Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Parents’ reconnecting after divorce troubles offspring
DEAR CAROLYN: I feel a bit crazy about this, but here goes. My parents have reconnected and are dating 35 years after divorcing. It was a bitter divorce followed by years of actively hating each other, then about 10 years of pretty much ignoring each other. They’ll both admit, they were better off divorcing.
My father’s wife of 30 years passed away in early November. She had been ill for a while and it was a difficult time for my father.
In early January, my mom announced she and my dad have become “friends” again, and just yesterday announced they’re dating.
I find this really upsetting, but my mom doesn’t seem to think it’s weird or disrespectful to his recently deceased wife. I let her know weeks ago I found it strange and didn’t want to hear about their relationship. She’s taken to posting vague things on Facebook about it. She’s always been passive-aggressive and I don’t interact with anything she posts.
Obviously, they’re adults and are going to do what they’re going to do. But I really don’t want to hear about it. I also don’t want this to cause a bigger rift between us; we already don’t see eye-to-eye on many topics.
Any advice on how I should approach this?
— A.
DEAR READER: Crazy seems right. Their unraveling must have been awful for you, and you probably took for granted that you’d go through it only once.
But you’re all 35 years older, 35 years more mature, I hope, and 35 years more adept at (and better positioned for) filtering out the worst of each other so you can choose to engage with the best.
We may never outgrow the ick of knowing too much of parental romance, but we can be sure to stabilize our own worlds so their volatility — or anyone else’s, for that matter — can no longer turn them upside down. And we can say, “I’m happy for you,” and mind our own business from there.
I don’t know where you are in this process, and therefore whether you need only minor intervention in mantra form that “their chaos isn’t mine,” or whether you need more professional help, maybe, to disentangle yourself once and for all from past family dysfunction.
Or maybe you need no intervention at all, having gotten used to the idea by now — we all need at least a few days to absorb weird new information, and you wrote this but a day after receiving yours.
Maybe, too, they’ll have remembered why they liked each other and outlived the reasons they split, and your only involvement will be, on occasion, to enjoy their now-not-entirely-unpleasant company.
In writing this, I’ve narrowed myself down to only two things I know for sure:
1. Unless he’s badmouthing her, there’s no “disrespectful to his recently deceased wife” element here. The job of the living is to live.
2. Your need to process her social media posts (or even look at, for ducks’ sake) is zero, zip, nada, bupkis, jack-squat, un oeuf and a toasted bagel. Hide her till you feel better, or don’t, but take the Facebook issue completely off your to-dwell-on list regardless. The sooner we treat the social media component of any relationship as optional — and therefore entirely-opt-out-able — the saner we all will be. Chat online with Carolyn at 11 a.m. each Friday at washingtonpost.com. Write to Tell Me About It in care of The Washington Post, Style Plus, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071; or email