grief anymore. It was understanding. And understanding, in its quiet, human way, was its own form of forgiveness.