Just as surely as superheroes have origin stories, so do divorced people: “This is the story of how I became a divorced person”. The stories may lack nuclear-infused spider bites, but they are just as life-changing.
General wisdom is that people should not talk about exes on dates, but two divorced people tend to break this rule because, inevitably, they swap their divorce stories on dates.
Here, I’ll show how the divorce stories come up, give two examples of divorce stories, and explain why we discuss this on dates. Ultimately, I answer the question, “Is it ok to talk about our divorces on dates?”
How do divorce stories come up on dates?
Usually the topic is approached in a gentle fashion.
“So, Lee. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want. But I saw on your profile that you’re divorced, and I was wondering how long you were married.”
I tell him my number. He tells me his.
Then comes the next predictable question.
“How long have you been divorced?”
I tell him my number. He tells me his.
We learn a lot from these numbers. If the number is too low, we know there’s a big caution flag.
If we’re not newly-divorced, we both know the real question he wants answered is coming up next.
At this point, I’m so wishing we could talk about something else, anything else. “Hey, do you want to see a picture of my dog?”
But as much as I dread the question, I know not to avoid this question. We need to get it out of the way. We need to know.
“What happened? Why did you get divorced?”
I typically tell a concise version of the truth, explaining that I was in law enforcement at the time. My ex freaked out about me having a dangerous career. That was that.
It’s become a bit of a mechanical spiel by now.
If they probe a bit more, I explain that I had dated very little before marrying, so back then I had zero relationship skills. Also, I had divorced parents, so I hadn’t learned from them how to work through relationship problems. Basically, I was clueless back then.
“Nowadays, I have a black belt in ‘work-through-relationship problems,’” I might add.
Then it’s his turn to spill his guts.
Example divorce stories
I’ve heard so many of these stories over the years.
I think of Jake’s story. After he and his wife started dating, she wanted to move back to her hometown in New York. Jake uprooted his professional life to follow her there. He took jobs that were below what he used to do and not really what he wanted to do.
Two weeks after Jake moved to New York, his wife’s step-dad experienced a traumatic medical issue, so the step-dad lived with Jake and his wife for the next 17 years. She tended to her step-dad during the day while Jake worked. In the evenings, Jake tended to her step-dad and the kids while his wife went to school and, after she graduated, to work.
Two weeks after her step-dad’s funeral, Jake’s wife surprised him with divorce papers and a plan she’d been concocting for some time, unbeknownst to him
“I’ve already rented an apartment near here, so I’m moving there today. The kids can come stay with me half the time starting next week after I’ve settled in,” she told him, and then she left.
Jake bowed his head over his hands. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I heard the crack in his voice.
“I just thought I would do what she needed me to do and make the best of things, and eventually our sacrifice would pay off. Because that’s what I was supposed to do, right? But it didn’t pay off. It didn’t pay off.”
About now, I should have patted Jake, said something like, “There, there”, and then said, “Oh look, squirrel.” Maybe I should have re-directed the conversation any way I could to get it away from THAT topic.
Instead, I said, “Oh Jake. I’m so sorry. So very, very sorry.” And then I asked questions about everything.
I learned about his frustration that she wouldn’t talk to him. He never found out why she wanted to get divorced. He so badly just wanted to know why, to just understand. What had he done wrong? What could he have done better? But she wouldn’t talk to him about much more then when to drop the kids off and when to pick them up.
He still couldn’t make sense of it.
Maybe you think this is a rare occurrence. Jake was just one divorced guy who talked a bit much about his ex.
I think of Tim’s story. He had moved to a small town in West Virginia. It’s not where he wanted to live, but his wife loved the area.
One day his wife told him that she had started feeling attracted to a guy at her office.
“I’m sorry, Tim, but I feel strongly that I need to act on this. We haven’t done anything yet, but I need to see what it is and where it goes,” she told Tim. “I just need to.”
Tim weighed what to say next as he threw the diaper he had just removed from their 1-year-old daughter into the pail. The obvious thing seemed to be that they’d have to get divorced, but then he had an idea.
“What if I said you could spend time with him, just to see if it really is what you think it is? You might find out you don’t like him if you really get to know him. Just don’t have sex, and I’ll be ok with you exploring this. Let’s just try this instead of getting divorced just yet.”
A month later, she said, “Tim, I know I want to be with him.”
She moved in with her new boyfriend and started the divorce.
Tim was trapped. If he wanted to share custody of his daughters, he had to stay in the town where he didn’t want to live in order to be close. He didn’t only want to see his daughters for token visits in the summer and holidays. He wanted to be a good dad.
By the time he met me, he had lived in that town for the past three years. He had 14 years left to go in his sentence.
Tim took a sip of his Guinness. I took a sip of my martini.
I had so looked forward to this date.
“Tim, I’m not sure why, but I get the feeling there’s a part of you that maybe, even now, still thinks that your ex-wife will eventually come to her senses and come back and re-build your family. I could be way off, but I sense that you want that.”
Three hours later, he thanked me for helping him realize how he still felt about his ex-wife.
Why do we swap divorces stories on dates?
By now, you may be wondering why I provoked Jake and Tim to talk more about their exes.
If we know we’re not “supposed to” talk about exes much, why did we?
Swapping divorce stories lets us learn critical pieces of information about each other.
First, we need to know if each other’s reasons for divorcing are aligned with our personal values.
In my case, I’m hoping they won’t judge me as the kind to prioritize my career over my marriage (I wouldn’t like to learn a guy that did that, either). Or they might judge me as the kind to bail when relationships get hard.
If the guy quickly says, “Check, please,” then that must mean my reason for getting divorced was unacceptable to him.
If his reason was that his wife was unwilling to have threesomes, then I need to say, “Check, please”.
Fair enough. Good for us to know that and not dally any further.
In these examples, I was able to learn that Jake had tried to do the right thing, and it didn’t pay off. And there was Tim, trying to be a good dad but being stuck in a place he never wanted to be. They certainly passed the ‘good men’ test in my eyes.
Second, talking about our divorces helps us figure out if each other has truly moved on and is truly ready to start a new, healthy relationship.
By the end of my dates with Jake and Tim, I knew that they were not ready for a relationship.
When they went on a date with me, they genuinely believed that they were ready, but it took talking about their exes for them to realize they were not, that they still needed to make sense of it all.
I didn’t stand in line for the Jake or Tim roller coaster rides. I had no illusions that if I could be understanding and supportive while they worked through their thoughts and feelings, eventually I’d be next in line. I sensed that I would be next in line for a long, long time.
Is it ok to talk about divorce on dates?
Sometimes I do wish that divorced people would stick to the rule of not talking about exes on because divorced people are usually telling stories of pain. Over the years, it has gotten harder and harder for me to hear them.
But what we learn from swapping divorce stories is valuable. We learn more about each other’s character and whether our values are — or aren’t — aligned. We also learn whether each other has really, truly processed the emotional yuck that comes with divorce and whether we’re ready for a relationship.
Plus, swapping stories with Jake and Tim yielded something quite valuable: Though they weren’t ready for relationships, all of us were ready for friendships. For us, a connection was formed the day we opened up and spilled our guts about our exes to strangers.
At that time, for them and for me, the camaraderie we felt with our fellow divorce survivors was what we needed more than we needed a new person to date.
Talking about our exes and our divorces helped us all get further along in our post-divorce lives. To me, that is quite ok.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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