kethrai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sins Two.... Divorce as Desecration In my opinion, love is a bit like alcoholism—you should only get seriously involved with someone after you’ve been sober for a year. Mind you, I didn’t really follow my own guideline when I first got involved with the Darling Husband—technically yes, I’d not been married, had been sort of broken up with the ex boyfriend for a couple of years (certainly we had given up talk of marriage, at any rate) and had only been casually dating when we got involved.
But hey, I was 25, no kids were involved, everyone didn’t really know each other, there were no real betrayals involved… you know. If you’re going to be passing from partner to partner, that’s the time to do it. A person that I work with, moderately respect, and usually like, is getting a divorce. A divorce alone would not change my opinion of someone. But this person is getting divorced after 20-odd years of marriage, because of another person that I work with… who I also moderately respected and usually like. Apparently they’ve been having an affair. I’m having a difficult time understanding this all. It’s not that I don’t understand falling out of love with someone, even if it’s lousy timing—I get that. I understand, too, what the attractions the people involved have for each other….but if you’ve been married for 20-odd years and it isn’t working anymore, don’t you at least owe your spouse a formal divorce and a little time before you start up with someone else, especially if said spouse is about to be blindsided by allathis? And shouldn’t you NOT be picking someone who your spouse knows? For instance: A few months ago there was a Flirting Incident at a faire that the Darling Husband and I were working. It was all just faire flirting to the Darling Husband….but when the Flirtee was cornering me in the bathroom and telling me how much she wanted to catch a Scotsman for herself and were we ACTUALLY married, or was it just like a handfasting thing, and for how long, and…. I got rather irritated. Not with her—I barely knew her, and as far as I’m concerned, strangers don’t owe me jack shit. I was irritated with the Darling Husband, for taking flirting to a level where she was clearly getting Some Expectations from him. Since then, when the subject has come up in conversation with others, one of my friends will jokingly remark “Oh, well, I wouldn’t flirt with him because I don’t want to get in trouble with you.” Which tells me they’re missing the point. THEY do not answer to me. The Darling Husband does. They are only responsible to themselves for their own actions. He is responsible to me for whatever reciprocity he hints at with another, just as I am to him. That’s part of this whole monogamy thing—we answer to ourselves and each other for our sexual indiscretions. Only one of the people I’ve discussed this with actually got it….my friend Crow, the actor, laughingly gave the Darling Husband a kilt check one day, and then turned to me and said “How much trouble is he in with you for permitting that?” I grinned. “He’s got to sleep sometime,” I said. In a hypothetical case where I found out that the Darling Husband is sleeping with another person….well, I’m not going to be hunting down the Other Person with a twelve gauge. They don’t owe me anything. I’ll cut to the chase and take him out. I can’t imagine myself getting involved with someone outside my marriage without dissolving the marriage FIRST, but should that unlikely event occur, I wouldn’t cheat on the Darling Husband with anyone he’s friends with. Wow. Way to get caught, dude. And way to triple the pain for everyone involved. But then, any other hypothetical Other Person that I could even remotely picture would probably be a stranger to me. No one who is involved in a relationship with me—be it the Darling Husband, my sister, my family, my friends….whatever the degree of relationship…. would think to try to encourage cheating because, y’know, part of the social contract of these things is you don’t poison the well you drink from. You don’t ruin the social circle you run in. You don’t engage in affaires that will hurt EVERYONE involved. What I don’t get about this divorce affaire going on at my job is that they all know each other, and have for years. The spouse, the spouse I work with, and the Other Person that I work with. They’ve talked kid-raising together, been to each others’ barbecues, all gone to the company picnics. Cripes, gone to the same church, for all I know. They have children about the same age. Which is part of what makes this unbelievable to me…. to know that you’re abusing the trust of someone you don’t know by schtupping their spouse is one thing, but if you have a face and a name….ouch. Bad enough that the Betraying Spouse is cheating, but in this case it looks as if the Other Person just went ahead and decided to cause a world of hurt as well. I just can’t imagine it. Divorce is a rightfully painful process, no matter how it goes down. A good friend who endured years of emotional abuse before cutting the knot still expresses regrets at odd little times about it. And it seems to me that if you’ve been in partnership with someone for a while, you at least owe them the dignity of cutting the knot in some way shape or form—a separation, a declaration of intent, a divorce paper-- before you rub it in their faces that you don’t love them anymore by cavorting with your new lover in front of them. I’m thinking that the Betrayed Spouse oughta go get a double hunting permit, in this case. I told the Darling Husband about all of this. His take on the situation was that it had probably been going on for years, and the Other Person was finally demanding that the Betraying Spouse get rid of their spouse and acknowledge the relationship. I suppose that’s possible. I’m trying very hard to not sit in judgement of any of these folks, at least not anywhere where it will come to their ears or anyone else’s, which is part of why I’m writing it here instead. Because it truly is none of my business. But it’s all so terribly sad—they’ve hurt the Betrayed Spouse, and everyone who’s mentioned anything about this in my hearing thinks very much the less of them. As do I. Really, they couldn’t have shopped for partners more calculated to hurt other people with. And while I’m not really into this whole sin thing, and don’t even really understand the qualifications for sin, so to speak—it seems that according to the published rules, I’m probably on my way to hell for a few things that I didn’t even see as exceptional –but it really seems terribly unkind for them to have chosen the partners they did, and to break it to the Betrayed Spouse in the way that they have. It’s particularly awful that the Betraying Spouse is lapping up the wailing of the Betrayed spouse, but that’s another brick in the wall for the Betrayer and a totally different part of the story, at this point. I’m not sure where I really want to go with this entry, actually. But the usual queasy distaste I have for anyone who decides to randomly and without communication break their marriage vows is magnified here, into something that just makes me sad. It’s none of my business, of course. But it’s hardened my resolve—if the Darling Husband ever kicks off, or leaves me—there will be a decent interval of Kethrai time before I go hopping back into the game. Time to dry out, sober up, and live one day at a time…. until the right time…to try again, or not. 10:20 p.m. - 2002-08-13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||