Meeting Your Mom’s New Partner via Zoom

I’m a firm believer that the COVID-19 quarantine affects us in much greater ways than simply health concerns. It puts us in tricky situations, forces us to reconcile with dark truths about ourselves and our cohabitors, and has made us as a society figure out how to communicate electronically. It’s tough. There is no denying that truth.

Now do I have a quarantine story for you.

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My parents are fresh off the trails of a divorce. It was sudden, unexpected, and wasn’t handled well. As a 21 year old (20 then at the time) who has been left to pick up the pieces on both sides of the family, I find myself struggling in this acceptance of the new normal. There is much with which to grapple. After all, I have an entirely new family dynamic to adopt.

Any child of divorce be it adult or young, will eventually have to come to terms with the fact that their parents will see other people. But having just had that experience, let me say it is not easy.

This electronic meeting was a “happy hour” with my aunt, uncle, cousins, mom, and my mother’s new partner. Basically we all made our favorite cocktail of choice and caught up with one another via electronic means. My drink was ginger beer mixed with crappy tequila I stole from my roommates (no, it was not good).

It is also important that you understand my feeling surrounding my mother’s new partner. I had avoided meeting him for months. I was angry, spiteful, and I told my mother it would not be pretty if I met him. The timing of their getting together was suspect and, simply put, altogether too soon. It had happened well before the papers were signed.

Now I blame my parents equally for the demise of their marriage: as an outside perspective, they both had faults that were never improved. But I especially find it difficult to adopt someone else into my father’s role (being the attached person to my mother) when I’ve barely had time to catch my breath amidst the divorce.

So I always told my mother I would refuse to meet him. Not until I had processed and I could approach this new person without anger. Enter the Zoom loophole.

Being that my mother and her new partner cohabitate, I couldn’t really impose my will upon not letting him join us. It would be unfair both because I am not the only other person there, and it would also mean that I’m dictating what’s happening inside their own home. That is not my place. So I acquiesced.

All told the call was fine. It was good to catch up with family. The new partner is a good person. But I still find myself unequivocally angry.

. . .

My immediate thought after ending the call is that everyone is just pretending. Everyone is putting on a facade and a mask and acting like this is the normal situation. Why?

This is an issue that I have great problems with in American society (I can’t speak to the rest of the world, so I am unsure if it exists elsewhere too). When a couple separate, be it a married couple divorcing or a casual break-up, there is this denial of acknowledging once was. I know not everyone is like this. Some divorcees are able to have good relations especially when necessary at big life events of their child(ren). Some casual couples are even able to become good friends. But by-and-large, there is a disconnect that happens.

Perhaps it is a greater issue in divorces that are a long-time coming. Perhaps not. But people need to stop writing one another out of each other’s lives simply because they have ended their romantic partnership.

Sure, if there is a legitimate reason (such as a danger to one or both partners, infidelity, or any other reasonable exception) then this makes sense. However, when you alter your history, when you simply swap people in and out of roles without consideration of how it affects others, there is an inherent selfishness that is present. There is nothing wrong in this kind of self-denial when your own history is only one you’re altering.

The issue is when you show up, introduce this new person, and expect your loved ones substitute them in for your former partner. No one, especially children, should be expected to have to join in on that facade along with you.

. . .

You may be reading this and think that these are only the ramblings of a hurt, angry 21 year old. To a certain extent, admittedly, you are correct.

To another extent, I am a firm believer that changes in life related to love and relationships shouldn’t be treated as if people are exchangeable. In my opinion, this is a great disservice to the memory of the former partner and the potentiality of the new one.

I am happy my mother found someone new that makes her happy. I am pleased my aunt and uncle are supportive of her. But my father still exists. My father was in everyone’s life for more than 25+ years. It does no one any benefit to pretend as if he doesn’t exist anymore, as if he never existed.

This doesn’t mean that new memories and experiences cannot be made with new people. But if you are pretending to act “normal” as you once had when other people were a part of the equation, then you are living a lie.

I still don’t know when I will be ready to meet my mother’s new partner in person. But when I do, I will live honestly and treat him as he is to me: a new person. Not as a replacement for my father, not as a new family member, and not as someone I know deeply — because I do not. I will live my life with my father still in it, even if my mother does not.

Just because our love for someone has faded, does not mean that they themselves are also gone. Acting otherwise is living in a fantasy world, and imposing that fantasy world on others is cruel. We can still acknowledge the people from our past, the experiences and memories that were created, and admit the changes that come because of the shifts. None of us this makes us weak, it simply means we have a story.

So don’t try and rewrite your story. Live truthfully and authentically and acknowledge the past and those within it. It’ll make everyone, including yourself, feel a little better.

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This post was previously published on Hello, Love and is republished here with permission from the author.
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