Divorce was one of those things that happened to other people. Not to me, not to my incredible relationship, we would be married forever. 

Or not, as it turned out. 

It appears you need more than great sex and the ability to make each other laugh daily to enjoy a relationship that goes the distance.

In my youthful exuberance, I had failed to take into account the fact that our few degrees of personal trajectory difference which was not noticeable at first,(like fifteen or so years,) eventually would turn into a huge unbridgeable chasm. 

Apparently being married and having a family was not really his thing. It took several years and a growing son to realize he wanted everything to remain unchanged, including how he showed up in the relationship. I wanted evolution, to raise our son, and be the best family unit we could be.

And, like in every life situation, if only one person in the said situation is motivated by something important to them and the other is not, eventually the flame goes out.

On paper and in casual conversation, it is so matter-of-fact and logical, it’s just another thing, but in reality, it’s a devastating process. Death by a thousand cuts. 

His refusal to call it a day and my refusal to accept the truth became a self-inflicted wound. At least 700 of those cuts I did to myself. Surely, “it was just a phase”, I would tell myself, “his “mid-life crisis”.

I kept thinking I could bring him back. For fifteen years he was my best friend, and partner in crime. We had experienced so much incredible awesomeness together, surely we weren’t done yet. My denial was so strong that I then spent another 3 years doing everything to bring him back to the family we had talked about and wanted and built.

I am a very loyal person, often to my own detriment. Unfortunately, loyalty is often taken advantage of, not reciprocated. I am aware of this.

But still, I will do whatever it takes to fix, repair or rebuild. Although, as I learned, you can only repair something so many times before it’s an unrecognizable piece of trash. This especially applies to trust. 

I felt like I was being punished for trying to keep our lives, our marriage, and our family together. The more I asked for dignity and responsibility in our home, the more he seemed to delight in staying out late and acting like a rebellious teen. 

Disappointing our son with empty promises, and snarky clap backs at me when I would advocate for our family and our son, his son, who wanted nothing more than to spend real time with his dad. Not dad-passed-out-drunk-on-the-couch-or-hung-over-as-crap time. I discovered my mama bear, and that chick is serious, she does not mess around. Do. Not. Mess. With. My. Child.

Our fights were horrible and stupid. In retrospect, the only way we seemed to communicate was by yelling at each other. We were not on the same wavelength with anything. I could say the roof was on fire and he’d call a plumber. 

I was shattered. The pain and realization that the person who knew me best, and loved me the most, who would make me laugh so much I would be crying, deciding he did not want to know me or love me anymore while traumatizing our own kid, is crushing, to say the least.

And then it’s frustrating, and then so exquisitely disappointing. 

The grief was palpable, pressing on my chest and gripping my insides. I lay awake at night wondering what would happen if I just stopped breathing, every day felt like I was moving through molasses.

I became filled with contempt for this person I had married, contempt for myself. I was incredulous at how stupid  I had been and how much of my life I had wasted on this person – literally the best years of my life were gone, I had taken a huge gamble, put my entire life into one huge bet, turned away from my own career and country, for some guy, and lost. 

 For all the divorces I have witnessed in my life, not one time did anyone ever mention the all-encompassing feelings of shame and futility. I was a massive failure.

Finally, I could no longer stand it and after months of darkness infiltrating my every waking moment and thought, I knew I had to pull it together for my boy. This was his childhood!

I talked to a lawyer to find out my options, demanded we sell the house, and moved our son and our pets to another state. With the memories of my own parents’ acrimonious divorce weighing heavy on me, and how much my mother’s hatred for our father had made me feel so unwanted and out of place my entire childhood, I was determined not to do that to our son.  I moved us to be closer to HIS family. They are all excellent people and I’ve known them for 20 years. I am grateful for them.

Time and distance have given me perspective, I also came to realize that it wasn’t all bad. In actuality, for just over a decade and a half, we had lived a freaking great life together. 

Besides loyalty, I also have a strong sense of what the right thing to do is. Much to my own detriment. I knew I had to honor that and myself and do the right thing for all of us. Even if I was the only one doing it.

Sure that would be the nice tidy end to that story, right? But life does not wrap things up tidily, or if it does it is literally only for a minute. 

So now, here we are three years later, I have the unique situation of cohabitating with my ex, 3 days a week in our attempt at co-parenting. Massive props to him, he still lives out of state but comes here weekly.

He is not really the other adult in the house, more like the cool older brother to our son, who leaves a mess when he goes each week.

Despite my insistence to “pretend when you are here, you have sole custody of our son, so it’s your responsibility to make sure he gets up, eats, gets to school on time, and goes to bed at a reasonable time, etc,” so that I can have a break and a social life, it is merely a suggestion in his world. He still relies a lot on my loyalty and personal responsibility to make sure they are awake each day. Because both of them would sleep till noon if left unchecked. And that strong sense of the right thing to do kicks in every time.

I am still the “adult” in the house, despite encouraging both of them to take personal responsibility for themselves and the house. This has taught me to just step away and leave them to it a lot of the time. (Helloooo writing.) But you take what you can get, and I’m grateful for his continued involvement. Kids need both parents.

Although it’s hard to communicate sometimes with someone you were once so close to, who blames you for their interpretations of everything you say. For real bro, if I could control your interpretation of the things I say, do you think we’d be divorced? But for the most part, we are civil. I think it takes more work to have resentment towards someone that was your entire world for so long than it does to just be where you are. People change. They just do.

I’m grateful for the journey. He was the single most constructive and loving person in my life for a long time. I am who I am because of our knowing each other. Sure it didn’t turn out the way I thought it was going to. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have a great time.

And I still believe in love though, because of the way I love. And that’s good enough for me.