Nobody goes to the airport for relaxing fun.
An airport combines Black Friday crowds with the disorienting stress of laser tag. Print boarding pass! Check bags! Queue for security and wait interminably like you’re in a 1932 bread line! Then be bored out of your skull until takeoff.
This brings us to a new social trend: “Airport Divorce.”
You know back in the day when a kid would jump on their bike and head out on a solo adventure? It’s like that. Upon arriving at the airport, a couple goes it alone. They choose their own airport adventure until it’s time to meet up for boarding.
The subject arose this week on “Live With Kelly and Mark.”
Kelly Ripa: “Couples are doing something unique and I want to run this by you. I think we could do well with this: an airport divorce. You and I have different travelling philosophies, different travelling styles.”
Mark Consuelos, her husband and co-host, just kept repeating “OK,” like he was listening to a detective set out the case against him at the start of an interrogation.
Soon, viewers felt like marital therapists. Kelly and Mark swapped airport grievances. He wants to arrive way too early. She walks too slow. He hates getting recognized by fans. She has false memories. Huh?
I was waiting for someone to shout: “WHY DO YOU GET THE WINDOW SEAT?”
There are too many “mini-divorces” roiling the culture.
Sleep Divorce makes sense. Separate beds means both partners will be rested in the morning and not scraping butter on toast while grumbling about snoring or duvet hogging. Bathroom Divorce also has an internal logic, especially if one partner is a disgusting slob. But some of these other proposed divides?
TV Divorce? Fitness Divorce? Kitchen Divorce? Holiday Divorce? Financial Divorce? Hobby Divorce? Tech Divorce? Political Divorce? Family Divorce?
If you checked multiple boxes, it might be time to just get divorced.
That said, let’s not be hasty about “Chore Divorce.” I might ask my lawyer to leave a binding contract for my wife at the Air Canada kiosk: My client will not scrub a pan during the World Series. And no more feather dusting.
Airport Divorce feels like something a TikTok influencer dreamed up for clicks.
Once you clear security, an airport is a waiting game. It is about killing time.
How many free G&Ts can you knock back in the VIP lounge? How many books can you pretend to flip through? Why are you buying a travel adapter when you don’t need a travel adapter? Because it’s something to do, like the $10 pretzels and gummy bears you just bought from a scowling clerk who looks even more suicidal than you.
Here’s what you need most at an airport: a familiar face. A sounding board. A co-conspirator. Someone who won’t laugh out loud when you try on sunglasses that make you look like a stoned raccoon on a Tilt-a-Whirl.
Someone to make small talk with as you wander aimlessly around the Duty Free until the shelves of perfume, chocolate and booze all blur together and you can feel your souls exiting your ears under a fluorescent haze of lethal monotony.
Airport Divorce is the latest sign of the apocalypse. Couples that travel together, stay together. Well, at least until it’s time to pay off that all-inclusive in Bali.
If anything, there should be Airport Spouses offered to single travellers. You know? A rental companion who will shadow you on the moving travelator and share a root beer with two straws at A&W as you review your travel documents.
Rental companion: “We still have 72 minutes to go. What should we do next? Charge our phones? Polish our shoes? Wordle? Check the board for delays? Skip your stupid flight and escape this tedium factory in a rental car we can drive straight to Vegas?”
During their playful spat this week, Mark Consuelos did seem genuinely irked when Kelly jabbed about his allergy to being approached by fans. He denied it: “I’m irritated with you right now for trying to throw me under the bus.”
Sir, she wasn’t throwing you under the bus. She was throwing you under the baggage carousel. This is what airports do: cause friction in great relationships.
The key is to boomerang that friction into beautiful bonding.
This is why couples must resist these goofy trends and realize they are in it together when those sliding doors open and you suddenly realize the Uber driver left you at the wrong terminal. You are in this together when someone forgets a passport. You are in this together when a travel pillow is misplaced in the departures lounge. You are in this together when the chicken tenders cost $25.
An airport is a sprawling labyrinth of stress and ennui. It requires solidarity.
It is the last place you should file for divorce.
