That thought struck me when I sat through the first episode of The Starter Wife.
The show revolves around the wife of a rich Hollywood type, who eventually gets dumped by her callous husband without a penny to her name.
No, I'm not saying we can all become a rich, powerful Hollywood type's wife, even if the show is a Hollywood drama series about them.
It is the underlying message of a marriage's fragileness that I am getting to here. Couple falls in love, gets married, one gets tired of the other, marriage ends in divorce. Sound familiar?
Never mind that most of us will never get to marry Hollywood studio executives, dress in Chanel all day long, or flit from party to socialite party, worrying only our hair would be out of place at any time.
The Starter Wife is a derivative from the concept of "starter marriage", where couples are married for not more than five years and do not have any children, for the sake of trying out married life.
Molly Kagan, played by Debra Messing, is the unfortunate starter wife whose husband dumps her just before their tenth wedding anniversary.
She finds out later that he left her for a young starlet.
Suddenly, she is thrown out of her country club when her membership is cancelled by her ex-husband, fellow wives of other movie studio types usher her out of charity-fundraising meetings, and even her friendship with one of her closest friends, Cricket Stewart (played by Miranda Otto), is put to the test when the latter's husband demands that they break ties.
Considered over the hill and without a career to her name, Molly, who has always been known as the wife of Kenny Kagan finds that friends and associates who used to pander to her now treat her like a pariah.
The biggest pity here is that an almost decade-long partnership and marriage is dissolved because one partner felt "it just didn't work out".
Isn't that what most of us are afraid will happen to us in our lifetimes? When vows of "til death do us part" are tossed about with a certain carelessness because it is just as easy to get a divorce and a one-way ticket out of a marriage.
The show progresses with Molly getting back on her feet and attempting to rebuild her life within the community. She meets a mysterious stranger who is a beach bum and there is chemistry. Along the way, friends lend her helping hand.
So yes, it could happen to any of us, those pressure-cooker times that make a couple begin to wonder: "Are things working out, or not?"
The Starter Wife premieres this Sunday, Oct 21, on the Hallmark Channel, Ch 17, at 9pm. Encore telecasts every Tuesday at 9pm.
