Hanging the Dirty Laundry

Blogger William Quincy Belle recently wrote a thoughtful piece about side-taking and the airing of grievances against one’s former spouse on the interwebs.  It draws on his own personal experience with friends who have placed him, or tried to place him, in the middle of their conflict. He doesn’t condemn those of us who hang our unwashed laundry in the dirty breeze so that everyone and their brother can get foul whiff.  He does, however, encourage us to engage a good therapist and work all that out privately.

If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all, my mother used to admonish me and my brother when we were quarreling over something that seemed significant but really wasn’t.  Her advice was always to suppress all negative emotions. Suffering, anger, and discontent were to be swallowed. Whole.

Divorce is generally not easy, but not all divorces are equal. I would give anything to have had a divorce like Molly Monet’s, assuming I had to have one at all.  My ex was not Molly’s ex.  I was unlucky (or perhaps unwise) enough to have what is commonly termed a high conflict divorce.  “If you end up in a high conflict situation with a nut job, my advice is to get yourself a good lawyer – no, get a great one – spare no expense and lay in a good supply of Xanax.” —says WQB.

Yeah, okay.  I did that.  I lawyered-up, took some Xanax, and I also got an army of helping professionals in flavors many of you probably don’t even know exist. I am following the conventional advice in such situations.  Really I am.

Even so, last week I got a call from the school principal because my thirteen-year-old son melted down in her office.  He was afraid that if I found out what kind of trouble he was in, I would leave him just like I left his father.  After all, his father betrayed my trust.  His father was reckless and irresponsible.  The principal didn’t know what she was stepping in when she reassured my son that both his parents loved him.  He shouted at her, “NO! My Dad does NOT love me! He is a DRUNK!” He then began to sob.

There I go, hanging things in the dirty breeze again.

This sh*t is heart-rending and it makes me want to crawl under the covers and hide and I can’t. I have children to raise, appointments to make, and I have to make some money, too.  I can’t allow myself to go into the dark places of the heart where blame flows freely.  It is Ex’s fault. (Obviously.) He wrought this misery. (True.) He robbed the kids and me of so many opportunities for joy.  (Uh-huh.)  No, I say to myself, this is my life and I alone can waste it blaming someone else for the unbearably steep incline, or I can set my jaw and start f’ing climbing that I might sooner behold the breathtaking view from the summit.  

Still, every day, my family lives with the psychological and emotional legacy of one of the ugliest divorces I have ever heard tell of. (Except for the reader whose philandering Ex got involved with her divorce attorney during proceedings.  I feel for you, girl.)  These are not the sort of problems that most of the good people I encounter in my everyday mommy-life are dealing with.  Most of them are in stable, intact, even enviable marriages. The few who are divorced usually have splits that more closely resemble Molly Monet’s than mine.  I spend much of my life dealing with this messy legacy, quietly, privately, within the confining walls of helper’s offices, which are not unlike closets. Working all that out in a closet is like trying to change into a superhero suit in a phone booth.

Some of us are tired of changing in phone booths, of living in closets.  We are tired of living without authenticity, of pretending that everything is okay when everything is decidedly not okay.  Someone wrote to me recently “it is wonderful to know that anger is OK and that bitterness is not a moral failing.”  Sometimes we all need to know that what we are feeling is just plain okay.

Women are too often told that anger is not okay.  Some of you may also believe bitterness is a moral failing, and maybe it is. I am increasingly inclined to feel that it is a phase of healing, a part of the hard, weedy row which many of us must hoe.  Talking about all this publicly is empowering for me and for others who have had the misfortune or misjudgment to find themselves similarly situated. We are not alone and reaching out to one another gives us hope for something better.

As always, those who chronically favor prettily arranged family portraits, cute kitten videos, Rainbow Appreciation Society meetings, and unicorns barfing pink glitter, are invited not to read.

WQB is right that divorce is crazy-making.  Some brands are worse than others—much worse.  Backing away out of self-protection is a perfectly healthy, perfectly reasonable response.  Sometimes, however, compassion calls us to come forward instead, to offer whatever aid can be spared.  I count at least one blessing daily.  I thank my lucky little stars that there were those who didn’t back away when things were at their worst.  Tragedy is difficult. Tragedy in isolation, makes crazy so much crazier.

“Divorce, by its very nature divides couples into us vs. them. We divide our piles of belongings, and our real estate and finances.  We divide our special places, our families and friends, and the time we have with our children.  Everything, everyone, and every place went into Ex’s pile or mine.  Much of my ex’s spite is because my pile was, is bigger, much bigger. I got the gold mine, he got the shaft (and I’m not talking about money either).

Divorce isn’t just the tearing apart of a relationship and often collaterally of one another, it rips to bits the fabric of a whole community.  We divvy it all up and stake out our territory, exclusive of the other so that we have our own sense of belonging, our own newly constructed web of security. It’s at a tremendous cost to all parties.” —wrote Annie, October 2010

As an innocent bystander, WQB objects to the same thing others object to:  being drawn into the conflict, being put in the middle, being divvied.  He admonishes: “Don’t make people pick sides. It’s not fair. After all, you’re the one divorcing your spouse, not them.”  Dear Readers, I realize that this blog forces you to choose a side. Sometimes it even backs complete strangers against the wall and demands to know what sort of people they are.  It is a criticism I have heard before.

Fond as I am of WQB, I am weary of those who want to maintain neutrality and give the benefit of the doubt to those who have done so much harm. Most of you don’t know Ex and you likely feel that I have asked you to condemn him. Perhaps I have.

WQB makes the point that we who write about the grisly details of our lives are not objective about our exes.  Our perceptions and perspectives are colored by our experiences and the wrongs we feel were done.  A reader, who is now a friend, one who was acquainted with Ex’s story before she read mine, wisely wrote that she believed there are three sides to such stories, his, hers, and the truth. My own experiences and perceptions are the only ones I can share.  I try to be fair and sometimes I even try to be objective, but that is not my purpose.  Readers, you are smart.  You are savvy and will undoubtedly see my failings, too.  The courageous ones among you will point them out and give me the opportunity to grow from your observations.

I invite you to decide for yourself if my truth is the truth if you haven’t already.  Many have already taken my side. Some, like “Lamont Sanford”, take Ex’s.  Some took his initially and were won over.  Most do the reasonable thing—they take the kids’ side.  Stand-taking is something a lot of people are uncomfortable with.  It requires a decision, a commitment.  I get that, but there are times when it is appropriate to stand up and say, there are bright lines here.  These blogs are one of the ways we talk as a culture about morality and ethics. Our voices help us all sort out what is appropriate and what isn’t.  (Thanks for your help with that, William Quincy Belle… and Anthony Morelli, and the other psycho-ex, the one with the Viagra-stash YouTube video.) We all learn so much from one another out here in cyberspace, don’t we?

A couple more notes on WQB’s piece:

—I absolutely agree that kids should never be put into a position where they feel that love of one parent is a betrayal of the other.
—Getting a good therapist is sound advice, but therapy is often expensive. Not everyone can afford it.
—Speaking of expensive, “get a good lawyer” is good advice, too, but good legal representation is rarely cheap. Many women have contacted me because they have, for whatever reason, found themselves in relationships with men not unlike my ex and they don’t have the resources to get out.
—With regard to having married a psycho in the first place, I cannot tell you the number of times I have counted the signs I should have seen, but didn’t.  Perhaps I was thinking wishfully, denying things others saw. My ex seemed to most folks like a fairly decent guy on a good road when he was in his twenties.  I was blind-sided to discover who he really was, and by then—it was too late. I must also add that there are many afflictions, especially the DSM sort, that do not improve with age.

I am grateful that William Quincy Belle has again given good food for thought, and a cause for reflection and reaffirmation.  I’m okay with what I’m doing here, whatever it is.  I don’t claim to have always gotten things right and there are certainly things I regret having written about, even things I have removed, but I don’t regret this endeavor.  However uncomfortable it makes stiff-jawed New Englanders when they read it, this work has given me a network of supportive readers and friends who know what is really going on in our lives, and it has helped a good many of those in situations similar to mine to find healing—sometimes in laughter, sometimes in hope, always in company.

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