Three Sides to the Story

You know that quintessential '70s scene where in the midst of a raging argument a wife leaves her husband and home, heading to her parents' house with kids in tow packed into a Pontiac station wagon?

I thank God, for the sake of every loving and engaged father out there, that such stories are seldom heard anymore.

My own short story in this regard is that I was put through the custody ringer (a legal racket, if ever there were one) during the course of my divorce. That is to say, when my ex filed for divorce (on fallacious grounds), she also vied for sole custody and removal (from the area) of our children, to which I responded with a simple no, and in so doing kicked off an excruciating eighteen-month legal process (because she chose to fight for it until it became obvious that it wouldn't go in her favor). If this reflects your current reality, take comfort. Fathers have rights recognized and protected in the courts these days. Oh, you still have to fight for them (they are unfortunately not assumed, as they are for most mothers), but while doing so is draining in every way imaginable, at least there's a clear opening these days to make your case. And what's more, judges are bound by laws protecting fathers' rights to judge according to the evidence.

So, take a breath. Calm down. And then get to work, protecting yourself and especially your children from the harm that groundless (and so I assume, vindictive) sole custody can do. For example, you'll want to start recording (e.g., on a calendar) the length, breadth, and depth of your loving engagement and presence with your children (as strange as that will feel). It's worth the effort and will cut lies off at the knees, should you perchance have the unfortunate luck to face such a thing.

I'm not at all suggesting that there aren't warranted instances where sole custody and even removal of the children (from the geographical locale) ought to be granted. Usually those are obvious to everyone but the toxic and irresponsible individual at the other end of the suit. But in a situation where you have two loving and engaged parents, being the cause of an unnecessary battle over custody until the bitter end makes no sense (it's deeply damaging to everyone involved—physically, financially, spiritually, etc.; and it also subverts any modicum of mutual respect you'll be needing to show while co-parenting). This isn't to deny that there are always two sides of a story (it's the third side in this instance that's too often forgotten). Of course there are, and of course those "reasons" put forward for sole custody and/or removal can be validated. That doesn't mean, however, that those validated reasons outweigh the reasons why sole custody and/or removal is not in the "best interests" of your children (get familiar with that phrase).

"Bitterness blinds life," preached Harry Emerson Fosdick, "love anoints its eyes."

Bitterness is like a tuberous weed—a gigantic pain in the ass to kill. Removing the growth above ground won't do; you must dig the entire root and all its tubers out. In the midst of an unwanted and subsequently acrimonious divorce due to specific hateful and hurtful actions revolving around the children on the part of the one suing, it requires a Herculean effort to avoid bitterness. If you do not, you will share in the cause of the malignancy to come. While you cannot control the victimization, self-absorption, manipulation and avenging that emerges in the actions of someone who has allowed bitterness to take deep root, you can control how you respond. There are wonderful resources out there (not least face-to-face therapy or just a friendly shoulder)—no matter what your learning style—to help you check yourself.

Even a few years on, I find myself continuing to battle with vigilance the bitterness before it takes root. It's hard to say this with absolute certainty, but I can imagine one getting over his or her divorce once the shock of it all subsides and the parties involved come to a relatively respectful parting. I mean, I can honestly say, on this side of it, that being divorced from that woman is A-OK. The battle with bitterness, it seems to me, would not feel so acute so often. But reflecting on what I had to go through in order to protect my children's lives and relationships with both their mom and dad still makes me angry. Add to that the burden of providing maintenance (and I'm not talking child support here) to a capable and educated person—really just an adult child, at this point—which puts both households at the poverty line, and bitterness and anger become very real and regular threats, indeed.

I've returned a few times to a helpful little booklet on bitterness written by Lou Priolo in the Resources for Biblical Living series published by P&R. Yeah, it's not the most robust treatment, leaning heavily as it does in the direction of nouthetic counseling, but I've found it useful each time I've read it. I know there are better (i.e., psychologically responsible) resources available out there on this issue, so I don't recommend it unless you're able to read it critically and openly, while at the same time attending to the trauma in your life that is in part one of the reasons you'd be struggling with bitterness in the first place (this booklet will not help you with trauma). Read with your eyes open, and probably don't read it first, is all I'm saying.

I'll leave you with Mary Baures helpfully highlighting the contours of bitterness and the role of hate and forgiveness in the wake of trauma (in the great article I link to in the above paragraph):

Allowing oneself to feel the fury of hate...is often a healthy part of the recovery process but it is only healthy if one can also learn to let it go. Hate minimizes a victim's feelings of powerlessness and self-blame and counteracts feelings of destruction. But after anger has been experienced, when self-compassion has replaced self-blame, and when the terror of the experience is no longer intrusive, letting go of hate can give survivors vitality and hope. ...The world is full of violence, and many are its victims. It is natural to become angry and even to hate as part of the healing process. But the final step is to forgive. Forgiveness does not condone evil behavior; it acknowledges evil without denying a person's potential humanity.

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A Stream Flowing in a Field

So different, this man
And this woman:
A stream flowing
In a field.

~Wm. Carlos Williams

Bailing on a long relationship seldom happens suddenly, severe mental instabilities notwithstanding. They die very slow deaths more often than not. I sometimes hear stories where people are shocked when the leaver finally leaves, but I've usually chalked that up to their stubborn unwillingness to be honest with themselves and their shared past with the other.

In seeming contradiction, there's this thing called "ghosting." Because ghosting is now a thing (but really it's nothing new; it just takes a unique form in our digital dating culture), research is being conducted on it. Psychologists and relationship coaches tell us that ultimately it stems from fear—fear of conflict, which leads to avoidance of confrontation, of difficult conversations, and of hurting someone's feelings.

I get that. I really do. Because I hate conflict, and I'll do almost anything to not hurt someone's feelings. (On second thought, maybe I'll do almost anything to not feel the way I feel after I've hurt someone's feelings.)

But it should come as no surprise that all that avoidance actually increases anxiety and conflict, sometimes from the one being ghosted, and often from the lingering guilt that comes with taking the wrong kind of exit from a relationship. Such anxiety can end up ruling you. I know this. I spent most of my early-to-mid 30s suffering from it, because my life was one big ball of avoidance—particularly with my now ex-wife. I had tried open communication early in our marriage, but I'm sure I wasn't doing it right: I was impatient and unkind. At times I was condescending and angry and overbearing. Because I didn't get anywhere with that communication (no surprise, looking back), I shut down ("ghosted") and became avoidant (incommensurate withdrawal or slamming the door on someone is the same thing as ghosting, only perhaps more painful because it occurs in the midst of an actual long-term relationship). So our communication occurred only out of mounting frustration. Never was there resolution. I avoided confrontation (and so did my ex), and my anxiety grew, and depression crept in. And then one day, I woke up, and my marriage was over, kicking off years of mere cohabitation. That's when the seething bitterness made its home in my heart. And I walked the earth with furrowed brow and heaving, heavy shoulders, dragging around black clouds wherever I went.

Then came the day when those clouds parted. My marriage was still over, this time legally. Sadness set in, but almost immediately so did growth and awareness and vitality and friendship. And, yes, even love. Whether reciprocal or rebounded or unrequited, I realized I could actually feel something in my guts, something better than what I had been feeling for so long. Integral to that growth has been not avoiding conflict, not avoiding doing the hard thing. Caring for the surplus of meaning inherent in the symbol of the holy, the other, the I-Thou.

If only symbols were empty, irrelevant things that aren't inextricably bound to each of us, bringing to world new relations, binding each of us anew to the discreet places they reveal. If only. Then we could dash them against the rocks without consequence. The idols would quietly go into the twilight, and the marketplace would open the next morning without any sense of loss, of meaninglessness. Take heed: symbols gather, symbols world nothing into something. It is for this reason they are to be revered—broken only as a last resort. And yet, a demolished symbol gathers another kind of world, sometimes in Elysian fields, sometimes in the abyss.

Walk, then, with fear and trembling. Guard the symbol with your life. Protect but whisper those unsaid things that cannot as yet survive in this world on their own (like little birds). Become the place—the field-stream—of peace and respite for the weary.

It's like she ceased being Thou, fully human,
With her own despair and desires.
Now she's become a symbol,
A signature of abandonment, a seal of longing.
Toward the Emerald Isle, dizzy in lofty flight.
Ghosted away: This is the dust we carry.

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Saving Your Marriage Isn't the Goal

Remember that I warned you about how deeply existential and one-sided my thoughts on divorce would be. I only expect that to continue.

In my last post, I intended to grope toward and commend the viability of letting go. When someone has turned the corner, it's better to realize that finality sooner rather than later. Of course, there are always exceptions to this principle, and you will find the interwebs offering up a great many stories to that end, and many of them come with expansive and detailed—if not manipulative—formulas to help them materialize in your life. They will give you hope. For a time.

But then you should come to realize that many of the suggestions and practical steps only you can take to save your marriage do pay off—whether or not you end up staying married. Because in the final analysis, avoiding apostasy, rather than saving your marriage, is the goal. While it's true that there are fates worse than death (and, at least initially, divorce as I experienced it was one of them), it's also true that there are fates worse than divorce.

When facing the inevitable death of your marriage, after all the disbelief that it's happening, all the negotiating with God and your partner, you will eventually need to get on with acceptance. It starts with truly repenting and owning up to your part in the dissolution. This can be a sensitive and touchy subject for many, not least for those who have suffered from some form of abuse at the hands of their former spouse. I cannot pretend to speak to those particular victims, except to plead that they run from that relationship, and take every legal measure at their disposal to make it so.

I also learned quickly that "emotional abuse" is a very real thing, with very real and negative consequences for all parties involved (even if a notion like "mental cruelty" as a ground for divorce is I suspect more often than not a thinly veiled attempt to justify an unjustifiable no-fault divorce, or worse, to perform character assassination in a child custody case). Facing the grounds with which I was strapped at first, I dove deeply into the subject, not least out of fear in light of my life and actions. Did I actually provide legal (not to mention biblical) grounds for this divorce?

If you have a modicum of humility, when you're world is unraveling, and you're an emotional wreck, you are far more susceptible to believe everything being thrown at you, to take on far more blame than the situation warrants. Guard yourself. Do not walk alone during this time. Find an honest friend who knows you for real and who can respond to certain allegations about you with a more reasonable and objective clarity than you'll be able to muster. It also helps tremendously if he or she doesn't let you drink alone.

The truth is, even though it felt like I was being ripped apart at the (ontological) seams, I had given up on my marriage well before my ex initiated. There was a time after that but before her initiation that I tried to turn it all around, but if I'm being honest I think I had intuited it was too late, and so it was a last-ditch effort with no real hope of success.

So, if you're like me, which is to say an oddball interested in literature, history and theology, and if you find yourself in a similar predicament as me, you may find yourself looking for similar resources to help you walk through and eventually accept what's happening to you (and I don't mean that in a passive sense—for you brought this upon yourself as much as your partner did). Such resources involve digging into the scriptures, reading theologians of the church on issues revolving around marriage and divorce, swallowing tomes of angsty Gothic poetry and spinning multitudinous records of 80s ballad music (and some outlaw country, for good measure).

In order to help me make sense both of my failures (which I came to readily accept and confess—and of course I still have a ways to go in discerning all of them), my former spouse's failures (which I had to impute, never having had the luxury of receiving a mutual confession) and my need, given my oddball interests, to find some guidance within the historic church to my dilemma, I unsurprisingly found myself sitting at the feet of one Martin Bucer.

In my next post, I'll unpack what I learned from him. Maybe it'll help someone else out there.

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I'm Sorry for That

"The Myth of Sisyphus," by Nicci Bedson

I've been itching for a bit to put down in writing a little more after my initial post on divorce. Today I was inspired to do so when I read a post from a young evangelical who has walked a similar path. His stakes are no doubt higher (=greater courage)—not least with respect to keeping up appearances—so I figured I could at least shake some of my journaling out these past three years and see what sticks, without (I hope) succumbing to questionable motivations, as the aforementioned poster warns against when going public in this particular context. Being a feeler first, and a thinker second, I realize how distasteful this may be to whole swaths of what little readership I have. C'est la vie.

I was struck some time ago prior to his death a quote I'd heard Robin Williams say in World's Greatest Dad:

I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel alone.

It succinctly summarized how I'd been feeling for so long, feelings that I'd previously found in the lyrical sentiment penned by Ben Folds back in the mid-90s:

Now that I've found someone,
I'm feeling more alone,
than I ever have before.
She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly. . . .
For the moment we're alone.
She's alone, and I'm alone.
Now I know it.

I can handle being alone—defined among the single crowd in terms of the absence of a monogamous, marital relationship—in contrast to being lonely. That's a healthy place to be. But handling the feeling of neglect and abandonment—as if you don't exist—from someone you've covenanted to love, that's well-nigh unbearable. I can see how it leads one to consider whether or not to live now, in reality (whether it be suicide or simply checking out), as "the only really serious philosophical question," as Camus suggested.

If you're the praying type, then one perhaps valuable prayer during times like these would be that God empower you to be freed from the need you feel for that other in the face of unrequited love. This isn't to suggest a desire to lose the ability to love deeply, to trust recklessly; you just want to be freed from having that other be the object of that love and trust.

It's okay to let go.

Now, I don't think it's unhealthy to be wrapped-up in another person (i.e., co-dependent in a very specific sense), insofar as one's identity (in Christ, for the Christian) isn't swallowed up in the process. Loving God with all one's heart, soul, mind and strength is a matter of priority, not a matter of exclusivity. I'm reminded in this that there is a place for speaking of God's love and trust as "risky"—risky in the sense that whenever a person opens him- or herself up to love and trust another, he or she runs the risk of it being unrequited. In some small way (given the parts we've all played in our own relational implosions), then, each of us who has had our deep love and affection and reckless trust betrayed, unrequited or used, taste the hurt, sadness and remorse that the covenant God feels in the face of the countless betrayals he has experienced at the hands of those to whom he has given everything.

In line with my penchant for unoriginality, I'll leave these thoughts here by commending a particular way to let go. I understand very well that many times it doesn't go in such a way that allows for this kind of parting (mine did not). At any rate, here's Theodore's last letter to Catherine for your inspiration:

Dear _____,

I'm sitting here thinking about all the things I wanted to apologize to you for. All the pain we caused each other. Everything I put on you. Everything I needed you to be or needed you to say.

I'm sorry for that.

I'll always love you because we grew up together. You helped make me who I am. I just wanted you to know that there will be a piece of you in me always, and I'm grateful for that.

Whatever someone you become, wherever you are in the world, I'm sending you love. You're my friend till the end.

Love,
_____

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Status Symbol Land

FEAR—especially the fear of losing control—serves as the impetus for an awful lot of art. It also, of course, serves as the catalyst for an unhealthy dose of insomnia, depression, anxiety, fatigue, and death (either of the silent or walking variety).

Motivated by Alan Noble's "Why Christians Should Read Disturbing, Dark, and Secular Fiction," I thought that since I have read and am now again reading a good bit of it that I'd do well to put some thoughts down on a piece that I've read recently. (This is a bit like pulling the winner out of a hat; I'm working through an anthology of American short stories and there are too many from which to choose. I decided against O'Connor's terrifyingly bizarre "Good Country People" because (1) she's not exactly "secular"; and (2) apparently she's now a Christian-hipster favorite, and I'm like light years ahead of those people.)

So, John Cheever's "The Swimmer" it is (originally published in The New Yorker on 18 July 1964). Summary of the plot:

“The Swimmer” begins with suburbanites gathered around a backyard pool, nursing their respective hangovers from the previous night's cocktail party. The hero of the tale is a youthfully middle-aged, athletic, and affluent denizen of suburbia. His desire to rise above complacently takes the form of an odd, comical quest: He decides to swim home, fifteen pools to the south. The narrative follows his journey from pool to pool, from his initial exhilaration to subsequent exhaustion, from bright and sunny to darker and colder, to unprepared and exposed. After crossing a highway, he descends into a public pool—hell to his social class. But even here he is excluded after failing to provide the proper identification. The journey is further corrupted when he finds his mistress has replaced him with a new lover, and a couple he has previously dismissed socially denies him. Finally, when he is alienated from what he knows to be true, and dispossessed of his comfortable reality, he arrives home to a dark, empty, and locked house.

Truly, I envied the swimmer Neddy Merrill's excursion. It sounded fun. Even in the rain. The absurdity part of it only becomes apparent during the last few dips, and especially when he arrives "home." The fun of swimming across several pools in a couple of neighborhoods looks pathetic indeed when Neddy reaches his now foreclosed destination. And the enthusiasm with which Neddy is greeted at first is subverted by the tale's end: all those drinks and smiles look more like pity than friendship. Status symbols are, we must admit, everything to this crowd (our collective crowd in these United States), and Neddy's loss of them feeds a fear that grips him to the point of extreme denial, acting out the absurd.

How poignant is the climax of the story today? Neddy swims "home" to an abandoned and decrepit structure. How many of those have we seen walking the neighborhood these past few years? Ah, home ownership, a grand American institution. It looks to be only a vestige of its former glory.

Speaking of American social institutions, what about the extramarital affair? Neddy’s inability to cope with his situation caused him to shut down and retreat from reality, ultimately hurting all the people in his life that he ever cared about. The same could be said about any one of the other poor choices he has apparently made (in response to a financial misfortune).

Neddy’s swimming pool journey effectively parallels our false lives, our swimming through life with eyes half closed, choosing not to acknowledge behaviors that are significant and detrimental to those we love the most. Extramarital affairs, alcoholism, gambling, and debt—all these activities gradually eat away at relationships every day. Of course, these are all symptoms of a much deeper problem: "Who can understand the human heart? There is nothing else so deceitful."

The mix of realism and surrealism, concrete rootedness and absurdity, the lack of a single vision holding reality together, the rusty linings of every cloud, are a few of the reasons I so enjoy this era of literature (roughly described as "postwar"). Yet in spite of all the aforementioned disturbing darkness, we still pine after love and understanding, and thus we must face the vertigo of absurdity with practical action—like Candide tending his garden forevermore.

So, then, "have reverence for God, and obey his commands, because this is all that we were created for." Or, put somewhat differently, love thy neighbor as thyself.


Listen to Cheever read "The Swimmer" here.

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Check, Please

The empty tumbler

tumbled onto the floor,

Accentuating the

saturninity of the scene.

His lecture lowered,

only now through clenched teeth;

Her eyebrow raised and curled,

unbroken yet abashed.

*Produced as a result of Judith Baumel's poetry exercise "Anglo-Saxon Lines" in The Practice of Poetry.

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