Where is that book of answers I ordered?

I sure could use that book right now, the one that gives me the correct answer to all of life’s challenges.  It exists, right?  Right?

Yeah.  I know.  It would be nice if it did.  Although figuring out things, experiencing, failing, succeeding, surviving is what makes life interesting.  I have walked the journey long enough to know that God originally intended it to be that way, even though I am pretty sure he created us to walk quite a bit closer with him than we humans do.  Somewhere along the way, the connection got lost, and we’re still trying to reach out and get the answers in any way we can.

Divorce is easier than marriage in some ways, much more difficult in other ways.  I want the EASY button, but that falls into the same category as that answer book.

I just need to write this down, get it out of my system.

Here’s the thing of the moment — I wish I knew what is truly fair when it comes to divorce.  I can’t pay my ex the monthly amount on the original divorce agreement due to changes in my salary.  When I had to take my new job last August, I accepted a salary that is roughly $6000 less than the salary her maintenance payment is based on.  My lawyer said I could take her to court to get the maintenance payment lowered, but it was better if my wife would simply agree to take less from me each month.  I tried to talk to her about it, but she wouldn’t even consider negotiating the amount.  So, I did my best to keep paying her the full amount for as long as I could, worked overtime each week to be able to afford the maintenance payment.  By December last year, it was getting really rough for me financially.  So, I made a decision that I really hated — I paid my own bills, then gave her what was left.  December’s maintenance was roughly $150 short.  Since then, I have paid her what I had left to pay her.  A few months, I have short payed.  Is it fair?  I don’t know.  I just don’t know.  There have been several weeks where meals consisted of grilled cheese.

I may have wrote about what she did last December, what she has done several times.  What she did in December was hound me to pay her early.  Demanded.  When Christmas day came, I gave my son a cheap coffee maker with some good coffee.  It was what I could afford.  My son came home from his mother’s on Christmas with extravagant presents, hundreds of dollars worth of presents.  I was already feeling bad about the cheap present I gave him, was angry when I saw how much she had spent on his presents.  This was a woman who had been begging me for money a few days earlier, with a story that she couldn’t pay her car payment.

I really don’t want to be angry.

I don’t pay her maintenance payment on the same date each month, although it is close to the same day of the month each time.  I get paid weekly, and the bill due dates don’t fit into the pay cycle (I get paid once a week) the same way each month.  The way life and earnings has worked out, I don’t have a lot of disposable income, which means I really have to plan out what and when I pay everything.  It goes on a calendar and I pay according to what I have when I have planned to pay it.  That hasn’t changed from when I was married.  Back then, I had to keep track of every penny lest we lose our house — there was more than once when we were three months behind on mortgage payments.  She always spent money like we had it, did it in a way that was extremely disrespectful to me. It didn’t matter how much I included her in budget planning, she refused to budget.  For the majority of our marriage, she was a stay at home mom.  We needed to budget, be careful.  I look back on those days, wonder how we made it through it.  The stress was incredible, so much so that I ended up in an ambulance one day, my boss so afraid that I was having a heart attack that he called an ambulance.  It was anxiety and high blood pressure, I think.

We separated more than three years ago, divorced nearly that long.  I have been paying her since before the divorce.  I have not missed one payment.

Yet she sends me texts and calls me with messages like the one she sent to me today.

I am signing a rental lease on a condo studio apartment on Monday.  I’ll need to have an exact date on when you will be sending maintenance and it will need to be consistent every month.

The request might be reasonable if she were willing to negotiate in the past, if she didn’t act like she thinks I have the money to send her at the drop of a hat.  The money I pay her is more than an entire paycheck.  She knows that, knows that if she demands money from me in the middle of the week, like she has done several times, I will not have the money to give her.

I tried to be nice, but her response to the below is that it really seems like I hate her.

I send you money when I have it.  Sorry, that’s just the way it is.  It has always been at or around the same time of the month, which I am disappointed that you won’t acknowledge, won’t give me credit for never missing a month.  It’s impossible for me to be ‘consistent’, especially when we have a child who needs money from the both of us.  I am paying several of his bills.  Between paying you and paying his bills, I am basically living on two paychecks a month.  I need you to quit demanding and give me some credit.  I have to plan my spending.  Really, at this point, you should not be depending on money from me to pay your bills.  If you can’t discipline yourself enough to live on your own, then maybe you shouldn’t be living on your own.  I am being honest with you.

One of the things that concerns me is that you know that I am making less money now,  nearly $6000 a year less.  If I don’t have the money, I can’t pay you.  Someone with a lick of decency would try to understand that.

So there it is.  I don’t really feel too much better writing it out, but I am glad I did.  Honestly, I wish I was wealthy enough to make the payments easy, but I am not.  It’s tough for me!

Gnocchi is a word I never pronounce properly

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“It’s OK if you throw out the tomatoes.  I understand.”

I was sitting in one of my condo comfort spots, the kitchen table, my back to the garbage can, a bowl of tonight’s steaming dinner in front of me.  Nate couldn’t really sneak behind me undetected, plus I anticipated what he would do.  The last time I prepared this recipe, a heavy cream tomato sauce with gnocchi, he went back for seconds, ate the gnocchi and sauce but left out the little chunks of tomatoes.  After he ate, he left the plate on the living room coffee table, a little heap of tiny tomatoes shoved off to the side.  This time, I think he thought he could sneak this one by me by dumping the tomatoes in the garbage and then washing his plate in the hot dishwater I left in the sink.  I am tricky that way — it was a dirty trick that worked, a way to get him to wash his own dinner dishes.

Cooking for my son during this season of quarantine is a bit of satisfaction, a redemption of sorts.  He eats what I cook now, even as he continues to supplement home cooked meals with fast food garbage.  When he moved in with me in March, after three years of living with his mother, I really didn’t know what to expect.  Meals were a large source of hurt for me during my marriage, largely due to expectations, I suppose.  My family always ate dinner together, shared meals and conversation, the table one of the ways we bonded.  When I married, I looked forward to that image of family life, only to be grandly disappointed.  My wife’s family never shared meals together, didn’t have that tradition, so she never understood the importance.  When I planned meals, went through the effort to buy the groceries, cooked the meal, I expected to share the same wonderful experience that my own family shared nearly every day during my youth.

Instead, I nearly always ended up eating a cold meal alone, disappointed and frustrated.  I knew the importance of family meals, not only because of the bonding during those meals, but also because it was a heck of a lot less expensive to cook at home.  More often than not, my wife would end up sneaking the kids out an hour after I had cooked dinner and took them out for fast food.  It was a kick in the teeth, a humiliation, and I hated it.

Of course, the dinner table was also where my wife and I had our worst fight ever in front of the kids, a knock down screaming event where we both dropped the gloves and took shots at each other.  Our kids fled outside, weeping out in front of the house and pushing each other on the tree swing there, comforted by our next door neighbors as the screaming continued inside the house over the dinner table.  Even though our divorce was still a few years away, that evening dinner was where the slide down the slippery slope began.

Seeing my son eat what I cook heals me.  Is that strange to say?

It seems odd to me to write about this.  So much of what I have written about since my divorce has been about my dating life.  My dating life IS important and I will continue to write about it, but I guess I haven’t had as much opportunity to write about my family life.  Funny how my boy moving in with me, invading my space, changes my perspective.

Invading my space is a very accurate way to describe what has happened.  Three years of living alone allowed me to develop my own habits, take pride of ownership in the little condominium I live in.  I like my neat little world.  It’s comfortable to me.  When an almost 21 year old male comes into that neat little world and throws a kink into it, it takes more than just a few adjustments to cope.  Patience has been a necessity.  Adjustment has been a necessity.  Acceptance of loss of freedoms has been a necessity.

For instance, Lisa has been in my place ONCE since the middle of March.  Our dating routine prior to COVID included dinner and some form of nookie at my place during the week and some weekends.  We both have sons living with us now.  We’re both taking cold showers on a regular basis.  Time alone, something we took for granted just a few short months ago, is a rarity for us.

He is coming along slowly.  He tests me.  My choice has been to pick my battles.  I know Nate is living with me because he really doesn’t have another choice.  His mother lives with her sister and her sister doesn’t want him living with her, so he has to live with me.  Yet it’s still a battle of inches.  My spare bedroom, now his bedroom, once a very orderly space, is now totally trashed.  It was my study, but he has removed everything from my desk, has made it his own.  There is a 48″ plasma TV on that desk, so he spends a large majority of his time, often until 4 AM, playing video games there.  One of his suitcases still occupies the hall outside the bedroom.  Nate refuses to close the shower curtain, tosses his towel at the rack, something I know he is doing on purpose to demonstrate his own control.  The rest of the house, he is conceding mostly to me, the exception being the kitchen, which he is learning to give in to out of necessity.  Still, more often than not, I go to bed with an empty sink and clean kitchen only to wake up to a mess in the morning.

We are learning to live with each other.

He is bored.  School was over last week.  Internship opportunities have dried up.  Work may or may not start up soon.  His friends are home now, inviting him to golf and do more things.  Yet he is seeking me out.  The things I did with him when he was a boy are starting to pay off.  He wants to do things with me again.

We played three hours of tennis together with two of my friends last Saturday.  Nate was an excellent tennis player in high school, state ranked at one point.  I taught him the basics when he was very young.  I was the person he played baseball and basketball and soccer and golf and tennis with.  He used to wait for me to come home, just so I would play catch with him.  Now, he waits for my shift to be over.  Oh, and I kicked his butt last Saturday in tennis.  My serve is killer, plus he has corrected the issue I had with my backhand.  We are playing more, even riding together.

As much as I hate the hovering his mother has performed during his nearly 21 years of life, at least I get to monitor it a little bit more.  I hear their conversations, am often forced to visit the bathroom to puke while I listen to them, but I at least can hear the propaganda she feeds him.  It’s unreal.  The poor kid really has to deal with an very controlling B#%c#.

The gnocchi was excellent.  Cleanup was easy, because he indeed finished it off.

 

 

3

I don’t know what direction tonight’s write is going to take me.  Heh heh heh… maybe in the write direction?

Bad, bad, bad.  So sue me.

Quarantine cabin fever got the best of me a few minutes ago, a fog created by a combo of excessive amounts of pizza (courtesy of my son, who might be getting a bit tired of eating my cooking) and the completion of a season three Ozark binge watch.  I decided to climb in my Subaru for a drive, just to clear my head.  Stay at home, work at home has me in the house from the time I crawl out of bed until I clock out remotely.  The commute to my couch is a short one.  With the weather still cold and mostly dreary here lately, I haven’t turned the pedals since last week, so I just need to get out.

In the last two and a half weeks, I have used a quarter tank of gas.

The winter chill is about gone, judging from the cold yet refreshing air that strolled into my garage as the garage door raised.  I backed slowly out, stopped for a moment in the drive to pick out some music on my phone – the atmosphere in the cockpit improves if the tune fits the mood (Huey Lewis’ new stuff was the choice).  My Subaru growled a bit while it pulled slowly away, as if it too was glad to get out from the confines.  Neither me nor my car was in a hurry.  We just wanted to enjoy the temporary freedom.  Huey Lewis crooned a gravelly tune….

Do you remember when, not so long ago, all we had was time?  And the future was the last thing on our minds.  What a time.

My mind wasn’t gravitating towards carefree memories of my youth, however.  Cabin fever wasn’t the only motivation for getting out of the house.  I needed to face a memory, take a short pilgrimage of sorts.  I live about a mile from my former house, the house I lived in with my wife for 22 years, where our children were born and raised.  I needed to see that house today.

Three years ago, I stood in the driveway of that house, tears streaming down my face, my then sister-in-law hugging me while she told me it would be ok, my soon to be ex wife driving off as she fought the emotions of leaving that house for good.  We had closed on the sale of the house and our time of separation began.  That night, I would sleep in the spare bedroom of the condo unit I was about to buy, perched on top of two mattresses and two box springs (I never felt the pea) with a pathway cleared from the tower of bed to the door through all of my things stuffed in that room.

I am not wallowing in pain or pity tonight.  I am not celebrating, either.  No one should celebrate that.  March 31, 2017 was the day my life as I knew it ended.  It changed in an instant.

It is what it is.

The Subaru growled compassionately as it guided me slowly past that house.  The journey wasn’t what I expected.  The journey was a tribute of sorts, a reminder.  I think I need to remember the pain, the excrutiating emotional stress, the exhaustion that was a constant companion the months that preceded that day.  Maybe I just needed to be reminded of how it felt when that weight lifted off my shoulders as I drove away that day.

My friend, John, reminded me today that so much has changed since that day.  There truly is much to be thankful for.  I think I will take that trip past my old house this day every year, a reminder that beauty comes from ashes, strength from not giving up.

I wonder what I will write next year?

Put another log on the fire

Cook me up some bacon and some beans.

Yeeeeeee haw.  Yes, I am writing next to a blazing fire, a tasty irish ale next to me.  The fire is hot enough to make me think about moving from my easy chair to the couch, but not quite yet.  I like the cozy warmth and the glow.  Plus, the last time my fireplace was blazing was Valentine’s day and Lisa shared that glow with me.  There is something about a nice fire that gets a woman going and Lisa is no exception.  She spread a blanket out next to the fire and gave me an evening to remember!  From now on, the blazing logs in my fireplace will bring back some very sweet memories.

Lisa is in Florida tonight, enjoying the warmth and beauty there, one of the perks of her job.  I sent her a picture of the fire, sans beer, just to let her know that it reminds me of her.

It’s a good thing I have her.  Otherwise, my life would suck.  One of the reasons that beer is in my hand is that I just need to be numb tonight, my job experience of the day just making me want to escape for a while.  I like my new job.  Don’t get me wrong.  One of the reasons I like my job is that it is non stop busy, which I prefer over twiddling my thumbs.  It’s also busy in a non stress free way, a change from the job I held for nearly 25 years, a job that sent me to the hospital from stress one day, my face so ashen that my supervisor insisted that I let him call an ambulance.  My previous job had me facing so many unrealistic deadlines and greedy territory managers that I eventually burned out in a very dramatic fashion.  Today, I had a territory manager go after me in a similar way and it brought me back to that stress from my old job.  I won’t go into details.  Let’s just say my day started with an email from the guy and it destroyed the productivity I had hoped to have for the day.  I do my job very, very well and this guy nitpicked line by line a proposal he had rudely insisted yesterday that I expedite.  I complied, and I was not thanked.

It would have been easier to take, I think, had I not been dealing with more drama from my ex.  My new job, a job I accepted last August with a $6000 pay cut, largely because my current employer had decided they could no longer pay me and cut my pay in half.  There was no time frame for when my pay would return to normal.  So I took the job offer, a company that had been courting me for a few years, even though I would be getting paid less.  I would be getting paid, the important thing.  When I took the new job, I called my lawyer and asked him what I should do about paying the monthly maintenance.  He suggested I try to stay out of court with my ex, instead asking her to allow me to adjust my monthly maintenance to her due to the cut in pay.

She said no.  That should be no surprise, I guess.

I have managed to pay the full amount since then.. until December.  She actually texted me and asked her if I could pay her early because she needed to pay her car payment.  I told her that I couldn’t pay the full amount, would have to pay her $100 less, which I did.  What slapped me in the face was when my son came home after spending Christmas day with her, with several very expensive gifts she had given to him.  My gift to him was a relatively cheap coffee maker, all I could afford.  I felt extremely less than, and a little bit angry.  She lives with her sister, doesn’t pay rent, didn’t really need the money from me for her bills.  She needed the money to pay for the expensive gifts.

The maintenance payment is nearly $900 per month.  It’s tough for me.  Most weeks, I barely have enough to buy groceries after paying my bills, much less have anything for myself.  It’s tough, but I knew it would be.  That is reality, but it doesn’t stop me from being a bit depressed.  I have nothing to show for my hard work and I hate it.  When I have hard days at work, like today, it affects my attitude.  Why work so hard when I literally have nothing despite my efforts?

I have been talking to my ex, asking her to consider lowering the monthly maintenance.  I have warned her that it is getting tough to pay her.  So, when I had to pay her this month, she should not have been surprised.  When it came time to pay her this past weekend, I only had $500 to give to her.  That is what I sent to her.

She is not taking it well.  I imagine that soon I will be in court, an expense I can’t afford.

No wonder many men end up hating their ex wife.  No wonder so many men end up moving in with someone.  I understand it now.  It’s a matter of survival.  No wonder many men die an early death.  The stress kills them.

In the meantime, I will sit by the fire, drink myself numb.  One consolation — tomorrow is work from home…..

 

Just a number?

October 3 will never be just a date on the calendar to me.  Never will that date represent just a number.  Even though the counter stopped nearly two years ago, in my heart and mind it will always keep running.  If the last two years have been represent of what the future holds, I will always approach the day with a bit of tentative glee, as if it still means something to me, as if I still need to celebrate the day.  It comes now and I don’t know what to do with it.  Should I reach out to her, let her know that I still hold some tenderness, or should I just let it go?

Last week would have been 27 years.  Technically, we made it to 25 years, although the 25th year wasn’t celebrated.  We were 6 weeks away from finalizing our divorce.

I am thankful for the memories of that first day.  Just a few moments ago, I read a friend’s blog that showed her in her wedding dress, willowy and sweet like my wife was that day.  That day, that week, may have been the only time in those 25 years that I was her focus, the only one she wanted.  And, yes, I remember what it was like to make love to her on our wedding night, unwrapping that innocent white package that was solely mine.  I really don’t think there has ever been anything so wonderful, nothing that will ever compare to the ecstasy I/we experienced, the joy of total surrender a unique gift.  I should apologize to the one who will or may come after.  That moment can only be experienced once, perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of divorce.  The sadness of knowing that it really is intended to be shared again within marriage is a reality to me now.  I wish that epiphany to be false.

Fateful Day

I wish I had more time to write today.  I have to leave for work in a few minutes.  Just a few thoughts on this day, what would have been the 27th wedding anniversary.  This week, as the day has approached, I have had various thoughts about my wife, none of them tender, mostly just the typical guards of why I needed to be away from her.  They are true, reasons and red flags that started almost immediately from day one of our marriage.  As many people say, I wish I had taken more time to get to know her.  I wouldn’t be sitting in front of my computer keyboards, typing about how I feel about being divorced.  It sucks and it doesn’t.  Many people in the same position as I am can relate.

She texted me last night, asked me to send our son more money.  I have sent him close to $400 in the past few weeks, something I am not sure she is aware of.  When I asked her if she has sent him money this week, something I asked to gauge how much money he has been sent, she refused to respond.  I wasn’t asking to accuse, I was asking to see how he is spending his money and use it as a way to encourage him to spend his money more wisely.  She doesn’t want to do that.  Her mode has always been to just give, not do the sometimes difficult task of teaching.   That mode was one of the factors that destroyed our relationship.

Time to go.  Dang.  I have more thoughts!

First Weekend Without….

I didn’t know what to expect this weekend.  After all, for over a year, almost every Saturday evening has been with D.  The past few months, that Saturday evening has extended into Sunday evening.  Companionship has not been an question mark in my life for a while, at least not on the weekend.  That changed a few days ago, a decision I made, a decision I made logically.  The potential for let down definitely was huge.

I just have to say that the decision to break up was tough.  I didn’t know if I was making the right decision, even though the reasons were obvious.  Who gives up a relationship that is good, that meets their needs, with someone they really care for?  I did.  I knew it would hurt her and it did.  She has let me know that through multiple texts, texts that were intended to both let me know that she is hurt and also to get a response from me.  I hated ignoring her, but I did.  She sent me texts late into the night on Wednesday night, when we broke up, on Thursday night twice, and twice last night.  I feel bad, but I also know that the decision was the correct decision.

So how did my weekend go?

Friday evening was “therapy” night at a local craft brewery with my friends Jim and John.  They both were itching to know what happened.  Jim had also cut ties with Amy, a woman who is a potential girlfriend but also with too much risk.  He needed to cut ties with Amy while he reconnects with Barb, his ex fiancé.  John is still dealing with the angst from his new divorce.  Thank goodness I rode when I got home from work because I needed the extra calories.  Four beers, spread out over four hours.  We had a good time.  A group of women having a girl’s night out kept buying us rounds!

Saturday morning greeted me with snow.  That meant one thing — I got to try out my new fat bike in the snow.  I got to the trails at 9 AM, rode the freshly fallen flakes by myself for 45 minutes, went back to the parking lot to find my friends Greg and Ernesto.  When I finally left, I looked at the clock in my car as I pulled out of the trailhead parking lot.  It was 1 PM!  What a fun morning.  My “new” fat bike is an absolute blast to ride.  We rode all morning with the snow falling around us in the woods — and it was an experience beyond compare!

I cleaned the bike up when I got home, took a shower, then hit the couch to recover.  Normally, I would spend the afternoon getting ready for my time with D.  What a relief to be able to decompress, rest, and do absolutely nothing!  Don’t get me wrong, I felt a little let down, but I also had Saturday evening to look forward to.  Can anyone say playoff NFL football?

I can.  Jim cooked an excellent vegan chili, had a nicely stocked fridge full of various beers while we watched the Cowboys play the Rams.  We spent a lot of time shooting the breeze, planning for the next bike riding season as well.  Jim had a 14% ABV beer that I could only sip, but it mellowed me like nothing else.  The Cowboys lost, but it was indeed another good evening.  John and Jim are proving to be really good friends.  What else do I need?

This morning was my first time in a while at church without D.  I didn’t know what to expect, didn’t know what kind of questions I would get.  It was a wonderful morning, spent sitting with my friend, Liz, and her husband.  Liz is a friend from my high school days, someone who watched me through my days of ‘celebrity’ at the church.  I was an actor in sketches as well as a musician and I think she got a kick out of saying she knew me when.  Her husband threatened to separate us during the service as we were chatting like teenagers.  He took a picture of us after the service was over — and it was obvious we were having a good time.  After years of seeing each other at church service, Liz and her husband have sold their house and are setting off on an adventure.  He has a job, but they don’t know where they are going to live, don’t know exactly how they are going to get to their new home.  I got to share their last time at church, spent some time sharing memories with them after the service.  Both are great friends.  Liz posted our picture on her FB, commented on what a nice and wonderful guy I am.  It made me feel appreciated.  She also wants me to get in touch with a former classmate, a woman who I absolutely idolized back in high school, who just happened to leave a heart comment on our picture!

 

I got home from church around 11 AM.  The day was sunny, still pleasantly cold so that the snow was not melting.  I ate a quick lunch (leftover lemon garlic chicken alfredo — my best creation in a long time), vegetated to The Office reruns for a little bit, then donned my winter cycling togs again.  No way was I going to miss the opportunity.  If I was with D, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to ride.  Just minutes from my front door are beautiful forest preserves.  The fat bike got me out into the snow covered woods and prairies.  Words can not express how wonderful the ride was.  I should have taken more pictures.  On my way back from the marsh, I passed a family of four riding their horses together.  I asked permission before I passed, lest I spook the horses with my bicycle, then enjoyed chatting with the family as I went by.  Their were four mares, plus a pygmy Shetland pony on tow.  I loved it!  The ride on the snow was quite the workout, but wonderful in many ways.  That bike floats over the snow!

When I got home, pleasantly tired and happy from the ride, I cleaned up the bike.  Snow can be brutal to a bike, even a bike made to ride on the snow.  After a brief wipe down, I stashed the bike in my garage, then pulled my daughter’s car out for a quick drive.  I am storing her car this winter while she lives in Turkey, so it needs to be driven now and then.  I pulled out of my condominium development, drove the short mile to my old house.  Every once in a while, usually when giving my daughter’s car its ‘exercise’, I like to check out my old neighborhood.  I also like to see if my old neighbor, JC, is out.  He was.  He invited me to join him for a drink at the local watering hole, seconds away from my condo.  I went home, showered, then met him there.  JC was a good friend when I was his neighbor, seems to like seeing me, bought me several rounds (I both like and don’t like that — I am trying to drink less).  It was a good time.  We both stayed at the bar longer than we planned.

There is my weekend.  It’s not what I expected.  While I expect there will be lonely, excruciatingly painfully quiet weekends, this one was very good.  Friends are a gift from God.  🙂

 

A Powerful Word

I remember vividly the moment I first heard the word ‘divorce’ come from my wife’s lips — the time of day, where we each were standing, the light in the room — and I remember even more how hearing that word made me feel in the moments that followed.  Even though the word was not spoken with finality, it felt as if an evil spell had just been cast on me, on us.  From that day on, our relationship would never be the same.  Just the utterance changed the way I looked at our marriage.  As I look back, I know that she was expressing what she had been thinking for a while, had even shown it to me in the way that she had withdrawn herself from me.  Just to say the word meant that she was serious enough to cross that line.  When she spoke the word, it was not to ask for a divorce, it was to say that if we did not seek counseling we would end up in divorce.

In the months that followed, it was painfully obvious that she was trying to gain control, get me to change and no longer be the wrong that I had become to her over the years.  We went to a counselor.  Ted was not all that good of a counselor, but what he did do was identify that she was holding back, was punishing me for a list of wrongs she would never completely reveal to me.  Our sessions quickly began to focus on her, something she hated.  It was about getting me to change, after all.  When it came down to it, there was nothing that I could change that would satisfy her.  She wanted me to be wrong.  If I was wrong, than her own actions towards me were justified.  We never resolved, never addressed those issues that had created those walls.

I am not going to say that I am perfect or was perfect.  I wasn’t.  Prior to the fight that brought the word ‘divorce’ into our marriage, I had been trying to deal head on with the disrespect I was feeling from her, lost the battle and my own behavior towards her had started to show it.  I hated it then, I hate it just as much now.

Perhaps the worst part of hearing the word ‘divorce’ from my wife, even in the context that she used the word, was knowing that she had thought about it.  In that moment, she handed me the apple, asked me to take a bite, and my eyes were opened to the knowledge it contained.  I suddenly realized how broken our marriage had become.  Oddly, it still took close to eight years before divorce became an option I would consider.  Once the thought of divorce entered my mind, that demon haunted me and took me over.  I struggled and fought against that demon.  I thought if I fought hard enough, found a way to resist, then I would win.

I tried to find help.  The company I worked for had a counselor on staff, with his own office, an indication of the screwed up mess the company I worked for had become.  It didn’t help that both my job and my marriage were failing at the same time, but it gave me an excuse to see that counselor.  He turned out to be more interested in protecting the company from harm than in actually helping.  Even then, he did listen, but he seemed more interested in getting me to the point of accepting that I was headed for divorce.  I needed more than that.  I wanted to fight the demon, not accept the demon.

My church pastor wasn’t willing to talk to me, something very sad.  I needed someone who would listen to me, help me spiritually and help me resist that demon.  It wasn’t that I needed advice or someone to guide me through the scriptures that deal with divorce.  I could and did do that myself.  I needed someone to really listen.  He instead suggested a counselor who would give me a 30 minute session for free.  Ummm… thanks.  Part of my problem was that I had a wife who didn’t trust me enough to budget.  I couldn’t afford a counselor!

I called Focus on the Family’s help line one evening when the despair was so overwhelming I couldn’t stand it.  What I found out that FOTF is too busy to really offer much besides a prayer and recommendation to contact a counselor.  The person I talked to wasn’t interested in talking me off the divorce ledge.  He only was allowed to give me a few minutes.  That phone call did get me on their email list, which means I get emails from Focus, trying to sell me a book or some other thing they are selling.  The email from Focus on the Family I received yesterday, reminding me there was still time to make a year end donation to their so called ministry, was what inspired today’s blog entry.

It’s really difficult for middle class, middle aged, Christian men to find help.. at least that what I thought at the time.  That really is not the case, but for many men that is the case.  No wonder some men, as a means of coping with a marriage that does nothing for them, resort to behaviors and addictions that destroy them.  Those demons lurk and take over greedily.  My story, even though I eventually did divorce, does not include those demons.  Eventually, I decided to lean on two friends, John and Jim, who listened to me, checked up on me, prayed with and for me.  I had supported each of them through their own times of struggle with divorce.  They were more than happy to help, when I finally let down my guard with them and sought them out.  Today, they are two of my best friends.  Right now, we get together at least once a week, share our lives.  It’s pretty cool.

2018 was my first full year as a divorced man.  If the year showed me anything, it is that life doesn’t have to suck.  It’s fun.  It’s full of friends and family who love me.. and that I love.  I started the year going to Florida with my daughter, watched her graduate from college then start an adventure teaching music in Turkey.  She honors me, that too a reason to hope.  My son took steps forward with me, then a few back, then closed out the year by taking some big steps on Christmas with me as well as my family.

2019 looks bright.  I can’t wait to see what this year is going to bring!

 

Social.. er.. “Butterfly?”

DAD!  (tug tug tug) can we go now?  Please?

So was the typical dance with my children, never tolerant of my desire to connect with my friends at church.  More often than not, if I stopped to talk to someone in the large lobby after I picked them up from their classes, they immediately began their quest to drag me out the door.  They weren’t subtle about it, they were children after all, they were blatant about it.  Their mother was the same way, often asking me why it was so important me to talk to anyone and everyone.  She should have understood.  In my ‘other life’ before I had met her, I had been a church youth pastor, so mingling with people was part of my job — the easiest and usually the most pleasant task associated with my job.  I am the offspring of two extroverts, their wine of their influence something I had been drinking for my entire life, a way I am accustomed to and prefer.  Her father was also a pastor (a missionary), so there was some angst in her from watching the people in their church take her father away from her.  It was true, even was something he had told me about as we talked about her life before she had met me.  A shy and private girl, assuming the far too public role as the pastor’s daughter had been difficult for her.

When she met me, I was the central member of the theatre company at a new church, integral to their worship services.  Our company was small in its infancy, a group that grew along with the church.  Eventually, when church attendance blossomed into the thousands each week, staff was added to produce and grow what our little group had started.  For the first couple of years, we wrote our own sketches tailored to the theme of each service, some comedy (my forte) and others dramatic.  It was a glorious time, fun.  Nearly every week, I was on stage performing our 5-10 minute sketches.  Company members shared the writing, producing, directing tasks and we were a close group, an inevitable bond resulting from the countless hours we spent with each other.  Since we performed for church services in front of a lot of people, we were celebrities of sorts.  I loved the interaction and validation I received from people, even if the sketch was bad (there were a few of those over the years).

A few of my favorite roles —

• Batman, in a sketch called Batman Retires.  Batman had become tired of the hero gig, tossed the keys to Robin and asked him to drive the batmobile.  That sketch was performed at the grand opening service of a new campus for our church.  A panoramic photo was taken of everyone out front after the first service, so I will permanently captured in a church photo in full Batman costume and with Robin at my side.
• Vern, a gruff old retiree who sat out on the front porch with his old work buddy, Elmer.  In our first sketch, Vern gave a speech about ‘Merica while Elmer played his harmonica in the background.  Our characters were popular and several sketches were written for those characters as a result.
• Shelley Levine.  We performed a watered down version of Glengarry Glen Ross for services one weekend.  I had to memorize a large script for the 50 minute performance in about a week, with two weeks of rehearsal.  It was a dramatic role for me, and a change from the comedic roles people were used to seeing from me.
• Restaurant patron at a restaurant called L’eftovre that served only, as one might guess.. left overs.  I wrote the sketch, didn’t really want to perform it because I wanted to watch it, but was cast in it.  There was a snotty waiter (of course) and I really wanted that role but didn’t get it.  One of my lines was a little rude and cut by the staff who reviewed/approved the script — a reference to the Donner party.  I loved hearing the laughs as the sketch was performed, blushed when given credit as the writer.

When my wife met me, she met me backstage after I had performed a sketch.  She played guitar in the worship band.  Our friends were mostly friends from church, friends we knew from bible studies and my friends from the theater group.  When we did things we those groups, she preferred the bible study groups, where she had made one or two close friends.  If we were at a party her close friends did not attend, we usually left early at her request.  As our marriage progressed, she became less and less willing to socialize, often hedged getting ready to the tune of being 2 or more hours late to meet friends.  For a guy who loves being around people and friends, that killed me.

It’s ironic, I suppose, that in the year since the separation and divorce, my friends and group of friends have emerged as a significant part of my life, a key part of the recovery I am experiencing.  D has noticed that.  She even knows my social schedule a little — Friday morning breakfast with the guys, Friday evening “therapy” with Jim and John, bikes with a number of regulars, dinner with J and M, nights out with S and S, beer study on Thursday nights, concerts with B and R.  When she goes to church with me, she knows that we are going to sit with friends and socialize afterwards.  I may lament D, but she does well with my friends, although she gets a little jealous of the time I spend with them.  Too bad she doesn’t have more time available.

Life has changed, gone back to my way.  I like it.