Always Advent

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A Word That Means ‘Divorced’

by Clare Siobhan

(This article originally appeared in the January-February 2007 issue of Faith & Family Magazine.)

I hate describing myself as “divorced.”

Somehow that word implicitly says, “Yes, I’m divorced and proud of it! Good riddance to him!” As if I actually want to be living this way.

I wish there were a single word that encompassed everything the word “divorced” has come to mean for me.

I wish there were a word that meant, “Yes, I’m divorced, but I don’t believe in divorce; I didn’t then and I don’t now, but it was kind of forced upon me by the no-fault divorce laws. My husband had checked the box that said “irreconcilable differences.” I don’t think our differences were irreconcilable, but once you find yourself the respondent in a petition for the dissolution of marriage, there’s not much you can do.

The judge even made a point of saying to my soon-to-be ex-husband, “Don’t worry, you will get your divorce.” His divorce. Not mine.

Is there a word that says, “Not only do I not believe in divorce, I thought my marriage was divorce-proof”?

We learned Natural Family Planning before the wedding and practiced it in accordance with the Catholic Church. We both agreed that divorce would never be an option for us. We were committed to the lifestyle of Dad supporting the family and Mom being the primary at-home caregiver and educator of the children. We were leaders in our parish choir. We agreed on the moral and religious upbringing of the children. We adopted a child from overseas. We volunteered with the local pro-life group. We even taught Natural Family Planning, for Pete’s sake.

How did we end up divorced?

When someone asks you if you’re married, single, or divorced, simply answering “I’m divorced” does not quite express the drowning feeling that comes with realizing one person cannot hold down a full-time job, keep the house decent, keep food in the fridge, keep close watch on the children’s schoolwork, friends, spiritual upbringing, encourage them to grow in faith and virtue, keep the lawn tended, manage maintenance and improvements on the house, take care of the pets, make sure the children practice their instruments and do their homework, take them to basketball practice or the occasional gymnastics program, make sure the laundry gets done, pay the bills on time, manage the endless stacks of papers that seem to accumulate all over the house, take the children to the dentist, the doctor, arrange for childcare when school is not in session, and so on endlessly …

One person can’t do all of that and do a consistently good job at it, especially when the children’s father does nothing to help and in fact seems hell-bent on undermining my attempts to bring them up.

He refuses to help pay for the children’s Catholic education and does not reimburse me for any of the children’s medical expenses. He allows the children to watch movies that I wouldn’t let them watch, listen to music I wouldn’t let them listen to, and do things I wouldn’t let them do. On several occasions one of the children has asked him if he’ll buy them new shoes. His reply? “That’s Mom’s job.”

Perhaps there’s a single word that says, “Even though I’m alone and struggling daily with the weight of too many responsibilities and not enough time, money or energy, I admit to some ambivalence.” As difficult as this single mom lifestyle is, it’s better than what living with him became: our marriage looked perfect on paper, but of course it was difficult. We each struggled with our disappointment and disillusionment in our own way, but twelve years into it his disappointment and disillusionment with our marriage and also with his career led to a mental health crisis in which he became suicidal. The upheaval and stress in our family was already unbearable, but as part of his therapy, he embarked upon a career change which entailed relocating us all to another part of the state and entering a full-time graduate school program funded by the proceeds of our house sale.

I’m embarrassed to admit that at the time I actually thought this all-out pursuit of his dream was a good idea.

To say that things rapidly went from bad to worse is quite an understatement. You couldn’t possibly understand unless you had been there. He threw himself into his re-education with a single-minded zeal that left our already-sputtering marriage dead in its wake. I was alone with the children every day, home-schooling them, and alone every night after the kids went to sleep because he would leave the apartment and go to his studio, often not returning until breakfast the following morning.

On the few nights he did stay home I was still “alone,” or worse, having another one of those knock-down, drag-out, plate-throwing, epithet-hurling arguments. I had never cried so much in my entire life, before or since, as I did during those bleak final months before his aggressive and erratic behavior prompted me to call the police and have him removed from our home to the local psychiatric ward.

He called me from the ward two days later to say he wasn’t coming back.

Even now, more than four years later, I still steer myself into the circular mental rut of second-guessing my phone call because it led to the debacle of our separation and ultimately to our divorce. Was it really so bad? Lots of people live with worse marriages than this.

Or do they?

Does raising his fist to strike me, body-checking me backwards into the bathroom, and then stomping on my foot count as spousal abuse? Was I supposed to wait until he really injured me before I called the police? I wrote him emails and spoke to him on the phone saying I wanted to be reconciled with him, but he never responded.

Should I have been more insistent?

When he filed for divorce, is there anything I could have done to stop it from going forward? How do I encapsulate in one word the anxiety of wondering if I could have done more to save the marriage? Worse, wondering if I didn’t do more because deep down I really didn’t want the children or myself to go back into that situation?

How can you sum up the loneliness and unease you feel as a single person in a couple’s world?
My close Catholic friends are welcoming, understanding and accommodating, but sometimes they’ll say something, or one of my prayer group friends will lift up an intention “for all our husbands,” or I’ll see one of these couples exchange a special look or someone will announce that they’re expecting another baby.

Those moments can be difficult.

My non-Catholic friends and family don’t understand why I’m not dating. Because there’s no annulment, I tell them, which at the moment is a convenient excuse. What if the annulment is granted? After my experience, I think I would run screaming from the prospect of a second marriage.

When I first meet someone new, especially at my parish, I always hope that person is not as critical of divorcees as I used to be. I used to assume divorce was always the mutual decision of moral weaklings, people who couldn’t tough it out during the hard times, people who too easily threw in the towel because working it out was just too much work or would require the eating of more crow than either party could stomach.

I was better than those people.

I know better now. I am a towel-throwing moral weakling with no taste for crow. My husband and I had younger married friends, who looked up to us, who were stunned by the news of our divorce. I’m still stunned at how far we fell, and yet, this view from the bottom enables me to see how arrogant, self-confident, and judgmental I was.

What do I know, anyway? My husband and I had all the answers and look what happened to us.

Everything is a gift from God; anything good is purely his doing, not mine. When I thought I had it all and knew it all, all I had was my own self-righteousness and self-sufficient pride.

Now that I have very little and know only that I failed miserably at my vocation, my eyes are opened and I can finally see God’s hand in my life as he faithfully provides for me and my children. His mercies are brand new every day; he is my portion and cup, the Divine Spouse, the beloved of my soul.

Is there a word for all of these mixed-up feelings?

How can I hate being divorced and yet be relieved at the same time? What do you call the embarrassment of being so handily un-high-horsed coupled with the paradoxical sense of gratitude to God for such a fruitful humiliation? How do you describe in one word the sense of being overwhelmed by everything but knowing that in Christ you can do all things if you lean on Him him and trust totally in him?

I used to look down on people who described themselves as “divorced”. But that’s only because I didn’t realize how much meaning and experience could force its way into such a small word.

A word that more adequately sums up everything the children and I have been through — the anguish, the shame, the frustration, the sense of loss — all strangely illuminated by a stubborn hope-in-spite-of-it-all, is The Cross.

These days I don’t feel the cross of my divorce as acutely as I did two or three years ago, but sometimes it still digs deep. Those are good times to remember to offer it all up for my friends and family members who are still married — all married couples, in fact — knowing that if it could happen to me, it could happen to anybody. (originally appeared in Faith & Family Magazine, Jan/Feb 2007)

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