I Blog

Me: "I blog."
Elena: "You blog?"
Me: "I blog."
Elena: "That's upsetting."

In Defense of Divorce

My 10 year old daughter asked me this morning, "Mommy what's a good age to get married?" I smiled and said, "Well honey, it completely depends on each individual person and how mature you are. Some people are ready at 20, but some people, like me, have only been mature enough in the last few years." I've always been able to learn from my mistakes, but the knowledge that if I had the ability at the time to realize I wasn't ready, I wouldn't have my two amazing children, makes me even more grateful for my mistakes.

Many of us who have found ourselves in mid-life with a divorce or two in our past are well aware of the fantasies and mistakes that led us down that path. I know a few people who had a lot of maturity in their teens and 20s. I was not one of them. Most people aren't. If you are or were, you are, very simply, genetically lucky. When I was 20 I thought that marriage would be a "fun" thing to do (for sex). When I was 30 I thought that marriage was the "smart" thing to do (for long term security). Those are not good reasons to get married, but, excuse the cliche, it really did seem like a good idea at "the time". I can see in hindsight that even as I married my previous husbands, I literally did not see what was before me. I was in the moment, or more precisely I was in "that time".

But "that time" was eventually followed by a sickening realization of what I had done, and that I was not willing to suffer or make him suffer for the rest of our lives because of my lack of foresight and maturity.

Some people argue that I was willing to let my children suffer, but if you know my children, you know that they suffer no more than any children who are allowed to experience both joy and disappointment in their lives. They are continually praised by teachers and other adults as polite, smart, funny, helpful, expressive, and emotionally balanced. I've never picked them up from a play date and not heard, "Your child is welcome here any time."

I went to a therapist for a short time during my last separation, and she asked me to recall the excitement at the beginning of my marriage. I raised my eyebrows and told her I had never felt such a thing. And I thought, to be excited to be getting married, now that would be something indeed.

It's only in my 40s that I've acquired the ability to truly recognize the scope of what a good marriage is. It's only in my 40s that I can truly envision the compromise, patience, long-range vision, and compassion involved in a successful marriage, and even more importantly, what I need in a partner in order to be willing to participate in a marriage at all.

I truly admire the few marriages I see that involve mutual respect, admiration, love, patience, and respect. I refuse to be a part of the majority of marriages I see that are bitter, sexless, and frankly, not at all good "for the children".

Do I wish I were married? Yes. But staying married for the sake of not being fodder for the neighbors' gossip or even worse, for the sake of the children, who know a bad marriage when they hear the arguing and see the bitterness, is in my opinion, a waste of an otherwise perfectly good life. I know many people do make that choice.

If I ever do get married a 3rd time, it will be a charm, an entirely different experience from the first two, and I will be very excited. With more than 40 years of mistakes, experiences, and insight behind me, it will be a passageway into a different kind of life that I have never before been able to create. Because of my mistakes, and both the couples I know who are struggling in their marriages, and the those who are making that journey successfully, it is one I can see clearly now.