Since you know me so well, I've developed a new means of posting to you. Let's see how it works!
Your divorcing spouse calls you an [censored].
a. Engage in the conversations and/or respond in an email. b. Agree and hand her the toilet paper to show you're listening c. Let it go and enforce your boundaries.
Your divorcing spouse blames you for causing everything that's wrong in her life.
a. Let her know everything she did wrong, exactly how you feel about it. And whenever she raises the issue always go back to square one and detail how you feel. b. Realize she's in a blame mode, don't engage and let her know it is no longer a topic of discussion. c. Really start thinking about all the wrong she's done you and let the anger rise.
Your divorcing spouse accuses you of all sorts of stuff because you have a relationship with another woman.
a. Tell her that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. (Still one of the lamest rationalizations I've ever heard) b. Ask her about her life/Let her talk about her personal intimate relationships to you, engage her in this discussion. c. Keep your personal life to yourself and do not engage about hers.
Both of you are misbehaving. Both of you are seeking negative attention from the other. Let it frickin' go. This doesn't work.
I keep suggesting setting boundaries. It's not about friendiness, being friends, being the safety net. It's about treating each other as adults, stepping the hell away from each and stopping pushing each other's buttons. You BOTH do this to each other.
Less talk is more in your case.
I remember after a difficult call with my divorcing spouse I hung up. Later he emailed me and asked me why I hung up mid-sentence. "I don't talk to people who call me names (disrespect me, scream at me.. etc... we had several calls where I disconnected the phone because of his behavior.).
I realized that talking to him on HIS grounds hurt ME. I minimized my contact. He's still angry at me and feels like I destroyed his life. Huh? He's living the life he's always wanted (or so he says). Let it go, buddy.
Stop beating the dead horse. It's gone on so long there's no longer hope for even glue.
Whatever you say to her doesn't matter. Her own angst translates it to something else.
Do what makes you healthy, brings a sense of peace rather than anger.
@Gypsy -- Do what makes you healthy, brings a sense of peace rather than anger.
Exactly what I did, not 5 minutes ago. She's been hammering at me constantly the past 48 hours. The final straw was this: Boy Child has an annual check-up mid-afternoon on Monday. She has to take him -- her custody day. She writes to b*tch about it -- we need to "coordinate" the appointments to make sure they're not "inconvenient." She has another appointment that morning, so now she's not going to be able to go into work at all that day.
I point out -- with copies of the relevant message traffic -- that she's known about the check-up for 55 days. So, um, what -- 8 weeks isn't enough advance notice?
I also point out that the reason it is Monday mid-day is that she forgot about his original appointment and this was the only time available -- as discussed in an email from 72 days ago.
Yet somehow it's my fault? No, not taking that. But what does it is this -- she can't "miss so much work," and I can't afford to have her miss so much work because I'm "living off [her]" -- a snide little reference to the spousal support issue, which she has brought up at least 3 times in the past 2 days.
So I did what you suggest. I did what will give me peace. I wrote her this reply: "Unless it is a life-threatening emergency for one of the children, don't ever speak to me again."
Excogitate; Excogitates; Ex Cogitating. To cogitate upon s/he who is "Ex."
It has been a quiet day. 3 e-mails from WAW's return address and 1 phone call from WAW's caller i.d., and they have all been from the Boy Child. That is good.
Gone now the sun; comes the night. It is quiet.
And I realize: I have gone as far as my limited skills would take me. I have drained the reservoirs of all mojo. I stand now without -- tools, resources, beliefs, expectations.
Beginner's mind indeed. I know nothing -- only this moment. The now is when one lives, writes Marcus Aurelius, the only time one lives, for the past is gone and the future uncertain. The Journey continues apace.
Whence came you, Traveler?
From the Land of To Survive, and that I have done. Doors have been shut, bridges burned, footprints in the sand taken by the sea. The year draws to a close, lamentations sung, days marked away on the calendar, time past. It is over.
And now, Traveler, hence?
That, my man, is the question. Terra incognita. The White Ship sails without skipper at the helm, without navigator at the binnacle. Time alone will tell at Journey's End. Said Macbeth, "Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day;" from this there is no escape -- time will run, and I with it.
Smiley's Person understands. She is Ex. All that Ex is; all that Ex implies. An Ex. MyEx. Ex: Latin -- out of; from.
That is she: out of, from. Ex matrimonium.
And he? He, a chastened Siegried who must guard against seeking the Golden Ring, Virtuous Retribution, the Pleasure of Being Right -- for no Pleasure is without its attendant Pain, no Virtue without its attendant Vice.
Which is prior? Impossible to say -- Virtue got chocolate in Vice's peanut butter; Vice got peanut butter on Virtue's chocolate.
Better simply to leave it alone.
This Smiley's Person now understands -- it is divorce, my brothers and sisters, it is without Virtue, without Vice, and -- lamentable perhaps though it is -- without Victory. It simply IS.
Hard lesson that, for a Searcher am I -- I sought Victory, Accountability, Justification, Validation, Righteous Moral Indignation's Karmic Accounting! She cheated! She lied! She betrayed! She disrespected! She didn't...She! She! She! Ahhhh, but I, oh, how I! I! I!
I. Not path, not forward, not future. I. The search wasn't for a way forward -- you bloody stupid man. You never left the starting blocks, so concerned you were with I.
Searcher? No, not quite right -- I didn't just search for it; I hoped for it, I worshiped it, I prayed for it: O, Ye Olympian Gods of Left-Behind Spousedom, give me that Righteous Email, that Infinite Mot Juste of Retaliation with which I may smite WAW a mighty blow and bring her to her senses, that Holy 180 that will bring Hope to Fruition, for this I pray, ay-men! The Elmer Gantry of divorce-busting.
Hard lesson, this: "Right" and "Wrong" matters not a whit -- whitless it is, and witless I was.
For in the end, there is only emptiness, the Void that descends upon your heart, upon your soul, within your life where once your Marriage stood.
This we know through hard-felt physical pain, yet on we rush to embrace the Void, for therein we hope to find the presumed pleasure of Being Heard, of our Pain Acknowledged -- of seeing WAS chastened, rebuked, and shamed. And once there, if not cast adrift within the Void, we soon learn the Hard Lesson: There is no Victory, Moral or Otherwise, over a Walkaway Spouse -- even if you're right, s/he's gone.
But I refused to see, refused to know. No, not Smiley's Person -- headlong, he rushed; headstrong, he rushed. Rushed to grab Alberich's Golden Ring in the name of all that was Righteous, of He Himself, Smiley's Person, Left-Behind Spouse...only to find, as Wotan did, that the Ring will bring down Valhalla -- that Victory its own defeat. Götterdämmerung, indeed.
So, Traveler, what lies beyond Survive? Not Victory, to be sure. Perhaps, one would like to believe, simply Forgiveness. Forgiveness of self. And, yes, even forgiveness of Ex. And what of Righteous Vindication, of Virtue triumphant over Vice? Let that, too, be Ex.
No more Virtue in suffering; no more Virtue in waiting; no more Virtue in reliving; no more Virtue in bearing that which, it must be admitted, no longer needs be borne. I bore the pain of my lost marriage to make a point -- to show myself -- to her? to myself? -- to be more Virtuous than she.
"No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness." -- Reinhold Niebuhr
I didn't hang onto my marriage, to my beliefs, to my values, to my hopes -- I understand, you see, that in the heart-of-hearts I wasn't as sanguine with detachment as I'd liked to have been -- for their sake, or even for hers, or even for the sake of Marriage Writ Large. I did it for me. For ego. For Victory.
That's gone, and with it the Hope of the Hail Mary Reconciliation -- the Reconciliation I could cruelly-but-happily turn down, ha-ha! that'll show you! I win!
Smiley's Person himself is mos' def' a half-empty-glass kind of guy. Niebuhr and love (ultimately, for Reinhold, the love of the Lord Jesus Himself) is probably a bridge too far in a league, along with Faith and Charity, that Smiley's Person is out of.
Better, perhaps, to stay close to the Nibelungen, to forgo that most dangerous of verbs, To Hope, and to choose instead that simplest -- but most difficult -- of verbs, To Be.
Yo dawg -- keep it Wagnerian. For Smiley's Person it will be Nietzsche, not Niebuhr, as guide on this part of the path; he who suggested to us that "hope is the worst of all evils, for it prolongs the torment of man."
Thus spake Zarathustra, the Superman who leads the interior monologue in Smiley's Person's head:
Without Hope, walk that path that is for your footsteps and no other's, Smiley's Person; let there be no agenda, no motivation, no reason other than that you live, you breathe. You are. Let Hope be for another day, for Journey's End. In this moment, you are a survivor, and on that day, the blackest of days you will recall, you thought -- you wished -- that you would die.
No such luck, Keemosabe. Like Yossarian, you live.
So walk already. The past? Gone. The future? Uncertain.
