Kate Bosworth's Divorce Shows Us How Love Changes

Kate Bosworth’s Divorce Shows Us How Love Changes

By Julia David

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Just as we as individual human beings (hopefully) evolve and change, so does love, and that is not a failure – it’s life.

The thing is, sometimes, you craved love, affection, care & attention.
You want to be loved by that person who’s in your thoughts & who promised to be with you.
But life changes & so do people.

— Zubair Ahmed (@izubair_ahmed) August 14, 2021

After being together for almost a decade, working together, and raising step-daughter Jasper Polish, Kate Bosworth and Michael Polish have decided to divorce. Kate’s raw and poetic Instagram caption announcing her divorce draws attention to how separation is natural, and even healthy. Additionally, her insight causes us to question…

If two highly emotionally intelligent individuals such as Kate and Michael ‘can’t make their marriage last,’ then who can? Perhaps this is the point. We no longer live in a day and age where you have to ‘make’ your marriage ‘last.’ Do we have to put expectations on one another to be ‘forever?’

Kate Bosworth’s post dances around the edges of what more and more of us are thinking these days. Is there really only one love in your life? Is marriage supposed to be forever? Is marriage even relevant in today’s society? In an era that finally sees the value of self care and making your relationship with yourself the most important one, is marriage still the end all be all? As we live longer, evolve and grow more throughout our lifetimes, can any relationship continually pivot in turn? Are conventional constructs of marriage incoherent with continual personal growth and learning?

I’ve decided to annoy everyone with my Valentine’s Day questions throughout the day. My next questions:

1. Did you truly marry because of love?

2. If love changes over time then is marrying for any other reason but love that wrong after all?

— Cassandra Lee 🏴 (@cassleeyy) February 13, 2021

These are uncomfortable questions. Ones that Hollywood will distract us all from by ascribing its own dramatic narratives to a divorce. It won’t be long before posts and magazines claim that Kate cheated, Michael had a drinking problem or some other outrageous all encompassing explanation for why these two couldn’t last. What if these really are just two good humans who chose to go their separate ways with love and appreciation for one another? Can we be okay with that and what it could mean about a relationship’s ability to simply die out? Or as Kate and Michael would have you believe, change into something new?

I’m not sure which approach you are referring to, but I’d like to know. I just feel that for the vast majority of people, divorce equates to a failure of some kind, when in reality (in my opinion), love changes. Relationships/love change as we do. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

— 𝓚𝓪𝔂𝓒𝓮𝓮 (@KayCeeWrites) July 30, 2020

Kate Bosworth and Michael Polish will remain close friends, and in their dedication to each other’s happiness, use “that most delicate and vulnerable last flicker to the flame [to] bec[o]me another type of furnace entirely.” They welcome the re-building of their lives because they love and value each other enough as independent individuals to want the best for one another, and even remain as a support. Bosworth’s moving divorce announcement motivates us to realize how leading with love does not have to end within a separation. This healthy message is blazing a trail for the next generation to rethink old narratives on love, marriage and “happily ever after.” To read her post, see below.