(Bitter)sweet 16

My eldest son turned 16 just over a month ago. He’s a lovely boy, easygoing and rock solid, with a wry sense of humour and a strong sense of self.

He is his Dad’s mirror image and has inherited some of X’s finer qualities, but is very much his own young man. I listen to the way he communicates with his mates and it’s clear that he knows how to be a good friend. According to my youngest son, he’s also a pretty cool big brother. 

He’s got a few good female friends but, as far as I know, there isn’t anyone special just yet. Right now he’s way too focused on learning to drive and building on his computer skills so he can follow his desired career path.

He’s got a plan. He’s sensible, trustworthy and even-tempered, and gives me not one ounce of grief. Needless to say, I adore him.

Looking at my boy so grown up and secure in himself has made me think about myself at the same age. I was living in the middle of the outback in a pretty chaotic environment, with alcoholism at its core. My parents were long divorced and my Mum and Stepfather were heading in the same direction. And to make things just a little more testing, I had recently had my first experience of heartbreak.

Along with nursing my aching heart, I spent a lot of my 16^th year fantasising about finishing school and escaping to the city to pursue my dream of being a writer. On weekends I had taken to sneaking out to the local clubs. I was restless and frustrated and wild at heart. I wanted to grow up way before I was ready to and left home way too young.

If I could give a piece of advice to the wide-eyed, small-town girl I once was, it would go something like this:

Stop being in such a hurry… Life unfolds soon enough and suddenly the years start passing at a rapid pace, to the point that you’ll actually want them to slow down.

When it comes to matters of the heart, trust that things will go exactly the way they are meant to and that your truest love will appear out of thin air, when you least expect him to. In the meantime, focus on the really important things – family, friends that will be there till the bitter end, work that makes you happy and travelling to all those faraway places you’ve always dreamed of.

And re the guy that just broke your heart, he will quickly pale into insignificance. His role is to deposit a good dose of resilience deep in your ventricles, to be drawn upon at a later date. When you encounter him again in 30 years’ time, it will be abundantly clear that you made an extremely lucky escape.

That's my boy!

One afternoon last week I was collecting my youngest son (YS) from school when one of his teachers came running up to tell me there had been an “incident” that day.

Allegedly one of the little girls in Year 3 had said to YS’s Best Buddy: “I bet YS’s parents got divorced because of him!” And, thinking he was doing the right thing, Best Buddy passed that message right along.

Apparently there were tears, followed by anger and a significant dose of humiliation, to the point where my boy declared to all of his classmates that he didn’t want anyone knowing his “private business”, so could they please all refrain from EVER talking about his family to anyone.

Once we were in the car and heading home, YS and I did what we always do when stuff happens – we talked it through. What struck me most by that conversation was how kind and insightful that boy is. He’s just turned 10 but is always willing to see things from the other side, even when he’s been hurt.

The first thing he pointed out was that it was “absolutely ridiculous” to think the divorce could ever be his fault:
“I was only 16 months old… And does she know how much you and Dad love me!” he stated with the utmost confidence.

Too right, I confirmed, adding that divorce could only ever be the fault of the adults, not the kids.

He was still feeling embarrassed and reiterated his belief that his family life should be kept private at all times
(I had to choke a little on that – he has no idea I blog and I’m not looking forward to that conversation when it comes).

He also said the divorce was the “worst thing that’s ever happened to me”, so wondered why someone would deliberately say something horrible about “my worst thing”.

Then, after raging for a while, he did what he typically does and turned it all around by saying: “It’s just really sad and awful that she would think something like that at her age!”

His solution, he decided, was to talk to her about it. He wanted to let her know that it was hurtful and humiliating, and he planned to advise her that she had to think before she spoke and not just say silly things that weren’t true – ESPECIALLY to someone’s best friend.

“Hopefully she learns a big lesson,” he added. “She might cry and feel embarrassed, but then she will know exactly how I feel.”

                                                                                  © 2011 What a Music Ltd.

The shock factor

Someone asked me a while back: What was the thing that shocked you most when your husband left you? I’ve been putting my response off for a while, to the point where days of avoidance have turned into weeks. I think I was a little fearful that raising old memories might hurt my heart all over again, but I’m actually sitting here laughing at how ridiculously horrible we can be when we’re parting ways with our partners. If I could give one piece of advice to anyone about to end a relationship and break a heart, it is simply this: Be kind.

That said, here is my answer… 

As any jilted wife will tell you, having your husband leave you for another woman is unbearably painful. There’s the heartbreak and the humiliation to contend with, but there is also plenty of shock value. It really is an experience that just keeps on giving.

There were many things that shocked me when X walked out the door… Firstly there was the initial horror of realising that he had been fully engaged in another relationship for quite some time, to the point where he had obviously been mapping out a whole new life for himself.

Then there was the realisation that our 17-year relationship really was completely over and there would never ever be any going back – X had absolutely no intention of returning and I was officially separated and a single parent.

But the thing that shocked me the most was how he suddenly started treating me as a complete hindrance to his happiness. I was no longer his loving and loyal wife or someone that he cared deeply about; instead I was an insufferable pain who he now had to endure on a regular basis as we began the process of shared parenting and headed down a one-way street toward divorce.

From one day to the next I was quite literally discarded and told by X that he had “transferred” his affections. Apparently I was no longer attractive to him, we had little in common, I was too old for him (there’s a six-year age gap), I was an imperfect mother and I just wasn’t needy enough.

I had been lied to, cheated on and dumped, but it was entirely my fault.

My personal favourite parting comment, however, was that he had NEVER BEEN IN LOVE WITH ME! Obviously those magical feelings he had developed for the girl from work were so overwhelming that the previous 17 years of our lives no longer held any meaning or currency.

He seemed to forget that he had relocated from London to live with me, that we travelled the world together, made lifelong plans, celebrated our marriage on two continents, bought our first home together and were both completely ecstatic when our first son was born. He had also clearly forgotten about the love letters he penned every week when he was overseas studying, and the beautiful things he would make for me when we were apart for long periods.

 

Made on a UK beach by the man who had never been in love with me.

There were times when the situation was just laughable, like when X would arrange for me and our boys to have some “family time” with him, but he’d spend the whole time texting his new love. Needless to say, I put an abrupt end to these pseudo family outings – they were untenable on so many levels and I just didn’t want to spend any more unneccesary time with this man I no longer seemed to know.

My diagnosis was that X had a bad case of being in love with love… A fatal disease that kills good and honest relationships, builds new relationships on sandy foundations and leaves behind a trail of heartbreak and destruction.

All I could wonder at the time was: At which precise moment were his affections transferred? And exactly how long had our relationship been a farce? I remember yelling at him on more than one occasion: "You watched me give birth to your children!"... Not that it made an ounce of difference.

Initially it was excruciating to think I had become nothing more to X than the woman he had children with. This man I had been so devoted to was treating me with absolute contempt and did everything possible to exclude me from his life. But as time passed and the sessions I spent with my counsellor became more focused on me and less on him, the pain subsided. Unexpectedly meeting another man just a year after X left me also went a long way toward piecing my broken heart back together.

Even though my heartbreak had been cured, for a long time it would still hurt whenever X said anything remotely nasty to me – sometimes it still surprises me that he has been quite cruel but seems to live without remorse. I’m of the opinion that he still needs to apologise to me for the way our relationship ended, but am not holding my breath. And as my counsellor so reassuringly said: “The Universe will apologise to you on his behalf.”

Nearly nine years on, my skin has thickened and the impact of X’s words is pretty minimal these days, and nothing about his behaviour really shocks me any more. I’m actually extremely thankful he left me and was so utterly awful in those early days – he made it pretty easy to fall out of love with him and his actions led me directly into the arms of a man more worthy of my heart. The Universe seems to have said sorry in the most perfect way, and I'm willing to accept that.

Ode to a single father

There’s a new book out called Single Father, Better Dad (by Mark Tucker), and it got me thinking back to my childhood and reflecting on the great wonder of my own Single Father – a larger-than-life character with an amazing passion for life. 

Dad wasn’t an exemplary husband – he was wild and irresponsible, and he liked the good times to roll on and on (just some of the reasons Mum left him when my sister and I were little). But he was a fabulous father. 

Way back when divorced parents were a rarity among my peers and ‘single dad’ wasn’t yet common terminology, my sweet Dad was leading the way. He cared little for worldly possessions and money was scarce, but he gave my sister and I the greatest gift of all – every single ounce of his spare time. 

Each Saturday without fail he would swing by and collect us in his work van, and we would help him deliver ice-creams and spread his good cheer to all the shops dotted around our outback town. 

Sunday afternoons Dad would pick us up again for our regular family roast with our Croatian grandparents and cousins, after which we’d do the rounds of the neighbourhood, stopping in at countless houses for a chat – to the point where we knew pretty much every living soul in the south part of town.

He’d take us to his favourite football club or to watch the Croatian community gather for a game of bocce or a celebration of some kind. Then, as we got older and occasionally stayed with Dad overnight, he would think up all sorts of mischief for the three of us to get up to… Like scaling the fence of the local pool for a midnight swim, or breaking into a mate’s backyard to give his prize birds a taste of freedom. He'd even let us cut his hair – something I definitely had no talent for.

There were no curfews if we wanted to go to a party, he had no problem with us going to nightclubs way before we should have been and we could tell him absolutely anything, knowing there would be no judgement and little consequence. It was pretty much like hanging out with an oversized kid – one with an extremely sharp wit, an endless thirst for fun, a car and all the friends you could ever want.

Whenever we parted Dad would throw his arms around us and openly declare his great love – it was a beautiful thing that came so completely naturally to him.

... It's all kids need.

I still have the countless letters he sent when I was all grown up and travelling the world. They’re handwritten in his signature upper-case style and signed off with a giant hand-drawn heart emblazoned with the words ‘I LOVE YOU’, and they will be forever treasured. 

It’s been almost 13 years since that big-hearted man made his grand departure, packing the local cathedral to the rafters with just about everyone he had ever met, and I can still hear his bellowing laugh and feel that boundless love. If X and I have made our sons feel even half as loved as me and my sister, then I would argue that a large part of our job is done. 

Dad certainly had his flaws, and I can’t say whether or not it was being a single father that made him a better dad. But having so much time with him sure made his finest qualities shine as bright as a million stars, and my sister and I can never talk about him without laughing out loud.

LOVE YOU, DAD. MISS YOU. xxx

The Humiliation Factor

The one thing you can do is to do nothing. Wait… You will find that you survive humiliation and that’s an experience of incalculable value. – T.S. Eliot

When it finally dawned on me that X and Y had been having their affair, probably for quite some time, I felt utterly humiliated. It wasn’t horrible enough that the man I loved had been lying and making future plans that didn’t include me, but the woman who had posed as his “friend” and had the audacity to come to our home and sit at our dinner table while I was pregnant was clearly laughing in my face.

I felt like THE BIGGEST IDIOT ON THE PLANET. And when I received an anonymous phone call from someone at X’s work – who, in some kind of sisterly show of solidarity, literally called to say: “Your husband is having an affair with Y” – my humiliation was complete. 

It was hard having to share the news with my family and friends, but the realisation that all of X’s colleagues seemed to know all about my (unconscious) uncoupling well in advance of me was mortifying.

It wasn’t just that I had been fully duped; it was that I had obviously failed as a wife. And the idea of being divorced and a single parent was scary.

Looking back, I think feeling like a fool was a fairly natural reaction. No-one ever wants to be the last to know their relationship has become a farce.

Fortunately for me, I could compare my own to level of humiliation to Jennifer Aniston’s (her marriage breakup happened not long before mine). On a scale of 1 to 10, she was definitely experiencing a humiliation rating of 50. In my darkest hours I would be comforted by the thought that the other woman in my life wasn’t Angelina Jolie, and that the whole entire world wasn’t weighing in on the tragic state of my marriage.

I was definitely feeling Jen’s pain but suspected she would be just fine – some handsome leading man would surely come her way, the movie offers would keep flowing in and she could always talk things through with Oprah or Ellen. And because there were no children involved, Jen didn’t have to see her Ex’s smug little Angelina-Jolie-is-in-love-with-me face in the flesh on a regular basis. 

I, on the other hand, didn’t think I’d ever be able to get off the floor for long enough to work again. I was pretty certain no dreamy guy would be wanting me and my considerable baggage. I definitely wouldn’t be left with a fabulous mansion and healthy bank account post property settlement, and I had no choice but to see X’s I-have-left-you-for-another-woman-and-am-feeling-so-loved-up-and-you-are-now-insignificant-to-me face on a daily basis. It was definitely a low point.

Thankfully I had two lovely and demanding little boys to care for, otherwise I might have just curled up in a corner and sobbed myself completely into oblivion. 



© 2014 Inertia Recordings

Eventually – with the help of an amazing counsellor, my sweet family and exceptional friends – I realised nobody was laughing at me. My humiliation soon subsided and made way for the next stage of relationship grief. 

In the process I discovered that surviving humiliation genuinely is an experience of incalculable value – it opens your eyes, expands your ability to empathise and gives you the chance to have a good laugh at your sorry self. And the truly great thing about humiliation is that it shines a spotlight on the people who absolutely love you and really will be there for you through thick and thin.

I’m not suggesting that you seek humiliation out… If you can avoid it that's a good thing. But if it happens to come your way unexpectedly, then consider it a lesson in resilience, and know that it will pass.