Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on The Huffington Post’s Divorce section as part of our regular contributions to their site. Keep checking back for more Sudden Bachelor on Huff Post.
July 4 prompted thoughts of whether divorce is a declaration of independence or a form of slavery.
Whether we wanted divorce or not, if we are getting divorced I submit the goal is independence, at least from our ex. I don’t mean excommunication. In the best divorces communication and cooperation are possible or even necessary if you have kids. Even friendship is attainable if exes are willing to swap amity for antagonism. Easier said than done.
And it’s easier said than done for divorce to be a move toward independence rather than an enslaver. As in most things human, the answer in how you slice it. Factors to consider if you have a will to move your experience of divorce toward independence and away from slavery:
• Are you the ‘dumper’ or dumpee? If the former you may indeed be declaring independence and feel liberated. If the latter you may be enslaved by anger and unrequited love. Or legion injustices may have taken place within the marriage which led to the altar of divorce. There’s no easy fix for these imbalances any more than there is an easy fix for relationships where one partner loves more than the other. This is where one of my divorce mantras comes in: therapy! If you’re a thinking feeling human, divorce sucks whether you’re the instigator or an unwitting victim, whether wrongs were done to you or you were the inflictor of them. If you have any money left, get therapy. Once it’s over (see Huffington Post’s It’s Over: Readers Share The Moment They Knew to help identify the end, amazing and scary!) what you need is independence from the marriage and the tangle of emotions surrounding its end. If there ain’t no cure for love, there is a partial cure to love’s end–therapy. That may well include anti-depressant or mood elevating drugs dispensed by a therapist if needed or useful. Fall back on your friends of course. And meaningless sex if available and tolerable. Formulate a goal to be free of the emotional slavery to the end of the marriage, and treat the path to that freedom like you would a task at work or as you would evaluate a long ago war in a history book. Independence is a right and privilege you will have to work hard for, start with therapy. [click to continue…]
Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on The Huffington Post’s Divorce section as part of our regular contributions to their site. Keep checking back for more Sudden Bachelor on Huff Post.
A lesson I took away from my two divorces: learn to flip the accepted wisdom, no matter how accepted or instinctive it is. Socratic wisdom is the best and hardest kind: knowing what you don’t know. Try hard to choose that over accepted or instinctive choices. Here’s a start:
• Accepted wisdom: Get the best lawyer you can afford and come out swinging, especially if your spouse did something bad like cheat or lie.
• Real wisdom: mediate, mediate, mediate. No matter how aggrieved you are you will feel worse if you drag yourself down into bitter expensive litigation to ‘punish’ your spouse.
• Accepted wisdom: You must get the best divorce deal you can.
• Real wisdom. Overpay. Overgive. As long as you don’t seriously impair your ability to live, good will between spouses especially with kids involved, and avoiding the emotional turmoil of a protracted battle, is worth more than any money or possessions you would take away by haggling hard.
• Accepted wisdom: My pride has been crushed, screw that $%#% I’m mad as hell and I’m going to ride that puppy– because I have no choice.
• Real wisdom: Be more Gandhi than Genghis. Yes your anger is like a freight train if infidelity or other misbehavior is involved, and yes no words and no logic can right that any more than words or logic would have stopped you from loving and marrying the wrong person. But the scorched earth battle you need to fight is against your own instincts, not against your ex. You will be happier for it.
• Accepted wisdom: Divorce is failure and one or both of you should be ashamed of yourselves.
• Real Wisdom: Divorce is evolution. Whatever makes us think we can correctly make lifetime choices like marriage or career when we are, like, babies, even at 30? Without experience of being married the Catch 22 is it’s real hard to choose who to be married to. Admit life is trial and error, move on, evolve. Heresy I know but facts are stubborn things.
• Accepted Wisdom: The kids will get used to it, and are arguably better off without experiencing and ultimately modeling a bad marriage.
• Real wisdom: The kids will hate it. Even in extreme cases of spousal abuse the shattered marriage shatters their sense of stability and home. Does this mitigate against divorce? Yes but ultimately you have to make a very tough decision, whether to put your life and happiness before theirs, it’s that simple and heartbreaking. It’s not wrong to choose that. Just be aware that you will have to put a ton of effort into making your kids feel even marginally ok about it.
What I’m saying in a word is: flip flopping is a bad thing in politics, not necessarily in divorce. If you find a way to flip your natural reaction and the accepted wisdom about divorce as you go through it, you have a better shot at ending up, if not overjoyed, at least not destroyed.
We can’t get enough of Weinergate! The big question around these parts is – will Oscar Meyer end up a Sudden Bachelor? Here’s a post with some tips on how he can prevent the world of SB:
Condemning is easy; fixing is hard.
If Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin came to my office this is what I’d do: First, I’d listen closely as they talked about how their marriage had been shattered by Mr. Weiner’s forays into salacious photographs and suggestive texts. Perhaps Ms. Abedin would express shock and betrayal, rage and sorrow. Mr. Weiner might talk about his guilt and shame. And the way the press was on a witch-hunt.
After conveying my sadness for their misery, I might tell them that in my clinical experience I’ve seen relationships where one partner has deeply betrayed another fall apart, and others be repaired. I’d ask them if they wanted to remain married. If Ms. Abedin said “It’s over,” Mr. Weiner might be disoriented, crestfallen, and even desperate.
“I think there are two kinds of “It’s over,” I’d say to Ms. Abedin. “In the first, it is over — one or both people have given up on the relationship and nothing can be done to save it. All bridges to reconciliation have been burned and hopelessness sabotages any wish to preserve the relationship.” Read the full post here.
Pinking- Penis thinking
No news here. We know guys think with their penises, leading us down the road to ruin again and again from the launch of a thousand ships to Weiner’s wiener. Here’s the thing- Weiner’s approach to penile cogitation is an object lesson- on HOW TO DO IT! In other words how to avoid sudden bachelorhood notwithstanding the waggish ways of your wiener.
What Weiner did was harmless. Lying about it was not. As is so often the case in courtrooms and careers, it’s the lie that does you in, not the act. So men who are married and being led astray by your wiener? Try virtual sex. Openly. Ideally with spousal permission. In at least some marriages, if virtual sex substitutes for actual a couple nights a week it may be a welcome respite from nightly sexual expectations from horny husbands? Or- it may be a good predicate to hot sex, you shop online but you buy at home? Whatever that saying is.
Will you get spousal permission to have virtual sex? Probably not, because no one can accept that the wiener will have its way regardless of what we say. So the alternative- if the choice is between an actual tryst or a virtual one (i.e. you are just another guy with weak will when it comes to the wiener) is the virtual one. If you get caught, own up immediately. Is this worse than jerking off with a copy of penthouse? Yes, but not all that much. Am I engaging in pinking? You bet.
