I’ve been interviewing women for a project about single mothers. I started the project because I feel like I’ve joined a totally unheralded and misunderstood group of women who moonlight as superheroes. Seriously, almost every single mama I know kicks ass. I am proud to be in this new fold, but I’m also sick sick sick of how the media uses “single mom” as an expletive, i.e., an US magazine cover recently announced “Anniston to become SINGLE MOM.” It could have said Anniston to become Polish or retarded or to lose a limb … or fill in the blank with any other harangued and poorly labeled group.
In doing the project, I’ve heard so many stories of people staying in relationships out of fear of what others would think. Families, mainly. But also kids and even friends. When Alex and I separated several years ago, many of our friends sided with him. That’s not what they said they were doing, but it was pretty evident. Invitations stopped coming my way and run-ins at the grocery store that would have been a 5-10 minute talk in the past became the briefest waves. I pained over what these people thought. Recently, I re-met a woman I’d seen a few times at parties with this particular group of friends, and she told me they’d unfriended her in just the same way, “like toxic waste,” she said.
People react to divorce from a deep, semi-conscious place. It brings out their own anxieties about their relationships. Any squeaky board they’ve been trying to ignore in their marriage sounds squeakier after talking to you, and chances are they’ll take it out on you. One friend currently going through a divorce who thought that earlier separation from Alex was a bad idea and had a sort of “just suck it up” attitude (my words, not hers) at the time, now admits that my separation made her uneasy; “There was so much in my own marriage that I just wasn’t ready to look at yet.”
Another friend, who I haven’t talked to much in years, gave a totally gut response when she learned that Alex and I were splitting: ”I envy you.”
The essayist Perri Klass admits to this range of emotions regarding others’ divorces: “Oh, I clucked over the divorcing couples, shook my head about the effects on their children, participated in the generally pleasurable buzz of rising gossip–but there were moments too, I think, when I looked at those parents with fascination and fear, wondering whether I was watching just the bravest pioneers, the first to march bravely down a perilous path which would ultimately beckon many of those self-satisfied uxorious cluckers.”
What I’ve learned in a pretty hard way is that others opinions about the most intimate details of your life sting but, ultimately, are fleeting and don’t matter. Not at all. Because the people who are making their opinions known are either too scared or too lacking in empathy to understand the complexities of your life which is yours alone to live.
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
May 5, 2009 at 3:39 am
k
bravo. this was exactly my experience during my separation/divorce 5 years ago. My parents have never had a happy marriage and my mother has sat in judgment around my choice (my divorce, and now my remarkable centered -happiness) ever since. Kudos to you for noting this hard thing so early in the process. I only understood this sort of judgment/opinions years after i had moved through the most trecherous terrain.
I haven’t retained (actively, anyway) many shared friends that j & i had as a married couple. one mutual friend was remarkably mindful at the time of the split. jon and i went out to lunch and he said that he didn’t take sides, that he knew things were complicated in relationships, but that in his experience a shared friendship to a married couple often fell away organically . . .not because the friend didn’t care but that it is hard and painful to watch two people you love make such huge change. and it is hard for the married-now-splitting couple to negotiage the emotional terrain as well. there is so much to negotiate. in fact, j kept the friendship with jon . . .and our friendship was the one that “organically dissolved.” but i was grateful for his compassionate awareness up front. and thus, the dissolution did not hurt quite the same? it was more of a soft gentle sadness?
5 years out, what i’ve found, is that these friends are circling back into my life . . . with love and curiosity and support . . .grateful to be knowing me again in new ways. while also knowing j. so i think it is a matter of time and acceptance for everyone? (but in the middle of it all it feels horrible). i have also found some of those friends (years later) confiding in me . . .saying much of what you intimate–bits of envy, or readiness to leave there own relationships. (i did this very thing, in fact, turning to others who went before me . . .whose boldness once terrified me) It is amazing how we learn from each other. every day. in all ways.
bless you for this insightful narrative.
May 5, 2009 at 5:08 am
Casie
You have no idea how much I needed to hear that. I just went through a horrible conversation with my mother in law about just how much I suck as a wife and a mother. And how selfish I am that I am not happy. And how I am a woman so I have to do everything and live with it. At this moment I have never wanted more then to pack up my kids and run far away from my husband and his family, but I have nowhere to go. So, I guess what I was trying to say is THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for writing.
May 5, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Jennifer
The only time I’ve ever told anyone to “fuck off” was my mother-in-law during that first separation. She was totally in my face, telling me what to do and what I shouldn’t have done, and saying some really ridiculous stuff. I just lost it. We’ve kept a safe distance from each other since, beign sure n ot to talk about very emotional things, but we do contnue to have a civil and more or less ok relationship, which is a blessing all things considered. Good luck with everything. Close your ears, as much as possible, and follow your heart. “Jump and the net will appear.”
May 5, 2009 at 2:05 pm
martha
I like that you have learned not to attach to the attitude of others. And I admire you for leaving a marriage that wasn’t working. It takes nerve, real nerve, to change, and to admit things aren’t good and to let go of what’s not working. Fear keeps people stuck. Fear dictates and limits our future, keeps up stuck in the past. We forget that letting go opens up other possible realities. When you let go, you open your hand to receive.
Casie, I hope you can find the strength to do what you know needs doing.