Inconvenient Knowings
scenes from the unraveling of a marriage
Did you know the average length of time a couple considers divorce is three years?
I forget where I discovered that information but I remember sharing it with my therapist early in my work with her, back when I had not yet admitted to myself that perhaps this was to be my path, too.
And yes, it was about three years from my statement to my therapist and my decision to end my marriage.
As Kelly McMasters writes in The Leaving Season, “This is how a marriage ends. Slowly, piece by piece, and then all at once.”
Though I did not move out of my family home until February of this year, I knew my marriage was over much earlier. But like many inconvenient knowings, I had learned to shake the knowledge off, stuff it down, drown it out. Like all truth, it could only be buried so long.
This past weekend I went with my family to the Christmas Tree Farm, a tradition that we started twelve years ago, when my oldest was still an infant, the only grandchild. As new parents we had forgotten to bring a Baby Bjorn so we lugged our seven-month-old baby all over the farm trying to find the perfect tree. This year wasn’t the first time I had embarked upon this family tradition without my husband. Two years ago, he decided not to accompany us. We always went with my mother, my sister and her family. But the days we spent with my family often ended with tension in my marriage. When we did things with my family of origin, he felt me reorient myself. My center of gravity shifted, away from him and the kids, and towards my mom and sister. I do not deny this happened. I come from a family that is enmeshed. Dr. Nicole LePera, author of How to Do the Work, defines enmeshment as “a relationship dynamic in which both a lack of boundaries and shared emotional states cause a lack of personal independence and autonomy.” It now seems obvious that I would tend toward enmeshment considering my identical twin sister and I came from one egg that divided.
Despite the fact that he did not always enjoy these excursions, until 2021, he’d dutifully accompany us and we’d often take a family photo to adorn our future Christmas card. But in 2021, he said he wasn’t going to go. I was in a rush to get the children out the door, the farm over an hour away, and we were meeting up at my sister’s. I wasn’t surprised. This was the tenor of our marriage now, each of us trying to take care of ourselves and prioritize what we needed to the detriment of our relationship. But I remember what I felt as he said he wasn’t going, I got my kids into the car, and I pulled up to my sister’s house without my husband. We are never going to go to the Christmas Tree Farm as a family again. This knowledge swept through my body heavy as lead, and yet I brushed my tears aside as well as this knowledge as I got out of the car, and apologized for yet again being late.
Another knowing blossomed in the spring of the following year at my daughter’s fifth grade graduation. My husband had a tendency to not be available via text, thankfully not attached to his phone like many, but sometimes frustratingly unavailable when I needed to ask him something or wanted to check in. He had gone golfing with some friends the day before the ceremony and said they were going to barbeque after so he would be home late. But soon it was 10 pm and I was going to bed. I have an anxious temperament so I texted him asking when he would be home. No response. I tried to go to sleep. The graduation ceremony the next morning required us all to be up early and well-dressed. But I tossed and turned, wondering where he was, whether he was okay. I texted again at 12:30, even tried to call. No answer. I forget what time he finally came home, but he was unapologetic, said he’d told me he’d be out late. But it was both a school day and work day, this kind of mid-week excursion hugely out of character. I was angry, thinking about the big day we had tomorrow. And how hard was it to just pick up your phone?
Our anger still simmered in the morning, on what should have been a joy filled day. When we got to the ceremony and there was an issue with seats, I let my younger daughter sit in the front row with her father while I sat several rows behind. Even though it was weird we weren’t all sitting together, I also knew, deep down, that this was how it was going to be. This was a foreshadowing of our future.
One family, split in two.
Shortly after that, I decided to buy myself some dishes. I had never registered for dishes for my wedding. My mother-in-law had a spare set from Pottery Barn she was getting rid of so I accepted the free ones graciously upon my marriage instead of choosing something I actually liked. But some of my work in therapy post-pandemic and mid-life reckoning was to determine what I liked, what I wanted, and realize that it mattered. I wanted some dishes of my own. We packed up the old set and put them out in the shed, alongside other Goodwill donations, but I never got rid of them. I knew that eventually those dishes would go back inside the house and I would take mine and make a home of my own.
I didn’t know this consciously. I couldn’t own this knowledge. But I knew. I knew that I was leaving. My body knew though my brain would not yet acknowledge it.
I finally admitted to myself and my ex that I was done trying in August. But I even backtracked after that admittance. Maybe I just needed a break. Maybe I just needed something different. It wasn’t until October that we told the kids we needed some space from each other and embarked upon a trial separation, or what my children called “the arrangement,” which was my ex and I shifting in and out of the house, nesting, as they call it in divorce circles.
To leave a marriage feels impossible, not an option, until it becomes the only one available.
Even during our trial separation, I still didn’t know, I claimed. I didn’t know whether the marriage was over, whether we would get a divorce, let’s get through the holidays and then we will see.
I now see that I don’t know is a coping mechanism I use, an automatic response to questions so that I can pretend for a little longer.
It took so long for me to know. It might have taken even longer except that in early January of this year, at the end of the holiday break, my ex lied to me. This feeling was unfortunately familiar, the tingling in my body, my spidey sense that something was off. Then came the confrontation, the gaslighting and finally the excuses. I hated this feeling. I never wanted to have this feeling again. And the only way I could guarantee that I didn’t feel this way again was if I left him.
And so I did.
I look back and see how long I knew this was where it was heading. But I get it. It takes a lot to dismantle a life. A lot to give up on the life you want for your children, even if you no longer want it for yourself.
I’ve recently been slowly reading a Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. Perhaps this is standard fare for women going through divorces, a book to assure them that they did the right thing. They have cast off their shackles, now they get to run free, be wild, get in touch with their animal nature. Because it is the wild one that knows, the self we have muted, the wise woman we have abandoned in the pursuit of what others want for us, who holds our truth. And sometimes that truth is inconvenient for others. Though never for ourselves.
“...when girls are very young, usually before five years of age. They are taught to not see, and instead to ‘make pretty’ all manner of grotesqueries whether they are lovely or not…This early training to ‘be nice’ causes women to override their intuitions. In that sense, they are actually purposefully taught to submit to the predator.”—Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves
A lot of my journey of late has been about owning what I know. About knowing hard things. About trusting myself, instead of others.
I am not alone in finding my forties a time of intense transformation. Anne Helen Petersen recently wrote about this time in women’s lives on Culture Study, calling it The Portal. Maggie Smith called it a “mid-life return to self” in her conversation with Glennon Doyle on We Can Do Hard Things. I recall this quote from that conversation and lately, I’ve been like: This. This is the synopsis of my book.
Of course I do a lot of other things in my book, but ultimately I am trying to unpack how I ghosted myself. And then my book recounts the work involved in reclaiming that self back. Which included leaving my marriage.
Writing this publicly about something so private is not easy. And yet, like the way motherhood was protected for so many years, the hardness hidden away, not discussed because to do so would be disloyal to your love for your child, we don’t talk about the hard parts of marriage enough. I’m watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills this season solely to watch the implosion of Kyle Richards’ marriage. In a recent episode, she is at dinner with one of her best friends, Dorit, who is asking her about her marriage, trying to open the door to a conversation so that her friend could tell her the truth. And Kyle stares at her, deer in the headlights. She tears up, but does not divulge anything. And I get it. We have been taught to hold back. We have been taught to stay silent. Which is why when couples get divorced, we are so often shocked. It feels like it comes out of the blue. But it never comes out of the blue. It’s just that we have learned to keep these spaces private. We have learned to shoulder the pain alone.
Well, I am a writer, so sadly private is not my purview. But I also write these words because I am not alone in these knowings, in these fears, in the ways we try so hard to make impossible situations tolerable. I write about life on the other side because we have set up divorce as the thing to avoid at all costs, and yes, it is hard, yes, it upends everything, but it also sets you free. It washes away the future you had planned and there is something so inviting in not knowing what comes next. We are conditioned to want the happily ever after, a future secured, but there is also so much life in the unknowable, the uncertain, the ambiguity, the adventure.
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Further Reading:
My first published writing: If You’re Not Sure If Your Marriage Will Survive the Pandemic, You’re Not Alone, Scary Mommy
You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith
I highly recommend Kimberly Harrington’s Substack:
This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life, Lyz Lenz. Available for pre-order.
It’s the one year anniversary of this piece I published in Mutha Magazine on how Ma Ingalls and other literary mothers failed me.
Thank you for this candid post that I wish I had read when I was going through my own divorce 13 years ago...
Thank you for stopping me in my tracks with this extremely relatable piece.