There comes a point for every world traveler, however adventurous, when you wake up in your hut (or tent or yurt), and think, "Gosh, I would love to make waffles." Then, you catalogue all the stuff you'd need to pull off waffles--the iron, the mix, the whisk, the plate, the grade B maple syrup--and then you look down at your pathetic kit of eye drops, lip balm and Bactroban, and say, "I want to go home."
When my husband walked out on our fifteen-year marriage, only to return a month later, the truth of the matter is that he came home, not for me, but for waffles.
Given the bitter man who showed up at my door, life on the outside must not have been all that and a bag of chips. After the heady rush of abandoning his tired harpy wife subsided, the brutal reality of his middle-aged, non-007 life surely hit him like a sucker punch. Maybe the hot divorcee from the gym, who told him his hair was cute, when push came to shove, didn't want to move into his overpriced bachelor pad after all? Or maybe the twenty-year-old twigs dragged back from the all-night raves seemed less edgy and bedazzling over coffee? Or maybe time with our kids whittled down to half cut too deeply? Or maybe, when he needed to blow his nose, there just wasn't an appropriate place to put his snot?
Perhaps that sounds like woman-scorned conjecture. Perhaps my husband looked into our children's wet eyes, saw my DNA refracted back, and determined that our covetable family of four was something precious worth fighting for. After all, history doesn't come cheap.
After a year of ego-breaking joint-counseling, it's still maddeningly unclear what myth-busting constellation propelled my Icarus back home, but it became painfully obvious that what drove him out of our marriage in the first place would not, and could not, go away: I was still me.
No amount of reflective listening or positive spin or self-medication was going to change it: after forty-plus years, I'm pretty much a formed human being. I wasn't going to get any smarter or more charming. Without surgical intervention, I wasn't going to get any prettier. I wasn't going to become less outspoken (my New Year's post certainly didn't help). And while I could try to be less inconsiderate or put out more, it would be a conscious and temporary effort. Plus, given the wounds of my public/private humiliation, my economy-size lifetime emotional U-Haul had ballooned into a crazy caravan; surely I was even less lovable now.
In the end, I could make a beautiful home, and raise beautiful children, but fundamentally, my best friend no longer believed me to be his faithful Kimosabe, and likely never would again, not really. Without his unconditional love, hearth and home felt altogether bankrupt. And that's why, after we both spent an exhausting year trying our damnedest, I worked up the courage to leave everything that formed my grown-up reality.
As we put on a brave face and slogged through mediation, the kids sensed that our family had fallen into hospice. The party line, "Mommy and Daddy are working on becoming friends," held them until the tension in the house became unbearable. After school one snowy day, over Rick Bayless' dulce de leche cocoa, the kids pressed me hard, and unexpectedly, I veered dangerously off script. "Yes!" I blurted. "Mommy and Daddy are getting divorced, but we are always your parents, and we will always love you, and..." In slow-mo, my two angels careened into a deep, dark hole, like the skin-suit pit from Silence of the Lambs. Because of my failings, no ladder made by God or man could ever pull them back into childhood. And even more, I'd ruined hot chocolate, forever.
This moment--from a woman who has suffered miscarriages, climbed glaciers, battled lupus and addiction, learned to walk again, and survived two decades of Chicago winters--has been, by far, the hardest thing I have ever endured.
As legal maneuverings ground me into dust, I heard my über-zen pal Tracy whisper: "You have your kids seventy percent of the time; everything else is just stuff. Wish Eeyore well, and let it go." So, impulsively, I traded my fine house for better running shoes and an open door. Since my income as a writer/artist/activist/mom is virtually non-existent, my soon-to-be ex reluctantly agreed to co-sign a lease on a nearby apartment (FYI: by the time Comcast deems you a credit risk, there's no place to go but up). The very next day, taking only the chandelier and my clothes stuffed into garbage bags, I teetered down the street to my new place, like some kind of kooky Lake Shore Drive refugee.
When I'd tell some well-meaning person the news of my move and impending divorce, their face would scrunch into tortured concern, until I learned to quickly follow it with, "But no worries; it's all okay." And then, they'd smile, and chime, "Congratulations!" Inevitably, some overly intimate conversation would follow in which they'd reveal the details of their own torrid affair, hushed-impotence, or prolonged Springeresque misery. Not that I'd mind; it was soothing to know that my own marriage was, by all accounts, very good (until suddenly, it wasn't).
Here's the little secret I don't tell them: Forty days and forty nights into my new life, I'm deliriously proud of myself for leaving my marriage without some Ibsen rescue at play. Up until last year, I didn't know the difference between a 401K and 5K (forgive me Suze Orman), and I'm still not sure how I'm going hang on to my pie-in-the-sky dreams and simultaneously put real food on those imaginary tables, but I'll figure it out.
Hopefully, after the machinery of the state has run its ugly course, my husband and I will become friends again. For the kids' sake, fingers crossed. In the meantime, as he navigates his new, more authentic self, I've managed to rediscover my long-lost Charlie girl.
In my Chapter II apartment, one block and a world away, I heeded my daughter's advice, and ditched my stale designer beige for Jonathan Adler fabulousity of electric blues, chocolate brown, and an orange so vibrant it almost pulsates. Writing here, under my salvaged chandelier, amidst funky thrift store finds, and jaw-dropping art on loan from my gallery pal Jennifer Norback; I can finally breathe. The place has a good vibe. But it's not about the stuff, although the unchallenged self-expression helps: in these groovy rooms of my own, I hear Sandburg's voice: "Nothing can harm you. Unless you turn yourself into a thing of harm, nothing can harm you."
Although my sage friend Lisa promised that we'd get to the other side, I never would have believed it: from my bedroom window, each morning I wake to the dog licking my face, and the sun rising over lake Michigan. I'm alone, but less alone than I was before. On "mom's weeks," my kids, still blistered and angry, jump into my giant, pristine white bed, with sleepy eyes, and, in spite of it all, kisses. We are healing. Slowly. And then, like clockwork, the three of us stumble into our Lemon Meringue kitchen, under the shimmering glitter of a disco ball, and make waffles.
Follow Jacqueline Edelberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/walktoschool
1. We cannot do the saving.
2. Counseling is futile when one person wants out and refuses to do the together work
Trying presupposes failure and it sounds to me as though your midlife husband was trying without doing.
3. It will take longer than a year; a year after Bomb Drop is still the beginning.
4. Don’t tell your spouse you are Standing (Think of your New Year’s post).
That’s not a hard-and-fast rule, some leaving spouses are reassured by Standing, many are pressured.
It’s about understanding and accepting the process. Many Standers will eventually decide to stop Standing and end their marriages.
“What drove him out of our marriage in the first place would not, and could not, go away: I was still me.” It’s not your fault that your husband chose to leave rather than chose to work on your marriage.
Your husband came ‘back.’ After only a month away he came home to something familiar not because he wanted to work on your marriage and enable it to blossom, but because it was easier than being depressed and alone. Back is a regression, not a joyous reconciliation. Coming home forward takes much longer to realize.
People continue to grow and develop in their 40s and beyond. The spouses I work with start out fearful and hesitant, but life doesn’t stop because their spouses are having some crisis and their marriages (lives) are suddenly in turmoil. There job is to get through rather than over and to do that they learn, the reflect, discover and change.
Someone congratulated you for not taking the easy way out and staying married since you don’t make a lot of money. There is not a way through that is easy. Divorcing and picking up a new life is not easy, neither is Standing. Standers are told they are doormats, they deserve better, their spouse is a %^&*, they do’t respect themselves… all while dealing with either an extremely depressed spouse or a spouse who instead screams at them and blames them for everything…oh yeah, while often having an affair.
It was 3.5 years from Bomb Drop until my husband recommitted fully to our marriaege and stopped his affair for good. Worth it? We laugh together, love together and play together. Before our priorities were about building and being individuals rather than whole individuals as well as an US. But I always knew my husband, my marriage and my vows were worth it.
May you have blessing in your new life.
Mscc827: Sadly, I agree with you....there are a lot of vicious comments on this thread by men who seem to enjoy taking shots at Jacqueline. I find this strange considering she struggled with self-blame and her share of guilt over the situation. Yes, there was some anger on her end (both genders usually struggle with anger at the end of a break-up, don't they?), but that wasn't the focus of the article. She was/is trying to let go and move on, per her Eeyore comment (among many others). I wish these men would write their own articles and do their own process rather than use her for target practice.
some men move the line with the help of substances or other women or work or a combination or all of them but when the line is crossed there is really no coming back.
It helped push you to a decision point, and it's impossible to believe you really intended anything else by it ... when a relationship gets to the point that either partner has to watch what they say for fear of it ending up in print as their mate seeks catharsis in publication, genuine intimacy is long, long gone, never to return.
Dont listen to the psycho babble. Stay with the person who is the other parent of your child(ren) unless there is violence between you. The grass is NOT greener. When you are with the other parent of your children and your children, you are where you belong. Talk to your spouse, dont leave them. It may not be the marriage made in heaven, but if you are honest and have your priorities straight, it will work.
My Best Friend
Where is my friend, I've known for so many years
and with out this person, my mind stays in tears
It is said "don't worry, he'll be with us again"
still he was not my lover, and was only a friend
Now It's hard to realize, the last time we made love
was a thing of beauty, because he hovered above
Now my life and my world, have been torn apart
because without my friend, theres a hole in my heart
Will he come back to me, in a matter of time
or will it take a new person, to have him, in mind
Why did he leave me, when he's needed the most
and he wasn't so special, when I was his host
Without his presence, my house is not home any more
and our battles aren't fair, when he's not keeping score
You see my friends not a person, just a spot in my heart
Because his name is TRUST, and we will still live apart
My man now sleeps with others, don't know what he'll get
but when I refuse him. it's not me thats upset
Then we throw stones at each other, to prove we are right
and then he gets mad at me, for starting this fight
Now I can't find forgiveness, nor offer a dove
still I miss all our yesterdays, when we were in Love
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