Video hit Gretchen Peters

Gretchen Peters - Breakfast At Our House (live)

Statistics show that almost 50% of marriages in the United States end in divorce.

As anyone who's been through it, or who knows anyone who's been through it, divorce is an ugly thing. Getting through one will strain the bounds of the human ability to cope.

Sometimes, coping with the seas that rage beneath the surface of a doomed marriage result in a situation that singer/songwriter Gretchen Peters describes as becoming "almost polite" with one another.

It's the gradual, subtle shutting down of emotions stemming from the death of communication where "there's too much anger, too much water under the bridge, too much pain" for the marriage to recover. She's been there. "I think the problem is that, if you're separating a relationship, usually one party gets to the realization first," says Peters.

"It's not usually arrived at simultaneously. I think the other thing I was really trying to get across in this song... there comes this point when you almost start to be polite with each other, because the situation is so strained and so strange. So you don't even have the intimacy left to fight. And that point I really wanted to try and get across. Because having been in the situation, I just thought, wow, this is so weird. You get to where you've lost so much intimacy that you even feel that sort of weird, distant kind of politeness."

Having experienced the struggle that sometimes accompanies songwriting, Peters says this song happened the other way around. It came on like a sudden storm. "It wasn't calculated. Actually, that song was one that really poured out, basically, in one sitting. It wasn't as though I sat down and thought, Hmmm, well, this is what I'm going to try to convey here. I mean, it just kind of came out. You know, one of those."

The lyrics:

this is how it is

no dramatic scenes

you read your morning paper

i read my magazine

happy weatherman

says we need the rain

but i don’t know what he’s thinking

it’s been coming down for days

and this brew is just too bitter

too strong for me to drink

gonna pour it down the drain right now

right down the kitchen sink

cold coffee in my cup

you turn the tv up

breakfast at our house

and this is how it is

and it’s no easy trick

we can promise what we want to

but we can’t make it stick

half a life ago

with this ring we wed

and now we’re sittin’ at this table

with the things we never said

but to come right out and say ‘em

would be rude and out of place

so I’ll keep it to myself I guess

but it’s written all across your face

burnt toast and offerings

that’s what the morning brings

breakfast at our house

so here’s to all the young boys, to all the fair haired girls

who ran away on honeymoons, who married in a whirl

whose pretty bed of roses feels like a bed of coals

who sit at breakfast tables and stare into their bowls

who had their dreams of love, but now they’re waking up

breakfast at our house

cold coffee in my cup, you turn the tv up

breakfast at our house