Divorce--Just A Fact of Life
Divorce is a fact of life in our house. I never did any weeping except in the arms of a male friend and only once. I tend to look at the whole thing dispassionately or at least I try. My kids have two houses, about a mile apart. They have two sets of clothes and two sets of computers, video and computer games and various mysterious Ipod accessories. When one of them forgets something, I hop in the car and go over to the house and pick up whatever is missing. Our money issues are not settled but it's an amicable arrangement. It has to be for the kids.
Sometimes I think that just like the marriage was only about the kids, so is the divorce. When it comes to the divorce this seems fitting. I find it ironic that in the end one of the main reasons there was nothing left of the marriage is that it had been focused for too long on only the kids. You sow what you reap.
Apart from the financial decimation, I look on the dissolution of the marriage as basically a good thing. Marriages end. People figure out that they have very little in common or that their cultural worldview is too different from the other's. Men meet new women and women meet new men. Not everyone knows how to end a marriage openly. At what point do you say to yourself "yes, this fits better. I'm going to move on and give this a try"? It's a terrifying thing to do and despite conventional wisdom, it requires some variety of courage. I know. I did it once upon a time and it was scary--even without kids. I can't imagine what it would be like with kids. But what's the alternative? Just look at all the "happy couples" who have been married 15 years or more and can't stand each other. We can all name a handful of those couples if we're honest.
And yes, there is therapy but sometimes the underlying issues are too big. Bathos leaves me cold and introspection left him even colder I think. So here we are. The kids are doing fine. My mother asks me in hushed tones--on the phone, which is even more grating--"how are the kids doing?, her voice cringing. I can tell she pictures crying kids, cursing adults and scattered belongings strewn along the path between the houses. In my mother's version of the world, the "other woman" would be worse than any evil stepmother could ever be but the truth is the opposite. My ex's intended is taller, younger and makes a lot more money. Her son is very smart and cute and she's very smart and nice. My bet is she may find it harder to teach him to be a good husband than she thinks. I might be wrong. When I say this to my mother, I can tell she thinks that I'm delusional or putting on a brave face.
It's all very nice. Today it struck me as I was waiting on the front steps that the whole thing is a bit surreal. I think their relationship started either 3 or 4 years ago. There's a rabid gossip in our business who'd lay it all out for me but I don't want to give him the satisfaction. I remember having a vague sense that my then husband was "busy" elsewhere but I also remember not caring. Then her name was mentioned often and then not at all. That was a dead giveaway. I found receipts once and confronted him--not angrily but knowingly. He scoffed at the notion that he could ever find the time or the organizational capabilities to engineer sneaking around. Even then I knew. But as I was standing there this afternoon, dead tired from a day at the coal mine--a job necessitated by the divorce, it occurred to me that this house, this life had been carefully planned. The landscaped lawn, the manicured hostas, fresh mulch, a shiny interior cleaned at least once a week by a cleaning lady--all had gone according to plan.
I don't mean a plan with three hard copies buttressed with a 45 minute Power Point presentation. (Is there anything worse than a Power Point presentation about anything?) I mean instead a vision of a future that includes this spiffy house, these carefully placed framed photos of the happy couple taken against exotic backdrops and others of the three kids--smiling as though they've always been a trio. It struck me that the only part of the plan that was still unrealized was me. I thought of "Without A Trace"--where the soon -to- be -missing person is shown in "real life" and then fades and disappears until the final scenes of the show. As I stood there I thought that perhaps I was fading away too. That our once happy family had migrated from this house where we began and flitted across town to materialize instead in this new, perfect house. The only thing that had really changed was that I had not flitted with them. That I am solid and not a spirit only in "my" own house, in my own leaf-strewn, overgrown yard.
Sometimes I think that just like the marriage was only about the kids, so is the divorce. When it comes to the divorce this seems fitting. I find it ironic that in the end one of the main reasons there was nothing left of the marriage is that it had been focused for too long on only the kids. You sow what you reap.
Apart from the financial decimation, I look on the dissolution of the marriage as basically a good thing. Marriages end. People figure out that they have very little in common or that their cultural worldview is too different from the other's. Men meet new women and women meet new men. Not everyone knows how to end a marriage openly. At what point do you say to yourself "yes, this fits better. I'm going to move on and give this a try"? It's a terrifying thing to do and despite conventional wisdom, it requires some variety of courage. I know. I did it once upon a time and it was scary--even without kids. I can't imagine what it would be like with kids. But what's the alternative? Just look at all the "happy couples" who have been married 15 years or more and can't stand each other. We can all name a handful of those couples if we're honest.
And yes, there is therapy but sometimes the underlying issues are too big. Bathos leaves me cold and introspection left him even colder I think. So here we are. The kids are doing fine. My mother asks me in hushed tones--on the phone, which is even more grating--"how are the kids doing?, her voice cringing. I can tell she pictures crying kids, cursing adults and scattered belongings strewn along the path between the houses. In my mother's version of the world, the "other woman" would be worse than any evil stepmother could ever be but the truth is the opposite. My ex's intended is taller, younger and makes a lot more money. Her son is very smart and cute and she's very smart and nice. My bet is she may find it harder to teach him to be a good husband than she thinks. I might be wrong. When I say this to my mother, I can tell she thinks that I'm delusional or putting on a brave face.
It's all very nice. Today it struck me as I was waiting on the front steps that the whole thing is a bit surreal. I think their relationship started either 3 or 4 years ago. There's a rabid gossip in our business who'd lay it all out for me but I don't want to give him the satisfaction. I remember having a vague sense that my then husband was "busy" elsewhere but I also remember not caring. Then her name was mentioned often and then not at all. That was a dead giveaway. I found receipts once and confronted him--not angrily but knowingly. He scoffed at the notion that he could ever find the time or the organizational capabilities to engineer sneaking around. Even then I knew. But as I was standing there this afternoon, dead tired from a day at the coal mine--a job necessitated by the divorce, it occurred to me that this house, this life had been carefully planned. The landscaped lawn, the manicured hostas, fresh mulch, a shiny interior cleaned at least once a week by a cleaning lady--all had gone according to plan.
I don't mean a plan with three hard copies buttressed with a 45 minute Power Point presentation. (Is there anything worse than a Power Point presentation about anything?) I mean instead a vision of a future that includes this spiffy house, these carefully placed framed photos of the happy couple taken against exotic backdrops and others of the three kids--smiling as though they've always been a trio. It struck me that the only part of the plan that was still unrealized was me. I thought of "Without A Trace"--where the soon -to- be -missing person is shown in "real life" and then fades and disappears until the final scenes of the show. As I stood there I thought that perhaps I was fading away too. That our once happy family had migrated from this house where we began and flitted across town to materialize instead in this new, perfect house. The only thing that had really changed was that I had not flitted with them. That I am solid and not a spirit only in "my" own house, in my own leaf-strewn, overgrown yard.
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