1: The Separation & Divorce
Ugh.
This fucking chapter is too incredibly horrible to birth yet. It really is like ripping my heart out through my ass.
AWKWARD PAUSE
OK, I might as well start by laying out the four phases of this.
Before the Separation
Before the separation, there were years of trying to wrangle the pain and suffering S felt about our relationship. The (outwardly) cyclical nature of her doubts and feelings of disconnection started to have a much stronger amplitude. This span of time was marked for me as a growing recognition that it was not really about me, but still trying desperately to find some way to help the situation. It was also in this time frame that we started couples counselling.
The couples counselling was initiated after S admitted that she had started contemplating divorce. Which was hard to take entirely seriously, as S is a creature made one trillion percent out of hyperbole. The reason for the hyperbole is perhaps a key to her inner struggles, but that's not relevant here. We went to a fabulous couples therapist, and proceeded to do some incredibly important work demystifying several unspoken aspects of our relationship.
Both S and myself suffer from the problem of being very smart, such that we tend to default to assuming that we are right. There are things about our interpersonal communication that we used to assume, but were deeply wrong about. Being quiet, for me, was translated as collecting emotional energy and self-soothing. Being quiet, for S, was translated as being rejecting. I am a sensitive being, and am ashamed of how readily tears will spring from my eyes. S thought I was being intentionally manipulative when I burst into tears, and virtually never cried around me. Asking simple questions about someone is seen by S as a basic demonstration of interest and inclusion. The same questions landed with me as being intrusive and rude, with the assumption that they would be offered if they wanted to share. There are other things, too, but the general trend was the usurping of communication by reflexive assumptions. And once those were more explicitly known, we were able to work more fruitfully with each other.
Sadly, it also meant that we could also correctly interpret each other as being rejecting or rude. Which slowly returned to being more common later on.
This was also the era where I felt hopeful about growing my communication skills to address both needs in our marriage, and also my ambitions at work. So I threw myself into personal therapy with that as the focus, and took every free class my company has to offer relating to communication and interactions. At home and at work I practiced being present and intentional as much as possible. I remain very proud of how much I developed and grew as a result.
Our couples therapy got consumed by diversions with regard to S's work stress, which in turn was a convenient scapegoat as a relationship stressor. Our couples therapy petered out for lack of pressing need. Or so it felt to me.
Separating In Theory
There had been several hypothetical conversations about what it would mean to separate occasionally before 2018, generally grinding down under the perceived misery of such alternatives. But then in 2018, S sat me down, and told me that we needed to be separated. That she had just been feeling too bad, and that she had been trying hard enough for long enough, and that she was done.
It broke me. Utterly.
The emotional pain was only occasionally overtaken by the confusion for the first long while. The sense of loss was life altering. Underneath countless questions about who I was, and what I could be, and how to even exist in a world where every aspect of my belonging was being undone, was the burning pain of being un-chosen.
We let it sit like that. For what felt like a long time. My only job was to hold it. The superficial life of work and parenting and having adventures with friends continued without this being acknowledged. Because I couldn't. At all. Existing as a secretly smoking ruin of myself took everything I had.
Gradually, S and I started talking about what it would mean. How it would need things to change, and what was necessary for mindfully moving forward. It was hard to face all the things I was losing, and couldn't bear to let my time with the kids go. Yet the core of my identity as a dad, which I feel is absolutely fundamental to my sense of self, was completely intermingled with my identity as a dedicated husband. This meant a lot of time had to be spent trying to navigate how to remain fully integrated as a dad while unraveling my connections to S.
I felt like a Clayton-shaped skin, holding shattered Clayton-fragments inside. The metaphorical process of reaching inside to figure out what there was and where the broken edges were was difficult and slow. And I hurt myself on the sharp edges. But I could see that even though I was broken, I was still essentially myself - I just needed to put myself back together. It would take time, but if I did it well it could be a good thing.
This is when I stumbled across the concept of Kintsugi, and made it emblematic of my process. To know where I broke, and instead of hiding the fractures to mend them in a meaningful and honouring way. So that when I am eventually done, not only would I be completely intact again but also able to know all of the lessons I can possibly learn from my challenges.
While noble-sounding and hopeful-seeming, progress was actually very slow. S and I had a stupid fight where we completely mis-understood each other and caused horrific damage to our relationship that took a long time to reconcile back into a working partnership for co-parenting and the home. We wrangled all kinds of hair-brained schemes for how to co-exist while we figured out what we would eventually do. We started couples counselling in an effort to have some objective moderation of what we were processing.
In hindsight, the whole process was complicated by the fact that we are both loving, kind people. It is simply easier to polarize and vilify, and let the social inertia of stereotypical break-up do all the work while we could just go along for the ride. Instead we both saw too much value in staying connected, as family, with our kids being central. We knew we wanted to stay as amiable as possible, because of how much we both like and respect each other. But these are all complications that I do not regret, even though they were all hard to face individually.
One of the complications was that, with the burden of guilt regarding our marriage lifted from her shoulders, S was able to be relaxed and friendly with me again sometimes. We had a small renaissance of accord, and there were many joyous family events and adventures that were only possible because of our collaboration.
Indeed, we had plans to establish more physical separation, as is typical. But when the date for making it happen grew nearer, we both backed away from the idea because of how much we loved the integrated feeling of the family unit in the home. So we negotiated a careful co-habitation to enable ongoing stability for the kids and to allow us a feeling of full-time access to the family and all the mutual support that allows.
It was all bittersweet. Because even though I had reasons to hope for a possible re-unification, S was also increasingly being separate. More time away with friends, more things done without coordination or even notification, and decreasing apparent need to understand my feelings. Plus S was changing in ways that felt profoundly disconnecting - conversion to Catholicism, increased interest in alcohol, even more erratic spending. That last point should be moderated by also pointing out that I ordered my Tesla in this same timeframe, which even though had a long overt build-up and planning was finally executed without S feeling like she could object, and therefore resented.
Most notably, this was also when S developed a strong interest in another man. It was technically innocent.
Deciding On Divorce
Then S decided that she didn't want her interest in the other man to be innocent any more. She asked for a divorce, specifically to open up a space to allow the relationship to flower. She has clarified that it wasn't this relationship in particular that she wanted to be open to, but rather any relationship other than our marriage. Maybe that makes some difference to her - it mostly just makes me feel worse.
It took me a while to process it. The unreality of it persisted unshakably. I felt like I was stunned, but maybe it was a kind of denial. There was just enough cognition to agree to re-start individual therapy. Which was good, because I was doing a starkly terrible job of taking care of myself emotionally.
Understanding started leaking in as S's relationship grew. Jealousy tripped all my circuits and rage ruled my skull for a couple days after their first kiss. I was such a fucking moron. I writhed and suffered every day, tortured by the increasing silence and distance from S, punctuated by horrific feelings of betrayal whenever a spark of knowledge about the relationship burned a new hole in my soul.
Far more difficult was seeing her discover a love unlike what we had shared. She flowered with a beautiful transformation into a hopeful, trying partner - to someone else. Her dedication and effort demanded my respect, even as it cast in sickening relief just how half-assed her efforts had been with me. She radiated with creativity, writing poetry and love letters through the night. Jealousy of a new kind sprouted, and a guilt that perhaps I had only been in the way.
Full realization came eventually, even for someone as utterly loyal fucking stupid as I seem to be. Alone together one last time, paddling a canoe on a glass-smooth lake at sunrise under the mountain dusted by my father's ashes, I told her I let her go. That she was free.
At least, I really meant it to be so. My fervent hope is that that lovely image of parting is what is held and remembered. Instead of the messy ugly bullshit I put myself and her through regularly afterwards as I worked to move on. This is the dovetail to the Dating section, where I struck out for some new connections instead of feeling like a victim and an asshole all the time. It's quite a thing to strive to be just a fool. But I worked really hard at it, and found enough peace and space in myself to navigate forward. Net forward; mostly forward.
Breaking Up The Home
The fundamental core of maintaining the family home as a shared residence was based on a very lovely mutual love of how we all function together. The seamless handoff of parenting and household duties made everything work better, and let us enjoy how we engaged with the family. It really was a worthwhile thing to hang onto for as long as possible.
Plus, my own needs were simple, and usually have been. I had a few places where I cache my stuff, but mostly I just nomadically occupied portions of the shared space to do all my things. The previously proposed "nesting" scheme where we would take turns being at some apartment just felt like having to be excluded.
But as I processed the divorce, I could not keep my head above the waters of anger and resentment. Even though I feel like I had processed the worst of the pain, and was past that, this was new. The Chestnut house became a trap. It felt like being jammed headfirst in the anus of the bloated, rotting corpse of my old hopes and dreams.
I clung onto that core hope of the shared family aspect. Probably harder than was wise. I tried coping by distracting myself with beautiful women, as the reigning king of the friendzone. But I did not do well, overall. A lot of lessons about my own limits were faced, and failed, but I like to think that I learned from them.
Ultimately, S saved us from my leaky torment by proposing to buy me out of the Chestnut house. To let me have some space, but also with the understanding that we keep the kids mostly at Chestnut and that I would be able to continue being a nearly-full-time parent.
This felt like necessary destruction, but painful nonetheless. I re-experienced a sense of betrayal, of being forced out, even though I knew it was what I would probably want overall for my own sake. S, in turn, seemed to run afoul of the full pain of losing me in a way that she had not yet processed. It remains very hard, but it is clearly the path forward from where we actually are. Our friendship is battered, but I have hopes of it growing again after being given some space. Our sense of being family is intact, as complicated as that is.
Obviously, this is still in process. A future update will doubtlessly be needed...
Forsaken Beloved
S expressed it in her own way:
