“Before you think about getting divorced, you need to step outside of yourself. Gain some distance. Establish a level of respect. Then work like hell at figuring out who you two were meant to be to each other. Maybe it’s not a married couple. But, obviously your paths crossed; you developed feelings. Now find the shelf where it fits.”
—-Fran Drescher (Redbook, via Yahoo Shine: “Don’t Even Think About Divorcing Until.” 5/2/12)
When I told my family and closer friends that I was definitely getting divorced (this was back in Spring 2011, when we were preparing to split up housekeeping) responses pretty much all fell into two categories.
Category#1: Unflinchingly supportive. These were the people who cared first and foremost about ME (how I was feeling, how I’d come to this decision, how I was handling the pain of it, what my plans were for the future, how they could help.) My sad news was viewed without any cultural and societal judgement; I was viewed as MYSELF (if that makes sense.) I mean that these were the people who saw me first and foremost as myself, and apart from any other roles I might play in life (wife…even mother.) These were (and are) the people I love best in the world (clearly with good reason!) and am so overwhelmingly grateful to have in my life.
I have to say, though: there weren’t many of these!
I don’t know if this is something that happens to other people at times like this; I don’t know if this is a “thing” that people go through. But for me, the whole act of ending a marriage served to shine a glaring spotlight on the depth and “realness” (or lack thereof) of many of my relationships – all of them, not just my marital one.
That’s been an unexpected hardship in the last year – dealing with the reality of the nature of the people I’ve surrounded myself with in the last several years. But I think in the end it’s a good thing to have these things exposed. I clearly didn’t have the strongest base of people in my life. The ones I hold close to me now I know without a doubt are solid – and it’s worth a lot to know that with such certainty..
Category#2: Supportive on the surface, but subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) judgmental. Several friends who prior to this point I considered pretty good friends, fell into this category. That was hard.
A few of these so-called “good friends of mine” expressed sympathy and support – but then quickly let me know that there were things I should be doing to fix my situation. (And if I’d already done these things, I probably just didn’t try hard enough at them.) The most essential point was that if I wasn’t willing to keep on trying and trying and trying endlessly to fix things until I or my ex actually died (the marriage vows, you know,) I was being selfish.
That was a charge I didn’t know how to deal with at the time; it totally blindsided me. How could anybody think that, I wondered, if they knew (as all of these people did) how hard I’d worked to fix things? (Read this post for a glimpse as to where I was then.)
I’ve since come to realize that some of this attitude comes from people trying to justify their own choices. Hearing about my marital breakdown, and my choice of how to ultimately handle it, threw into question decisions they’d made/were making about their own relationships – and particularly marriages. I had to be wrong…because if I wasn’t, there was something wrong with what they were doing.
Grasping that didn’t make it any easier to deal with though.
Here’s a good example: At one point I told someone (someone I mistakenly trusted) that one of the things that finally turned the tide for me and made me own up to the fact that it was time to end things was the idea that my daughter would grow up looking at my relationship with her dad, and my apparent acceptance of it, and think that THIS was something good. That the way he talked to me sometimes was okay. That the fighting was normal.
I, growing up with the model of the highly functional marriage of my parents, knew that I couldn’t let that happen. I remember that I told my friend that, while this wasn’t why I was ending the marriage, I did hope, by my choices, to teach my daughter to value herself and develop solid, nurturing relationships (my son too.) I really believe strongly that the best way we teach our kids is by how we live.
Anyway, my “friend” responded to this by telling me that what she wanted to teach her daughter was to honor her commitments.
I try not to be a grudge-holder…but I admit to remaining a bit bitter about that one.
At any rate, I started thinking about this stuff (how people view divorce, and how hard it is to be trying to navigate the terrain of divorce) last night because the post I wrote (this one) was recalling another post I’d written wherein I’d referenced the subject somewhat (that’d be this one.) Particularly the “selfish” thing.
And then I came across Fran Dresher’s quote from above – and this post was born from a desire to pass that on.
I might seriously have to check out Fran Drescher’s sitcom now. I think it deals with a divorce…and now I’m very curious to see how she handles the subject matter.
