Marriage After Divorce

I’ve spent the majority of my life reflecting on divorce. Always the little kid asking, “Why?” Divorce is like a giant tree that has grown in the middle of the garden of my life, like a weed with big twisted roots choking out everything else in the garden. The first 20 years, I was caught up in it emotionally, fueling the tree like Miracle Grow with my bitterness, anger and resentment. Somewhere during the last decade, I started going through a renaissance period. I started cutting through the emotions with the blade of the sword of Truth and looking at things a little differently. Still asking “Why?” but this time looking for answers that held truth instead of those jaded by my own brokenness. First I realized Miracle Grow is poison, so let’s get rid of that. This tree is not one good for fruit or shade or anything else, it is dark and brings nothing but darkness; so not only is it not productive in my garden it is slowing destroying everything else. So, I decided to chop it down. Hasn’t been easy. When you realize how much the roots have intertwined with everything else, the task almost seems impossible to complete.

One of those roots is selfishness.

A marriage is a single unit. Two people choose to come together to become one. Continuing on the path of one-ness requires sacrifice because you have to abandon all sense of selfishness. Nothing is mine or yours, it is ours. Having children just adds more “we” to the “us.”

Divorce is like a villain everyone underestimates. I’ve talked to many people who claim, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that.” “Our divorce is different.” “We get along so much better now.” Some divorces are less tumultuous, some people are luckier (if you want to call it that) than others–but you cannot underestimate this enemy. There is so much going on behind the scenes.

The hard truth is this: divorce makes everyone involved selfish. Whaaaaaaaat?! Yes, you. You’re not magically immune. Don’t deny it, it will only make things worse–and teach your children to be even more so. Think about it logically for a moment. Divorce fractures a family unit. What was one now is in several pieces. Even if some of the pieces try to align together, the underlying truth is that every man now fends for himself. There is no us, there is only me.

Somehow our society has come to the conclusion that we should not rock the boat and try to salvage things–you know, for the good of the kids. I imagine their thought process is that a broken family breaks apart like a puzzle (it seems logical, people were separated before they come together to form a family) and if we just remove one piece of the puzzle, it will be OK. The puzzle is still almost whole. You can still see the image. We can glue all the other pieces together, to the table, so we don’t loose any more. That one piece won’t be that big of a deal. But that is not how it works. That thinking will never work.

When hearts break, they don’t break even. Hearts–and families–shatter. Imagine a glass shattered on the ground, spilt milk everywhere. The glass is the family and the milk was their future. After this moment, nothing will ever be the same. All of the family members made up one glass together. When the glass broke the family didn’t just break apart into a clean piece for each person. Every person themselves is shattered and all the pieces strewn about. What do you do? You try to put yourself back together.

It’s not that anything is wrong about that. It’s human nature. And a necessary evil. Think about being on a distressed airplane where the oxygen masks have fallen from the ceiling–what do you do? You put on your mask. You have to. They tell you to. You put on your mask first. You can get all indignant and wax eloquent saying that you’re a selfless parent who would definitely be concerned with putting a mask on your child first. But you may not live to help your child, if you don’t help yourself first.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t start by putting yourself back together. On the contrary, I am. But you have to realize what you are doing. Don’t lie to yourself, or others. Sometimes you have to be selfish for a moment to become selfless for a lifetime.

Think of Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane. Sweating blood. Irate with his brothers for falling asleep and having little regard for what is going on. How pivotal of a moment in history is that? Jesus needed that moment to say “I don’t want to do this. Please don’t make me do this.” He needed a little me time to get perspective on the us. Then he made a choice, to make the sacrifice for the good of the world–a broken, fractured group of people. Altruism. He didn’t whine “Woe is me, look what I did for you, look how selfless I am that I would die for you! Blah, blah, blah, me, me, me.”

The irony about the glass scenario is how people act like divorce is the end of the world when it comes to family life. But it is not. Divorce doesn’t destroy families (well, it does if we let it; but it doesn’t naturally) it just restructures them. Same way that new additions, death, adulthood, marriage, or other life changes would. That’s probably where we get the term “family dynamics,” because families are dynamic. Families don’t stay the same. Ever. They are always changing. They involve multiple people who are constantly evolving and changing the way they interact with one another.

So, why when there is a divorce do we try to take all the glass shards for ourselves and force everything to an old memory to stay the same forever? I’m still trying to figure out that why. Actually, no. I think I know. I think it is because all logic and reason goes out the window and people act only on emotion. And the emotional response to hurt is to pull back and avoid being hurt again. So the most aggressively emotional person in the group grabs all the pieces and tries to force them into their desired memory, while driving out any memory of the one person they are removing and placing all the blame on. Selfishness. I don’t think that person necessarily means to hurt anyone. And they are convinced they are a victim and an vigilant, saving everyone else from this hurt. But hurt happens. The hurt has been done. Don’t push it deeper. Help it heal.

The cool thing about glass is that it melts at high heat. It just so happens that divorce (and other life-altering events) is an intense heat situation, providing a perfect opportunity to make something beautiful in the midst of an ugly situation.

You just thought that a puzzle was a better scenario because you didn’t truly think about the entire picture.  Just a puzzle missing a piece, much better than tiny shards broken glass that can’t be fixed. But the puzzle will remain broken forever. You can’t just get by without a piece. You can’t force a different piece in it’s spot. Or draw a new piece yourself and get the same finished whole product as the original.

The shards of glass cannot be glued back together to form the same shape they were in before. But they aren’t meant to. Once a family is divided it has to start again, re-creating new families. Just like you did when you got married in the first place. You don’t think you left broken glass when you left your parents’ glass?! Well, you did. Just go ask your mom. Her life changed. Forever. Families are supposed to change. They were designed that way. That’s what makes them dynamic.

So, why are we forcing children of divorce to cry over spilt milk? Demanding they use superglue to desperately try to glue together something that cannot be fixed? Tying their well-being and self worth to our own and trying to force them to feel our feelings and reject the other parent?

It’s time to stop being selfish. Take a moment to be selfish to reflect on yourself, get help from outside to focus on the big picture: families change, and you cannot remove anyone from your family–marriage is forever (in more way than one). IF you make a child with someone you are tied to them for life. You cannot change the laws of life. No amount of running or lying or repressing will eliminate a member of your family. So stop trying. Look at what is and make the most of it. Choose to be selfless for your children. Recognize that you are hurting your children more by your actions than the divorce itself. And accept the cold hard truth that the best way to navigate your family through divorce is together. In case you missed it, together means with your ex. Because no one’s ex falls of the earth after a divorce to never be heard from again. They are there. For the rest of your life. Learn to live with it. Not just “until the kids get older,” or “after the payments stop,” or “when the ex gets remarried,” but for-ev-er. Your children will grow up, get married and have children of their own. You will have weddings, funerals, births, graduations, birthday parties, and countless other milestone moments in your family life that you cannot eliminate someone from. Suck it up, Buttercup. For your family. For your kids. Set fire to the broken glass and make what you want of the pieces–together. You’re family never gets smaller, it only changes form. Teach your children how to handle the changes in life, stop the cycle of bitterness, brokenness, and victimization, prepare them for the inevitable next change. Dynamic. Families are dynamic.

Disney doesn’t ruin children’s minds with fantasy images of marriage and family. We do. We’re the ones crying “Woe is me… ” “All this bad stuff? I didn’t deserve…” “Make sure you pick the right person…” “Leave them before they leave you,” and all kinds of other bad advice. Whether verbally or through our actions. Stop telling children that you can make “perfect” families and keep them that way. It’s not normal. It’s not supposed to happen. It’s not going to happen. If you keep feeding them these lies before they ever realize the truth they will be lost and broken thinking something is wrong with them, when the only problem they had was having a parent fail to teach them the beauty in broken glass and the ability to create under fire.

Do you want your children to spend their entire lives preoccupied with mediating their parents’ failed relationship? “Well, if I invite dad, mom is going to be unbearable the entire time..” “I’d call my mother, but I don’t want to spend an hour listening to her berate my father…” “I think my kids would be better off spending minimal amount of time with their grandparents. Too much drama.” “If I have to choose between my parents… I choose neither. I can take care of myself.”

No matter how awesome you think you are. You cannot be both parents to your child. They will always have a hole in their heart. After-all, fifty percent of them is the other parent. If you teach them to hate the other parent. You really just teach them to hate themselves.