Jon & Kate
I feel like Jon and Kate are part of my family. I know that’s crazy. They aren’t. They’re in my living room a lot, that’s true, but they are their own people. I have to remember that. And I think that I’m usually able to understand that and keep the show as, well, a reality show. I would turn off the show and go on with my life.
But while I was watching the season premiere, I found myself crying when Kate choked up. Like, I needed a few Kleenex kind of crying. It really caught me off-guard. I’ve always wanted them to remain happy, and laugh and take great care of their kids, but something happened while I was watching her. The regret and pain were absolutely palpable. It was heart-wrenching. My husband and I cuddled almost the whole night through after watching it. Suddenly marriage and family felt very fragile, and we found ourselves being very loving and kind, and so sad for them.
The day of the season premier, my husband and I were at a Memorial Day BBQ. We were having a great time, Jon and Kate were a hot topic of conversation and my husband was making his usual jokes about how much our son looks like Aaden. My husband is Asian and he’s always joked about how we should have our own show: “Jon and Kate Lite.” Maybe that’s why I felt so close to them as a family, who knows. But I love these guys, more than I realized. They’re cranky, they’re real, they laugh, those kids are just so beautiful and they deal with the real ins and outs of parenting like few people do. No pretense, no perfection, just real life. I mean, the scarcity of that kind of blatant honesty is why we founded this website.
I was really looking forward to the show. I was thinking all this fake media stuff would go away and we would finally hear from them and watch them laugh it off and hug and move on. Besides, I can’t believe these kids are five already! That happened too quickly and I was looking forward to seeing how they’d grown and how much fun they had at their party. And I wanted to watch and make sure they each got their own birthday song! I love that they do that!
But that’s not what we got, is it? I didn’t expect what we all saw. I didn’t expect to see a marriage on life support like this. Even writing this I tear up. How is this happening? Surely this can’t be real. We love them. They both have their flaws and they are both so great. How could this have happened?
As I was crying watching Kate saying that she doesn’t know what the solution is, how they’ve become two different people so quickly…I kept waiting for her to say she misses Jon. That she loves him. That she will do whatever it takes to make it work. When she said parents of multiples have a higher divorce rate and she thought they would beat that statistic, I kept waiting for her to say “I will not let that happen. I love Jon and I will give him all the love he needs to make this work.”
I had the same experience watching Jon. “I might as well be in prison,”….but where was the “but I’m with my family and my wife, whom I love, so I’ll fight through it…?” Where was that? I'm not saying the hurt isn't real. It is, and it's valid. But is it more important than the marriage?
It’s so easy for me to sit on my couch and watch this and not be the person who’s living through it. It’s always so easy to see what other people do “wrong,” isn’t it? So I consciously turned this to my own life. How many times have I not said, “I’m sorry” when I should have? Would I be willing to, say, give up this website if my husband told ...(cont)
