No More Wire Hangers!
In this episode of Momversation, Mindy Roberts from The Mommy Blog asks the question, “How has divorce effected you?”
Since you and I can’t sit and sip on a bottle of bourbon and chat all day about this, here’s the short version answer to that question:
My father has been married four times. FOUR TIMES. How can that not mess you up?
Of the four marriages, wife #2 was by far the worst. I can unapologetically say that being around her was worse than being around my own mother, who was a paranoid schizophrenic. If that ain’t saying something, then I don’t know what else does.
To sum it all up – wife # 2 was incredibly abusive, both verbally and physically. I can trace most of my neurosis as an adult from the seven years that she spent casting an ominous cloud over me. That woman completely terrorized me in a “Mommy Dearest” kind of way (“NO MORE WIRE HANGERS!!!”). And to make matters worse, she treated my older sister like she was her pet. I, on the other hand, was called “dae-jee” (or “piggy” in Korean) and was ridiculed for being less than perfect. When my father and she finally got a divorce, I was doing a little happy dance inside. I was just so relieved to not walk on eggshells all the time or be yelled at for things like not folding the laundry correctly. It was a complete relief to me, but my sister was completely devastated.
After living through 3 divorces as a child and watching a zillion fights – my views relationships are completely skewed. As a result, I’ve had three major relationships in my life and none of them panned out. I did the best that I could with the dysfunctional toolbox that I had, but I really think my past relationships have been a diversion to avoid dealing with who I was. I fell into a trap that was hard to climb out of.
Nowadays, I think I have moved passed all that. I am a champion for love. I don’t necessarily believe that marriage is important, but love – love is something that I would go to the mat for. I give all the credit to Heather, Rebecca and Daphne for making their marriages work. From my experience, it’s not easy to maintain a relationship for the long haul. And as for Mindy, I think sometimes it’s harder to walk away … and choose happiness and self preservation.
When giving relationship advice, I always tell people to choose happiness. If you are happier together, even though things are sometimes bad, then it’s worth holding out for the times when things are good. If you spend your days fantasizing about being solo (I did this alot) then get out – get out fast.
And for goodness sakes, be gentle with your kids. They are no reason to “stay together” but there’s no good reason to tear them up while your relationship is falling apart.
PS. Check out the comment section of this Momversation episode. These ladies have a lot to say on the topic of divorce and are quite frank about their own experiences. I think it’s great to hear the whole spectrum of stories.
Tags: daphne brogdon, divorce, dooce, mindy, momversation, rebecca woolf
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Daily. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
5 Responses to “No More Wire Hangers!”
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I like your relationship advice.
“If you are happier together, even though things are sometimes bad, then it’s worth holding out for the times when things are good. If you spend your days fantasizing about being solo (I did this alot) then get out – get out fast.”
That is so true.
Jammie J.´s last blog post..Protected: Random Ramblings.
Wow. I think our fathers married the same woman.
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Seconded on your relationship advice! In each of my major, long-term relationships I reached that point where I knew it was time to end it…even though doing so was hard. Now I find myself ready and willing to hold out for a man who is moving over 1000 miles away for two years. We’ll see what happens.
I did the best that I could with the dysfunctional toolbox that I had, but I really think my past relationships have been a diversion to avoid dealing with who I was.
Wow, so with you on this one. Thankfully we are older and wiser now.
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Not having experienced divorced parents, I can still relate to the abusive parental situations. Of course dysfunctionality doesn’t only come from divorced family units. Wire hangars were only “stage one” for me … later I was upgraded to the solid wood baseball bat. And then there was the yelling (so loud the neighbors yelled back to shut the F up) as well as the emotional and verbal abuse.
Did this lay a foundation of sorts for my future relationships? Sure did. Even after finding “Mr. Oh So Right,” things turned upside down for a long spell which had us seriously contemplating divorce MANY times over.
But y’know … TRUE love isn’t all roses and romance. It’s how things get handled during the extremely rough times. And in retrospect although we handled some of those times VERY poorly, we DID learn about one another quite a bit. But more importantly I learned more about myself and he himself. We realized that we got each other so fired up because we “helped” the other see what was ugly and wrong in our lives (whether it was old baggage or new junk). It was easier to lash out at our partner about it rather than try to fix it.
But again, the test of love — the test of how unconditional we were for the other — came into play. We decided it was worth the FIGHT FOR our marriage versus fighting against it. We’re still a work in progress, but we’re more thankful EVERY DAY that we didn’t sign those divorce papers. Because NOW we are that sappy love story people can gush (or gag) about.
(PS – parents had their own positive transformations as well … but that’s another story)
Hasn’t everyone gotten bored of this crap by now?