Tag Archives: divorce

July 16, 2011 · 4:11 pm

how dare you

Not too long ago, I was randomly blog-surfing, and what I found amazed me:  blog after blog written by a divorced person, full of vitriol and hatred for their former spouse.  It wasn’t the anger that surprised me — I understand and accept that divorce breeds a lot of anger — it was the intensity, the duration, and most of all, the basis for it:  most of these posts to which I am referring could be summed up as “How dare you stop loving me?!”

As I read one after another, I was first amazed and then saddened by how summarily and brutally these writers labeled their former spouses as “evil” or “ruthless” or (my personal favorite) “demonic.”  Several times, I took a step back and tried to uncover the cardinal sins committed by these damned husbands and wives, but rarely was it one of the obvious Unforgivables.  Most often it was the more common and intangible “drifting apart,” “feeling unappreciated,” “unhappiness with the marriage,” or “feeling like she lost her identity.”  These reasons were universally dismissed by the writers as being insufficient grounds for leaving the marriage.  No, they insisted, their former spouses are simply evil.

Hmmmm……

I used to work with families whose children had been abducted, usually for sexual purposes.  I don’t need to be educated on the presence and power of evil.  I’ve seen it and felt it and know how real it is.  So let’s get a little perspective, shall we?

But I can forgive the hyperbole.  Love — and hate — makes people crazy.  Emotions are powerful and we are all their slave at one time or another. Anger is a completely natural expression of pain, and expressing it is the only way to purge it.  I understand that.  What I don’t understand is staying crazy, wallowing in it, embracing it as your actual reality for months or years.  That part is incomprehensible to me.

What I hear when I read these diatribes is this:  I don’t care if you (my husband or wife) was unhappy or miserable or even suicidal (don’t laugh; I’ve had several women confide to me that their thoughts of desperation and hopelessness went that far, and I was nearly there in my own marriage…).  I don’t care if I wasn’t meeting your needs or if you told me so a million times or if you did seven years of couples counseling with me (again, don’t laugh; one poor blogger did exactly that).  All I care about is that you dared to take your love away from me after you promised that you wouldn’t.

I don’t mean to be a complete bitch, but to that I have to say:  So sad, too bad.

The marriage contract is not indentured servitude.  You aren’t stuck until the other person decides that you’ve earned the right to leave.  None of us is entitled to another person’s love or physical companionship, but that’s really what so many of these rants sound like to me.  They honestly and genuinely sound as though the departed partners should have stayed, no matter their feelings, no matter the state of the marriage, no matter what.

I understand that marriage used to be exactly that — you stayed no matter what.  But then society evolved and most people began to agree that a physically abused spouse should not be required to remain in such a marriage…nor should a spouse who has been cheated on…or one who is saddled with their partner’s addiction issues.  And so, gradually, more and more acceptable reasons for divorcing emerged, and the concept of the “no-fault” divorce arrived when it became clear that most of the time, marriages did not end because one party was a “victim” and the other was “evil.”  Most of the time, it was just a long, sad road to Irreconcilable Differences.

What’s particularly interesting to me is that, in the abstract, most reasonable people can agree on the wisdom of these premises.  They can nod sagely and agree that a person who feels stuck in a sad or loveless marriage for many years should not be expected to serve a life sentence.  They can be supportive of friends who leave their marriages because the love was no longer was there.  But when it is applied to their own relationships, the polarizing categories of “good” and “evil” are resurrected.

This form of hypocrisy was evident to me from a very young age.  When I was growing up, my mother had many divorced friends and she was always accepting and non-judgmental of their reasons for having left their marriages. But when my father left, after spending four years explaining to her that he simply didn’t love her anymore and couldn’t stay in the marriage, she was furious beyond all reason or sense.  And she stayed furious for many, many years.  Even now, more than 20 years later, she still can barely say his name without clenching her teeth.  By her calculations, he had no right to stop loving her after he promised he wouldn’t.  He broke that promise, and so he is an awful person.

My friend Annie’s husband is another fine example of this.  Even though Annie worked really hard to stay in her marriage — marriage and individual counseling, self-help books, the support of family and friends, and various attempts to reconnect with him emotionally and physically — he told her recently that he would never forgive her for leaving.  Apparently she was supposed to simply suck it up and swallow her sadness and hopelessness and carry on for his sake?

Is that really the deal we strike when we marry?  Am I really to believe that because I promise to love you always, I must do so no matter how you treat me or make me feel?  Am I required to accept whatever efforts you make and just assume that is your best and highest effort at saving our marriage, or am I — like you — permitted to judge those efforts and find them insufficient?  Why are you allowed to say that I didn’t try hard enough to save our marriage but I am not permitted to level the same accusation at you?

I think that it is precisely this ability — perhaps even propensity — to embrace such a self-righteous posture that may be a common denominator among many failed marriages.  What I mean is this:  maybe people who are capable of and willing to villify their exes are more likely to be left.  Would that really be so surprising?

In my dating life, I gradually developed a rule about not dating men who’d been left by their wives unless there was a really good reason (e.g. she was mentally ill or unstable) or the circumstances giving rise to the marriage’s demise had changed (e.g. he used to be a workaholic and has since created a better work/life balance).  This wasn’t a rule based on prejudice or a lack of empathy, but of too many dates listening to men rail against their exes and slowly reveal to me her very good justifications in leaving him.  And of course there are huge and important exceptions — there always are.  But in my experience, they are exactly that — exceptions.

Hate blogging someone is human.  It’s simply the latest version of what has gone on after break-ups for eons.  But hate blogging someone for eternity is not human.  It might just be evil.

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July 15, 2011 · 9:39 pm

grieving before leaving

Last night I spent some time with my friend Lindsay, who is in town visiting.  A few months ago, she moved 1500 miles away from here to take an amazing job opportunity in the Pacific Northwest.  At the time, she was incredibly frightened about what the move would mean for she and Gray, her husband, but she was also hopeful that it would be the fresh start that they so desperately needed.  I wrote about my sadness in watching her go in I already miss her.

Seeing her last night was wonderful.  She looked amazing and her new job is everything she wanted and deserves and more.   We talked as if the time and distance between us did not exist, and I was so very grateful to be in her presence again.

But it was also very sad.  Because she is very sad.  Her marriage is crumbling around her and she is awash in the myriad of emotions that accompany that experience.  She vacillates between wanting — truly and completely — to save her marriage, and feeling almost certain that it is too late.  We sat at a cafe in the twilight by the creek, and I watched the candlelight play off her face and listened to her voice crack as she struggled to get the words out, and my heart broke for her.  I don’t know what her outcome will be, but I know that she is miserable and desperate for change and feeling hopeless, and those are all feelings I know all too well.

She has tried to reach her husband.  They have had some heart-wrenching, honest, no-holds-barred talks and each time she comes away convinced — certain! — that her marriage can be saved and they have finally turned a corner.  But within a week, the momentum is lost and their relationship has backslid into complacency and despair and silence.

Lindsay is grieving, and she’s only partly aware of it.  She is grieving her marriage and the end of all their mutual hopes and dreams.  She is processing the past and contemplating the future and considering her options.  Her heart and mind are engaged and attentive to their situation.  She is not passively awaiting some conclusion or resolution of their problem.

But Gray? As best she can tell, he has resigned himself.  She is frustrated that he doesn’t seem to see what is happening to them, that he is resigned to their situation and appears willing to live in that dismal space forever.

A few years ago I would have been puzzled and unconvinced by Gray’s apparent attitude toward their problems.  He couldn’t possibly not see it, could he??  He must realize what’s happening, mustn’t he???

Now I know better.

Between the work I’ve done in therapy and lots of reading on relationship ambivalence and my own observations,  I have realized that men and women face the end of relationships differently.  This is especially true of men and women over the age of 40.  Most women are proactive about examining their relationships, whereas most men are passive.  Men seem to mostly assume that things will be fine, or at least stay the same, while most women seem to think that things will have to change and get better or else they will leave.  I think this is why most men I know are surprised and stunned by the end of their marriages, while their wives report feeling like they were shouting at the top of their lungs for years before it ended.

I was one such wife.  I — quite literally and sincerely — informed my husband during our first year of marriage that if he continued to tell me I was stupid and treat me as such, I would be gone 10 years from then.  I loved him enough to want to work it out, but I made it clear that I knew myself well enough to know that I wouldn’t live like that forever.  Over the course of our 11-year marriage, I reminded him.  Each time he apologized and acknowledged it and then…. nothing changed.

I think he, and many of my male friends, assume that the wedding contract is non-negotiable.  You signed on, you’re in it, the rest is just details.  Including whatever misery you might be in.

The best example of this is a man I used to be friends with named John.  John cheated on his wife throughout their 14-year marriage and spent considerable energy detailing her every failing. The space between them gradually opened to form an enormous emotional chasm, but he was basically okay with things and, although he talked about leaving, it was clear he never would.  Then his wife, Heidi, came home from a trip to visit family and announced that she was leaving him.  From that moment onward, Heidi seemed to lighten.  Her depressed state lifted and she moved forward, and out of their marriage.  Meanwhile, John was stunned.  Truly speechless and in utter disbelief.  And I was stunned that he was stunned.  Their marriage had been a mess for many, many years.  Heidi’s needs and feelings had played second fiddle to everything else in their lives for ages, and yet he was shocked that she was leaving.  I hardly knew what to say to him.

Someone once told me that when a man in his 40’s says he wants a divorce, you need to call a marriage counselor; but when a woman in her 40’s says she wants a divorce, you need to call a lawyer.  Because when we say we’re done, we’re really and truly done.

Every divorced woman I know spent months if not years being unhappy and grieving her marriage before she finally left.  I don’t know a single woman who made the decision impulsively or without enormous angst.  I also don’t know a single woman who regrets that decision.

Granted, my survey is by no means scientific, and it absolutely can apply in the reverse — there are women who feel blindsided while their husbands feel like it was years in coming, too.   But my point — and one that is borne out in psychological literature on divorce — is that 40-something women who leave tend to process quite a bit of their divorce before they leave.   To a very large extent, much of their grieving and pain occurs while they are still in the marriage.  Which is why, I think, so many men feel like their wives simply stroll out of the marriage without a glance back or a tear shed.  What they are missing is the simple and sad fact that she is already months ahead of him in her grief process, while he is only just beginning.  The pain and reality is fresh and new and harsh to him.  It is accepted and familiar and well-worn to her.

This is not a scientific white paper on divorce psychology, so I am necessarily making gross generalizations, but I think they are useful as a jumping off point when considering why men and women experience the demise of their marriages so differently.  Lindsay is lost in a morass of “what next?” s, while Gray is sitting with sad resignation.  Their experiences of this moment in their marriage are very different.

Sadly, I think that Lindsay will ultimately leave, because Gray has made it fairly clear that he is not interested in working on their marriage.  But she’s not ready yet.  She has a lot of processing and feeling and grieving to do before she’s going to be able to take that step away from him.  In the meantime, he is likely to continue assuming that their marriage, while far from good, is perfectly stable.  And when she finally goes to him and enumerates her reasons for leaving, he will be shocked.

And I will be sad for both of them.

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May 4, 2011 · 7:09 am

was it worth it? (pt. 2)

A new friend wondered aloud recently if I would have the desire and commitment to fight for the kind of love and intimacy I claim to seek, or would I let fear and doubt strangle the possibility.  Because I respect his opinion, I gave his comment some serious consideration.

Every person leaves a marriage for their own, very personal reasons.  I left because I was dying inside.  My ex-husband was not a drinker or a gambler.  He didn’t sleep around or lie or beat me.  I did not hate him or think him an awful person. But there did not exist between us that magical connection that is as fragile as the finest, thinnest silk thread, and as strong as steel.  Our love was not capable of surviving the challenges and punishments inflicted on it by circumstance and time, and no amount of wishing that it was could change that.  That connection, that intimacy simply wasn’t there.

It took me many years to accept that this was the truth… to face it in my own heart and do what was best for both of us… to acknowledge that I could no longer pretend that what we had was enough…. to finally leave.

Divorce sucks.  Plain and simple.  I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, if I had one.  I lived through my parents’ horrific divorce, and I still wasn’t prepared for how painful and wretched my own divorce was.  There have been ample opportunities in the last couple of years to search my soul and re-examine my commitment to my decision, and plenty of dark moments of intense pain and grief that have seriously challenged that dedication.  Lots of tears and lots of peaks and valleys.  And time after time, I have sat across from a perfectly nice, attractive, interesting man and thought, “If I wanted this, I could have it.  But is it enough?”  And over, and over, and over again, I have answered no.

Deep down, in the very core of my soul, I know extraordinary love is possible.  I have felt it and seen it and tasted it in my own life, lost myself in it and surrendered completely to the possibilities inherent in it.  I have also witnessed it in my friends’ relationships, heard their stories, and seen their eyes sparkle with that magical connection that cannot be adequately explained, even after decades together.

Am I frightened of getting hurt again?  You betcha.  Does my flight reaction still kick in with an annoying regularity.  Yep.  But over the last few months, I have finally begun to really push back against these demons.  I know that they could very well rob me of the prize that I seek with my full heart, and I absolutely, resolutely, with every ounce of my Irish stubbornness, refuse to grant them that victory.  No, no, a thousand times no.

I know it won’t be easy to find the kind of love and connection that I want.  And once it’s there in front of me, I’ll have to step up and dig in and commit myself fully to the adventure it presents.  I know that I’ll stumble, that those old fears and reflexes will show up like the party-crashers that they are.  Hopefully my partner in that great journey will have the patience to love me through it as I show the unwelcome guests the door.  Hopefully he’ll understand that beating these demons is simply part of my journey and not a reflection of my commitment to my ultimate goal.

Perhaps I won’t find the kind of love that I seek.  Maybe I’ll reach old age and simply be one of those remarkable old ladies with a bevy of amazing, loving friends and a life full of smaller miracles.  But I hope not, and I intend to keep trying to be open, trying to be brave, for the rest of my life.

I met someone recently who, like a nudge from the universe, reminded me of the profound possibilities that exist in the realm of love.  Against all traditional definitions of what is “rational” and “smart,” I have embarked on a wonderful adventure of mutual discovery with this man.  I have no idea where it is going, and, yes, that scares me a little, but at the very least, I have discovered another kindred spirit who seeks the same thing I do.  We are out there.

I have told only my two closest friends about this new man, and their reactions have told me volumes about my own commitment to the kind of love I seek, because they are both completely unsurprised that, once again, I have signed on for the adventure.  Are they worried that I’ll be hurt?  Of course they are; they love me.  Are they supportive of me taking this risk?  Of course they are; they love me.  They understand that I will never be happy with less, and so they cheer me on as I press forward.

When I first announced that I was leaving my husband, my then-closest friend scolded me, saying, “Well, I sure hope it’s worth it!” I endured her scolds silently, knowing that I could never make her understand how I felt or why I was doing what I was doing.  And what she could never appreciate — not in a whole lifetime — is that it is already worth it.  I am no longer dying.  In the last two years I have learned how to live again.  Yes, I crawl into bed alone most nights, and yes, I am poorer than I once was, and yes, my future is wide open and uncertain.  But there is possibility.  There is a chance.  There is hope.  And there is me, standing in the middle of all of that.

So, yes, it was worth it.  A thousand times, yes.

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March 30, 2011 · 12:32 pm

the divorced and the furious

Anger and I have never been friends.  I was raised in a household where the only anger tolerated was my mother’s.  Every one else had to be “nice.”  As a result, I grew up not really knowing how to constructively deal with my anger, so most of the time, I swallowed it.  And it became an ulcer on my soul called depression.  It wasn’t until, as an adult, I had a therapist explain a theory about depression that centered on the idea that depression is anger turned inward.  In other words, it’s anger with no place to go… for one reason or another, the anger you feel cannot be expressed, so you bury it and grow increasingly depressed.  This is a clinical depression, not a sadness or a grief, but a low-energy hopelessness about your situation that usually feels completely out of proportion to the actual facts of your situation.

Once I understood the concept, I had one of those beautiful “aha!” moments when something in your life just clicks into place in a way that completely alters your worldview.  This theory, I realized, explained so much of my life and the intermittent depression I’d struggled with privately.  I wasn’t sad, really, I was just very, very, very pissed off, but too “nice” to do anything appropriate with that anger.

Anger is still something with which I’m learning to get comfortable, and it’s not easy for me.  Of all the emotions, anger seems to me to be like that loud, bawdy, vulgar aunt who drinks too much at Christmas, burps loudly, and laughs at her own jokes.   There is no softness to anger, it is angular and sharp and hard.  It is unforgiving and unyielding, and it frightens me how it can be blinding in its extremes.   I realize that it is a vital emotion, and one that can be cathartic and cleansing when managed properly, but when I’m angry, I mostly feel like a newbie driver behind the wheel of a semi-truck — ill-prepared and dangerous, ready to roll over an innocent bystander at any minute.  So, I guess you could say I’m working on it.

When my parents divorced, my mother was outraged.  I am not exaggerating; there is seriously no other word for her feelings toward my dad.  His primary sin was that he didn’t love her anymore, and for this she was completely and utterly furious with him.  Now, my mom comes from a long line of Eastern European hotheads, and she did her ancestors proud.  She stayed furious at my father for 13 years after their divorce.  Yes, that’s right: THIRTEEN YEARS.  For 13 years, she seethed.  If his name was mentioned, her face and demeanor perceptibly changed.  Those who had anything nice to say about him were banished, and he became this horrible villain in her life story.  Fortunately for her (and all of us, really), an enormous falling out with me followed by some intensive therapy helped her let go of most of her anger.  Thank goodness.

Since my separation, I have dated plenty of guys who were divorced, and, not surprisingly, anger has been a frequent theme.  As expected, some of these men reported ex-wives who were a combination of Medusa and the Wicked Witch of the West, but I became adept at being an active listener and discerning what was real and what was pure emotion.    I learned to avoid the men who had a lot of unresolved anger; my experience with my mom had taught me that anger of that nature is ultimately visited on everyone around the injured person, and that’s a kind of baggage I decided to avoid.

That’s not to say that I don’t get pissed off at my ex or that I wouldn’t be in a relationship with a guy who didn’t have a fairytale happy relationship with his ex.  I’m not talking about the guy who still gets annoyed at his ex or thinks she’s a crazy bitch.  I’m talking about the guy who is seething.  The guy who has so much anger in his heart toward his ex that there probably isn’t room in there for anyone new.  That guy is, for all real intents and purposes, still in a relationship with his ex, as much as if he were still sleeping in her bed.  He is engaged with her, consumed by her, negatively infatuated by her.  And for any woman who is good enough to try to love him, he is a dead end.

The most obvious example of this kind of man was one of my first match.com dates.  We’ll call him Chris.  Chris and I met for coffee one morning and talked for over an hour.  He was handsome and interesting and seemed to smile easily. But as the minutes ticked by, I perceived that, despite his relaxed Colorado demeanor, inside he was clenched tight as a fist.  I asked about his ex-wife, and, at first, he claimed no hard feelings and enumerated some of her wonderful qualities.  I sat back and listened and, as often was the case, he kept talking.  And I saw that his smile, while easily worn, had a tightness about the edges, a sharpness to it that belied his inner anger.  He pulled at the napkin in front of him with a kind of controlled fury that I noted with apprehension.  He talked of her egregious behavior and how she had failed to honor her commitment to a life together until death did they part.  I finally interrupted him and asked how long they had been divorced.

Nine years.

They had been divorced nine years and Chris was still raging over her and the fact that she had left him.  Wow.  Needless to say, I got the hell out of there as fast as I could.

Of course divorce makes people angry.  It might even make them rageful. A lot crappy things are done and said when a marriage is dying and a divorce is being born.  But what the two people do with those feelings and how much control they surrender to them and how long they hold onto them are all very telling.  Does their anger color their world view?  Are they aware of their anger or do they deny it? Do they ever consciously let go of that anger in order to make a new life?  Or do they allow the anger to consume them, so that they are living a life in the shadow of a relationship long over?

Last week, my ex-husband disappointed me.  In a big, big way.  And I was shocked at how quickly my anger and resentment toward him boiled up again.  I spent a few days telling all my friends (not our friends, but my friends) what an asshole he was.  I had bad dreams and journaled furiously about how perfectly this latest offense encapsulated my reasons for divorcing him.  I avoided this blog, lest it become a repository for my negativity. And then, after a couple of days, I was spent.   So, I turned away from him and my feelings about him and back to the life I’m creating for myself.  And in the last few days I’ve hardly thought of him at all.

I’m sure there isn’t only one right way to deal with the anger of divorce, but I know that this is the way that I’m dealing with it.  I’m trying to allow my anger to speak when appropriate, but to do so constructively and without malice.  As with any new skill, I’ve had mixed results.  But so far, I’m just glad it hasn’t become the centerpiece of my life.  Because anger held too tightly for too long creates a barren and harsh landscape, inhospitable to compassion and love and empathy and intimacy.  I learned this early and I learned it well.   Thank goodness.

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March 8, 2011 · 10:07 pm

two years

This weekend will mark an anniversary for me: two years to the day since I loaded my earthly possessions in a moving truck and formally separated my life from my husband’s after 11 years of marriage.

The day of my departure played out like a suburban melodrama. I had scheduled my move for a Friday, so that my children would be in school, but that morning we awoke to find my youngest running a fever and generally feeling rotten.  So, my five-year-old spent the day numbly watching her mother extricate herself from the family home. Feeling her eyes follow me around the house that day was agonizing. My husband stayed home from work, ostensibly to watch my daughter, but subsequent events suggest to me that he would have been there anyway. That morning, he alternated between standing with his arms crossed, surveying the moving men as if insuring that I didn’t take anything to which I was not entitled, and whistling as he moved through the house taking care of small things with a kind of forced nonchalance that I found grating, but would have gladly suffered all day, had I known what was to come.

A month earlier, my husband had made it clear that, other than tossing all my clothes into trash bags and depositing them in the guestroom (“Was Daddy helping you pack, Mommy?” “Yes, dear. Wasn’t that nice of him?”), he was not going to lift a hand to assist me. So, I hired two strong Mexicans with minimal English and a truck to do the heavy lifting. They were kind and by the end of the day were offering sympathetic half-smiles of encouragement. They could see how much I needed them, I think, because my child and my Mexicans were witnesses to possibly the most hurtful moments of my life that day.

Of all the acquaintances and friends I knew, of all the women and men whom I reached out to during my 12 years in our town, only one friend offered to help me move that day. She arrived, despite her husband’s opposition and the disapproval of our mutual friends, in ready-to-work clothes and with a can-do attitude. Within moments, she had plunked herself down in my living room and was busily packing my china. Had I been less numb, her gesture of compassion and kindness would have likely reduced me to tears, as they did later when I was able to fully appreciate that day.

Next to arrive were the couple that my husband and I had been closest to during the last year or so of our marriage (we’ll call them Brooke and John, because those are their names). John came first, and joined my husband for a beer in the living room, as I bustled around them, removing items and apologizing (yes, seriously) for disrupting their conversation. And then later Brooke came sweeping in, right past me without a word, my former best friend who hadn’t spoken to me since I told her that I was leaving my husband. Just as I finished in the living room, the three of them followed me to the den, standing casually in the middle of room, and I was again reduced to shamefully collecting my belongings as I shuffled around them and tried to be as small and inconspicuous as possible. Even in that moment, I understood their need to punish me for daring to break a covenant that we’d all held so dear, and the nature of my guilt was such that I bore their condemnation with alacrity.

Like most people my age, I have suffered my share of intentional acts of meanness directed at me, but the memory of leaving my home under those circumstances currently surpasses all others. It was a cut so deep and painful that I could barely process it for months. Were it not for my Irish stubbornness and determination, I would likely have fallen apart, truly. Even now, it takes my breath away.

It was a long day. My friend had to return to her familial duties after a few hours, but my Mexicans and I worked until after dark. At the end of the day, I offered them each a beer from my new fridge, which they accepted ruefully and drank quickly. As they left, the older one turned back to look at me and ask, “You be okay, yes?” “Yes,” I replied, but I don’t think either of us was convinced.

That horrible day mostly seems very distant now. Within days of my move, a few kind couples offered various assistance and support, every single one of which brought me to the verge of tears. In those dark days, I saw the true character of many of the people around me. The people who surprised me pleasantly will never know the indebtedness I feel for their small acts of kindness. As for those individuals who were so certain that I was making a huge and horrible and unforgivable mistake, I have thought recently how perturbed they must be to see me now. They say that living well is the best revenge. I hope that’s true. It’s the only kind of revenge I really believe in.

I have often thought that how we feel about a milestone is more about where we are in our life and how our previous expectations fit with where we are, than actually about the date or occasion we’re marking. For instance, my 25th birthday – when I was broke and un-coupled and struggling through graduate school – was far more difficult for me than any birthday since, primarily because I was unhappy with where I was and frustrated that my life didn’t match the expectations I had for myself.

This anniversary is oddly sweet for me. The initial elation of freedom and blossoming possibility that I felt during the first year has passed, but so has the loneliness and doubt of the phase that followed. I feel like my new beginning actually commenced within the last three months, not two full years ago, as if I had been previously in a holding place, a benign purgatory of sorts, over the last two years.

One of my more colorful friends likens my recent history to a difficult birth. She invoked this analogy not long ago to explain to me that leaving my husband and the home we’d made was like detaching from the uterus and beginning the painful journey through the birth canal.  I pushed my way through, gradually, until recently, when I finally emerged, damp and blinking, into the new world I’d created for myself. In some ways, her analogy is a bit graphic, but I appreciate how vividly it captures the struggle one encounters when separating from that which is safe and warm and secure and embarking on a world that seems wrought with uncertainty and newness.

Of course I had certain ideas about where I’d be two years hence from my separation, and I can honestly report that not much of my life looks as I’d anticipated it. There have been losses, and regrets, and stumbles, but there have also been insights and gifts and love. I cannot honestly say that I would change much. True, I’m not where I thought I’d be, but I think there’s a strong case to be made that where I am is even better. And for that, I am truly and completely grateful.

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February 13, 2011 · 9:33 pm

divorce as divine mercy

I have a friend who has been divorced for 8 or 9 years now.  He and his ex-wife have a pretty remarkable relationship — they still spend holidays together with their daughter, they went on college -visiting trips together as a family, and they have actively supported each other through their respective family crises.

This weekend, this friend explained to me that, for them, divorce was like a divine mercy — the last act of mutual kindness they paid to their marriage, ending it before the pain became too great to bear.  A kind of marriage euthanasia, if you will.  Rather than wait until it the cancer of betrayal and deceit completely gutted their respect and concern for each other, they ended their marriage when some modicum of decency still existed, to be nurtured and built upon, to provide the basis of a a new relationship of mutual respect and caring.

I had never heard divorce described with such tenderness before, and it made me ponder yet again why we have turned divorce into such a nasty, vindictive, painful industry.  Why have we accepted all of that vitriol and jealousy and nastiness as “normal”?  Why do we expect people to behave more maturely when breaking up a simple dating relationship than we do a marriage?  Doesn’t a marriage deserve even more mutual tenderness and understanding and compassion?   Shouldn’t we demand from ourselves, and each other, better than this? Why should any marriage be battered, burned, and bruised until it is no longer recognizable?  Aren’t most marriages worth more than that?

I think that divorce is likely often a “divine mercy.”  And, really, when it’s all falling apart around us, and in our hearts we know it can’t be rebuilt, don’t we owe each other that much?

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February 5, 2011 · 10:01 pm

hello, i’m mrs. jones.

Shortly before I announced to the world that I was leaving my marriage, I had a bizarre conversation with my then-best girlfriend.  We were in my kitchen, one evening during a dinner party I was hosting, and she was helping me tidy up after the meal.  We were talking about the second home my husband and I had purchased and how much fun it would be to have weekends away — all of us together — up in the mountains during the coming winter.  And then, with a smile, she said it:  “You know, y’all are the Jones.  You’re the ones that have it all.  The rest of us are just lucky to keep up with you.”

The air left my lungs as I bent over to the load the dishwasher and I mumbled some attempt at a witty reply, but my head spun with her pronouncement. Was that really what she thought?  Could she really not see how terribly unhappy I was?  Did my husband and I really seem that right for each other?  God, couldn’t she see that I was dying inside??

True, I hadn’t told anyone how I felt.  At that point, I wasn’t even sure myself.  I hadn’t yet determined that my marriage was the reason for my depression and grief.  I hadn’t yet admitted to myself that I’d been mourning a relationship that was still on life support.  But I did know that something was terribly wrong and that I felt like anyone who glanced at me could see it written plainly on my face, and yet she — my closest friend — did not. 

In that moment, I saw my first glimpse of what would unfold months later:  the utter shock on my friends’ faces as I told them I was leaving, the complete shunning I received from some acquaintances, the gossip that analyzed my “sudden” action.  To them, it would seem like I was upending perfection, tossing away all the good stuff we all want and strive for.  To me, it felt like the final, gasping breath of a woman flinging herself from her gilded cage in a desperate attempt to save her soul from a quiet, silent death. 

I never wanted to be the mythical Jones’ whom everyone struggled to match and keep pace with, and I don’t think that my ex did either.  But somehow that’s where we found ourselves, performing the roles of the couple who seemed to have it all, when in fact, we were missing everything that really mattered.

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February 5, 2011 · 4:26 am

was it worth it? (pt 1)

Sometimes people ask me if I have any regrets about leaving my marriage, and I can only assume that lots more wonder but don’t ask.  To those who do, I always say no.  But that’s not entirely true.  I often wrestle with the ubiquitous “what if’s” that lurk in every dark corner of my decision to divorce.  I think this contemplation, reevaluation, reexamination is normal, and good.  There was real value in my marriage — it wasn’t an all-bad situation — and I think my “what if’s” are my way of staying real with myself and not getting caught up in the polarized ideas of good guys and bad guys that seem to be the standard paradigm of divorce.  I don’t hate my ex, and he doesn’t seem to hate me, and I think the utlimate question of whether my decision was the right one will only be known at the end of our lives, when we look back on what we created separately after I left.

I want it to be worth it.  Really, truly worth it.  I want to know that the pain I inflicted with my decision somehow gave birth to goodness in our lives in other ways, and not just my life, but my ex’s and my children’s.  I want us all to emerge from the shattered ruins of my marriage as better, more well-developed, self-aware, happier people.  Is that too much to hope for?  Maybe, but I am damn determined to try.

Something happened recently that put my dedication to this ideal to the test.

One of the small injuries that accumulated over time into a real wound in my marriage was my ex’s apparent indifference to me when I was ill.  You know how sometimes you’re just so sick and you need to sleep alone so you can barf or cough or toss and turn all night?  When my ex was sick like that, I’d offer to sleep in the guest room if he wanted me to.  Not because I was afraid of the germs, but because I didn’t want him to be concerned about bothering me when he was that sick.  So, when he was sick, I slept in the guest room.  But when I was sick… I slept in the guest room.  It was a very, very small thing that became associated, in my mind, with all of the other ways that he seemed not to care for me when I was vulnerable.   In the midst of one of our vicious post-separation, pre-divorce fights, I hurled that example at him with the power of the pain that was behind it.  He physically recoiled as if I had slapped him, and I saw my own pain played out on his face, as he realized how broken we were and our mutual culpability in getting us there.

It was never mentioned again, directly or indirectly…. until a few days ago.  My ex delivered our daughters to me for my week and explained that his girlfriend had, for the first time, spent the night at his house while the girls where there.  Before I could say anything, he offered the explanation that she’d been sick and he hadn’t wanted her to be home alone at her place.  He further explained that she’d slept in the bed, and he on the sofa, so that she could get a good night’s sleep.

Ouch.

As the final words left his lips, we had the same realization at the same moment, and the next moments were excruciating:  me fumbling through a reassurance that I was fine with it; him over-explaining that he only mentioned it in case the girls were uncomfortable or talked to me about it; me mumbling agreement; and then us awkwardly saying goodbye as he retreated, and I was left standing alone in my foyer.

In that moment, the fork in the road was clear.  I could resent him for giving her, in those small, caring gestures, what he had denied me all those years.  I could rail against her as undeserving and some usurper who was now reaping the benefits of all my pain.  I could hate them both for being what we could not be together.

Except that I couldn’t.  I want him to be a better person.  I want him to be happier than he was with me.  I want to know that my leaving meant something,  I want to know that I meant something — enough to cause him to pause in who he is and possibly reconsider his fierce certainty, through the latter part of our marriage, that he was fine and justified and right, and I was broken and selfish and unreasonable.  And everytime I see glimpses of the new man he is becoming — and believe me, this was not the first glimpse — I am proud of him.  I am proud that he is making this worth it, finding value in the pain that we created and I blew wide open.  He is using this experience to become a better version of himself.  It is what I wish for all of us.  That, and possibly that alone, would make me feel, at the end of my life, that this decision was indeed worth it.

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February 5, 2011 · 12:14 am

i was a match.com spaz

Online dating is hit or miss, with more misses than hits.  Men outnumber women on some sites by something like 4 to 1, and even on the more balanced sites, it’s still close to 2 to 1.  So, as a woman on an online dating site, you can receive a lot of mail.  The temptation is to simply delete the contact attempts from men that don’t appeal to you, but there is something inherently rude in that.   So, match.com has this nifty little button that says “No, thanks.”  When you get an email from someone you’re not interested in, good online etiquette dictates that you click the “No, thanks” button, rather than ignore your potential suitor.

My first few days on match.com, I got a lot of mail.  (I’ve since realized that they must have an algorithm for making sure that new members get inundated and feel welcomed and popular, but I didn’t know that then. )  I was going through my mail and came across someone who didn’t interest me in the slightest.  I was about to hit delete, and then I remembered the “No, thanks” button.  I clicked it. Nothing happened.  Hmmm….. I clicked it again.  Still nothing.  Maybe my mouse wasn’t working… Clicked it again.  And again.  Apparently the thing didn’t actually work, so I gave up on the “No, thanks” button and just deleted messages that didn’t interest me.

Except that it did work.

The following day, I opened my match.com inbox to discover a message from the man to whom I tried to send the “No, thanks” message.  His message said, “Thanks so much for the reply, but I just wanted you to know that I got the hint the first time.  By the fourth time, it was just kind of mean.  Good luck to you.”

And so began my match.com adventure.

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February 4, 2011 · 11:37 pm

dating as research

After I was separated and had spent a few months getting my bearings, I threw myself into dating.  For nearly 18 months, I dated.  A lot.  A whole lot, actually.

Not everyone around me was comfortable with this.  Well-meaning friends suggested that I “take some time and get to know myself first.”  This truly bewildered me, because I learn more about myself through my interactions with others than I could ever discover sitting at home with a book or a movie.  Only recently has the source of their discomfort dawned on me:  they thought that I was dating to avoid being alone, that I was simply afraid of not having a man in my life.  They were wrong, but it is only in hindsight that I see clearly what I was actually doing.

I was doing research.  Serious, focused research.

Coming out of my marriage, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want THAT anymore.  But what did I want?  What did it look like, feel like?  What did he — this mythical soul mate that I had left my marriage to discover — look like, sound like, act like?  I dated all kinds of men.  I went through a period of younger men, and a period of former pro-athletes, and a period of very tall men.  Some of them had doctorates, some had diplomas.  Some had private jets, others lived like college students. I tried them on (most only metaphorically), and I made copious mental notes of what felt good and right and what did not.  And slowly a sense of what I want in a man emerged….

But one of the worst parts of my marriage was who I became within it.  So I had work to do there, too.  Who did I want to be in a relationship?  What parts of myself did I value, did I want to nurture and grow and share with someone?  What parts of myself did I never want to see again?  Each new man taught me something about myself.  I discovered whole new parts of myself that I had never known before and made instant friends with!  I slowly came to realize which kinds of men brought out which parts of me and how I responded to the various situations and challenges that dating presents over and over and over again.

My laboratory work is over, and I have stopped dating.  This is not a permanent situation, but every scientist needs a chance to quietly and completely examine the results of her multiple experiments before synthesizing the results into a statement of discovered fact.  And that’s where I am.  I think I know who the best version of myself is, and I know that I want to be her.  I think I know roughly what I’m seeking in a mate, and I want to meet him.  And that will most likely require more dating.  But my friends can relax.

For now.

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