By Jennifer Latson
It’s a far cry from the towering cakes and cascading gowns on display at Houston’s bridal shows. At the Divorce Marketplace, the main attraction is meeting other recent singles.
On Sunday afternoon, in a carpeted conference room at the Crowne Plaza hotel near Sharpstown, a small group of divorcees navigated between booths advertising dating services, gym memberships, outing groups and even pet adoption.
Gena McClatchy’s phone buzzed as she toured the room with her friend, Michelle Kerbow, both from Cypress. It was a text message from another mutual friend.
“Have y’all met a man yet?” it read. The crowd was largely female, however.
McClatchy, who has been divorced for 10 years, just recently re-entered the dating pool.
“I felt like I needed to find my own way through life first,” she explained. “Now I’ve done that and I’m ready to find a partner.”
The crowd came in varying stages of recovery from the shock of splitting up.
John McGee, 45, was married for 22 years before his divorce became final in May. The father of three is still sorting through a jumble of feelings, and he knows he’s far from ready to date again.
“I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,” he explained to a saleswoman at one of the booths, who commiserated. She’s recently divorced, too.
McGee stopped at the expo on his way home from church — mostly out of curiosity, he said. He found little of interest among the vendors offering microdermabrasion and scented candles. A chiropractor offered adjustments that he said would help alleviate some of the emotional effects — depression and anxiety, for example — that accompany the grief of separation. That seemed, to McGee, like an oversimplification of his distress.
“This is all kind of fresh, kind of new, and it’s painful,” he said.
The goal of the expo was to empower the newly single — maybe just not the QUITE-so-newly single, organizers said.
Patricia Navarro, a Richmond boutique owner who showcased glittering jewelry and brightly sequined belts, recognized that rhinestones can’t cure heartbreak. But they can help, she said.
“I have a lot of divorced clients,” she said. “When they try on my blingy stuff, they look pretty, they feel pretty; some of them even cry. They’ve got a new lease on life.”
A guidebook
Two sales representatives for a company called Slumber Parties — the adult novelty version of Tupperware parties — said that while they’ve set up booths at bridal shows before, this was their first divorce expo. But they thought their products could resonate with this market, too.
“These women need to take time to make themselves happy, as well,” said Sheila Rosario.
Other booths were more directly focused on the challenges facing the recently divorced.
Jayna Haney, who offered a guidebook on single parenting, said she urged the newly single to find the silver lining of leaving a marriage that wasn’t working.
“People who get divorced have a lot of conflicting emotions. They feel sad, isolated, frustrated. But they may also feel relieved, happy — that this a fresh start for them,” she said. “I think the Divorce Marketplace makes it less about what happened to you, and more about what you’re going to do with it.”
