Nearly every time I share a piece about my ex, my marriage, and the events leading to its demise, I receive a comment with some variation of, “But what about him? Sure, you’re happier now and have moved on and have found new love, but is his life better?”
While I think it’s vital to see someone else’s perspective in order to have proper empathy, these comments also irk me. I’m sharing my story as I experienced and interpreted it. I’m sure my ex has his own narrative of events, but in order to know what they are, you’d need to ask him. Additionally, he is the one who initiated our divorce. While I had certainly fantasized at times about leaving, I was also still begging him to go to couple’s therapy and wracking my brain doing everything I could to try and strengthen the connection between us. I did not have one foot (or more) out the door. I was not wholly relieved and grateful when he told me he was done with me, the way I’ve seen friends react to their own divorce announcements.
I didn’t simply tilt my head, purse my lips, shrug, and turn around—continuing on with my life as it had been. While I had complicated feelings about my marriage and my Was-band, when he asked for divorce, I shattered. I crumbled into a ball of dust and laid in the corner of the floor for months. I stopped eating. I stopped talking to friends. I stopped returning phone calls and texts. I stopped caring about work. I stopped showering or brushing my hair or putting makeup on. I stopped being about to take care of myself, and it was an uphill battle to drag myself out of that deep dark place.
When I am writing about the events of 2+ years ago, I am doing so with healing and distance between what I went through then and where I am now. I have come to terms with my relationship and the million mistakes I made in it, and have taken pains to prevent those same factors from invading my current relationship. And I am writing with the certainty of a woman who feels loved—and in love—again. I’m not still wondering if I’ll ever feel loved again or find someone else to care about. That is a huge cushion and eases a good deal of the sadness and bitterness I carried when I left my marriage and my home.
Ido understand why people ask how he feels. Perhaps they see elements in my stories that are familiar to their own relationships or identify with how I’ve written about him. Perhaps they are just worried and want to safeguard their own marriages. Perhaps they, too, are going through a breakup or divorce and want to know if they’ll be okay on the other side. Perhaps it’s simply the anonymity of being behind a keyboard and wanting to poke at other people’s stories. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. I’m not sure.
What I do know is that my ex can be highly impulsive. How he feels about me—and our marriage and divorce—probably changes multiple times a day. I know through friends that he was dating someone for a while. I don’t know how serious it was, but I heard through the grapevine that they broke up because “maintaining a relationship is just too much effort” for him. (His words.) I know that he’s still living with his mom several years later and that he still hasn’t gotten a job. I know that on the surface, his life looks very much the same as it did when we were married, only now it’s his mom taking care of him instead of me.
I don’t know how he feels. I don’t know if he’s happy or resigned or actively making changes. And while I don’t wish him ill, I also have no desire to see him or talk to him. I have no wish to subject myself to his emotional abuse again.
So please stop asking me to have empathy for his plight. Stop asking me to put myself in his shoes and identify with how he must feel, knowing I’ve moved on and am happy. Stop asking me to continue to pour my energy into someone who discarded our relationship. I’d rather focus on other things, like the way my new partner lights up with he comes home from work and I go to the door to greet him with a kiss. I’d rather spend time planning our next adventure—hiking in Sedona? Camping in the Redwoods? A road trip down the California Coast?—or let him teach me how to play Hold ’Em. I’d rather focus on what I’m building instead of what my ex and I destroyed. I’d prefer to spend my time and energy on what is instead of what was.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com
