Amy Schumer Decries Mother's Adultery and Divorce in New Book, 'The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo'
Comedian Amy Schumer has emerged as an apologist against divorce and adultery, decrying her mother's affair with her friend's dad and describing the heartache it caused in her memoir, The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo.
Although a funny lady, the 35-year-old stand-up comedian and actress who stars in the Comedy Central series "Inside Amy Schumer," doesn't think adultery and divorce are a laughing matter.
"I've had UTIs that lasted longer than some of my parents' marriages," Schumer jokes in the book, according to the New York Post.
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Schumer's mother had an affair with her best friend Mia's father, a move that ultimately ended her parents' marriage and destroyed her friendship with Mia.
"I wish she'd considered the ripple effects of her actions and then fought her desire to have this affair. ... I can't speak for her, but I don't believe she tried hard enough to think about everyone who would be affected by the relationship," Schumer writes in the book.
As a teenager, Schumer internalized the agonizing stress of that relational chaos and it gave her what she called a "blinding pressure cooker of a headache for years to come."
She further laments: "In the movie 'Moonlight Mile,' Susan Sarandon and Dustin Hoffman play a married couple who fight a lot but still really love each other. They talk about how they're there to 'witness each other's lives.' I love that description of commitment. I don't think my parents ever signed up for that. They didn't show me what a good marriage looks like or how to stick it out to the end."
Relationships, marital unions included, split up so often now that many Americans are desensitized to it, but children feel the pain of those failures acutely.
"Divorce hurts kids. The hurt doesn't go away," wrote the Ruth Insitute on its Facebook page last Thursday, praising Schumer's words on the subject.
For those who have long argued against the culture of no-fault divorce, like Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of the Ruth Institute, a celebrity of Schumer's stature telling her story is no doubt encouraging.
In an op-ed published by The Christian Post in 2014 titled "Let's Listen to the Children of Divorce," Morse noted that the culture tells many lies about divorce, such as: "The kids will be fine as long as their parents are happy." And "kids are resilient. They will get over it."
Such lines are meant "to console adults who have decided to leave a low-conflict marriage, or to exonerate adults who have decided to leave their spouses for a new love interest," Morse said.
But since the presumption of permanence has been removed via no-fault divorce, marriages can now disintegrate easily leaving untold heartache in their wake. Even people in their 40s and 50s, Morse notes, have expressed to her that they are not ready to speak about the pain.
Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Southern California, concurs.
As CP reported in May, Warren urged couples in troubled marriages to stay together for their children, because "when children are born, they are completely helpless. God knew that children needed a safe environment and somebody to feed and dress and nurture and protect and train and care for them."
"When you do marriage God's way, it works out better in your life and your kids' lives. Kids grow healthier and stronger when they grow up in a stable family, with a mom and a dad in a stable marriage," Warren said.
