About Me I am a writer, journalist and audio producer living in Niwot, Colorado. Email: mandy@sincemydivorce.com.
|
If you follow me on my Facebook fan page or twitter (@sincemydivorce), you’ll know I’ve been away the last few days at Blissdom – a wonderful blogging conference in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ll be posting about what I learned there probably Wednesday this week and you’ll start see some changes to the blog in the week or so.
Before then, I want to finish up the Leap and the Net Will Appear series that features Carolyn. You’ll remember that Carolyn and her ex have two young children and share custody. That means although she and her ex are divorced, they are going to be tied by their children for quite some time to come. Carolyn sees that as a cloud looming over her future, even when everything else is falling into place. Here’s how she describes it.
***
When I first moved out, I tried to move to New Mexico because my mother and good friend lived there. I thought moving there would help me get through the break up. I had never been alone before and I thought staying with my mother would make it much easier. My ex objected and so I took him to court. They said no. At the time, I was really upset but now I agree with the court’s decision.
 I think it would be different if he was a deadbeat dad who didn’t want to see them all that much or was a bad influence on them, but he wants to see them, he loves them and they love him. So I understand why the court decided it was in their best interest for me to stay in the state.
Now, given how I’ve seen his relationship with the children develop, I wouldn’t go out of state even if I had the right simply because I didn’t have a dad and my children have a pretty good one. His interactions with them are really good and loving and I wouldn’t want to take that away from them.
My boyfriend and I are talking about getting married but it’s a big undertaking. He lives an hour south of me and that’s where his work is. But knowing my ex as I know him, I’m pretty sure he would take me to court to stop me from moving with the children. Even though the children would be gaining financial support, living in a house where they could each have their own bedroom, have better health insurance, I still think he would fight me and that makes me angry.
I really wish sometimes that my ex-husband and my ex-best friend would make some grand gesture towards making things right because I’m a very forgiving person. I could probably forgive them enough to have a pretty co-operative friendship with them as co-parents. But they’re not there and I’m not sure they ever will be.
Maybe, I never really knew them all that well because I feel the least they could do is relocate an hour south to facilitate me being able to have a stable, happy life after they completely derailed my life. If she can’t do that, I can’t ever forgive her and that’s really tough because she and I were so close.
I feel that if he really knew how much he hurt me and what he did to me, how could he begrudge me wanting to move 25 miles south so I could get remarried and have another shot at having a happy life? I don’t think he sees it all and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to take him to court. The thought of that is stressful but I try to remind myself that there’s nothing I can do about it. All I can do is proceed and hope that the stars will align so everything will work out for the best somehow.
***
What this story captures for me is that even though divorce ends a marriage, your parenting relationship with your ex continues and honestly, I’m not sure when it ends. I’m assuming certainly not until college over. If you have a special needs child, then it could be much, much longer. And what do you do when you want to relocate somewhere and your ex says no?
I’m a transplant from England – I’ve been here for over 20 years. When my ex and I got married, we never really talked objectively about the possibility of moving back to England. His mom was not well and I accepted that that tied us to the U.S. I also thought we’d just be able to figure it out as we went along. Now, I’m no longer married, I have no family here in the U.S. and the thought of moving back to England has crossed my mind – the two ladies I consider to be my closest friends in the world are there as well as my sister.
However, aside from the likely (and reasonable) objections from their dad, I can’t see my teenage kids wanting to uproot themselves from their schools now. Even when they do go to college, I don’t want to be living on a different continent to them – I keep saying to them, “Please don’t do to me what I did to my parents.” So on some days, I feel stuck here. Other days, maybe when I’m being more objective, I question how realistic I’m being about being able to adapt to life in England after so long away. For now, my master plan is beginning to look like, once I’m an empty nester, trying to manage my life so I could at least spend a couple of months there each year.
Carolyn’s has just to posted about the ‘deep breath‘ – the conversation she’s started to have with her ex about her possibly moving. Hope you’ll visit her blog and give her some support as that conversation progresses.
Photo Credit:
Carolyn, who blogs at Leap and the Net Will Appear, is an amazing, strong lady. When I talked to her, I got the sense she was a capable, confident, loving mother who had a clear path ahead of her. But, as you know from this series, she hasn’t always been this way. She says although it is a cliché, the divorce was the best thing that ever happened to her. Here’s how she describes the change.
***
I’ve become an advocate for myself in a way I never was before. I put up with a lot of things I shouldn’t have put up with. I was in denial because I was so insecure. I was afraid to argue with my husband because he might leave me. I felt I would be nothing without him and because of that I was too scared to speak up for myself. I felt I was lucky to have him to take care of me.
I was paralyzed by fear.
I used to agree with all of his politics. I would argue vehemently for all these issues he believed in and I would blog about them. When I moved out, after a few months, I realized not only do I not care about his politics, I actually started swinging the other way. He’s really libertarian conservative and I’m far more liberal. That would horrify him. It’s not that I was faking it before or lying about my beliefs. I simply didn’t look at my own beliefs. I didn’t ask myself what I thought.
 For a while after moving out, I almost had a PTSD reaction to talking politics. My new boyfriend would try to start a political discussion and I just didn’t want to go there. He would start telling me what he thought and I would smile and nod. It took a couple of months but now we have lively discussions – sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree. It’s a whole new experience!
I’m also learning it’s OK to be scared.
I’m learning it’s OK to be angry. It’s not OK not say something about it.
The other day, my boyfriend said something. It wasn’t something I was angry about but it didn’t sit well with me. I thought about for a day or so and I thought ‘why do I keep thinking about that conversation? Maybe I’m upset or irritated by it.’
Then I started my old habit, which was to convince myself that I had no reason to be upset with him. I started to defend him, in my head. Then I thought, ‘what about my point of view?’ and this time though I worked up the nerve to talk to him about it. I said,
“Remember that conversation we had the other day? I was bothered when you said XYZ. It’s not that I’m angry but I interpret it this way and that’s kind of irritating.”
It took me half an hour to spit it out, but it ended up leading to a long conversation about our thoughts on marriage and commitment and families.
What I learned was it’s so much better to just say something. What was I so scared of? That he’d be upset with me and we’d have an argument? So we’d have an argument! If we can’t agree on things, we shouldn’t even be together.
I’m still scared of situations like that but I’m learning that’s OK. What’s not OK is to push it under the rug and act like it’s not there. I respect my feelings more. If those feelings exist, they’re valid, even if I don’t know why.
I see my ex-husband when he drops off the kids and he’ll chat to me like he knows me. He acts so familiar and I think,
‘Wow. He really has no idea. I’ve changed so much since I’ve moved out and he doesn’t know that.’
It makes me kind of smug sometimes when I talk to him. I do feel like a different person but in a good way.
***
Our bodies tell us so much about what is right for us and what is wrong but often we don’t listen and then we wonder why we’re not happy. We have an internal guidance system that helps us make good decisions. The biggest clue is the physical feelings that come with the feelings. It’s hard work learning to understand your feelings and then to express them but developing that skill is important in all relationships, not just our romantic ones. I’ve been practicing this with my kids – trying to get them to accept that it’s OK to disagree and that it’s best to talk about it, exactly as Carolyn is saying. Mama J talked about the same issue in the importance of fighting in a marriage .
Don’t forget, Carolyn writes the Leap and the Net Will Appear blog – hope you’ll pay her a visit.
Photo Credit:
If you’ve been following Carolyn’s story, you’ll remember that her husband and her best friend were having an affair. Carolyn is now divorced and her ex-husband and ex-best friend are now married. It’s hard for me to imagine an end of a marriage that would be more painful than losing your husband to your best friend. It would be easier for Carolyn if she could just put that behind her and not have to face them but she and her ex have two children and they share custody.
I asked Carolyn how you grieve the loss of your marriage and your best friend and yet maintain that relationship because your want the father of your children to be present in their lives. Here’s what she said.
***
I think I’ve always had this knack for disassociating from my feelings. In part, that’s what enabled me to stay with my ex as long as I did, denying all of my feelings. My therapist said,
“It’s a defense mechanism. That’s what people do to protect themselves from being hurt. When things are too painful for them to bear, they just don’t feel it sometimes.”
I think that’s what I did back then and I think to an extent, that’s what I do now, only with my different understanding of it, I don’t feel guilty. Out of necessity, I just block out what it feels like when I drop off my kids.
Most of the time, I walk into their house and I smile and I make casual chitchat. I’m both a relieved I can do that and a little disgusted. I wish I could just remind them over and over again, how much they hurt me and what wretched people they are, but that’s not going to help me.
 It occurred to me early on that if I played my kids against either of my ex’s, but especially their new stepmother, it would hurt them, not me. If I tell my children what happened, or even if I just gave them a hint of the level of my ill-will towards her, and they were to express that in any way to her, then on some level she might start to resent them and not treat them so well.
It sucks that we’ve got to split homes like this but what would suck even worse is if either of those homes was not led by loving parents. As much as I hate that woman, she loves my kids. I know she loves my kids. She was their godmother, she held my hand when I was giving birth to my daughter. She’s been there since day one, and I hate her, but she loves my kids, she treats them well, she feeds them nutritious meals and she makes their time with their father better.
Honestly, it would worse to drop them off at that house if she wasn’t there because I don’t totally trust my ex-husband to be on top of the childcare as well as she is. I know her well enough to trust her with my kids.
I also trust in karma. I don’t think she won anything great. I think what she took from me is probably making her life worse and she probably knows it. Maybe I just tell myself that to make me feel better?
***
I have so much admiration for Carolyn. It must be so hard to put that chapter of her life behind her when she has to confront it, face-to-face every week. A mother’s love is strong and selfless.
You can read more about Carolyn’s journey at her blog, Leap and the Net Will Appear. Her recent post, Learning to Live After Divorce, has great links back to milestone posts. They make for some inspiring reading.
Photo Credit:
In one of the cycles of couples counseling my ex and I went through (we tried it three times), the counselor urged us to think back to why we chose to marry each other. What were the qualities we saw in each other? What was it that we enjoyed about each other’s company? She suggested that identifying these would be the clue to us once again finding common ground and getting close.
When I was interviewing Carolyn, the conversation drifted to why she married her ex. This is what she said.
***
 One of the reasons I married my husband was because I thought he would be a really, really great dad and despite all my complaints about him, he is. But, I didn’t pay as close attention to what kind of husband he might be.
My mom was a single parent and I don’t think I ever really knew what made a man a good husband. I had never seen one. So I spent a lot of time trying to find someone I thought I could make a happy family with.
I always had this void in my life for this happy nuclear family and I really wanted one. My ex is a pretty darn good father but he was a lousy husband. It was really difficult for me to leave and be a single parent because I had a rough childhood in large part because my father was not around. We were poor. My father wasn’t even the every-other-weekend kind of dad – he wasn’t there at all. He was just gone.
I didn’t want that for my children. I was so freaked out by that possibility and that is why I stayed so long knowing my husband was having an affair with my best friend.
When I first left, I felt guilty that I was putting my interests before my children. Now I don’t feel that way. I feel it would have been complete insanity for my children for us to have carried on living that way. It would have been very bizarre.
It was scary because I didn’t want my children to end up having the kind of childhood I had and I didn’t want the life I saw my mom have as a single parent. She was always lonely and didn’t even date. She was in a second marriage briefly and just gave up on men after that. I remember she used to say, “You can’t depend on a man for anything.”
I always thought she was incredibly bitter but I think she was trying to give me good advice. It’s a little depressing but I think she’s right. I would broaden it to say, “You can’t depend on anyone else for anything.” Ultimately, you have to depend on yourself because you’re the only one you can really, really trust.
I don’t think that means you shouldn’t trust people. It means that you have to put yourself in a position where you’ll be able to take care of yourself. Other people are always going to be a variable that you can’t guarantee. It’s difficult. I don’t know what kind of advice I’m going to give my own daughter – I hope I don’t sound as bitter as my mother, though.
***
A slight variation on this … my mother used to tell me how important it was for me to go to university because I should never be dependent on a man to support me.
I think what Carolyn is saying is hard to express – not being dependent on someone doesn’t mean you can’t be in a relationship but I do think it means the relationship should be a partnership, with an even balance of power. And BTW, Carolyn is now in a loving, steady relationship so she hasn’t become her mother.
I wonder if choosing your husband based on perceived qualities as a father is a common mistake? I certainly considered that when I got married – he’s a school teacher and I thought that meant he’d relate to children and be a great dad. What about you? What qualities made you marry your husband?
Photo Credit:
|
Prefer to talk to a local divorce attorney? Call (877) 248 2303.
|
I think it would be different if he was a deadbeat dad who didn’t want to see them all that much or was a bad influence on them, but he wants to see them, he loves them and they love him. So I understand why the court decided it was in their best interest for me to stay in the state.
