Monday, December 2, 2013

HOW DO YOU SAY . . .

Welcome to the divorce blog. Evidently, that’s 90% of my content here. Fortunately, the feedback is good. So I’ll just keep on entertaining y’all with the drama that is my life. Let’s just say that it’s a part of my healing process. There’s recovery to be done, and I’m doing it. 

Truth be told, I feel like I should be totally “recovered” by now. On December 3rd—tomorrow— I will have been divorced for a year, for heaven’s sake. I’ve historically been a early achiever, so that should apply to this too, right? Unfortunately, there are deeper-seated issues. In therapy I mostly deal with stuff that doesn’t have much to do with the infidelity nonsense directly, stuff like how I take independence to a stupid level and that my self-talk is so mean it’d make Satan weep. But even though it’s not divorce stuff that hampers me, it is the stuff that I enjoy blogging about. I like using my misfortune to entertain people. As a bonus, some folks find this saga useful in their own lives. (Yes, Dear Reader, it could happen to you. It really could.)

I love letting people in on how Jim and I came to be dating the hell out of each other. (My husband, Mark, was Jim's best friend. He had an affair with Jim's wife, Carrie. Mark and Carrie ran off together. We are all divorced now. Jim and my ex are no longer best friends, or friends at all. Instead, I get Jim to be my best friend.)  Telling that little story is, like, one of my top ten favorites things to do, right up there with eating candy, sleeping in on weekends, getting new yoga clothes, stepping on the scale and not discovering bad news, making mug cakes in the microwave, doing solid typography work, laughing with my sisters, and so on.

I bumble through my days hoping for the opportunity to tell someone about how I nabbed the boyfriend. It's a damned good tale. In fact, I told some medical assistant our story the other day and she said, “Hey, I saw that movie!” “Honey,” I replied, “I'm living that movie.”

Jim and I were talking about such when we got to thinking about what it’s like when our exes answer the how-did-you-get-together? question. So you meet someone new. You introduce your significant other. And, as conversation flows, the new person asks how you two met, how you hooked up.

Does my Wasband, Mark, answer truthfully and say, “Well, this little lady here was my best friend’s wife, and I wanted her, so I took her. I thought, ‘So what if she’s eight years older than me and fourteen older than my wife? So what if she’s got four kids who deserve better than having someone dishonorable like me in their lives? Any shred of morality aside, I want what I want, and I’m taking it!”

Hmm.

Does Boyfriend Jim's ex, Carrie, fess up: “Well, he was a married man, and I was like, ‘Puh-leeze! Who cares?’ so I told him I wanted to kiss him and then I left my four children, got a divorce, and we’ve been confused, fibbing about how unhappy we are, and shacked up ever since!”

Hmm once more.

So my darling and I doubt that our still unmarried exes tell the truth when answering that question. Instead, they will do the one thing they’re excellent at and lie some more.

He may say, “She was in an abusive marriage, and I had to help her get out.”

Of all the answers we’ve actually heard that they give, that’s our favorite, because it’s the funniest. Anyone, and I really do mean anyone, who knows Jim even little bit knows how utterly absurd that is. In fact, it’s so insane that we want them to use that answer here in Reno. See, Jim and I can’t go anywhere in town without running into someone he knows. And all those people like him. At every turn there is a friendly exchange. Everyone likes Jim. It is fact. And everyone knows he’s not abusive. So please, Mark and Carrie, try to pull that off. The failure will provide both my boyfriend and me endless hours of laughter.

Unfortunately though, it's also the kind of answer that will just push Carrie's older kids further and further away from her. Their four kids know the truth about their dad—how loving and kind he is—and it's not going to help mend relationships if their mother and her boyfriend are out spreading self-serving lies about their father. This makes Jim really sad. He tells me so.

As for what the Wasband would say about ending our marriage? Honestly, I can’t find anything interesting there. I was controlling? I was depressed? I was bored with him? Too busy for him? Any of it sounds lame and not nearly as interesting as someone trying to convince all of Jim-loving Reno that he was violent and abusive.

1 comment:

EM said...

Admittedly your crazy divorce story is kind of like the fascinating train wreck that I can't look away from. But I come back to your blog over and over because you makes me laugh. Clearly you've got talent when you can take that horrendous situation and make it sound like comedy. You keep on "dating the hell out of Jim." Best to you both.