I'm divorced, deal

Kat Wilder — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:55:30 -0500

When I got divorced a few years ago, I thought long and hard about what was ahead — financially, romantically, etc.

One thing I just didn't realize is how people would judge me and my kid, even if they weren't aware that they were doing it.

People don't like divorced people and their offspring very much — they
feel sorry for us, the "failed" ones — although they'd never say it to
your face. They do it by their language, tinged with judgment, and by
their oblivious behavior. I touched upon this before in "The divorce dilemma,"
how people assume the wife "got" the house, how schools and coaches
don't understand that there are two homes, thus the need for two sets
of forms, etc. Dad's House addressed this beautifully, too.

People make a lot of assumptions about divorce, and the people involved.

Most people talk about divorce in terms of failure, as if the
marriage "failed." Is every ending a failure? Does that mean that a
couple who stay together in a loveless, unhappy, emotional Siberia of a
marriage just to get their kids through high school have a "successful"
marriage? Or that a woman who stays with an abusive alcoholic husband
has a "successful" marriage? Boulder Blonde rips this (and other
assumptions) apart in "Shift Happens," an intelligent read.

We divorcees have to deal with numerous assumptions. Beyond
"getting" the house, divorcees are often seen as "getting" away with,
well, a lot: living off their former hubby's hard-earned pay (even if
she was the breadwinner or an equal economic partner), and the "bad"
one if we (as is often the case) want the divorce (so, if Elizabeth
Edwards and Silda Wall Spitzer leave their marriage, are they "bad,"
too?). And so many men want to lump us into the bitter, unhappy, angry,
man-hating category. That's not to say that there aren't some women who
are like that, but there are just as many men who would fit that
profile, too.

On top of that, we are seen as threats, even to friends we've known for a long time. The hubbies think we'll make divorce look so attractive to their wives ("Gee, she's having such a great time, dating, having wild sex, doing whatever she wants whenever she wants to ...").
And wives sometimes think in our desperate need to find another man
that we'll try to seduce their hubbies (although, quite honestly, it's
the husbands themselves who see the new divorcee as ripe for picking —
except then we'd suffer the fate of poor misguided Sienna Miller.

In a bizarre twist, divorced men, especially divorced men of young
children, are almost a sexual magnet to women who think they are
somehow helpless, wounded and in need of someone to care for them and
their kiddies. Um, how many divorced moms can say the same thing?

Then, of course, many people assume the two former spouses can't get
along, thus if they get involved with a divorced man/woman, they'll
have to deal with the "psycho" ex and his/her passive-aggressive
manipulations.

And even though families come in so many versions nowadays — two
moms, two dads, single mom/dad by choice, etc. — people still tend to
think that divorced people aren't a "family," that anything less than a
man and a woman (who once were married) in one household with kids
isn't "normal." (To which I say, have you looked at what's "normal"
nowadays? I'll have nothing to do with it, thank you very much.)

Kids of divorced parents get a raw deal, too. A few studies have
found that teachers perceive kids from divorced families as
problematic, more likely to have behavior issues and academic
struggles. And if the teachers have ever had to deal with parents who
had an antagonistic relationship, or if they themselves are products of
a divorce (or divorced themselves), that gets dumped on the kids, too.

Plus, people look around at all that's "wrong" with kids nowadays,
and they start pointing fingers. At whom? Well, the selfish people who
got divorced, duh:

Divorce is blamed for the troubles
of young people; the feeling is that if the youth of today is "in
crisis," this must, at least in part, have to do with the ravages of
growing up in a nontraditional family, without the benefit of
traditional parental roles.

Or so writes Ruth Bettelheim, a psychotherapist, in Greater Good magazine.

So next time you run into a divorced man, woman, or child, stop your
inner voice before it gets all freaky, and be in the moment and see the
person for who he or see is. And I'll promise not to look at a married
couple at a restaurant eating their entire dinner in silence,
disinterested and possibly resentful, or listen to a wife/husband rag
on his/her spouse for being imperfect and feel sorry for them. Deal?

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I'm divorced, deal