If celebrities can start over at any age, can we, too?
These days the news is full of famous people
happily starting second chapters –
like Megan Fox with Machine Gun Kelly,
Kourtney Kardashian with Travis Barker,
Kim Kardashian with Pete Davidson.
All three of these women are mothers who experienced a
relationship breakdown with their kids’ dad and are now glowing from
falling in love with someone new.
"I definitely notice that Kim is happier.
I think that she's so much nicer now. Thank you, Pete!"
They’re also doing this in their late 30s to 40s –
an age that is still young, but isn’t treated like that for
women with families in our culture.
Jennifer Lopez, meanwhile, seems to be blissfully enjoying
her literal second chance with Ben Affleck in her early 50s.
"With second chances, if you can get one, I highly recommend it."
So often we’re led to believe that, after a certain age, people are just
stuck with their lot in life, however bad the job or relationship is.
“Doug, you should enjoy yourself, because come Sunday, you’re gonna
start dying, just a little bit, every day.”
But why does that have to be true?
These high-profile examples emerged from periods of struggle to embrace
what look like far happier, healthier relationships.
And their kids are adjusting to blended families in apparently positive ways.
“And I heard him say to North, he was like,
you know, getting a stepdad isn’t so bad.”
So is it possible for the rest of us to get a new chapter if
we don’t like the one we’re currently writing?
Here’s our take on why the celebrity-starting-over trend is
here to give us hope.
“Everything’s gonna work out, everything’s gonna be okay.”
It’s refreshing to see today’s celebrity love reinventions
because they run so counter to what we’re told women’s options
are in a certain phase of life.
The women in these couples are actually relatively young;
but even recently, our culture dictated that this was too late
to start over –
especially because these women each have several children.
"It makes you analyze, like, where you're at in your life
and, like, who do I want to grow old with?"
Pop culture is rife with the narratives that you don’t get to leave the person
you have kids with and that marriage pretty much has to be bad.
“I’m never voting again. Like marriage, no matter
who you choose, it turns out bad.”
And even series that focus on single people use the specter of
commitment as a way to scare characters.
“What are you thinking about Jerry, marriage? Family?”
“Well–”
“They’re prisons.” [Laughter] “Man-made prisons. You’re doing time.”
A show like Kevin Can F-[bleep] Himself posits a world where the only way to
escape the misery of marriage is murder –
simply being able to leave and start over feels unthinkable.
“She decides to kill her husband.”
“Why wouldn't she just leave?”
“Leave? Like it’s easy?”
We read arguments that it’s good to marry the wrong person
and still make it work.
And we’re told it’s even a moral imperative to stay in
bad relationships ‘for the kids.’
Americans have long taken for granted that divorce is bad for
children and should be avoided at all costs –
but Slate reports that actually, academic research doesn’t support this.
Not only do studies indicate that a high proportion of children of
divorced parents have positive mental health and life satisfaction,
but Slate also cites findings that children whose high-conflict parents
don’t split experience even greater behavioral problems.
"The best thing you can do for your children is to minimize or manage
or resolve the conflict between the parents.”
In Hulu’s The Kardashians, it’s interesting to watch how
even a woman as rich and famous as Kourtney Kardashian has to
grapple with these longstanding but tired cultural narratives.
For years on the family’s original show Keeping Up With the Kardashians,
viewers followed the toxicity of her on-again, off-again relationship with
the father of her kids, Scott Disick.
“I am on the longest Ferris wheel of all time. Like, we’ve gotta get off
the ride at some point and get on a new one. ”
So on The Kardashians, it can be really nice to watch Kourtney in a
new relationship that appears genuinely happy, warm and loving.
Her new husband, Travis Barker, has also dealt with his own long,
complicated relationship with his ex Shanna Moakler,
and it feels like the fact that the couple is meeting a bit
later in life is a plus – their maturity helps create a positive foundation
between them.
Meanwhile, their dynamic is free from baggage – whereas when
couples have hurt each other over years, even if they do
work to improve themselves, they’re still stuck with their
shared history.
“The debauchery that’s gone on has definitely
closed the door several, you know, billion times.”
Still, in The Kardashians, we see Kourtney getting
frustrated because her ex, Scott’s, feelings about her new relationship
get to be center stage in the show –
despite the fact that their relationship reportedly deteriorated
due to Scott’s substance abuse problems and infidelities, and,
more importantly, the two have been broken up for seven years.
“I’m sensitive to him and his feelings but beyond that,
I just got engaged and I wanna, like, be happy and be in the moment.”
She explicitly says that the reality show isn’t telling the right narrative:
“It should be an empowering episode about me getting out
of toxic relationships and really having this, like,
fairytale love story.”
Meanwhile, Kourtney’s sister Kim has had her own Ferris wheel to
deal with in her ex- husband Kanye West.
[Crying] “I just, like, honestly can’t do this anymore, I just can’t.
Why am I still in this, like, place where I'm stuck for years?”
After leaving, Kim spent months dealing with Kanye’s increasingly
stalkerish behavior towards her and her new boyfriend Pete Davidson,
which has only hammered home the importance of leaving.
With all this context, it’s heartwarming and refreshing
to see Kim back on her feet and building a new life for herself with
someone who seems to treat her very well.
“The perfect word to describe Pete is genuine,
I mean, I think, just, that I never knew you can just be so happy.”
The details of Megan Fox’s relationship breakdown with
her ex, Brian Austin Green, are less public –
their estrangement may have been closer to what
countless long-term couples experience.
But what’s especially inspirational about Fox’s new chapter is that
exciting new love with Machine Gun Kelly coincides
with her return to the entertainment industry
after she was largely blacklisted for being vocal about industry sexism.
Starting over also doesn’t necessarily have to mean a totally fresh start.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s first stint as Bennifer was an intense,
highly public relationship that ended, in part, because of the extensive
media scrutiny they received.
“I love Ben, he’s a great guy, but it was a lot for both of us
to be under that type of, uh, siege for two years.”
But the two maintained a friendly and admirable relationship and
continued to acknowledge their mutual respect.
After Affleck’s failed relationship with Jennifer Garner and Lopez’s
broken engagement to Alex Rodriguez,
the two got back together, almost 20 years later –
and finally got the wedding they called off back in the early 2000s.
So the couple embodies the opportunity to get another chance
with the one who got away –
with the benefit of additional experience and perspective.
“Would you ever have imagined that it comes
full circle, it ends up like this?”
“No, you never could imagine something like that could happen.
It’s a…it’s a beautiful thing.”
The biggest obstacle or complicating factor in starting fresh is the presence
of children from previous relationships.
“We had three children, and then we split about three years ago.”
Many of these celebrities are balancing finding
new love as parents.
Some of them are creating pretty large blended families.
To this day, there’s still plenty of societal pressure to stay in standard,
nuclear families based on a foundation of single marriages.
But actually, we’ve been accustomed to seeing healthy blended families
since at least The Brady Bunch.
[Singing] “This group must somehow form a family.
That’s the way we all became The Brady Bunch.”
And plenty of these real-life examples give us inspiration
that it’s possible to make any family structure work,
especially in situations where divorced parents can maintain
positive relationships.
Even after all of their difficulties, Kourtney and Scott Disick have
been able to maintain an effective co-parenting relationship,
navigating how to be a part of each other’s lives
even amid new partnerships.
“If it’s a family trip and everyone’s going,
of course, I don’t want to miss out on those times.
But I also want you to feel comfortable.”
Likewise, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have been
able to maintain a large blended family,
including positive relationships with their respective exes.
And even in cases where co-parenting is more difficult,
like in the publicly contentious relationship between Kim and Kanye,
exes can still make an effort to be civil for the sake of their children.
“As hard as it can be sometimes,
I do try to ignore it and, just, try to do whatever’s best for the kids.”
“That’s what I love about you.”
“Take the high road.”
Of course, these are wealthy celebrities who have the resources
to leave toxic partners –
and money is one of the primary reasons lots of people feel they
have to stay in bad relationships.
“Like he’d just let her take the $194 she has
and buy a bus ticket to Jersey?”
Even so, leaving a broken relationship is usually really hard,
especially if the choice isn’t mutual,
and media scrutiny must make it more daunting.
For any of us who might also be in unhealthy relationships,
it can be truly inspirational to see others ending bad patterns
and finding happiness.
"He was one of my closest friends for probably eight years.
We could just be ourselves. We fell in love, and now he's my boyfriend!"
For all that we’re warned about how terrible it could
go if we don’t stick it out,
these examples remind us that we only have one life to live,
and our personal happiness is important for the well-being of
our families, too.
While we can’t really know the details of any
celebrity’s lives behind the curtain,
the chemistry these couples share is tangible and infectious.
They seem to be in relationships that aren’t just healthy and happy,
but almost aggressively so, with a puppy love quality that
comes through in their interviews, whether it’s Megan Fox and
Machine Gun Kelly playfully making fun of each other –
“You can literally Google any Machine Gun Kelly photo,
and then if you also Google any meerkat photo,
and you split-screen those…”
“Oh, I hate you.”
– or Travis Barker giving a tour of his house.
“That is the first day, October 17, we ever, like, hooked up or hung out,
like, as more than friends.
And that is also the day I proposed to her.”
Of course, it’s not like all these couples are just living in a fairytale.
Travis Barker was recently hospitalized with pancreatitis,
while he and Kourtney have struggled to conceive a baby together,
and Machine Gun Kelly’s new documentary follows him through
mental health struggles and other challenges.
“I’ve never seen anyone be able to self-sabotage more than me.”
But these trials have also allowed us to see how partners respond to
adversity in genuinely supportive relationships,
whether it’s the Kardashian-Jenner family showing up for Travis Barker
or Megan Fox supporting Machine Gun Kelly in getting treatment.
Part of the downside of celebrity is that the public simultaneously knows
a lot of things about you and doesn’t really know you at all.
So there’s something heartwarming about seeing these famous couples
experiencing one of the fundamental joys of a loving relationship:
feeling known by another person.
“What film am I most proud of? Easy.”
“Jennifer’s body.”
“Yeah.”
Ultimately, the lesson we can take away from these relationships isn’t
that finding someone new will fix everything,
but that knowing what you want and being honest about pursuing it
can mean making big changes –
changes that may be rocky at first but that will, in time, be worth it.
“I was like, you know what, I’m in my 40s, go for it,
find your happiness.”
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