Marriage is a precious gift that people no longer value.

I haven’t been married for 72 days. And I’m not Kim Kardashian.

Having been married for barely two months, I don’t know a lot about marriage. Still, I can’t imagine two people having irreconcilable differences already. On Monday, Kim Kardashian cited just that when she filed for divorce from Kris Humphries.

People might say it’s none of our business. Unfortunately, Kim sacrificed her privacy when she turned her wedding into a four-hour, two-day, two-part television special. Last month, E! aired “Kim’s Fairytale Wedding.” You pay the price when you sell your life.

I was one of the 10.5 million people who tuned in to the over-the-top extravaganza. I had high hopes for Kris and Kim. I’m a romantic like that. But I’m not shocked at this sad turn of events.

Truthfully, there was a lot of arguing going on in that two-part wedding special. Kris wanted Kim to take his name. He wanted a life with less paparazzi, like he has back in Minnesota. He likes his dogs in the bed.

Kim is about business. She didn’t want to compromise the Kardashian brand for the lesser-known Humphries name. She wouldn’t dare give up L.A. or New York for Minnesota — that’s inconvenient for work. And dogs in the bed? Not in her house.

Through all the extravagant and complicated little details of the wedding, they seemed to skip right over premarital counseling. They didn’t sit down and talk through their differences beyond arguments that were never resolved. At one point in the episode, Kris even mentions never seeing the weaker, more vulnerable side of Kim when she breaks down about her father.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot you don’t see when you’ve dated for only six months, get engaged and then married just three months later. They’ve been in each other’s lives for less than a year, and most of it has been on-camera. That has to be hard.

Some might say that’s plenty of time. After all, it worked for Khloe Kardashian and hubby Lamar Odom. Why not Kim? Blogs are buzzing with reports that the Kardashian-Humphries wedding was made for TV.

Jared Shapiro disagrees. The executive editor at Life & Style Weekly told CNN that Kim and Kris had the real thing, and it wasn’t about the flashing lights.

“Guess what, she really got married, and she really got divorced,” he said. “This part wasn’t scripted. … She didn’t want to get divorced in front of the whole world. … This isn’t a game she played. She tried to make it work. It didn’t. She pulled the trigger.”

I’m not bashing Kim. I don’t know whether the wedding was scripted. What I do know is she admitted that “she was caught up with the hoopla and the filming of the TV show” when she probably should have ended her relationship. And I fear that a lot of people get caught up in the show when it comes to weddings.

I wish people would take marriage more seriously. Sometimes things just don’t work out. I get that. But as a newlywed with hopes and prayers for a lifelong marriage, I find these twisted portrayals of romance and drive-through divorces disheartening.

Filming a wedding should never become bigger than your actual life. It’s about the marriage, not that one day. And television — be it Kim’s special or the dozens of bridal shows — doesn’t push that truth.

Kim was hoping for a fairy tale is what she says. But you don’t just snap your fingers and get that. It takes time and understanding. If you have differences, you talk it out. It takes longer than an episode of your favorite show. When you’re in love, don’t you work for that longevity instead of working for one day?

I once interviewed Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of “Eat, Pray, Love.” She divorced, gave up on love and then gave marriage a second try, so I asked her what she learned that changed her mind. She said marriage was a work in progress.

“The credits always roll after the wedding or the happy ending in a movie,” she said. “But there isn’t ever an ending. You never coast. You are continually figuring things out. You’re refining it and changing the oil on that thing. You wrap duct tape around it and make it work every day.”

Fairy tales are for TV. The reality is you work for love, the real-life, healthy-yet-imperfect kind of happily ever after.

via kansascity.com