The Best Divorce Ever
Last
year I spoke for a graduate counseling class about addiction. The professor is the daughter of a former
neighbor of ours from our days in Annapolis.
This neighbor saw me at my worst whether she realized it at the time or not
and has been a big support to me from a distance ever since. She had mentioned me to her daughter and I
was happy to oblige. She asked me to
come back this year and speak and asked if maybe Frank would be willing to go
as well and speak from the perspective of a family member. Frank agreed to go and we drove up to NJ
together.
I will admit that I was unexpectedly nervous to speak, because I would be doing so in front of Frank, and then I would be hearing what he had to say. Now, over the past nearly three years I have spoken at meetings and rehabs and conventions and events and have written in detail about my addiction and it affects, but here I was nervous about what my ex-husband would hear and say, as if he hasn’t heard it all before.
I
started speaking and discovered that it isn’t all that different speaking in
front of Frank, in fact as the class wore on and I had said my piece and he had
said his, we stood together and answered questions. It became easy and flowing. It was easy to tell, I guess because it is
our story after all, his and mine, spoken from two different viewpoints that
sometimes overlapped and sometimes veered off in different directions, but ours
none-the-less.
What a difference time makes. If someone had asked me three years ago, or even a year ago if we would be able to do this I would have looked at them in utter disbelief. I am proud of what we have forged and I look forward to co-parenting and enjoying life with Frank in this way till the end. We joked the other day that we will have to get adjoining rooms at the home when we are old. Which is not to say that we don't ever get on each other's nerves. I won't even mention the near disastrous family shopping trip to IKEA earlier this year, but still!
I was talking to a co-worker the other day about our divorce and she said there isn’t a word for it. She said it’s so rare it’s like a unicorn, something you hear about but never see. I have to agree. I hear of other peoples’ situations and there almost always is overwhelming resentment and anger and bitterness on one or both parts and it makes me sad, especially if there are kids involved. If you have to get divorced (and oddly I will say I am not a proponent unless you have really tried everything), then for the sake of your children you have to do some work.
This is not to say that it was easy. It may look easy now but the effort it took
on both our parts was Herculean and the grief, anger and discomfort were, at
times, oceanic. But it is doable.
Frank and I were having a painful late lunch together at a diner
after Thanksgiving last year when I asked him for a divorce. It was a bit of an out-of-body experience. We were once again hashing things over and
trying desperately to fix something that couldn’t be fixed. When it came over me that this wasn’t all
about me and it wasn’t all about alcohol.
There were other things involved, fears and hurts that Frank had that I
could not control and in some cases had nothing to do with. I realized that we were causing each other
pain just being together as a couple, even though we care very deeply for one
another and always will. It came over me
that I no longer wanted to be a source of pain in his life. If being with me meant he couldn’t be the
best version of himself and vice versa, then we had to make a painful change. It was as if I heard my inner voice say, he
does not want to be with you anymore and you no longer want to be with him
anymore and it no longer matters why.
I could easily write a book about all the ways Frank has wronged
me or hurt me over the course of time knowing him and trust me he could
probably write three about me, but what is the point? What is the point of hanging onto all of the
negative and ignoring the positive? When
I hear people bash their exes I often long to say to them, “what does that say
about you”? After all you chose that
person, so there must have been something good in there at some point. Why not try and focus on that. I know there are some serious exceptions to
this, but not all situations are so bad that you can’t at least try and see
some things from the other person’s perspective.
We tearfully drove away from lunch together knowing we were
entering a period of fear and grief but both feeling a great sense of
relief. I remember relaxing into the
idea and seeing him as my friend again.
I made a decision right then and there that we could literally have the
best divorce ever and I told him so.
Luckily for me and for the kids, he jumped on board with that idea and
we began the work of re-building what being “us” looks like.
I think people feel societal pressure to “stick it out for the sake of the kids”. I get that, I really do, but what if you staying together is actually bad for the kids? I know that our kids are better off seeing their parents as friends and not enemies. I also know that our kids have not come out of this unscathed, but I know that this is part of their story now and that we can’t shield them from all pain. I know we can honor the pain they feel about the divorce and work together to support them as best we can. What Frank and I can do is become better chapters in our kids’ stories and our own going forward.
So much about living a congruent life is acceptance. It is a concept I learned in recovery. In order to live congruently, which is something most of us strive to do, it means you have to accept the divine reality of situations and life in general. If you can do that, then you can move forward with integrity and faith.
And for the record we are going out for dinner on the 29th of December on what would have been our 15th anniversary, because why not?
