During the summer, I went to a party given by a friend of mine who was going through divorce. She’d moved back to her old neighborhood and was getting everyone together. I knew one other person there which forced me to socialize, in a good way. I told a couple of ladies about my blog – turns out a couple of them were divorced so we had lots to chat about. Elise volunteered to share her story for this blog so we met a few weeks later at a local coffee shop.
Her story begins when her husband of 13 years decided to leave her. It wasn’t the first time. However, this time was different. While she didn’t want him to go, she didn’t try to stop him.
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We’d gone through struggles periodically for years. It wasn’t that we were arguing all the time and divorce was clear cut. I just don’t think he ever really wanted to be married to anybody and then even though he wanted kids, I don’t think he was prepared for parenting. It might have been different if they were kids who just went off and read and were happy to amuse themselves but they were very much kids who wanted interaction. They were very social.
When he left it was the poorest, worse time that he could have sprung it on me so I was just, ‘Yes, get your ass out of here, please!’ I was just fed up so even though I didn’t want it, I was, ‘There’s the door. Go forth and conquer.’
It was hard just managing the kids on my own but as my dad, who was living with us, frequently reminded me, he wasn’t helping me anyway. In the end, it was, ‘Yeah, this is the same thing I’ve always been dealing with.’
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We’ve all heard enough stories about marriages to know that you can never tell from the outside what someone’s marriage is like. I’ve also known friends whose marriages worked great for them but wouldn’t work for me. For example, I’m really not sure I could be in business with my spouse. Elise’s view about her ex got me wondering if there are people who truly aren’t suited marriage? Are there people who should just stay single?