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A recently separated friend of mine, still in her 30s, has a term for the current cultural fixation with failing marriages. She calls it “divorce porn.” “Married people are obsessed with divorced people,” she said, particularly their sex lives.

The Hugh Hefner of divorce porn is Elizabeth Gilbert, of course. She helped popularize the recent surge. Her 2006 memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love,” uses her painful divorce at 32 as a starting point for an exuberant yearlong “search for everything” across Italy, India and Indonesia, including lavish meals, romantic affairs and a happy ending in the arms of an exotic man (also divorced).

Earlier this year, Ms. Gilbert published a follow-up book called “Committed,” an anguished account of her ambiguous feelings about marrying her lover, called Felipe in the books. As a mark of the current vogue for alimony over matrimony, “Committed” has sold 200,000 copies in the United States, according to BookScan; “Eat, Pray, Love” has sold five million copies. That’s a ratio of 25 to 1.

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