Rachel Hollis is getting a divorce.
She and her husband, Dave Hollis, announced this on their Instagram accounts.
People are understandably upset by this news as Rachel and Dave set themselves out to be relationship experts who taught people how to deal with marriage, parenting, and kids.
They were the go-to couple, showing millions of parents how to survive and thrive.
Their divorce has sparked outrage, anger, judgment, and feelings from people who are feeling duped. People are feeling upset because Rachel and Dave put out an image on social media that does not match with their divorce announcement.
Here’s how I feel about their divorce announcement.
I believe that they were portraying their marriage as it was, at least the good parts of it. And you know what, they are human and no different than any other couple.
Everyone is surprised when a couple gets divorced because the couple’s public perception is so different than what was going on at home.
No one wants to show people the problems, the negativity, the challenges that they are experiencing.
I think Rachel Hollis and Dave Hollis were simply being human in trying to portray their marriage in the best light.
I would also like to believe that they gave their marriage their all, did whatever they could to try to save it, and worked on it in every way they knew how. I know this is being extremely naive and giving them the benefit of doubt but that’s what I believe.
They couldn’t have faked their relationship on Facebook Lives and Instagram Lives for months and years on end. There’s good in marriages and bad in marriages. The Hollis’s just showed us the good in their marriage.
By announcing their divorce, they also showed us how difficult marriage is. Even the best couples with the most photogenic kids who work on their self-growth and have a strong faith practice can get divorced.
Even the couple who looks they have it all together on the outside can have marital problems and strife. Even what appears to be the strongest of relationships can fall apart.
It doesn’t seem like this relationship was a complete fake or Rachel was putting on a show for the world to see. She looked genuine and happy. She and Dave were regularly irritated and annoyed with each other on social media. They also enjoyed laughing together and loving each other.
Anyone who’s in a marriage that’s falling apart, doesn’t want it to. They are going to work on it as much as they can to make it work. I truly believe Rachel and Dave tried. They not only wanted to make it work for themselves and for their kids but also for their business. They knew their business bottom line was tied to showing people how to have strong marriages.
They had a strong interest in making this relationship work both on a personal and professional level.
Yet they couldn’t do it. With all the resources, support, counseling, faith, family and friendship they had, they couldn’t do it.
Just reminds me that marriage is hard and you have to get to a pretty bad place before you decide that you’ve had enough and it’s time to move on.
As far as their marriage and life, let’s give them a break. Let’s let both of them move on. Let’s hope they can separately amicably and find peace in their separate lives. Let’s hope they can find love and happiness again.
Now, the secondary issue has to do with how they were doing business and portraying themselves.
This seems a little more suspect and uncertain to me.
Is it ok to make your life look like this big fairytale on the outside? Is it ok to use social media to only show the good and not the bad? Is it ok to always present the story you want to present to your fans?
I know it’s not right but I do know that a lot of people do this.
When you don’t post the full story, it comes across as inauthentic and you’re trying to mislead people.
For example on my own blog, I give people the whole picture. I don’t try to make anything look better than it is.
When my life sucked, I detailed it to the maximum here. I explained every emotion and heartbreak that I went through. People appreciated the honesty and regularly tell me that I speak their pain and their journey.
I wouldn’t have tried to make my situation sound any better than it was.
But what if I had started a business around my marriage, my relationship and my kids, would I have tried to portray a positive image that wasn’t true? Would I have tried to continue perpetuating this image to the public even though we were struggling?
A lot of this is speculation. If they were only struggling and portrayed it like they were a happily married couple, then, yes, I’d be in the streets.
If they were doing their best and portraying a particular image on social media that was the truth, but not the whole truth, I could try to understand. Like it or not, people put their best life on social media for others to see.
I’d also be pissed if you read and believed that Rachel said about working through the hard stuff and making things work. If she made it seem like you weren’t trying hard enough or weren’t getting what you wanted because of your efforts, then it’s fair to be upset with her.
And finally, probably the more unforgivable part was running a big business based on this message they were putting out there. They were raking in money from conferences and workshops where they were indirectly telling you that you too could have the lives of the Hollis family. You could come and learn the secrets to having a great love and life.
Overall, I can see the humanity of the Hollis’s. It looked like they were trying the best they could. Could they have shown the negative side of their relationship? Yes. Do most people? No.
Should they have shared the full story on social media? Yes. Do many marketers put the negative side of their product or message on social media? Not really.
Should they have continued to profit if the life and relationship was not what they made it out to be? Not really but again, I don’t believe it was a complete show. I believe they tried, and failed. I believe they are humans with human failings.
The take away for me watching the Hollis’s is a reminder to be authentic myself in my writing and social media. It’s also to be a little more suspect of other people’s social media accounts and stories. Every day, we continue to find out that people mislead us and portray an inaccurate image. Your job is to discern who to trust and who not to. Here are the other lessons I picked up from the Rachel Hollis divorce.
You have a right to be upset with the Hollis’s for their social media practices and misleading advertising of their message.
You also can practice compassion, understanding and empathy. You know they’re human too, at the end of the day.
This isn’t exactly what they wanted but something they are going to go through together. I may not agreeing with everything they did and their ways of conducting business but I wish them the best in the next chapters of their lives.
They both have self-help books on how to navigate life during the tough times. They now get to apply their knowledge and wisdom from these books and put it to use.
If you’re done with the Hollis’s, I get it. If you’re going to give them another chance, I get that too. If you’re going to wait and see what comes next, fine. Just proceed with caution and awareness.
While I have closed comments on my blog for years, I’m going to open them for this post. What do you think of the Rachel Hollis divorce? Leave a comment below.