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I keep having an image of me hanging off a cliff. I have a rope and those special spidey power shoes, so I’m safeish, but I’m really not used to hanging off a cliff. I’ve gotten better at it over the past year, and even found some smallish comfort zone, but it’s just not my natural space. I’m gwetting tired and, frankly, bored. But the top of the cliff is just right there – ugh, canalmostreach it. Almost it.
Breathe. Keep hanging. The rope’s got you. Now, before you can stand at the top and look out at where you’ve been and where you’re going, keep your wits about you. Pull the latest version of the stipulation out of your back pocket–yeah, you too can reach it, pal — just do it! –then let your lawyer know how it looks. Call the accountant and ask that question that’s been sitting in your frontal lobe for nearly a month. Go ahead and pay your bills for this month, including the mortgage that just went up by$50 and is now seriously off the charts ridiculous, trusting that they will get paid again next month even if you don’t know how. Apply for the jobs that you can apply for; sure, they don’t excite you, but neither did that boulder that fell on your back last spring. When the money heebie jeebies come up at 3:33 am or while walking the dog this morning, do what your friend C. says, and just check in with your body, sit with the heebies and see all the ways in which they’re about so much more than money. In fact, they’re not really about the money at all (or so he says, and I believe him in my gut but head hasn’t quite figured it out yet).
Speaking of which, calmly but repeatedly ask Alex for the money he owes you. He’s over there hanging off his own cliff and he can surely just toss you the wad of cash, which you can then catch in your teeth because you’ve gotten pretty dang amazing at such no-handed feats. While you’re at it, politely ask him – again – to stop taking food from your house; he can buy his own flour and cinammon and maple syrup… Stay focused. Just a little bit farther to go. Think how good it will be to sit at the top and breathe and look around for a while. But don’t get too cocky. See that cliff over there? It’s next.
That’s what I said when I called to tell Alex that the mortgage company had just called me to say they had yet to receive the August 1st payment . His voice rose and he started to say, “I …” But I cut him off at the pass.
“Spare me the indignation! Just deal with it.” Click.
It turned out that my transfer of funds to him to cover the mortgage, which was supposed to be automatically paid from his account, never went through. Which has an echo of yesterday’s call from the credit card company that hadn’t received payment since June — “I swear, I paid it.” Or the other credit card that was overdue a week earlier and which elicited a blank look, followed by, “What??”
Dear Reader, I am wellllllll aware of how this crap is messing up my credit rating. I had paid off our credit cards about two years ago – totally down to zero — and gotten rid of all but one, telling him that it was for emergencies only. Turns out he found many things to be an emergency. It also turns out that he kept another one that I thought was extinct.
I’m painfully aware of what little recourse I have. The credit card companies won’t take my name off of the acc’ts – even though the acc’ts are officially closed. As my credit gets jacked around by He Who Cannot Be Trusted (you may recall that the first words out of my mouth when he asked me to marry him were, “If you promise not to bounce any more checks.”), I am beginning to wonder what – if any – retribution I can get via the divorce process. There is no fair fix. I mean, Alex can’t wave a magic wand and repair my credit rating. But is there an apples-to-oranges gesture that could be made? One suggestion from a friend has been that he pay a portion (a large portion) of my legal feels. Any ideas?
In the meantime, I just want my financial karmic self to be completely, utterly CUT from this person with these toxic habits. Wow, ok, it just occurred to me that I need to practice compassion on Alex around money. Ooooohhhh, that makes me squirm. Which means it’s probably a really necessary place to go.
Gosh, guys, thanks for helping me figure this out! 
I live on a street sometimes referred to Lavender Alley for all of its lesbian households. They are all thrilled, and rightfully so, at the Iowa Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to legalize same-sex marriage. “We need to find a way to do marriage differently,” wrote one neighbor on facebook (until it truly warms up, this where I “see” my neighbors). She was soliciting ideas for new vows and ceremonies. I wrote and gave her the name of a book we’d used for our ceremony, a collection by poet Robert Hass, but added, “I hope you find a way to do divorce differently, too, because this stinks.”
My lawyer told me that when Alex returns in July, I should expect six months until we’re divorced. “Four months if everything goes perfectly,” he said, “But be prepared for six.” Given that we separated last June, that will mean a year and a half in all. That strikes me as ridiculous. I know it’s legal, I know it’s basically an untangling of possessions. but we have so few. ANd it only took a day to bind us legally, why should it take six months to unbind us?
When Alex’s mom was divorcing from her really rotten second husband about ten years ago, it was a comedy of errors that nearly undid her. One court appearance was cancelled because the judge’s mother died, another because the rotten ex fell on a bike and broke his collar bone, and yet another for a hurricane. And each time, it took months to get a new court date. In the meantime, the rotten ex decided he suddenly wanted her gardening tools, though he’d never gardened himself. He needed her pots and pans. He invented reasons to be alone with her in the house they were selling – the house in which she’d raised her kids previous to meeting him but to which he was privy of its profits – and twice he threatened her, throwing objects her way that she was luckily able to duck. But having a TVh hurtled at you does not make for a stress-free experience and definitely makes one wonder why the heck two years — 48 months! – are needed to legally get away from someone so nuts.
When I think of things I hope my daughter won’t have to go through, a year and a half separation/divorce is among them. Though not being the target of a TV thrower is higher on the list.
I’m just starting to grapple with the legalities of visitation, child support, etc, all of which is complicated because Alex’s current life is so unstable and transient. His current income = zero. His current address = mud hut. Kind of hard to make a plan around that. Nor does he know where he’ll be living when he returns to the States, or exactly what he’ll be doing for income. So there will probably be many caveats written into the final document.
Someone left a comment on my last post that receiving the check from her ex, prior to when the automatic deposit kicks into action, makes her feel like a prostitute or a beggar. Yeah, I definitely get that. I’ve been amazed by the number of divorced mamas I’ve encountered who forego formal child support because they so want the financial chains to be completely clipped. These aren’t wealthy women. One friend, a social worker, has her ex pay for summer camps, after-school programs, sports and music lessons, and back-to-school stuff. Then she does the rest herself exactly because she couldn’t stand the check exchange or the sense that he was giving her the evil eyeball every time she showed up in a new pair of shoes or went on vacation. “It was like he thought his money was going toward me. He never got that what he was paying wasn’t even enough to cover our son, so of course none of it was going to me.”
I know other people who are ADAMANT about a father’s obligation to pay child support – my lawyer included, who has already politely put me in my place for suggesting that I’ll “give” on various financial areas just in order to be done with things. ”Uh, that’s his debt, too,” he says, gently but without any sense that we should budge on the point at hand. And I think there’s a certain obligation we owe to the women who came before us who fought the hard fight to get child support. The legal rights we have, as compared to women in developing countries, shouldn’t be taken lightly.
“His father never paid his child support regularly, so I don’t think you should assume he will either.” THAT “sage” advice came from Alex’s mom when she was trying to convince me stay in the marriage. As though I was somehow going to get more money out of him by staying together? She was overlooking the fact that it also meant being saddled with his debt.
Another friend just told me that she and her ex take turns from year to year claiming their son on their tax returns. But he lives with her, staying with the dad two nights a week, so the arrangement didn’t make sense to me. “Yeah, but I got out of all of his student loans,” she said. Ok, I see: it’s a game. You pay this, and I’ll pay that and maybe we’ll come out feeling something like ok at the end of the day.
Or not. I’m guessing Or Not kind of rules the day for most divorced couples. You?
Spoke to Alex yesterday. He’s in Sudan where all aid organizations are being evacuated. I’d been reading the news, scouring the web for more information but hadn’t talked to him. I’d slept with the phone by the bed in case he called – or worse, in case someone else called about him. I felt torn and weird – here I am actively working with a lawyer to draw up papers, which is such a relief, but I’m also worrying about this person who I still love in many ways and who is in this crazy situation.
The talk was good. I read him newspapers over the phone because he has no source of news there. They’re all in lockdown until they evacuate. We talked about the kids. The dog. Springbreak. And then the conversation ended the only way it can when you’re talking to someone you’ve known for eighteen years who is being ordered about by a crazy president of a country with an ongoing genocide: ”I love you.” “I love you, too.”
It reminded me for the hundredth time of how relatively close Alex and I are to having a working, healthy relationship. And of how many people would take what we have. There are women who would accept his penchant for lying and his financial mess-ups because he’s a great cook and a wonderful dad. Just as there are men who might turn a blind eye to my tendency to fall in love with a different person every few years because I hold everything else together.
I wonder how each person decides what her limit is? How do we know when enough is enough? It would be so much easier if there were rules and guidelines – speed limits of love. Instead, it’s all got to come from the gut.
Just called and made an appointment with a new lawyer. The other woman I’d seen was brassy, loud, decisive. She seemed like she’d be great if you had a real fight on her hands, but she scared me and didn’t really answer my questions. So onward to a nice, quiet guy who was two years behind me in high schools. I want to get as much in order as possible so that when Alex steps off that plane next summer, he can sign on the dotted line.
In the meantime, I’m just trying to make waves. Call people for appointments. Send out queries. Let the Universe know that I’m here and ready for Something – Anything. I figure if I don’t jump up and down and yell, she might not notice me. Too much time with the covers over my head this winter – time to look alert.
