the other day i was chatting with my new boss, and happened to mention my ex-husband.  she was surprised to learn that i’d been married before, but even more so that i was proud of having been divorced.  it may sound strange to hear someone use the word “proud” in relation to having been divorced, but it’s the only way to describe how i’ve come to feel about it.

g and i got together in 1991 when we were both 19.  we got engaged after only a few short weeks of knowing each other, but didn’t actually get married until 5 years later.  i was 24.  four years later, we were divorced.  i was 28, and we’d been together nearly one-third of my life.  we parted as friends who still cared about each other, but we went our separate ways.  he took the cats and i kept the dog.

what went wrong?  the old cliche  – we were too young when we got together, and we grew up to be different people than we’d expected.  it was no one’s fault -though i was the one who initiated the divorce- but that didn’t make it any less painful.  my parents had divorced very bitterly after 20 years of marriage, and i had sworn that would never happen to me.  i would never get divorced.  i would never allow my marriage to crumble.

and yet it did.  no amount of therapy or force of will could stop it – we changed, and our relationship changed.  as committed as we were to staying together, we couldn’t make it work.  it felt like a deeply personal failure.

and that’s exactly how i viewed it initially: a colossal failure.  i’d chosen wrong.  i’d been unable to fix it.  i’d wasted 9 years of my life.  i’d invested 9 years in something which was fundamentally broken, then had nothing to show for it except heartache and a decree absolute.  i was desolate.

and then at my 30th birthday, something shifted.  g came to my birthday party as a surprise, and brought me a lovely kaleidoscope as a gift, knowing that i collected them.  i remember looking at him thinking: this is a good man, someone kind and caring.  after everything we’ve been through, how could i say my time with him was wasted?  for nearly nine years, i’d loved him and he’d loved me – how could i ever consider that a failure?  expressing regret was like wishing i hadn’t had that experience.  and while there were some unhappy times, there was a lot of good, too – memories that i wouldn’t trade for anything.  and even for all the pain of our breakup, there was also a strength that i’d found that i didn’t know i had.  how could i possibly be sorry for any of that?

it was a turning point.  for the first time, i was able to shed the shame i’d associated with being divorced, the guilt that i’d been carrying around that somehow i hadn’t been a good enough wife to make it work.  the fear that i was faulty and doomed to loneliness.  granting myself that acceptance allowed me to let go of the sadness and bitterness.  i began instead to think of my relationship (and its end) in term of the lessons i’d learned about myself and marriage, and not just about the mistakes i’d made.  i began to measure the growth i’d gone through – i’d figured out so much about who i was, and who i wanted to be.  more than that, i was able to acknowledge that my relationship with g had had a profound impact on me – that those years and experiences were a part of me that i could not, and did not want to, divorce myself from.  they made up part of who i was – and when it came down to it, i really liked who i was.

eight years later, g and i are still in touch to this day.  he’s engaged to be remarried, and i’ve been remarried for a few years now.  i credit much of the solidity of my current relationship to what i learned from being with g – and in that way, i view my first marriage as a success.  we may not have been right for each other, but i am glad for the years that we were together, because both our marriage and our divorce truly did make me a better person.  and so i say these days that i am proud to be divorced.  while i wouldn’t wish for anyone else to have to go through it, ultimately it was good for both of us.

we didn’t fail at marriage – we succeeded at finding a new future that was right for us.  as corny as that may sound, i wouldn’t have it any other way.

wolf parade – grounds for divorce

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