Throwing Darts into the Whirlwind

I need to write.   Things swirl around me sometimes making it hard to concentrate.  Writing gives me a chance to throw a dart into the swirling mass and pin down some part of it.

I miss my wife.  As I say it, I realize it is not like she stopped being my wife all of a sudden.  Many of the little intimacies that come to mind where withdrawn more than a year ago.  This last year has just been the lingering death of a marriage that she withdrew from over the course of two or three years.  She would probably say it had been longer than that, but I think active, purposeful turning away has been no more than two or three.   So as I think about the things I miss, I realize it is twenty years worth of memories and shared lives.  Over seven thousand days of being one.

Now she has decided she is not my wife.  We have a legal paper that says we are not married.  But is that really all there is?  I know there are many different opinions about this.  I have chosen a way that I think honors the Lord most in my current situation.  I do not think that God so easily releases us from the vows we make before him.  I may not feel released to pursue another marriage until my legal ex chooses to re-marry.  I have to admit the fact she is already in a relationship gives me some reason to think it will not be long before she gets married.  I know there are some who would say I am released as soon as she has been with another man.  Again, I am not so sure.  Is that all the marriage vows are about is the physical relationship?  Short of marriage, how many relationships outside of ours am I required to forgive?  These are hard things.

A funny thing happened on the way to the weekend without the kids

A few weeks ago, my then wife asked if we could go ahead and start our weekend schedule because she and her friend Leann were going to spend a weekend away together.    She had asked about this a month or more ago, and knowing that it was probably so the other guy could buy his plane ticket, I said no.  When she asked again more recently, I said yes, because it had to start some time, and she was implicating her friend.

Now comes the funny part.   Our friends have two daughters that fall in the age range of our own children.  Figuring that the father would be watching the children during the girls weekend away, I asked if he would have the girls that weekend.  There was a long pause. You could see the wheels turning. “Why?” was my wife’s reply.   The father lives really close to us and I thought he could bring the children over that Saturday.  “What makes you think the girls will need watching?”  It was all very funny.  Clearly she had implicated her friend without considering the consequences.    If I asked her friend the direct question, would she lie?  I will not ask.

The downside of all this is that I could be wrong.  I doubt it, but…..

Meanwhile, I know that I need to let go of this.

That was easy

I have an easy button on my desk at work.  These come from Staples when you order office supplies from them.  When pressed, a voice says “That was easy.”  In some ways divorce feels that way.  Having worked up to it for almost a year, the actually signing of  papers was pretty mundane.  Except that is for the additional clauses that her lawyer threw in at the last minute to cost me just a little more! And my wife went along with it, including one little thing that she did not even read before she signed.  I called it to her attention and she clearly had no idea what I was talking about.    Her lawyer didn’t even blink.  I had little choice but to sign it.

Now I find my ex-wife over at the house every day since she moved out…to be with the kids…This is odd to say the least.  It is like she is camping in the backyard.  Remember when we were small and would camp out in the back yard.  We knew we could always run back in the house if we got scared.   This is what my ex-wife is doing.  She is out in the yard but keeps running back into the house to make sure everything is ok, she gets scared that she may have done the wrong thing and has to check in with the kids for reassurance.

I believe that next week the other man will be visiting.  I have made it abundantly clear that she needs to be discreet.  If she introduces him to the children, it will be a problem.  Now, I know there will be other men in her life, but this guy is the one that carried her through the divorce, providing monetary and emotional support throughout the process.   He is the poacher, and he is the one that my children do not need to be aquainted with.  I know…I cannot really do anything about it.  I even have moments where I wish she would just go public with her relationship.  It would certainly clear things up.  And when it crumbles (statistically) it will be even more clear.

Let me tell you how I really feel.