25th wedding anniversaries and helping divorced friends

It was bound to happen. I was in eight weddings and had forty friends who got married in 1984-1985. Naturally that means the last two years on Facebook have been minefields of silver anniversary well-wishes. Jon and I limped across our finish line at 25 years—no party, no exotic cruise, no trip to Greece (that was our goal).

How can I explain what it feels like to watch those go by? One of my college friends congratulated a mutual celebrating friend on her wall "We celebrated our 25th last year. Isn't Jesus good to keep us together no matter what?" and I felt stupid reading it. Did Jesus forget about us? He could only hold so many marriages together and we just happened to be one of the ones he skipped? And what is the implication? That all marriages that have Jesus will be kept together?

It's not that I'm unhappy that other marriages are celebrating their accumulation of years. It's just that the tallying up is over for me. I feel like I'm a high school drop out watching people go off to college. Like I tied my tubes and everyone is having baby showers. Like I foreclosed on my house while all my friends are burning their paid-in-full mortgages.

Not only that, I'm hanging out with a vulnerable crowd. There's no path marked for how to support someone going through divorce. If your spouse dies, people know what to do. They make meals, they come to the funeral, they tell you all the wonderful things they remember about your spouse, they remind you that it wasn't your fault, they repair your car and house if you lost a husband, they mother your kids if you lost your wife. The deceased spouse becomes "hero-like" in memory, with everyone agreeing that it happened too soon, that the person will be missed, that he or she was even better than they actually were, that the marriage partner left behind was lucky to have been married to such a wonderful person...

Divorce doesn't work that way. Everyone wants to identify a villain (whose fault is this tragedy?). Or they want to prove a lack of commitment (whether to Jesus, vows or spouse). They don't know if they should remember good things about the marriage or focus on the bad stuff they now see more clearly. Should you be sad for the person saying, "I'm sorry about your divorce" or should you say, "Good for you! Taking your life back!" Perhaps you always felt like one partner was a jerk and you are relieved for your friend that she's out of a bad situation. Can you say that? Is that disrespectful of marriage as an institution? Or might you even feel like saying, "Idiot! How did you let this happen?" when you discover your friend turned out to be a bad spouse.

I got a wonderful email yesterday from someone who knew me years ago on a homeschooling board. Her sister is going through a horrible divorce. This acquaintance has been reading my blog over the years and wrote to me to find out how she could support her sister during this challenging time. I wish more people asked that question! Unfortunately, I don't have a set of items in a list as advice. But I do have some general principles to keep in mind.

Divorce isn't always horrible. Leaving a troubled marriage (especially at first) feels like relief. Identifying the relief and empathizing with it is a great place to start. Even underscoring it for the person when he or she feels badly about divorce is supportive. You can say stuff like, "It must be nice to wake up in the morning and know that all the thoughts in your head are yours, that no one else is wandering around in your mind telling you what to think or do or be." You can say more stuff like, "Isn't it a relief to finally be free of pressure, doubt, control, betrayal, hurt, violence, game-playing, cruelty, blame (pick one)?"

Instead of focusing on how hard it is to be divorced (as though that is the only narrative that goes with divorce), focus on the benefits and help your friend remember them. "You get a second-chance at making a great life" and especially for those leaving long-term marriages you can say, "You'll fit two lifetimes into one! What will you do with this gift of a second 25-30 years?"

Validate the personal journey that led to this moment: "I know and trust you, so if you say a divorce is the right thing for your family, then that's all I need to know. How can I help?"

It's also supportive to identify the strengths in the divorcing person. It takes a lot of courage to walk through the legalities of divorce. Planning a wedding is all fantasy, romance and ceremony. Executing a divorce is paperwork, courtrooms and colorless legal protocols. Some of the strengths necessary: Staying vertical when you're in grief; carrying on with children and chores despite losing a partner (or conversely, not getting to live with those children any more and learning to live with loneliness); starting a new career or working a new job or going back to school or increasing one's work load; mastering the legal process and understanding it; facing the scrutiny of others and not giving in to it.

Which leads me to the most heartfelt point. There's no way around some sense of failure when divorcing. So if you are one of those good friends in a divorcing person's life, be someone who highlights successes: success at getting out of what was not a healthy situation, success at filing paperwork, success at navigating these choppy waters with kids, successfully staying married during years of challenge, success at raising children, successfully facing hard truths... Divorce isn't a big invalidation stamp, either. There are often plenty of happy memories in divorcing families. These don't need to be rewritten. They need to be embraced as part of the complexity of life.

Lastly, the best thing about divorce is the opportunity to find what you didn't have before: emotional peace, security, intimacy, optimism for the future, relief from depression or fear or anxiety or abuse, love, partnership, self-respect, maturity, safety. We all want these, married or not. And there are plenty of marriages that get credit for years accumulated that don't have them. Divorcing people are those who say they won't live like that any more. They should get a little credit for that... even on their Facebook walls.

When you forgive (reprise...)

I wrote this post before I ever had any idea I would be a divorced person myself. It's haunting to reread it knowing my own children are now dealing with the complexities of being children of divorce. How quickly things change.

How fragile we are...

There's a thin line that separates the mentally tough from those who've slipped under the rushing waters of panic and anxiety. Brave, successful, "mainstream" people one day find themselves clutching their chests and calling 911 when they feel like their hearts will burst, only to discover at the ER that they are suffering a panic attack and their hearts are fine.

Panic is spontaneous. It's not like you plan for panic or even anticipate it. Panic, by its nature, swamps. It's the downpour of unwelcome adrenaline that floods the bloodstream, overwhelming the system like swirling, pulsing waters from a drowning gutter that spill into traffic. The traffic is your life, and suddenly you're barely dog paddling in the rapids, too fast to navigate.

I've been told by numerous friends that when they hit that stretch of deep water, the ordinary stuff of life feels impossible. Usually in the wake of panic, depression sets in. Imagine nearly drowning and then being asked to get back in the water and swim a mile, with a rip tide. That's how it appears to a depressed person—who's lost the life vest and is clinging to a palm tree for stability.

Depression isn't merely a psychological condition, nor is it mostly about the emotions. Apparently biology can trip the wire as easily as stress. When the body gets involved (where food becomes poison, where sleep happens during the day but rarely at night, where shivers and shortness of breath are the new conditions of regular living), depression takes on a very different character than mere sadness, grief, or disappointment. Depression, particularly led by panic, quickly and effectively strips the individual of ordinary tools for living.

I've been emotionally depressed during a few seasons of my life—not ever medically diagnosed, and I've never called the ER myself. Still, I can think back to specific occasions where I let the TV drone all day while I barely supervised my toddler because I couldn't make myself stand up. I've had moments where anxiety spilled from my nerve-endings and it seemed I could send electrical shocks if I touched anyone or anything.

I've had an incredibly challenging pair of years, and it occurred to me recently that it would not have been surprising at all had I had a full scale breakdown at some point. The pressures have been enormous and new, complemented by the kind of pain I never imagined. Yet even with some of the symptoms of depression, I didn't wind up clinically depressed.

I've reflected on why and have become so grateful for my mental fitness, I wanted to list (and pay due gratitude to) the resources that have kept me from drowning:

1. California: I do think there is something to be said for growing up in the navel-gazing capital of the world. I grew up knowing it was important to pay attention to me.
2. Therapy: Similarly, therapy is not stigmatized in my world. It's a given, and it's not a "once-for-all" proposition. Therapeutic tune-ups are part of my mental hygiene. 
3. Nutrition: My mom was one of the original health nuts of the 1970's. I grew up reading labels, not trusting additives and preservatives, and eating lots of fruits and vegetables. I have no appetite for junk food or fast food. It's not even a struggle. It doesn't appeal.
4. Running: Even though I haven't run every year of my life, I've returned to it again and again, particularly during stressful seasons. I know running will be there for me when I need it.
5. Ocean: Which is not in Ohio and has had consequences unpleasant! The ocean sustained me when I felt like the world was falling away from under me. Now I look to the big, open expanse of sky above me. It works too.
6. Friends: Of all textures—the ones I call just about every day who live out of town; the ones I only talk to on chat or email; the ones who fly me places if I need them to; the ones who knew me way back then and validate my today perceptions; the brand new ones who like me as I am now and don't need to care about my past; the local ones who've brought me into their lives; the virtual ones I've never met in person who respect me and share my ideals... Friends are the difference between sanity and losing touch. They have literally preserved my mind, given me saving ideas, and shouldered half the load.
7. Writing: Who knew how important it was to write? I only do it because I can't not. It's how I know what I think. Turns out writing is a chief way to process our internal stuff, and endless processing has saved me from the specter of overpowering phantom-like anxiety. I know the measure of my pain... in lines on a page.
8. Spirituality: Whatever version, whether by the Bible or poetry, through church or grad school, by the intimacy of prayer or the quiet emptying of yoga, a spiritual life has undergirded me as long as I can remember.
9. Fun: I have it, I like it, I go back for more.
10. Mother: And if you go back over the list (1-9), my mom is the Ur-text for all of it. She's 72, hikes, camps, knits, goes to her regular support group meetings, is active in her faith, works out at the gym, eats healthy foods, doesn't have physical complaints, is writing her 74th book (yes, that is seventy-four!), supports her family through acts of kindness and phone calls, gives money, keeps old friends and makes new ones, is optimistic and positive, and looks for the good in people and life. How lucky, blessed, lottery-winning am I to have such a mother!

We've heard it said so many times, we almost stop listening: Take care of yourself. 

I'm realizing today that every age carries with it the stresses of that stage of life (whether you're learning to navigate a high school and open a locker; figuring out how to get a job and repay school loans; adjusting to a new marriage and baby; hanging in there with a partner who is disappointing or challenged; or leaving a long term marriage and making a new life alone). It's easy to take ourselves for granted, believing we can face new challenges without re-upping the supplies we need to survive.

If you don't put oil in the car and it's leaking, eventually you'll burn out the engine and have to rebuild it from scratch.

1-10 is my oil change check list.

Thank you friends, family and online community for being a part of my sanity package. May I be a part of yours too.

The Underground of the Other Half

I got an email last week from someone who knows someone who knows me. She cautiously admitted that she's considering a divorce and had heard that I had been through one (Was that right? she hedged respectfully, non-intrusively, covertly). She wondered if it was okay to ask me about it. I recognized the tone. A familiar tentativeness—trying to determine if the audience will understand that you don't want a divorce but that you might still get one. It's a hard thing to admit out loud in the homeschooling world we come from... that you aren't able to sustain the image of healthy family, and that you feel awful about it, and even embarrassed by it.

She and I talked on the phone today. In that "back from the trenches at different fronts" kind of way, we traded stories, even laughing at what isn't laughable. I got around to asking her what support she has in her life right now. She quipped, "Well I have my non-Christian friends who take me downtown for dinner and drinks. Thank God for them."

Oh that made me laugh. I know just what she means. In the churches we come from, it's almost like two-shall-become-one is not just a spiritual, mystical union, but a fact of identity. When you go back from "couple" to "single," it's hard not to feel like half a person, half a soul, half-saved. While outside the church, people just look at you as, well, you!

I remember years ago when a couple who led our home Bible study group filed for divorce. They were a little older than I am now. The home group disbanded because the husband moved out. At the time, it disturbed me. Why couldn't we carry on with the wife heading up the group? She was still in the house. She hadn't asked her husband to leave her for someone else. But the policy of the church was that "couples" led groups with other couples in them. Sure singles were welcome to participate in the group, but they couldn't lead groups (unless they limited themselves to singles). We all accepted this unwritten code, as though the nature of true spirituality is a married heterosexual pair.

Once you declare that you are more interested in a healthy life than in propping up an institution, the others on that underground railroad find you. It's an interesting community down here. A major shared characteristic is how many have moved away from their original church communities. When they most needed support, they felt abandoned or worse, persecuted. I've heard from women who have had to endure pastors defending violent husbands, calling them repentant or provoked. For what? I can't think that pastors are excusing violent behavior because they, too, are violent (though some may be). I don't think they want wives to be smacked, shoved, slugged, or forcibly restrained, either. So why do some pastors go to such lengths to keep marriages together after a wife finally gets up the courage to admit how bad it's gotten?

My guess is that marriage is so critical to the reputation of the evangelical church (at least the white churches I've been in), they feel the need to protect it at all costs. Successful marriages (in America anyway) have become the chief evidence that the Spirit of God is still a vital force in people's lives. Divorce has become the great evidence that the Spirit of God is lacking in our culture, and consequently, in the lives of individuals who choose it.

Seen that way, no wonder those of us in the divorced camp huddle together in cover of email and get drinks with non-Christian friends away from the suburbs! It's not pleasant to be seen as one who is no longer responsive to God's Spirit... or worse, perhaps was never filled with that Spirit to begin with!

This side of the D word

The matrimonial culture we live in was never so apparent to me until I left it... I've felt ashamed of the times I overlooked another person's unmarried status in my writing, in my thinking, in my self-congratulating pride at being married. But now, I identify with the "single mother" in Toy Story 3. I notice naked, dented ring fingers. I get irritated by announcements of silver anniversaries and the chipper way marrieds toss out "Love you, Babe" on Facebook walls and their friends comment how cute they are together (not ever knowing, even, if that couple is kind, faithful and generous to each other, or secretly enmeshed in verbal terror, infidelity and/or cold, stale, long-term indifference).

The pressure to stay married is tremendous, which is why so many do—long beyond mutual joy, emotional safety and family well-being. The reason so many marrieds think "every" couple has huge fights or deals with cruelty and meanness is that so many of those couples stay married and report that this is what it's like. We tell ourselves that we aren't worse than anyone else... and on we go, putting up with what no one should. We mistake intensity for intimacy.

I've read many of the standard "how to stay married" books and frequently, they aren't in the arena of what is wrong. The deep problems in marriage aren't about money or sex or kids. Often, communication problems aren't really about communication, but a flawed fundamental disposition toward the other person.

Better to ask:

Do the partners revere each other? Do they operate from goodwill and generosity more often than not? Is there the capacity for empathy and mutual understanding? Can both people be themselves—the real person, as he or she is—without being a disappointment or source of ongoing irritation to the other partner? Is the marriage a wellspring of strength and nurturing or is it a relationship of egg-shells and pretending?

In other words, if the advice in marriage books to resolve differences doesn't work, might it be that the issues are more fundamental—not about bedtimes and budgets, but what it takes to provide consistent regard and care, shared power and mutual support? Do the parties esteem each other in both the global ways (who you are in the world is someone I am proud of and admire) and in the tiny, hidden ways (I protect your well-being by my tone of voice, by believing the best of your motives, by hearing your anxiety and fear... and relieving them, by cherishing your friends, habits and interests)?

Anyone who thinks divorce is easy clearly ain't been there, done that. Staying married (even in painful, hurtful marriages) goes with the flow—it's downhill, it's the path of least resistance... at least, until it isn't. No one steps out of the powerful, culturally-approved current of marriage because, "Hey, it's so easy to divorce in our state, and you kind of bug me, so bam! I'm filing." I haven't met that divorced person yet.

And I'm certainly not her.

But I'm also not someone who willingly conforms to the cultural viewpoint of divorce as the Great Epic Tragedy of a Failed Marriage. As a dear friend said to me at one of my low points of self-doubt about my decision, "I'm sorry that you are second-guessing your divorce since it's the healthiest thing you've ever done for yourself and your family."

That was a moment.

But I do get it. No one gets married looking forward to the day you get to get divorced! The best option is not an option anyone wanted.

Still, divorce doesn't have to mean a shipwrecked life. One of my biggest disappointments is that I have to "stop counting the years" as though I'm "out of the race" or am no longer qualified to be a happy, successful family. I decided a few weeks ago that all those years count and if I ever remarry, in my heart I will start at year 26. After all, I have been married 25 years. They were real years of investment. They are simply at an end for now.

One of the lessons of divorce for all involved is that there are some behaviors, some issues that deserve a no tolerance policy even if it means completely overhauling the structure of your family. Divorce makes it possible to extricate oneself from those destructive forces, to build again, to teach one's children that a love relationship must be grounded in deeply committed, honest respect. Anything less is not intimacy; anything less is not what I want to model for my children as a marriage.

Last week on the Bachelorette, we had exhibit A of Jake's emotional abuse of Vienna (that television constructed villian-ness to Jake's good boy image). How odd it was to watch the whole thing flip—suddenly Jake was unmasked as the arrogant, defining, controlling, abusing male to Vienna's inarticulate despair and humiliation. In that flash, I saw something that moved me. This young (widely disliked) woman of 23 had more self-esteem than I had for most of my adult life. She said in effect, "Fame, fortune, my reputation be damned. I won't be with a mean person. I deserve better."

That's what divorce is often about. The culture of marriage sweeps meanness under the rug—we're urged to "deal" with it, to endlessly turn the tiles of the Rubix cube in search of a solved puzzle. There's some idea that if I hear your story and it "doesn't seem that bad to me," then you must be able to deal with it. But there is never any way to convey an atmosphere, a pervading sense, an inner knowing that you are not being respected. The isolated incidents can be untangled and re-imagined, they can be forgiven and left behind. Who hasn't done that ad nauseum in a long term marriage than ends in divorce? What no one can understand without living through it is the way your psyche and spirit are diminished in a slow yellow-wallpaper kind of way that leads to a one-day inner cry of "Enough!"

When that day arrives, divorce is the long lost friend. It's the passage, the ticket to Europe, the remodel of the house, the great chance at a do-over. I know people want to convey sympathy when they say to me that they are sorry. I do get that. What I feel now, though, is that I want people to feel relieved for me, to be optimistic with me, to believe that if this is the choice I made (and they know me), they can't imagine it wouldn't be the right choice for my family despite the enormous pain it creates in the aftermath.

I know that's a tall order. I accept all offers of kindness no matter how packaged. I also know that divorce feels like a contagion. Who wants to get close to it, particularly if your own marriage is one of those challenging ones? I certainly don't "recommend" divorce like a good book or fine wine.

I do, though, stand by one principle over all others:
Your life is your responsibility. Protect (with a mother bear's fierceness) your right (and your children's right) to peace, respect, love and safety. Whatever it takes to achieve these is what it takes. That's all.

When yin and yang are whack

Once I kissed my father good-bye, I hopped in the car for one of my favorite activities in the world: driving up the 101 ("Ventura Highway" of America fame). The ocean erupts on your left as you hit Oxnard and north. The beaches on the way to Santa Barbara are almost close enough to reach out the driver's side window to run your fingers through the surf.

Because California loves me, the sun shone and the clouds skipped town.

I made a quick phone call to my best friend from high school whose home I would stay in that night to give her my ETA. Dana answered, on her way to drinking mimosas with a friend who needed help preparing papers for a custody battle—midlife mess erupting on the phone.

"Aren't you glad your marriage and family life are sane?" I sighed.

Dana paused. "My life is not sane, Julie. We'll talk when you get here."

Thud.

I clicked "end" on my cell, preparing myself for news I immediately knew and didn't want to know.

A little historical context would be helpful right about now. When I was 16, Dana slept over the night my parents announced that my dad would move out. She and I were laughing and talking in my bedroom when my mom called me to the kitchen.

In the too-brightly-lit space, my brother and sister draped themselves over a couple of orange chairs and my mom fiddled with the pink saucepan she'd been given for a wedding gift 17 years earlier. My dad stood awkwardly in front of the sliding glass door, which showed me his back. He made a simple statement: he'd gotten one of those awful apartments with the incessant fruit fly problem over near the Topanga mall. He'd move out in the morning.

No conversation. No discussion. I walked back to my bedroom, a different person than when I'd left it: child of separation. Dana and I didn't laugh. The night was wrecked.

Of all the people in my life today, only a handful knew my parents as a married couple. Dana is one of them. She watched my family, so good, so wholesome, so together, completely fall apart. Her own mother picked up the pieces of my emotional life by serving me plates of the best spaghetti ever made and letting me drink big glasses of wine, even though I was only 16. Dana likes to tell me, "I've never forgiven your parents."

So there I was heading north aware that Dana's news would be of the particularly awful kind. Her daughters in high school and college were facing the very unforgivables I had lived already, at the same ages. And all I could do for any of them was show up, pour wine, and tell Dana that I wouldn't ever forgive her husband for what he'd done to her, either.

In the strange universe of yin and yang, we'd swapped places. Midlife takes no prisoners, apparently.

The Divorce Generation Grows Up

I found this Newsweek article about adult children of divorce through a backtracking link to my Forgiveness post.

What struck me in the first paragraph: this writer is speaking about the San Fernando Valley in California, where I grew up. Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett? They lived up the hill from me while they were married. So did Steve Garvey, and Dennis Weaver was a few cul-de-sacs away. Sarah Vaughn and David Gates both had daughters in my class at Calabasas High. We were the class of 1979, though, not '82 like the article writer. And yes, equally raised on "The Brady Bunch."

Meanwhile, some of the most promising candidates for longterm happy family life in my neck-of-the-stucco-home-woods fell prey to the divorce-epidemic which did seem to start in southern California in the mid-1970s.

It's been more than a quarter century since the Grant High class of '82 donned tuxes and taffeta and danced to Styx's "Come Sail Away" at the senior prom, and nearly four decades have passed since no-fault divorce laws began spreading across the country. In our parents' generation, marriage was still the most powerful social force. In ours, it was divorce. My 44-year-old classmates and I have watched divorce morph from something shocking, even shameful, into a routine fact of American life.

But while it may be a common occurrence, divorce remains a profound experience for those who've lived through it. Researchers have churned out all sorts of depressing statistics about the impact of divorce. Each year, about 1 million children watch their parents split, triple the number in the '50s. These children are twice as likely as their peers to get divorced themselves and more likely to have mental-health problems, studies show. While divorce rates have been dropping—off from their 1981 peak to just 3.6 per 1,000 people in 2006—marriage has also declined sharply, falling to 7.3 per 1,000 people in 2006 from 10.6 in 1970. Sociologists decry a growing "marriage gap" in which the well educated and better paid are staying married, while the poor are still getting divorced (people with college degrees are half as likely to be divorced or separated as their less-educated peers). And the younger you marry, the more likely you are to get divorced.

Yet all these statistics fail to show the very personal impact of divorce on the individual, or how those effects can change over a lifetime as children of divorce start families of their own. (my bold) When we were growing up, divorce loomed as the ultimate threat to innocence, but what were my peers' feelings about it now that they were adults? What I wanted to know was how divorce had affected our class president and Miss Congeniality, the stoners and the valedictorian. Did it leave them with emotional scars that never healed, or did they go on to lead "normal" lives? Did they wind up in divorce court, or did they achieve the domestic bliss their parents had sought in suburbia? I decided to open my yearbook, pick up the phone and find out. These are their stories—or at least their side of their stories, since each breakup is perceived so differently by every family member.

As I read the article, it struck me that David's curiosity is also mine: what happened to those of us who come from messed up families? I've begun with myself because that's the easiest source material. If you have a similar experience, I'd love to know how it's turning out for you. Please post your "adult child of divorce" reflections in the comments section, if you are so inclined.

What a powerful discussion topic this is turning out to be.

I do know one thing: My sister and I were both so traumatized by our parents' divorce, we've made every effort to stay married for our kids... we don't want them to suffer what we went through. I wonder if growing up with divorce leads some of us to be better married partners... cautionary tale and all of that.

Another excerpt:

Despite the dire predictions, a surprising number of Grant alums wound up in solid marriages. My buddy Chris made good on his high-school promise to let me be best man at his wedding—I gave him my "Fat Albert" lunchbox as a wedding present—and 15 years later he's still happily married, and living with his wife and two daughters near Houston, where he works for a company that conducts pharmaceutical clinical trials. "My life since my parents' divorce has been shaped to a tremendous degree by the goal of avoiding divorce as an adult at all costs," says Chris, whose parents both died of cancer within months of one another in 2001.

In many ways, the urge to stay married is stronger in my classmates' generation than the urge to get divorced was in my parents'. Perhaps this was a backlash to divorce; maybe it was the result of reaching marrying age just as President Reagan's New Conservatism was shaping the social order. Whatever the cause, my married classmates seem more clear-eyed than their '50s forebears.

I would agree with the statement about the Reagan era's social conservatism. Many of us were reacting to what felt like the chaotic moral fall-out of the 1960's that manifested in full color in the 1970's. That's about the only explanation I have for why so many of us have become such hardened conservatives in our forties.