(no subject)
Here I am, again, writing more about the divorce. I just have a few stands to make on my soapbox, and then I will stand down. Promise. This is for a few friends who might need it. If you're bored, please skip!
I’ll put it bluntly: I needed to leave my ex and yet I was completely, utterly terrified for years to do so. Here’s why:
• Child.
My son, my only, my beloved child, until I married Lawrence and inherited my younger two, has Asperger’s Syndrome.
I had fought so very hard against my ex and his family to even get anyone beyond his teachers to acknowledge he needed any help. I had worked two jobs while going through my Ph.D. program to afford all his necessary psychiatric and social intervention care while his father, like Nero, fiddled as Rome burned. I worked with his teachers to ensure he would have the opportunity to make friends. I did everything in my power to protect him from and help him manage emotional pain. And now, here I was, about to cause him the worst emotional pain of his life.
More, I was about to insist that a child who couldn’t easily handle transitions had to make the worst transition of any child’s life, and that he would have to shift homes on some weekly or biweekly schedule, shuttling between his father and me. I would introduce uncertainty and anxiety to a child who perhaps would never be able to handle either. Finally, my son was 12 when I divorced; this would be, well-meaning people assured me, the worst possible age at which to leave my ex. I believed, supported by these people’s advice, that he would hate me for the rest of my life, that I’d lose him.
Into this uncertain and special-needs dynamic, I brought a divorce and my son, one of the loves of my life, is so much the better for it - and says that to me directly.
• Money.
I cannot tell you how terrified I was of money, both in general and with regard to divorce. My ex had a terrible money problem - it flowed through his fingers and though I knew he would never be able to handle money properly, I didn’t see any way to take control of it away from him without ruining the marriage. How does one, exactly, tell a grown man a decade one’s senior, that he cannot have his own ATM card anymore, or that he cannot be in charge of the finances? Doing so would have undercut the central myth of our marriage: that he was a full adult. So we lived for 15 years with the electricity being cut off in winter, with there being at times no food in the house, and with a foreclosure warning notice coming a couple of times, leaving me to pay off everything as quickly as I could. His money would be all gone, you see. It was on me to fix everything.
Given he’d ruined my credit (by refusing to allow me to pay my own bills and insisting we pay his alone), given I had little left in savings, given we couldn’t survive on both of our salaries, and perhaps, because I made more, I would have to pay alimony, I didn’t feel confident I could provide a good home for Adam - much less food! - on my salary. Perhaps he wouldn’t pay child support! We lived in a tony house in a tony neighborhood with amazing schools - perhaps I’d have to move to a less-nice neighborhood and enroll Adam in a school that wouldn’t have autism support. My ex assured me that our money problems were actually my fault, because I wanted things, I wanted to eat out… maybe he was right. Maybe I’d flounder and fail, taking my child along with me. And of course, my ex was a lawyer and I had been the one to send him through law school. Would he turn the gift I gave him against me and use his legal skills against me? His mother, too, was very wealthy. Wouldn’t she give him money for exquisite legal representation?
I didn’t fail. Despite having only my own salary and wits to rely on, I did quite financially well. The ex? Failed terribly. He didn’t pay me child support, he didn’t pay me alimony, he didn’t do much for Adam beyond feeding him when Adam visited him. None of my fears were realized. I make enough to send Adam to college just fine on my own.
We are fine. We are better than fine now.
It was terribly hard in the beginning due to a combination of child/money concerns. I cannot and will not minimize that: it was indescribably difficult and I would never want to go through it again. Yet that doesn't mean I'm not the better off for it.
The emotions were terrible too, don’t get me wrong. It was excruciating to say, “I want a divorce. I am going to leave you.” I had to close myself off to his emotional outbursts, which rocked back and forth between hissing fury and hysterical sobbing.
What was worse was seeing Adam’s own emotional outbursts. He had always had little respect for me (due to his father’s behavior toward me): now he seemed to have even less. I didn’t know if he’d ever love me again, and I was scared he’d become like his father toward the woman he one day married. None of this was helped by the ex, who actually went to Adam and told him that I was stupid, that I’d financially ruin us all with this divorce, that I was throwing him and Adam into danger.
Adam, more terrified than furious at that point, came to me for support. I held him close and told him I would never do anything that would ruin him and me. I sat with him and typed up an excel budget together. I showed him how much money I made, and how much things would cost, based on research I’d done. He looked at those numbers and saw there was money left at the end of the month. He asked if that money was enough for treats and sushi and going places together. I assured him, happily, that it was more than enough, and he would never have the electricity go out again.
I’m not sure that conversation was the beginning of his respect for me, but it certainly provided the basis for my demonstrating I tell the truth and I’m dependable.
Adam has, in the 8 years after the divorce began (and in the 6 years since it ended), seen me live up to that promise. He LOATHED Lawrence for a while, wouldn’t go near him, but now knows I gave him a stable, loving father figure. He has seen me always pay the bills on time; he has never again known what it is to live without food and electricity, even if our house wasn’t large anymore, and we lived in a twin. He’s seen me work hard to make sure he and his step-siblings have absolutely everything they need and then some. He’s seen his father continue to have problems with money, refuse to look for a new job upon being fired, be willfully unemployed for 5 years, spend on himself all of the money he promised to use for Adam’s college (rather than suck it up and take any job to support himself), and refuse to hang up a shingle or do any consulting lest he have to pay malpractice insurance. He also saw his father refuse to investigate new careers where he could put his legal skills to use without having to purchase malpractice insurance - careers he once professed to like.
Over the years he has also been treated to the ex’s gaslighting, neglect, “turn the tables blame game” and various other abusive personality traits. This breaks my heart, because I could divorce his father. Adam cannot, and he gets to go through this the rest of his life. But he says I gave him the strength he needs to deal with it by demonstrating how to deal with it instead of just taking it forever.
To sum up: The money was not as rough as expected. The pain I caused Adam was awful in the beginning. However, he - and we - are much stronger than ever now because I left his father. He learned to respect and love his mother -- something I am certain he never would have learned otherwise. Here is the inside of the card Adam, my once ungrateful, fledgling abusive child, wrote to me this Mother’s Day. You be the judge of how things turned out:
“Mom,
“Every Mother’s Day I try to reflect on everything you do that makes you such a great mom and all the ways those things touch my life. However, there’s really nothing I can say that will fully express my deep admiration, respect, and love for you. You inspire me every single day to be a better person, and for that I’m so grateful.
“I love you so, so, so much.
“Happy Mother’s Day!!!
“Love, Adam”
Divorce was awful. It was excruciating. He put me through abject hell. I had to fix up the house without his help and I had to borrow money from a friend to move out with after I had to sell the house out from under him to make him move. I would never, never, never want to go through it again. If I could go back in time and choose whether or not to divorce the ex again? I'd do it again in a heartbeat, because now I have a son, a self, and a life. And hey, the electricity stays on. Who woulda thunk it?
I’ll put it bluntly: I needed to leave my ex and yet I was completely, utterly terrified for years to do so. Here’s why:
• Child.
My son, my only, my beloved child, until I married Lawrence and inherited my younger two, has Asperger’s Syndrome.
I had fought so very hard against my ex and his family to even get anyone beyond his teachers to acknowledge he needed any help. I had worked two jobs while going through my Ph.D. program to afford all his necessary psychiatric and social intervention care while his father, like Nero, fiddled as Rome burned. I worked with his teachers to ensure he would have the opportunity to make friends. I did everything in my power to protect him from and help him manage emotional pain. And now, here I was, about to cause him the worst emotional pain of his life.
More, I was about to insist that a child who couldn’t easily handle transitions had to make the worst transition of any child’s life, and that he would have to shift homes on some weekly or biweekly schedule, shuttling between his father and me. I would introduce uncertainty and anxiety to a child who perhaps would never be able to handle either. Finally, my son was 12 when I divorced; this would be, well-meaning people assured me, the worst possible age at which to leave my ex. I believed, supported by these people’s advice, that he would hate me for the rest of my life, that I’d lose him.
Into this uncertain and special-needs dynamic, I brought a divorce and my son, one of the loves of my life, is so much the better for it - and says that to me directly.
• Money.
I cannot tell you how terrified I was of money, both in general and with regard to divorce. My ex had a terrible money problem - it flowed through his fingers and though I knew he would never be able to handle money properly, I didn’t see any way to take control of it away from him without ruining the marriage. How does one, exactly, tell a grown man a decade one’s senior, that he cannot have his own ATM card anymore, or that he cannot be in charge of the finances? Doing so would have undercut the central myth of our marriage: that he was a full adult. So we lived for 15 years with the electricity being cut off in winter, with there being at times no food in the house, and with a foreclosure warning notice coming a couple of times, leaving me to pay off everything as quickly as I could. His money would be all gone, you see. It was on me to fix everything.
Given he’d ruined my credit (by refusing to allow me to pay my own bills and insisting we pay his alone), given I had little left in savings, given we couldn’t survive on both of our salaries, and perhaps, because I made more, I would have to pay alimony, I didn’t feel confident I could provide a good home for Adam - much less food! - on my salary. Perhaps he wouldn’t pay child support! We lived in a tony house in a tony neighborhood with amazing schools - perhaps I’d have to move to a less-nice neighborhood and enroll Adam in a school that wouldn’t have autism support. My ex assured me that our money problems were actually my fault, because I wanted things, I wanted to eat out… maybe he was right. Maybe I’d flounder and fail, taking my child along with me. And of course, my ex was a lawyer and I had been the one to send him through law school. Would he turn the gift I gave him against me and use his legal skills against me? His mother, too, was very wealthy. Wouldn’t she give him money for exquisite legal representation?
I didn’t fail. Despite having only my own salary and wits to rely on, I did quite financially well. The ex? Failed terribly. He didn’t pay me child support, he didn’t pay me alimony, he didn’t do much for Adam beyond feeding him when Adam visited him. None of my fears were realized. I make enough to send Adam to college just fine on my own.
We are fine. We are better than fine now.
It was terribly hard in the beginning due to a combination of child/money concerns. I cannot and will not minimize that: it was indescribably difficult and I would never want to go through it again. Yet that doesn't mean I'm not the better off for it.
The emotions were terrible too, don’t get me wrong. It was excruciating to say, “I want a divorce. I am going to leave you.” I had to close myself off to his emotional outbursts, which rocked back and forth between hissing fury and hysterical sobbing.
What was worse was seeing Adam’s own emotional outbursts. He had always had little respect for me (due to his father’s behavior toward me): now he seemed to have even less. I didn’t know if he’d ever love me again, and I was scared he’d become like his father toward the woman he one day married. None of this was helped by the ex, who actually went to Adam and told him that I was stupid, that I’d financially ruin us all with this divorce, that I was throwing him and Adam into danger.
Adam, more terrified than furious at that point, came to me for support. I held him close and told him I would never do anything that would ruin him and me. I sat with him and typed up an excel budget together. I showed him how much money I made, and how much things would cost, based on research I’d done. He looked at those numbers and saw there was money left at the end of the month. He asked if that money was enough for treats and sushi and going places together. I assured him, happily, that it was more than enough, and he would never have the electricity go out again.
I’m not sure that conversation was the beginning of his respect for me, but it certainly provided the basis for my demonstrating I tell the truth and I’m dependable.
Adam has, in the 8 years after the divorce began (and in the 6 years since it ended), seen me live up to that promise. He LOATHED Lawrence for a while, wouldn’t go near him, but now knows I gave him a stable, loving father figure. He has seen me always pay the bills on time; he has never again known what it is to live without food and electricity, even if our house wasn’t large anymore, and we lived in a twin. He’s seen me work hard to make sure he and his step-siblings have absolutely everything they need and then some. He’s seen his father continue to have problems with money, refuse to look for a new job upon being fired, be willfully unemployed for 5 years, spend on himself all of the money he promised to use for Adam’s college (rather than suck it up and take any job to support himself), and refuse to hang up a shingle or do any consulting lest he have to pay malpractice insurance. He also saw his father refuse to investigate new careers where he could put his legal skills to use without having to purchase malpractice insurance - careers he once professed to like.
Over the years he has also been treated to the ex’s gaslighting, neglect, “turn the tables blame game” and various other abusive personality traits. This breaks my heart, because I could divorce his father. Adam cannot, and he gets to go through this the rest of his life. But he says I gave him the strength he needs to deal with it by demonstrating how to deal with it instead of just taking it forever.
To sum up: The money was not as rough as expected. The pain I caused Adam was awful in the beginning. However, he - and we - are much stronger than ever now because I left his father. He learned to respect and love his mother -- something I am certain he never would have learned otherwise. Here is the inside of the card Adam, my once ungrateful, fledgling abusive child, wrote to me this Mother’s Day. You be the judge of how things turned out:
“Mom,
“Every Mother’s Day I try to reflect on everything you do that makes you such a great mom and all the ways those things touch my life. However, there’s really nothing I can say that will fully express my deep admiration, respect, and love for you. You inspire me every single day to be a better person, and for that I’m so grateful.
“I love you so, so, so much.
“Happy Mother’s Day!!!
“Love, Adam”
Divorce was awful. It was excruciating. He put me through abject hell. I had to fix up the house without his help and I had to borrow money from a friend to move out with after I had to sell the house out from under him to make him move. I would never, never, never want to go through it again. If I could go back in time and choose whether or not to divorce the ex again? I'd do it again in a heartbeat, because now I have a son, a self, and a life. And hey, the electricity stays on. Who woulda thunk it?