Life ‘opened up’ post-divorce — but not for ex-wife, child
DEAR CAROLYN: Three years ago, I woke up to the fact that I wasn’t happy with my life. The pandemic made me realize there are no guarantees and you have to live your life now. I’d been married five years, right out of college, to my high school sweetheart, and it hit me that I was 27 with a wife and kid and mortgage, living like I was 40, and if I didn’t do something, life was going to pass me by.
As much as it hurt, I left and started over, and I’m so happy now. I have a great apartment, I’m getting noticed at work, I’m dating casually, I’m even planning a three-week trip to South America. Life has really opened up for me.
I wish I could say the same of my ex-wife, but she has just shut down. She moved back in with her folks, which is so sad — she has never had her own place; she even lived at home during college. From what I can tell, she doesn’t date, even though she’s a young, good-looking woman with a good job and our son is old enough now to leave with a babysitter.
I’ll always love her. I’ve tried reaching out, but she doesn’t respond to any overtures unless it’s about our son. You got a letter recently from someone who didn’t like questions from her ex about her love life. I’m honestly not doing that; I don’t care if she dates, I just want her to have a full life. I’d like to get together with her and talk about what she’s doing and encourage her to want more for herself. Is that out of line?
— Anonymous DEAR READER: You divorced your standing to want things for her. So, yes, out of line.
Apparently, you also left her to do the heavy daily work of living a premature middle age and rearing your son while you went out and got your 20s back. Out of line and in her face.
Over the years, I’ve read letters with some nerve, but this one has some freaking nerve. (That’s two levels up from basic nerve.)
You don’t mention anything about money, and maybe that’s because it isn’t an issue, and maybe that’s because you’re giving her enough in child support and possibly alimony to enable her to move herself and your son out of her parents’ home into quality housing of her own, and she simply has chosen not to do that. If so, then, OK — I’ll back off that part of it.
And if you share custody or if she has your son because you tried for but weren’t awarded custody, then I might even lay down a few of my torches and pitchforks.
But even if you didn’t dump all your responsibilities, only your marriage, then there are still layers of OMG here, including that you didn’t mention the financial or custodial arrangements at all in your letter lamenting her choices. It’s relevant, no? Whether she can club-hop with Life and spend three weeks overseas while you primary-parent?
And then there’s the ick of condescension. Maybe “sad” to her is what you did, or an apartment for her and kid, and “full” is the life a multigenerational, multi-adult household gives your child. Not that this way or your way or whatever other way is right, just that a narrow mind is wrong. Read what you wrote again and imagine it’s through her eyes this time — then once more, through a friendly disinterested-newspaper-stranger’s eyes. Maybe she thinks the definition of “sad” is to equate a spouse, home and a child to having “life pass me by.”
And then there’s your complete omission — maybe it’s denial? — of how her embracing your vision of “more” would conveniently let you off the guilt hook.
I will go on the record now, as I probably should have a few harrumphant paragraphs ago, with my firm belief that white-knuckling through life in an unhappy marriage is not a virtue. If you were miserable, and if you threw your whole self into trying to fix the marriage only to feel just as stuck, then a choice to leave was valid and arguably necessary.
But how and whom you leave matters — so if you sloughed off all that life weight onto her instead of carrying every ounce of it that you were still responsible for, then you own that, whether she lives happily ever after you or not. Just as you don’t own her struggle anymore if you’re pulling your weight.
Absent these key details, I have to give you two answers:
If you do owe her more as a co-parent, then improve her life by stepping up more as a co-parent — not not not by appointing yourself her life coach.
If you already do beyond your share as a co-parent, then trust and accept that as your only appropriate contribution to her prospects in life, which are otherwise now up to her.
Either way, if you ever find yourself “encourag[ing]” her to “want more,” put your fist in your mouth.
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