Y?all, this is a very special edition of Through The Fire, because the author is a friend and one of my favorite writers on the internet ? Jen from The Trephine???and also because her post is one I truly and honestly want *everyone* to read: married, divorced, or otherwise. I think it?s just that important and awesome. Please to enjoy.
*
Through The Fire is a series of reader submissions. It offers people a safe, anonymous place to tell their personal stories of separation and divorce, with the intention of fostering empathy and compassion around the shared experience of having a marriage fail. If you would like to submit an original, unpublished story to this series,?click here. Today?s guest post is by Jennifer Gilbert.
The day I got divorced, my soon-to-be ex-husband and I rode to the courthouse together. In his car, Jeff and I were amiable enough, if a bit nervous about what getting really, truly, officially divorced would feel like.
I stood in front of the judge, next to my much wealthier ex, and reassured His Honor that no, I didn?t want any money, and yes, I was sure.
With that, our divorce was declared final, and as we turned and headed out the door, Jeff strode briskly away from me and called over his shoulder, ?You should have asked the judge for cab fare, BITCH,? as he left me at the courthouse to fend for myself.
I trotted after him in the hallway to catch back up, and then we laughed and went to lunch. We did that because Jeff and I are those people ? we are your dinner-party anecdote. We are your proof that it can be done. We are the little divorced couple that could.
****
After we separated, we lived on opposite sides of the country for a number of years, but these days, as a result of sheer coincidence and Jeff?s nomadic lifestyle, he lives an eight-minute walk from me. I have keys to his apartment and often let myself in to take care of his rabbit (our rabbit, actually, adopted years before we split up) while he?s away. Yes, it is strange to routinely open his door and walk into his empty home and see some of our old things living their new lives, to open cabinets with my dishes stacked in them and to sit on my old couch. No, I haven?t unscrewed all of his lightbulbs or replaced any of his shoes with a smaller but otherwise identical pair. I haven?t even dipped his toothbrush in anything at all, much less anything deeply unsavory or conducive to hepatitis.
I did once paw through all of his possessions while peering through the splayed fingers of my other hand, but I was experiencing a dire need for duct tape and it couldn?t be helped.
We trade our old possessions back and forth; he needed my snowboard so often that I eventually just gave it to him. He borrowed my car for a road trip last year and returned it to me detailed and with a full tank of gas. We have dinner now and again, though not particularly often, as we?re both quite busy and both cognizant of the fact that boundaries are healthy. We did go to Spain together once, in an opportunity too good to turn down. (We tried to sleep on our respective twin beds, but had to swap in order to be on the right ?side.?) When we do visit now, we often sound like cousins or fraternity brothers: Above all else, I simply want to know how everyone is doing. I encourage him to date nice girls, and he always makes it clear that my boyfriend is invited to dinner.
Jeff is not the first person I would call in a crisis, nor should he be. But I know that if I really and truly needed him, he would do what he could to help ? if not as a nod to me, as a nod to my family, to my father and mother, to all of the people who once watched us promise to take care of one another.
****
We are inspiring to some and quite controversial to others. People tell us that our relationship is unnatural, though I?m not sure how. I guess mortal enemies are ?natural? in the same way that picking lice off one another or gnawing your way through your newborn?s umbilical cord is natural, but I would hope that modern society would be better at grasping the logical disconnect between ?She was my favorite person in the world? and ?I hate her guts and never want to see her again.?
I think a lot of people decide that we must simply not have had very severe issues as a married couple, the same way that your ego forces you to assume that anyone skinnier or richer or happier than you are is also luckier than you are. Sometimes those people really are luckier, and sometimes they?re not. All I can tell you is that we had our own very serious problems, that our decision to divorce was an emotionally devastating one for both of us, and that diplomacy was incredibly challenging in those first few months. You can believe me, or not, but the gory details are no one?s business, and we agreed long ago to keep them out of the public eye in the name of preserving each other?s reputations and keeping our mutual friends and family members from feeling as if they have to choose sides.
The societal and personal benefits of peace ? not peace as some kindly Jesuslike selfless gesture but as something we pursue for our own sakes, for our own well-being and health ? are not undocumented. Even back when humans were still hacking at one another with hatchets, we could see the appeal, which is why we literally buried those weapons in a ceremonial truce every once in a while, though admittedly not as often as we could have.
Even if it?s difficult to imagine yourself in my situation, it is worth your while to try. The divorce rate is ? well, everyone knows what it is.
I haven?t witnessed much of a cultural response to that notorious statistic beyond a lot of pearl-clutching and insisting that you guys, we all like, REALLY need to start staying married. These people repeatedly remind us that marriage requires a lot of hard work and commitment, in case we?re all imbeciles who have foolishly assumed it?s cool to treat our marriages with the same lax approach we took toward the goldfish we won at the carnival when we were six. The movement toward the preservation of marriage is as vehement and generally ineffective as ever ? though I?d argue it does sometimes keep really vulnerable men and women in abusive relationships. Meanwhile, the movement toward friendly divorce is generally seen as blasphemous and culturally reckless, just like those hellbound liberals who keep offering free condoms to teenagers, which of course only encourages them. One look at that prophylactic tube being rolled down the shaft of a banana is all it takes to erode the otherwise steadfast willpower of teenagers, driving them past the point of no return and into a lustful frenzy that will consume our nation. Everyone knows that.
I wish the movement toward learning to live with divorce were louder. I wish it could compete with the ?divorce is not an option? folks, who seem not only painfully unfamiliar with the legal system (where divorce is, I assure you, absolutely an option), but also blissfully unaware that sometimes, people leave their spouses, and those left behind get no say in the matter, and it would be lovely if society would stop traumatizing them even further by judging the everloving shit out of them.
The expectation for, pressure toward, and societal support for amicable divorce needs to get stronger. I would argue that few issues are so culturally pressing for our generation?s children ? not to mention our generation?s poor friends who are caught in the middle and unsure of which of us they?re supposed to invite to dinner parties ? as our society?s profound need to figure out how to get over ourselves and get the fuck along, for all our sakes.
This isn?t just some hippie notion that I cobbled together out of idealism, naivete, and unicorns. I have personally seen how ill-equipped we are as a society to cope with divorce and how damaging that is. I worked as a legal assistant and spent my days watching people do horrible things each other. Divorcing someone who hates your guts can cost you thousands and thousands of dollars. It can trap you geographically. It can consume your schedule. It can drain you in every way possible.
I once read that litigation is like making love to an 800-pound gorilla: you are not finished until it is finished. I have it on good authority that this is true.
I managed expensive, tearful mediation sessions over Tupperware. TUPPERWARE. Between two grown adults who were unwilling even to speak to one another. All because we as a society are not very good at coping with, if you will excuse my crass way of putting it, epic romantic butthurt.
I happened to hold this job while in the thick of my own separation. Let me tell you, it puts things in perspective. When you walk down the street to the courthouse every day to file piles and piles of dead trees dedicated to other people?s bitter diatribes, you realize how exhausting and expensive it is to have enemies. You spend your days on the phone listening to the rants of people who are eaten up by it, who can?t stop railing against what this person has DONE to them and is DOING to them and it?s not FAIR, and you see so clearly that no one wins except the lawyers. You realize how ridiculous it really is to find someone else?s existence so intolerable that you are willing to sacrifice your very happiness just to punish them ? or to become so entitled to your own customized universe that you think it?s perfectly reasonable to expect that person to get off your lawn, stay away from your Internet, waive all claims to your friends, give up their children, and maintain a 100-yard distance at all times or face the legal consequences, just in case anyone had any doubt of the depth of your disappointment in them.
Like it or not, divorcing people, you are part of a community that, thanks to technological advances like Facebook, gets more intimate every day. Like it or not, you are going to have to learn to share that community with someone who not only let you down, but also proceeded to have the audacity to continue being alive. Some people have all the nerve, seriously.
****
If you want your hypothetical or your very real divorce to be as healthy as something like this can be, you have to do a few things, and a few of them have to happen very early on.
If it?s too late for you, tell your friends, okay?
REFUSE TO WED THE BITTER
Marry a man (or woman) who has a healthy, mature attitude toward exes, someone who is capable of not taking even the most devastating romantic wounds too personally. Marry a guy who accepts that if another person didn?t want to be with him, it was probably for the best that everyone went their separate ways. If his every ex is described as a sack of crap who betrayed him by callously breaking his heart, you need to RUN, okay? I cannot put enough syllables in that directive: RU-HUH-HUH-UN. It absolutely takes two.
I cannot tell you how often someone tells me they wish they had my divorce, but the other person simply will not speak to them (or worse).
So if you want a chance at a good divorce, prevention is everything. Marry the guy who will still write a professional letter of recommendation for an ex trying to get back on her feet. Marry the woman who mailed him his favorite sweatshirt when she found it hidden in the back of the closet, months later. Marry THOSE people all you want. Marry them ten times! The worst you will suffer is a couple hundred dollars in court costs. Well, that, and the emotionally flaying loss of your innocence as you arrive at the demoralizing realization that white dresses and really nice centerpieces, no matter how carefully you chose them on Pinterest, do not actually conjure a magical spell that will protect your relationship from much of anything ? nor was your relationship really all that special in the first place, bee tee dubs.
But that soul-crushing denouement only happens in the first divorce. I hope.
ARRIVE AT A PRE-PARENTING AGREEMENT
If you have children, have them with someone who is going to put those children first ? someone who understands that children deserve a team of parents who are willing to give them not only a loving atmosphere, but a united, consistent approach to raising them. Someone who understands that, unless you are an actual toothless, bank-robbing crack whore who poses a very real danger to your offspring, you have rights to your children that no amount of romantic devastation should be able to dissolve.
Nothing complicates a divorce like children. Have them with someone who is intellectually and emotionally capable of enduring that complexity with a relative amount of grace. Talk about custody. Talk about what would be important to you if you were raising a child with someone you were no longer in love with ? religion? Location?
I have no idea why pre-parenting agreements aren?t a legal standard ? I?ve watched parents spend their life savings and compromise their own children?s futures in order to arrive at an accord that they could have laid out in advance much more easily. No one likes thinking about divorce before their children even exist, but it?s even less fun to think about when the time comes and you?re too irritated with each other to agree on anything.
JUST SHUT UP ABOUT IT ALREADY
Table the topics that don?t matter anymore. The time to lay your hurts and objections at the other person?s feet have passed. You?re breaking up. If you couldn?t solve it when you were striving to save your marriage, you certainly aren?t going to solve it now ? not only that, but now that you no longer share a hamper, it?s irrelevant which of you did all the laundry and which of you was a lazy good-for-nothing who only ever had clean underwear because of you, AHEM.
It?s nice if everyone can apologize sort of generically in the name of friendship, but the two of you do not have the same version of events. You are not historians, and perfect accord is not a requirement. You?re 100%?right, and he or she is 100% wrong, and you were horrifically maligned?despite your flawless performance as a spouse, OBVIOUSLY, but other?people are surprisingly unreceptive to testimonials that make them sound like assholes. Yeah, I don?t get it either.
Even perfect people like us are chronically misunderstood sometimes. Give it up. Be misunderstood. It won?t kill you, and the truth doesn?t matter much now to anyone but you, not in any practical way.
RECOGNIZE WHAT YOUR ARGUMENT IS REALLY ABOUT
I mean, it could be about Tupperware. It could be. Maybe you just really love Tupperware. It could also be about the fact that he cheated on you with your whore of a Pilates instructor, though.
When you are experiencing loss, you will cling to anything, including ?priceless? mementos that you hadn?t so much as thought about in years. If you can?t acknowledge what you?re really angry about and remind yourself that profound loss is an inherent part of this experience, you?ll camp out on any battleground you can find whether it?s really going to make you feel better or not. Don?t do that, okay? It?s expensive. New Tupperware is much cheaper.
ACCEPT THE AWKWARD
Don?t just accept the awkward. EMBRACE the awkward, because oh man, this is going to be so fucking awkward. Remember that time you dropped your box of condoms while standing in the grocery-store aisle, and someone picked them up for you, and that someone turned out to be your boyfriend?s dad? That?s nothing. You haven?t dragged a solitary index finger across the SURFACE of awkward until you decide to reshape your marriage into a functional post-divorce relationship that society is
willing to accept.
Ever enjoyed a friendly get-together in order to split up your wedding pictures? How about extending an olive branch by inviting your ex to the family Christmas even after you?ve separated and are both dating someone else, so you can watch everyone stammer and stare at the tablecloth as they try to adjust to this new reality? How about bring up this unconventional relationship to dates and explaining that your baggage comes with the deal?
If you think that the first time I saw my ex leaning on my fence and my boyfriend standing in our yard talking to him, my brain didn?t absolutely sneeze itself out my ears in a gray mist, you are overestimating how zen I could possibly ever manage to be.
But awkwardness is necessary, and awkwardness will not actually catch you on fire despite your firm belief to the contrary, and awkwardness is STILL vastly preferable to mediated Tupperware fights. Trust me.
****
We did as much of the negotiating as we could ourselves before we called the professionals. By the time we arrived at the lawyer?s office, we had officially divided everything that could be considered mutual property. Retirement accounts had been split in half, I had taken over the title on the car, and so on. We had worked on our relationship and navigated some very terse moments and arrived at a good place. It had taken two years, but we had set ourselves up for the easiest divorce that is legally possible.
We entertained our lawyer with the slapstick routine we produce together when we?re nervous, and we asked whether we could get divorced on our eighth anniversary ? you know, just for a nice neat ending. She was flabbergasted by our dynamic, but she did seem to enjoy the whole thing, even serving as our divorce photographer. We had originally joked that we would get official divorce pictures ? images of us sitting at opposite ends of a beautiful park bench with our arms crossed and our chins jutting out, perhaps ? but we never made the time.
She did snap this picture of us, though, right under the Domestic Relations Court sign:
Plenty of people were getting married at the courthouse that day; apparently they do those right before they do all the divorces, because apparently the court enjoys delivering a little poignancy with its decrees. It was easy to tell which was which, of course. The soon-to-be-newlyweds were nervous and clingy and giggly, and the divorcing people were slouched in chairs on opposite sides of the hallway, not speaking to anyone, staring at the floor.
?I feel like I?m at a middle-school dance,? I whispered to Jeff, gesturing to the two rows of gender-segregated wallflowers.
?Speak for yourself,? he muttered back. ?This is a great place to find single chicks on the rebound.?
When it was our turn in line, our elderly, sweet bailiff initially mistook us for one of the marrying couples until he saw that we already had the same name. We reassured him for a moment or two that there was nothing to be depressed about, explaining our overall philosophy and telling him we were proud to be different, that we had worked hard to be different.
?It?s too bad you two couldn?t have made it,? he said, with that touch of sadness we always see in people when we talk to them about our experiences, even when everyone is trying to keep the mood light. I?ve accepted that sadness, especially in myself, and it?s all right.
?Well ? maybe we did,? I said. ?Maybe you just have to redefine making it.?
I really do believe that we can.
*
If you would like to submit an original, unpublished story to this series,?click here ? the submission form is completely anonymous.
steve jobs fbi safehouse brown recluse brown recluse front door alyssa bustamante protandim
No comments:
Post a Comment