id you ever consider what the worst thing that could happen to you would be? You'd have to be quite a moribund person to mull over such a thing, but perhaps it could be a constructive exercise. Maybe a grizzly bear swiping a sharpened claw through your solar plexus, snagging a whole bunch of your entrails on the way out? Or how about having spikes driven under your fingernails by some hammer-happy Nazi torturer? Perhaps being left in the desert with nothing to drink while the Sun climbs to zenith? Losing your house and all your savings in an economic meltdown? Whatever you decide upon, it will be wrong, because there can be nothing worse than a messy divorce. Divorce is dying but without the relief of death.One of my favourite books is "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's not my usual cup of tea, but I really enjoyed reading it. In fact, I think it's the only book I've ever read twice. She begins the book by describing her rather sudden separation and divorce from her husband, and she uses some wonderful expressions that really spoke to me. She relates a phrase that her friend used to describe divorce. He said that divorce is like "having a really bad car accident every single day for about two years". It is kind of like that; it's like waking up each morning from a wonderful dream (that is, if you can sleep), having those few moments of fading bliss where the dream melts away and then being hit by a half-tonne block of metal on wheels. Sometimes it is a tangible pain. She goes on to describe the breakdown of the relationship between her husband and herself: "The object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion". This is one of the things that hit me hardest. In marriage (or should I say, in a successful marriage), you choose someone to be with for the rest of your life and that person gets to see you at your very best and your very worst, but they stick with you through both. They become part of you, they're like an extension of you. In Christianity (see "R is for Religion") this is emphasised more -- you leave your parents and you cleave to your wife (or husband), becoming one flesh... the spiritual picture is of grafting yourselves together. So that when your marriage breaks up (not that this is condoned by the church) this picture is reversed: flesh is ripped from flesh. What was once part of a single living organism is now two wounded halves. Sometimes it really feels like that, especially when the wound is fresh. And probably you'll always have an ache. As Elizabeth Gilbert so poignantly expresses, that part of you that you once knew intimately becomes unrecognisable and actually starts to detest you, and you it. Whereas when you woke up in the morning to gaze into your lover's eyes, now you're waking up trying to avoid them as much as possible.
I'm not really sure what happened during my separation and divorce. I don't really want to go into too much detail, but now that I look back on what happened I can see that we never really trusted each other and that weakness in our foundation early on lead to the downfall of the house we tried to build. I think my lack of trust in her was kind of twofold, firstly knowing that she'd cheated on a boyfriend before, and the second is my desire to be in control (of *my* own life, more than anyone else's) and so I wanted to do everything myself. Hers was due to a number of factors, not least having a mother who had married and divorced four times, thus giving her two different fathers in her early childhood, and meaning that there were always people coming and going in her life - her fathers, her mother's boyfriends, her mother's friends as she moved from job to job. So even from the moment we met, my ex-wife was subconsciously expecting me to leave her. And probably because of her control issues, she was continually looking for reasons to leave me, to anticipate what was to her something inevitable. But you know, we were kind of grown-ups about all this, in a sense... although in terms of maturity, we were clearly just kids (clearly with hindsight, of course). We realised that we each had these weaknesses, so like all romantics in love, we thought we could overcome these flaws through the power of that love. We couldn't, though. Only three months after getting hitched, she was walking out the door -- she needed space. Of course, being the sap I was, I told her that she should stay in the apartment, and I would go away for a few days. So she got space, she got control, we both convinced her to try it again, so we did... until the next time and the next time and the next time, until the opportunity finally arose for her to leave for good and she did. We couldn't reconcile, and I haven't seen her now for two and a half years.
We had effectively been in the process of separation ever since the day we got married. Probably even before then. I remember a night we were together just a few months before our wedding day. We were talking an evening walk around the neighbourhood, and as usual, we were arguing. Invariably she was the instigator of arguments, and, we reasoned, it was because she wanted to drive me out of my shell into some act of love and adoration of her, in order to reassure her that I did actually love her. I guess this is a grown-up version of the torment-the-boy/girl-we-have-a-crush-on game that many preteens engage in. Sadly this tactic was doomed to failure, since when someone yells at me (and boy, she could yell) I don't automatically think "Oh, how I love you... let me show you". I kind of curl up in a metaphorical ball, kind of foetus-like, and wait until the beating stops. Sometimes it takes a while. Days. This time she had been yelling at me for a couple of hours, as we were walking around the neighbourhood... you know, like couples in love do. I was being very on top of my game at this point, and I was quelling my survival instincts and looking higher, seeing that all this yelling was just a cry of reassurance. I tried to reassure her, I told her that I loved her and was committed to her -- all things she needed to hear -- but this particular evening she went further than she had ever gone before, and said the words "break up". We should have absolutely broken up at that moment; it would have solved so much heartache and embarrassment and humiliation later. Indeed, my head was saying "Yes, we should break up! Here's what you've been waiting for, my boy". But my heart, my incurably romantic heart, was still fixated on this, my first serious relationship, being forever. Stupid heart. Masochistic heart. To cut a long story short, I mollified her rage to some extent, convinced her temporarily that I was serious about her, and gave her some breathing space. So, yes, that was just a few months before our wedding, I seem to recall. My head was also thinking, "If you break up now you can say bye-bye to all those deposits for the photographer, florist, cake, venue, string quartet..." Stupid head.
I've never had to break up with someone before. Relationships just seemed to end, and we both knew it. I didn't know when to make that kind of decision. Do you give it your all until you find yourself married and tearing each other's throats out, or do you have a defined point where you realise that the situation is irretrievable? I guess recognising that point comes with experience. I have some experience now, and I think I could recognise it if I saw it again. For those of you who need a clue: if you find yourself hating someone -- even briefly -- it's probably a good time to break up. If you find yourself a slave to the relationship, it's probably a good sign to get out. If you find that when you're just sitting with your other half there are awkward silences even after you've been together for a while, think carefully about your future together. I mean, there are ups and downs within a relationship, of course, but when you know, you know. Listen to that quiet voice, and don't try to block it out with sugar-coated dreams of the future. You might end up married, and then divorced... with the scars to prove it.
