OPINION: 'Everyone's saying the same thing about Nicole and Keith's divorce. They're wrong.'

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When news broke this morning that Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were separating after 19 years, the internet responded the only way it knows how: with collective devastation and a dramatic declaration that "love is dead."

And I get it. Nic is one of ours. We all rooted for her happy ending after that whole Tom Cruise Scientology… circus. 

She found Keith, they fell hard and fast, raised two daughters, built a life together, and for almost two decades, it seemed as if they had cracked the code on how to survive both Hollywood and real life.

Their love story looked like a fairytale. And now, the story has shifted.

Listen: Holly, Jessie and Em have an emergency debrief about Nicole and Keith on Mamamia Out Loud.

Here is where I start yelling: I refuse to call a 19-year-long marriage (and a 20-year relationship) a "failure."

And I refuse to swallow the narrative that their split means love is officially cancelled for the rest of us. If we keep doing that — keep labelling long, complicated, life-defining relationships as nothing more than a collapsed house of cards — we erase the entire foundation those relationships gave us in the first place. 

I was 29 when I got divorced. 

I'd married young, after already spending five years with the man who had been my entire adult life up until that point. By the time we split, we had been together for 12-and-a-half years. That's not a blip. That's not a "failed" experiment. That's my entire twenties, and more. 

It was starting and graduating from university, buying our first apartment, getting my dream job, moving overseas, celebrating the marriages of our closest friends and family, welcoming nieces and nephews. It was every major life milestone.

And yes, the marriage ended.

But to call it a failure and write those years off as nothing? It would be like taking a red pen and scribbling over an entire decade of my life, writing "LOL THIS DOESN'T COUNT" in the margins. While I may not be married to him anymore, he is undeniably woven into the fabric of who I am today — a fact I will forever be grateful for. 

Whether it's mine, or Nicole and Keith's, people lobbing "failure" grenades at long relationships that end makes me bristle. The end of a marriage does not erase the love, the growth, the family, the challenges and the chaos. It doesn't erase the years of showing up for each other through the boring, everyday stuff. 

It just means the story has changed. And isn't that literally the whole point of stories?

Keith and Nicole's love story has changed, which is entirely the point. Image: Instagram.

And then there is the other side of this discourse: the "love is dead" chorus.

Nicole and Keith's love isn't dead. It was alive and kicking and important for nearly 20 years. It grew two daughters, and it carried the couple through addiction, career highs and career nosedives, red carpets and school drop-offs. It mattered. It's just that now, it is morphing into something else. 

The subtext of all of this "poor Nicole" sentiment is that this Oscar-winning actress has lost out on her happy ending. But babe, she didn't. 

She had one. She had a big, beautiful, messy, complicated, human love story that lasted two decades. It doesn't mean she won't have another. And even if she doesn't, can we not cheapen the one she had by acting like it only mattered if it lasted forever?

Watch: Nicole and Keith Urban share a boogie at a Taylor Swift concert. Post continues below.

Let me say it louder, for the people in the back: a relationship can end and still be a success.

My divorce taught me that. For a long time, I let the "failure" narrative haunt me. It made me feel broken. Like I had wasted my twenties. Like I had to justify the years that I "lost"; to family, to friends, to potential new partners. But the truth is, I didn't lose those years; I lived them. Fully. And when it was time to walk away, I did. A decision that was just as much a part of the story as the vows we made.

When people scream that "love is dead," what am I supposed to hear? That because I already built a life with someone once, I don't get another chance? That I've used up my quota of big, real love?

That's why when I see Nicole and Keith choosing to go their separate ways, I don't see failure. I see two people who had the courage to love each other loudly — unapologetically and for a very long time — and who now have the courage to say, "this chapter is finished."

We only do ourselves a disservice when we equate longevity with success and endings with failure. Life doesn't work like that; love doesn't work like that. 

Yes, we can be sad. We can declare this an "end of an era", pour a glass of wine and spiral in the group chat. But please, let's not call this proof that love is dead, because for 19 years, love was very much alive. And if that's not enough, then maybe the problem isn't love, but our definition of it.

Feature image: Getty.