As the rumours around Djoko’s dipping form swirl- one of the many juicy ones is the trouble in his marriage which in tennis terms is’ ‘injury to his marriage’. The sightings or lack of it, of his wife, at the tennis courts has of course led to more conversations than a Federer /Nadal rally.
Usually this is the time when the divorce lawyers, like me, forcibly swing into action and sometimes start baying for blood. Or do they? Actually it’s the schadenfreude of the collective that fans the rumour and revels in them. Marriage, is in itself, so tough to manage, with its daily ups and downs and when you add rumours to it, it becomes a combustible mixture. Celebrity marriages, of course, become even tougher because you are under the microscope all the time and any small mistake in itself becomes magnified to gargantuan proportions.
Do marriages actually break up because of rumours? If the marriage is going through a tough time, then the rumours, of let’s say infidelity, can definitely harm a marriage. The worst thing about rumours is they are like Medusa’s hair, venomous and difficult to tackle.So in a shaky marriage the situation gets worsened by rumours. If you are the couple involved, you constantly feel like you are firefighting on all fronts-both internally - because you are trying to save your marriage on one hand- and externally-by trying to deal with the rumours which may or may not be true.
Many a times the rumours about the breakup may be untrue, at least at that time, as has been the case of ‘the Brangelina marriage’ or in India about the superstar Salman Khan’s brother Arbaaz Khan’s marriage to Malaika Arora The gossip mills keep churning overtime, to feed into the frenzy for the ever growing demand for the state of disrepair, of a celebrity/minor celebrity or even a non celebrity’s marriage breakup.
Untrue rumours are the ones which are the most damaging. If it’s about the couple, then at least they both know it’s not true and they don’t have to deal with it. In case it’s about one of the spouses then he/she is badly stuck in trying to justify it to their spouse. It’s the married couple who have to have the conversation about their marriage to strengthen it and to deal with the damaging rumours.
Unfortunately, when the rumours are true the couple is left refaced in accepting the veracity of the same rumour that they had summarily dismissed as untrue. It’s not easy to deal with a broken marriage and the entire baggage it entails.
But let’s not rush to write out an obituary of a live and kicking marriage with deadly rumours.
If the rumour is true Djoko may need me…otherwise he has his wife.