Divorce – what you don’t think about

“I’m heartbroken,” Eric said, as we drove to my apartment last night.

I knew what he was talking about immediately.

I’ve already written a post about why I view marriage as an unnecessary and burdensome financial contract. Not going to repeat myself here. So I’m going to talk kids and how they often do not “play” in the divorce decision.

When I was contemplating divorce — a process that actually took years of therapy – it was all about me and my husband. What was good? What did I love about marriage? What was bad? What I could live with? I talked about what I needed and wasn’t getting. Was the stuff I was getting out of marriage enough? Could I live the rest of my life with the stuff I wasn’t getting from my marriage? These were the topics I beat to death in therapy. In the end, as you know, I decided I could not live without emotional and sexual intimacy from my husband for the next blah blah years.

There were things I thought about but didn’t fully comprehend. I could tell you I didn’t expect the huge financial cost of getting a divorce. I can tell you I didn’t foresee the financial collapse, so gettting back to work as an economist wasn’t an option (I did come close with Lehman, which was to go under less than a year after that interviewwith their chief economist). I could tell you I didn’t foresee the incredible psychic energy and emotional toll a four year divorce took on me, even though I made the best of it and came out pretty intact for a manic depressive nut (lol, just kidding).

During those years I painted, I got a degree in Art therapy, did an internship, got a job, took the lsat, did not get into law school, dated a bagillion men and even fell in “love/like/infatuation” a few times. Frankly I had a hell of a good time, despite what could have been a period of outright mental breakdown (I have a few friends, who had that emotional collapse that can only be described as a breakdown.even though that is not an actual psychological term, lol. I did not! Yay for me. )

During most of the divorce period, we “nested” meaning my soon-to-be-ex and I still lived in the same house.. He in the office, me in the master bedroom upstairs. Later we would alternate who lived in the house with our daughter, each of us being ordered by the court to find a bed somewhere else so the child could live with one parent at a time and adjust to the new world order.

This. This is when it hit me. I would no longer be with my daughter every day. I could no longer see my daughter every day. I would no longer be able to touch her, or smell her, or play with her, or talk with her every day. It was fucking devastatiing. And I didn’t expected it. Can you believe it?

And that is what Eric meant went he said “I am heart broken.” The kids. Where is that fixture — the product of your own body and your lifeblood? The emptiness is almost unbearable.

Now, more than a year after our divorce has been finalized and residential custody arrangements have been settled, it still breaks my heart. And as smart as I am, it didn’t come into the equation when I was considering divorce.