Today marks exactly five years since the divorce decree from my second, fateful marriage of almost eight years was signed and finalized.
For weeks I have periodically contemplated (usually while driving) what kind of blog expression this milestone deserves and what I should say or not say. Surely I have formed numerous titles from the tens of thousands of words and stories and reflections and details that have wafted through my mind...
At some point recently, I decided that I would simply write from the most current thoughts about this situation (in terms of title and focus) and allow myself to pull in whichever elements that seem best when today–this day–finally arrived.
I have been in ongoing, active-and-chronic crisis mode essentially since the night of February 17, 2017. Although, I did not file for divorce until the end of May 2019. Filing for that divorce and the extremely ugly, outrageously, financially-costly process that ensued became something I both realistically anticipated should it need to take place (from the night of February 17, 2017 onward) yet still something I had yet to fully fathom in my wildest imaginations.
Never when I made the dreadful, foolish and partially ill-informed decision to re-marry and re-locate to Alabama could I have imagined a scenario that ultimately cost me around $17,000 (as best I can estimate/account for in its various legal costs) and that I would receive “discovery” questions asking me if I had ever touched (all kinds of body parts I will not name here, on both males and females) as well as engaged in an act I had no idea the definition/meaning of and had to Google.
When I was startled by such vulgar questions as part of the things I was required to respond to, I was told this was “standard language” and questioning.
All I wanted was to take action to protect myself and my future and try to figure out the best outcome I might hope for. Initially, I thought there was no way I would ever, ever get out of Alabama and back north to my home state or my grown sons. Initially, the most I was asking was to just keep the home which housed my business, the only career I had known since 1989. Eventually, the situation was escalated, and thankfully I became aware of the possibility of a rehabilitative alimony/settlement–temporary under a new Alabama law under extenuating circumstances for marriages less than ten years.
I am grateful for all those who helped accomplish this and get me back north. Even though I returned to a “personal and other world that no longer existed,” I have been struggling and fighting with everything in me to somehow maintain hope of rebuilding my life, my business and especially for God to heal my sons and the whole situation, that God would heal and bring good out of all the things that transpired between 2012 and today.
Never in my wildest imaginations would I have thought that the other party would attempt to legally obtain and read every private Facebook conversation I ever had and obtain a copy of every email exchanged with a male. I mean, there was nothing inappropriate to be discovered–only desperate, private messages with various male clergy I had known over the years, desperate and potentially damaging conversations between various previous extended family members at that time, and the occasional male client that was discussing order details via email.
Never in my wildest imaginations would I then be handed a flash drive with all of the other party’s private Facebook conversations and read the things I read going back to times pre-dating my filing for divorce. Only I knew which conversations would be relevant to the divorce case, and I had to read it all. To this day, I retain parts of those conversations in my psyche. To this day, I now keep my FB friends list low, and private…and a number of these people I cut off. My second husband and I had attended first through twelfth grade together (though we were never close friends then) and had reconnected on Facebook in May of 2010.
As one high school friend said, “It was hard to watch…we saw it all unfold back then (like some ‘fairy tale’) and then we saw it all going down…” (paraphrase)
Never in my wildest imaginations would I imagine a situation where I was reading private conversations between mutual high school friends (as well as others) that were of the nature of that which I read.
And yet, I would be held in “contempt of court” if I didn’t comply with a tremendously excessive discovery document asking me for extensive documentation of everything but the kitchen sink, all the while one of the most pertinent documentations required from the other party was not properly produced until the day before the horrific 8 hour “mediation” that occurred on December 18, 2019.
What I learned from all this was that divorce lawyers make a lot of money–all around, both sides–and a lot of it amounts to “posturing” and I felt I was at the mercy of a system and process I could have never imagined in my wildest dreams.
The first month or so of the ordeal, I found other homes to spend the night at. Eventually, we resumed sharing the house during the divorce process. It was beyond difficult. My first lawyer joked and asked me if I’d ever seen “War of the Roses.” I did watch it during that time. I was a mess of emotions…and by then…anger was my deepest.
It takes a lot of anger and determination to follow through with a rational decision to break a marital covenant.
I still remember the odd experience I had one afternoon that summer. Somehow, I was working out front in my gardens and my second husband (with whom I was in the midst of a very bitter divorce) pulled in our long driveway. For just a moment, my heart leapt. For just a moment, somehow I had forgotten the actual situation and I felt the old excitement that he was home from work, and my mind looked forward to telling him something about my day.
It was jarring…I just couldn’t believe that those feelings had somehow grown up through some crack…and as he pulled in, I thought about what I had just experienced.
There will always be unanswered questions in my mind.
I mean, I understand that the other party would not have wanted this to go to what would have been a public court case scheduled into 2020, and I was told that I wouldn’t want that either for various reasons, and that mediation was what all lawyers were urging/advocating. Simple things like how the divorce decree was signed the very next day (December 19, 2019) after the eight-hour mediation…somehow rapidly making it through the Decatur Morgan Court System in about 24 hours, I will never know how. Perhaps there is no deeper, darker reason this happened. I just had seen so much that I didn’t trust a lot of things. So many things I won’t even mention here. It is all too much.
It is my understanding that most all legal documents in this case are part of public records. Anything filed by me on February 17, 2017 with the Lawrence County Sheriff or afterward are also public records, I believe.
After that night, I began learning a lot about public records.
As the narrative I had believed began to unravel, I contacted other places in New Hampshire inquiring about public records and obtained public records. I read them, held on to them, and continued to contemplate what I should do.
For awhile, I thought that maybe we would recover, and things slightly improved in some aspects through April 2019.
During the divorce process in 2019, I discovered an image under the other party’s name that was easily visible as public information on Google, from the state of Minnesota. I don’t know how Google searches somehow produced this in 2019 but not in 2010, or before I married in 2012 and relocated, and I only hope that I was not already so far in (like a frog brought to a slow boil…I kept seeing the “terms” of things change, goal posts moved, and red flags yet I just couldn’t let go of this person and the hopes that I had allowed to build in my mind…things that materialized as so very far from the reality of all that I had thought this relationship might be and become…) that if I had seen the same image then, I would have come to my senses and called it all off.
Sometimes I think about the footprint we leave in Google.
Anyone can search “Eileen Slifer” and hit “images” and find out the most immediate things about me in images/links. The same is true if I search either of my former spouses names and hit “images”–or sometimes I’ve put in my previous two married names and done the same, out of curiosity. Not much comes up any longer under “Eileen Elfers”–that person has not been in Google since 2005. Yet, some things still come up.
It was all ludicrous (the divorce process) and jaw-dropping to me, and I still have trouble processing the anger it still produces whenever I find myself going over and over in my mind the tremendous amount of “reversals” that took place in everyone’s lives between that fateful reconnection online in 2010 and today. I am thankful that these times slowly fade and consume less of my time and emotional energy as I put them into their place.
When it first ended and I came back north in early 2020, I had so much “feminine anger/rage” and envisioned I’d be some outspoken voice for women everywhere that had gone through such an ordeal as I went through. I was determined to “get my life back” and was naive at what that would fully look like or the toll it would take on me in every way.
I mean, I certainly knew it would be difficult.
I did some nebulous blog pieces on certain issues around that time, and have periodically done personal reflections on divorce and family issues, that are now slowly taking new forms. These reflect my own healing and evolving/processing as well as God’s bringing my spiritual compass back more closely to the things that have always been my heartbeat, even when seemingly obscured at times when I see in retrospect that I was off the spiritual “beat and path” in some regards, for various reasons.
Actually the more this second marriage disaster fades, the more attention I actually find myself still reflecting upon issues/fallout/consequences of my first divorce–my twenty year marriage to the father of my two sons.
Second marriages have a higher failure rate than first marriages, and I clearly understand now why that is true.
My life and that of my children will never, ever be the same. There is no price tag/”rehabilative” settlement that could ever compensate for the lifelong damages done, and I must own that I freely made that decision to marry someone without digging really, really deeply into every aspect of their previous situation. I took them at their word and now I have learned not to be so trusting of anyone, ever, hopefully.
Now, I find myself to be a kind of “spectacle”–perhaps this is part of my calling/lot in life now–God putting on full display both His abundant grace as well as what happens to a middle aged woman who made the kind of decisions I made.
I still struggle as many who have divorced do, with objectively evaluating the entire scenario and the levels of culpability of each partner. No marriage fails solely because of one partner, yet I do not buy into a 50/50 responsibility in every case.
It’s a lot of mud, for sure.
Divorce is not God’s will, nor God’s best, nor God’s intention. What do we do with that fact and its consequences, especially when we go through more than one divorce (with biblical grounds) for such action? I don’t know. For one thing, we shouldn’t be too quick to get into another relationship nor to make another marital covenant. That’s about all I can say at the moment.
There was nothing of significance that I failed to disclose to the other party prior to the marriage.
I really should only speak for myself:
- In May 2010 I owned my own home
- In May 2010 I owned a vehicle (2005 Town & Country, original owner)
- In May 2010 I had zero debt, although my situation had required a legal option to be taken in 2008, when the market crashed and complicated my then post-divorce business situation starting the end of 2005
- In May 2010 I was providing a home, internet and all other amenities for my two teenage sons; it was difficult, but no one was living on the street or going hungry
- In May 2010 there were no legal restrictions on my visitation/relationship with my sons; in fact as I am clearly indicating, my sons lived in my home. I shared joint custody with their father and my home was their primary residence.
- In May 2010, I had never been arrested for anything of any nature.
- In May 2010 my oldest son was at the U of D with free tuition benefit from his father; my youngest was still in high school having been homeschooled through 10th grade and attending Newark High from 11th-12th grade. He also was set/aiming to attend the U of D and have the free tuition benefit.
- In May 2010, I had promptly filed all Federal and State taxes for all years prior as required, and was current with no delinquent tax debts.
- In May 2010, I owed no back child support and rather, was receiving child support as mutually agreed upon between my first husband and I.
- In May 2010, I was not un-employed. I had not lost a job, ever, for any reason other than voluntary reasons. I had not ever been laid off, for any reason. “Self-employed” can be difficult and unpredictable, but I had been at that career path since 1989, and was then sustaining myself and my sons through my art business, difficult as it sometimes was.
- In May 2010, while I definitely had the bumpiness in relationship with my sons, having gone through divorce, being a single mom, and trying to properly manage/guide teenage boys, I considered my relationship with each of them fairly good. In fact, I would have characterized my relationship with my younger son as very good and very stable and in many ways, seemingly easier-going than that with my older son. I do understand in retrospect there may have been more things at play than I realized or was able to properly address, yet, I was blindsided by the slow unfolding of various things after I went to Alabama beginning in the fall of 2012 when he started at the U of D. I will never fully forgive myself for making a decision which destabilized both my sons in ways I didn’t foresee, and especially, my younger son.
__________
This morning, as I awoke I spoke aloud something I’ve found myself doing pretty consistently for the last several months or longer. As I came awake I voiced aloud: “I trust You, Jesus.”
And then I dozed a little longer and when I finally was ready to stand up, feeling the arthritis in my bones and knowing/carrying so many weights and uncertainties into yet another long day that lay before me, I found myself vocalizing to God what became the title of this piece–“Be my rock and my strength”–and with that I put my feet on the floor and looked at my phone.
A friend had sent me an encouraging message based on a passage in the Old Testament, encouraging me that I was doing the “right thing” to “keep seeking God” in a certain situation. I am so very grateful to my inner circle of friends that have been closely walking with me in various ways through my entire ordeal, which keeps taking twists and turns.
I have found that God put various people and listening ears in my life at different stages of the situation, and to each of these people–I hope you know who you are–I thank God for you.
When I’ve been ruminating on what/how to express about the five year mark of this divorce, there are several parts that always come to my mind, in stories. I suppose on any given day I might focus on differing aspects of the same particular story.
“He’s here.”
–Jonathan, Friday night, July 2, 2010
One title of this expression might have been “He’s Here.”
As I think back on that night, those words my younger son (then sixteen years old), feel like a kind of dark, death knell of everything I had held so dear up to that point, and currently.
I had gone through my first divorce at age forty-two, in 2005. My first husband immediately began dating other women that he connected with on “Match-dot-com.” I had also put myself on that dating site at some point after the divorce, as well as “Eharmony.” Oddly, I recall one time being sent a “match” on “Match-dot-com” with my first husband. I got a laugh over that…I suppose.
It felt so bizarre, and I found that such sites were simply filled with “cheapened” computerized matches to people who likely had all sorts of issues. But, don’t we all? Hmm. Eharmony required a paid subscription and actually had a much deeper questionaire about compatibility qualities; I was pretty honest in my self-assessment/description of myself as an artistic, intense, religious person and I only received one match during that time!
I figured, why distort the truth about who I am and what makes me tick just to get a date? I wasn’t that desperate and I certainly wanted/hoped for something better and “right” if I ever got a second chance.
It matched me with an airline pilot in Wilmington, as I recall, and I think I may have sent a message but there was no response. In a way, it is oddly funny. An airline pilot would be gone quite a lot (maybe not have to endure my quirks?!) …and as it sadly turned out…after moving to Alabama my second husband was probably gone/traveling maybe even a third of the entire time (who knows?) that we were married.
It was a LOT of travel, and far more than I understood when I came to Alabama to marry him, be with him, support him in every single way possible, and, build our “new life” together which was to involve all of our children. Things happen however, despite our best intentions. And it wasn’t long in Alabama before a number of difficulties surfaced, some of which I had not at all expected.
He was in California, Europe, Japan…Midwest, DC with regularity…I came to know the Huntsville airport quite well because for the first five years we only owned the van which I brought into the marriage, fully paid off by myself. I would have to drop him off and pick him up at the airport sometimes in the wee hours of the morning or late at night, and if I needed my van for work-related things during the week, I would have to drop him off at his new job and pick him up when he was off.
When I first filed divorce, the week after my second husband returned from an elaborate trip to Ireland involving his three children, my first lawyer (yes, I eventually had to change lawyers) led me to believe that a sheriff would serve him the papers that I filed. I supplied a photo and his business trip itinary…it seemed at the time that the airport would be a place he could be predictably located.
The Memorial Day weekend of 2019 turned into a very, very overwhelming situation.
(I was asked to go on the trip to Ireland but did not have the slightest desire to leave the continental US with him for several reasons at that point…I was continually worried I might get a call that my younger son was in some immediate, terrible crisis…plus, I did not have a European driver’s license and did not want to be in a foreign country under those terms. Plus, there was just too much work I was responsible for in the situation in Alabama, to keep things “functioning” under very difficult stressors.)
I’ve digressed…seemingly from the mention of being matched at one point prior to 2010 with an airline pilot…
Basically by July 2010, I had gone five years without a single date. And while there were a couple of people I talked with online in different forums that I was infatuated with from afar (those would also have been disasters…in retrospect), the reality was that as a middle-aged divorced woman who was hoping somehow for a second chance at love, I had no idea how that might ever materialize.
I’m probably somewhat of a hopeless romantic and an idealist. I’m deeply empathetic, and get myself attached to people (even in my infatuations/imaginations) far too easily. One of my favorite romantic comedies of all time is “You’ve Got Mail” and in many ways, there is still an inward aspect (but not precisely) to my “free spirit” and often determined, feistily-even-naively-cute-inwardly-vulnerable-outwardly-stoic personality that Meg Ryan’s character captured so well in that film.
I was involved at that point in the Newark Church of Christ, but there were no prospects of “dating” anyone in that church setting. I did not go to bars, or clubs, and pretty much all my time was consumed by running my business, caring for my sons’ needs and managing our home and my own life/needs. I did find that Facebook (I first joined in 2009 after hearing about it from another caricature artist who thought I might try it in order to connect with people and get more business) was quite an outlet for self-expression and connection at that time. And, I suppose I still do find Facebook to serve some purpose. For better or worse.)
So it was in May 2010 that my second husband joined Facebook. His name popped up as “someone I might know” and when I saw it, next to “Add friend” I thought to myself, “Oh I remember this person from school” and I clicked “Add friend.”
I looked at his profile, where he was listed as single and a “Christian” and like many of my High School classmates I had connected with on social media I wondered to myself, what is his story?
I could have never imagined how rapidly my own story was to be forever altered, and to be fair, so was his.
Almost right away, I felt attention being paid to my posts, with comments and witty, intelligent responses. I liked that. He was a good conversationalist at that time, and I felt some attraction.
I love a good conversation.
After about a couple weeks of this, where, as many divorced middle-aged people online might experience, the increasingly regular, verbal interactive attention back and forth on social media with another single person of the opposite sex felt good. Eventually, we began private chatting and entered some process of talking about our personal lives and divorce situations, our children, our work, and other things.
Things continued on, increasingly through that June, and I recall what felt like mutual online flirting on posts happening, with playful banter. One post in particular involved something about cooking food and baking desserts, and I started to wonder if somehow this person and I might get together in person. At the time, all I knew was he was “in between jobs” having been in the midwest, and was temporarily staying with his parents in Delaware until he found the next thing. Which was predicted to be “easy” to find in that area.
I decided to invite him to my home for dinner, a home-cooked meal and re-connecting in person. Essentially, it was our first date. I remember within a week or so before this first in-person interaction a friend of mine was visiting me and I asked her to take some photos of me in my garden and holding one of my cats, so I could put it on Facebook.
I wanted to make sure she got me in a flattering pose that communicated who I was. I’m not one of these women who will use photo filters, and I’ve never worn makeup much after around 1986 or so. Even then, it was very minimal. I was nervously and excitedly behaving almost like a teenage girl–and at forty-seven years old and after no dates for five years of being a divorced Christian woman, I thought maybe God was finally doing something wonderful.
I remember in private chat, the other person indicated that I had that “Mother Earth Thing Going On” in those photos, and I took that as a high compliment.
It was a Friday night, July 2, 2010, and I had made a pot roast of some sort and prepared stir-fried fresh green beans from my garden and probably some type of dessert and other side dish. I remember my older son was out with his friends, and my younger son was waiting for his dad to come pick him up for his regular weekend time with him.
My “date” showed up early. I was in my office on the computer when I heard Jonathan call out to me, “He’s here.”
Two words that will forever bring me such deep, deep grief and remorse as I now think back on them.
He had been dropped off early for his date at my house which really should have been the first red flag. But always, there was an explanation. It seemed logical to be told a vehicle was sold when he came back east to “re-group” after a job ending. It seemed logical that a new one would soon be obtained.
I was nervous…he was early.
I came out into the family kitchen of the home that I owned and Jonathan was standing there and so was my date. There had not seen any close-up pictures of my date on his Facebook page, only a very distant photo of him reclining on a rock, as I recall. I knew from our chit-chats to expect a big, 6ft 4in guy who wore a size 12EEE shoe (I think…) and of course I surely recalled from Wilson Elementary how much bigger than the rest of us he was.
But there was one detail I had not been given the heads up on–which involved something I noticed immediately when he stood there broadly smiling at me, with arms folded.
I must say, I could not conceal the shock on my face. If I had something like that missing, I surely would have given a date the heads up, rather than to say the thing was lost in the move, and that it could be replaced.
I smiled and invited him into my office to talk. It suddenly felt terribly awkward, I was confused, and suddenly, not sure what I was seeing and felt mistrustful, and definitely some type of disappointment. He stood next to my computer with arms folded, looking nervously at me, and I noticed he seemed to be shaking a bit. I thought, “Wow, this guy is really, really nervous.” He had on a big tee shirt and shorts.
He looked at me and awkwardly said, “I can leave if you want. I can call my ride back…” (paraphrase)
My confused, empathetic self took over and I said, “No…,” and then I found myself gently touching his shaking elbow and saying, “It’s OK…” and then asking, “How did you lose your ______?”
I got some version of having been in an accident, and I felt relieved. My mind had immediately imagined other scenarios. I just hadn’t expected someone so educated with a PhD to appear as what I saw before me. I began to make conversation and try to set my guest at ease.
My son Jonathan soon left, and we sat down to dinner. I offered my date a beer, and he told me that he did not drink. I didn’t make too much of that, and we had dinner and conversed–continuation of various topics we had been hitting upon by private chat. We talked about each of our work and his patents (and I showed him around my studio) and we talked some about our children and ex-spouses, most likely…the typical things that two single, divorced middle-aged people might talk about.
There is a process of “disclosure” that I believe happens in any romantic relationship and especially in these middle-aged, post-divorce situations. In between more superficial interactions, the two people gradually bring up what is surely in one another’s mind and curiosity…“What led to your divorce and what are all the current details of your situation…(and what are you hoping for)…” is generally normal.
We ended up with several hours of conversation and I do recall–since we had touched upon my mother and he hadn’t known a lot of what I went through during our school years–taking him into my office after dinner and playing some of my mother’s “crazy tapes” from the 70’s that I had mentioned to him by chat in conversation. I played some that were kind of funny, and I suppose I was curious what might be his reaction. Like most people who hear that wild stuff, they want to laugh on one hand but they realize the sadness of it all, on the other. It was an interesting conversation and experience that night, I suppose.
I remember giving him the side-eye to see his reaction and he was trying not to laugh, and I suddenly teased and interjected, “Am I boring you???!!!” to which he replied, “No, psychosis is never boring!!!” (This was a reference to my mother’s paranoid/odd bugged-phone recordings she made of herself and others in secret, when I was pretty young).
When my date left, I awkwardly (I suppose) saw him off at the door when his ride arrived and I may have given a quick hug and thanked him for the evening, but I definitely still felt confused in some ways and that it all wasn’t what I had expected from our written communications through social media. I did not indicate I was open to any good night kiss, nor did he make any attempt.
I do recall when he reached home, he wrote on Facebook something like, “What does it mean to be a good man?” I immediately sensed a kind of sadness, disappointment or deflation on his end, too, and got the impression he was down on himself or maybe felt rejected. I don’t know. This is primarily my story–through my eyes. And, no one can ever silence or take away my ability to put my own voice to my own story.
Being the empathetic person I am–and I honestly don’t remember which of us initiated the private chatting that night after our date–but we did start talking again late that same night. Just like we had been doing before that first in-person date.
It is interesting that during the “courtship” and marriage and even the divorce and beyond, that I realized I had developed a certain response to seeing his name in words online or through written text writing. The movie “You’ve Got Mail” so accurately depicts the power that the new online social media can hold. And to be fair, before we had computers, I can remember the same excitement receiving a written letter by mail from males I had been involved with in some way from high school through the dating time with my first husband.
We become emotionally and psychologically conditioned to the handwriting, the post mark…we become conditioned to the person’s online avatar with their name by it…or the notification of a comment, a reaction emoji, or, a private messenger chat notification. And each time we respond positively to that stimulus, it becomes more embedded in us as the excitement and positive associations become reinforced.
I hope that whatever my story communicates, that it will serve some greater good and purpose at this point. That divorced or single people hoping to find that “happily ever after” ending to their story might exercise more caution, pay attention to the red flags, and recognize that the internet provides both amazing possibilities and amazing pitfalls.
People can be whomever they want, sometimes, online. And to be fair, we all do this to some degree. It’s the nature of things. Even before the internet, people had ways of public or private presentation that didn’t reflect the whole story. It is sad that through photos and other things online, we imagine a number of things about other people’s lives. Some people clearly present a varnished version, others just watch and share very little of themselves, and others are more open-books, I suppose.
So my “date” and I had yet another private text-chat conversation that night on social media.
Later, I believe close to midnight, my older son came in and announced he was going camping with some friends. He gathered up stuff (he was twenty-one at the time) and I recall being upstairs by the steps as he was rushing around in a whirlwind…and of course my “mom concern” of how late it was but of course, he was his own person. I am sure I asked where they were camping and said, “be careful.”
I remember he had his backpack on and turning to me, walked back up the steps and gave me a hug. He asked, “How was your date?” I think I said good, and he said, “I’m glad. You deserve to be happy.” (Possibly this was the next night…July 3…after I had a “2nd date”…)
That next day, Saturday July 3, I was on the phone with a friend (the same woman who had taken the pictures of me and captured my “Mother Earth Thing”) trying to process my experience and what I was thinking. Somehow, I thought at the time that maybe “God had a wonderful gift to give me in a package I hadn’t quite expected” and that I was being unfair to consider some things as enough red flags to just shut the whole thing down.
After all, I reminded myself that I had already felt attracted to this person through our written interactions, and what was on the inside was what counted. To be clear, this had nothing to do with disappointment over physical features, per se, but more to do with the overall impression/incongruence that some physical things were communicating to me.
I decided to chat with my “love interest” again that Saturday afternoon online, and suggest I might drive up to Polly Drummond and we go for a walk that night at our old elementary school. We met up on the playground of Wilson School, walking all around, talking about various memories from those school years: teachers, other students, and the gym class-social studies “Olympics” we always had each spring during the late 60’s/70’s.
It felt more relaxed and I was feeling the romance again. We ended up sitting on a bench as the moon was rising in the sky and I was listening to many more details of his personal story. I remember what I was thinking to myself, in response to the narrative that was given. I was feeling a lot of very positive things and was finding myself trusting this person and seeing this person as honest, perceptive of many things about relationships, life…and especially…as someone who had had a hard time (just like me) and very much wanted a “new life” and second chance at love.
Again, this is my takeaway…not what was specifically said. It was what I read between the lines of everything.
I remember I felt like maybe…maybe I would be open/curious to a first kiss. Again, there were no dates after my divorce in 2005…and definitely…I didn’t know what it might be like to kiss another man, after being married to one man for twenty years.
I remember thinking I didn’t know how it might happen. We were sitting closely on the bench, talking for hours under moonlight on our “childhood playground.” I remember I awkwardly said, “I think I’m falling…” and he thought I was falling off the bench and I think he tried to grab me with his arm around me.
I clarified that I meant, “I think I’m falling (in love) with you…” and somehow, we mutually shared a first kiss.
At the end of this second date, I asked if he wanted to come to church with me the next morning. I knew he was Lutheran, and he said he would come to church with me. I picked him up the next morning, the 4th of July, and we showed up at my church. I remember it was all so quick…there was a dedication of the “People’s House” taking place afterward, and he and I were holding hands outside. A wonderful woman I had known since I was seventeen years old approached us and said, smiling with curiosity and her always-welcoming spirit, “And who might this be??!!”
I introduced her to my “church date.” My third date on the third day between July 2-July 4…and I remember we had been chatting that morning on FB before I picked him up. He was so confident…and I liked that about him. He had been joking/serious/flirting (?) with me that because I had said “I love you” to him (yes…by the next morning I was under some “love spell” I suppose….) that there really was only “one outcome” for us. And that we wouldn’t even have to change any “monogrammed towels” (not that I had any nor wanted any).
It was a time of exciting, playful, romantic banter and possibilities…
I was interpreting some statements as the idea of “Christian courtship.” That excited me. I recall that he felt he had been through so much, he didn’t want to invest in a relationship that had no possibility of leading to marriage.
Wow, I thought.
I felt the same way. I so much wanted, especially, not only another chance at love and a life partner, but a man that could help me with my sons, and that I might help with their children. I recognized that we each had a whole other life, and we each came with children. I so much wanted to do it right, get it right…and until then…it had not seemed that God was opening that way forward.
To be fair, in my own aloneness (I am never “lonely” but I am certainly “alone” and this is not how God made things to be in this world…but, that is another topic) I had, through some of my indirect “keeping my eyes open” and engaging with a few other single males online here and there during those five years, certainly opened myself up to a number of forms of compromise.
From where I now stand, my hopes of ever finding/having a “happily ever after” with yet another marriage feel increasingly slim for quite a number of reasons. My standards/desires are so very high and so very specific in the realm of Christian compatibility (true equal yoking…and that involves far more than each person being a “church goer, general ‘believer'”) as well as the true meshing of life purposes and many other ways of being/personality/education/physical health and interests in the outdoors, worldviews….so very much….I am not actively looking, and I am learning to depend on Jesus as my “husband.”
For the remainder…unless God sees fit to do otherwise.
But…after church that day…July 4, 2010…we then spent the day together and went to fireworks that night at the U of D. My son Jonathan sat on a blanket with us…my dear, now-lost son Jonathan who just two nights before announced from our kitchen, “He’s Here.”
(Above and Below) My two sons, Christmas 2011, the last Christmas we were all together in our home.
(Above) Somewhere around September 2010
(Below) Christmas 2010; the first time I meet my future step-children and my sons meet them.
(Above and Below) My sons cutting down our Christmas tree, 2010, and me making cookies. Ironically, I am wearing the same blue flowered sweater today as I write this piece.
“Stay With Me on This”
When through a string of issues during the horrific divorce process in 2019 in Alabama, when I had to change lawyers somewhere during July as I recall, I remember sitting at a large conference table in a much bigger law firm, opposite a much older, more experienced woman lawyer.
I must say, that my first marriage of twenty years ended fairly mutually and amicably (as much as can be) in that we mutually agreed it was time to divorce and we used a mediator. Two sessions and a total cost of $250, and he and I and the attorney discussed and put into writing, together, all the relevant aspects of dividing up property/debt/child support/receiving a pro-rated part of his pension in the future/custody of children and anything else relevant–including my decision to take back my maiden name. Since our home had no real equity, and my business was home-based with a large studio area, and since our boys needed that home, too, we evaluated our heavy debt load (in part, due to a separation in 2003 and then reconciliation, and then 18 months later coming to the point of divorce) and I took a bulk of it in exchange for sole title to the property. While any time a divorce occurs each party has their feelings about what is fair, and the negotiation process can be unpleasant and triggering, somehow we worked it all out, and I consider that it was all a fair situation, given a number of things.
But there I was, in the deep south, apart from the little family I had up north and especially, apart from my sons. When I relocated to Alabama with him, I had relinquished my support system…my church…my friends…and especially…my home. I had relinquished (and it was never my original understanding of how things would be) everything that related to my independence.
Agreeing to being relocated under that circumstance was the very worst decision I’ve ever made in my life, hands down.
Had things unfolded the same and had we had married in the state of Delaware, and lived in a property I owned before the marriage, with the entirety of my own belongings/business property I brought down south, there would not have been nearly the ugliness of divorce, had it come to that.
It would have been pretty clear in terms of property division. One look at what each brought into the marriage would have settled things. There would have been no question which party needed to vacate the property during a divorce process, nor the same legalities that moving to another state presented. I only hope that I would have had enough sense to not have put anyone else’s name on the deed, had we done the same and lived in my home in Delaware. Who knows…given all things.
I legally owned all the personally property I took to Alabama, but the catch was, after we moved from the first house that we rented, we had purchased a property together. So many things complicated every single aspect of the situation. I remember how I would increasingly go to bed in Alabama and think about my sons and my previous life…it began to slowly feel like a nightmare at some point…a bad dream I just couldn’t wake up from. The reality that I was 800 miles away, or more, from my sons and it emotionally felt like an ocean away. There was a distressing surrealness that would sink into me at night-time, and then, I would awake in my “Sweet Home Alabama” and go through my very active days.
Being a wife, running a business, volunteering at church, interacting with neighbors…and much, much more. Our kids would come for visits, and we would travel to them. I was taken twice to California, and I got to see Memphis, New Orleans, Nashville, parts of Florida.
But there I was that July of 2019, as I sat there I sat at this fancy conference table, so distraught I couldn’t stop crying.
I was being asked questions, and this time, the lawyer before me was taking detailed notes. Not just taking my money.
“Tell me again, how did you get here to Alabama?” (paraphrase)
(notes made)
“You owned a home? How much was it worth?”
(notes made)
Anyone who knows me knows I would make a very poor witness! Just ask me a straight question and my mind ping-ping-pings down rabbit holes and struggles to get to the point and eliminate too many details…it’s just a struggle and when I’m upset, it is 10x worse.
Regardless of how anyone else viewed my previous situation, that fact was that I had kept my home/business/stable location in my first divorce process, and had been there for eight years. I owned the home, even if there was no equity/ability to quickly sell it without financial loss. It still represented to me independence, permanence, and I would have never again needed to obtain a mortgage. I had imagined living there until the day I died. I imagined my business continuing to grow and flourish, to remain active in my church community and involved, as I was, and that my sons would do what I imagined…finish college…find girls and marry…and that one day my grandchildren would be coming and going from that “home place.”
My being persuaded to relocate was quite frightening to me, as it should have been. But I was persuaded that it was what that relationship now required of me.
Back to the lawyer and conference table…I kept wanting to make emotional remarks and emphasize certain things...I kept crying…I forget what I was saying exactly…something terribly emotional no doubt about how awful it all was, how wrong and unjust, and how powerless, fearful and hopeless it all was….blah blah blah blah blah…
What I remember was her sternly–almost motherly as a much older woman might say to a younger woman falling apart–saying to me periodically, “Stop that….STOP that.”
She wanted me to get a hold of myself, stop my uncontrollable crying and bemoaning the whole situation, and answer her very pointed questions, so she could take notes. Somehow, I did that.
One title of this blog piece might have been, “Stay With Me on This.”
That was what my “date” said to me nearly 18 months later in the fall of 2011. Throughout that time, he clearly communicated to me that once he found work (and that shouldn’t be hard for him in Delaware area) that we would get married. I had my hopes set on that, even though there seemed to be no movement in the ongoing job search.
Almost daily I would pick him up in the late afternoon after I did the bulk of my work and he had worked on resumes, and would bring him over to hang out for dinner. Those seemed like great times. He loved to barbeque, and he seemed to have a good rapport (for the most part) with my sons. I liked that. He was smart, funny, knew lots about music and movies…we would watch movies, play games, hang out…and often I’d be working on little art stuff in front of the TV to keep up with my work and still be able to spend time with him. He’d have his laptop….we’d go for walks…or various places…it was almost like…almost like…what I imagined it would be when we could finally get married.
This one night around late August/September-ish when it was nearly 11 pm and he stood up and went to use my bathroom as I was getting ready to drive him back to where he was staying, he came out of the powder room off of our family’s kitchen/living room area and said he had something he wanted to tell me.
It felt unusual and I immediately had a weird thing in my gut...he looked at me almost as nervously as he had that night of our very first date in my home, and he said, “Stay with me on this…”
He then said he had an interview. I got excited, and wondered with whom? What company?
He then said, “It’s in Alabama.”
I cannot say how much my heart dropped and an immediate sense of fear and confusion fell upon me.
Alabama??
I remember saying, “What does this mean for us?”
The reply was along the lines of he did not know, but that he loved me big, and we were going to stay together and figure it all out. I understood that he just wanted to go down and see what was offered, and then maybe that could be leverage with something up in Delaware…should that finally materialize. When it all went down, I wondered in retrospect at what point he had broadened his search away from Delaware…and, for what reason?
When I got back home that night, I was very distraught. I did not even know where Alabama might be, specifically, and looked it up on a map. I just knew it was far, far away….
There are just so many things that were discussed and unfolded between that night and the day the moving van came to pack up and take everything I owned and my entire business down south…and I took my boys out for a Chinese buffet dinner the night before. It was a heart-wrenching time and I kept sticking to my word and going forward with it all…despite the increasing red flags and bad feelings in my gut that sometimes arose.
I would go over and over things in my mind or in dialogue, wanting so much to get back to a place of “it’s going to be OK.” In retrospect, I now know I was finding ways to rationalize some increasing red flags during the five months we were apart–him in Alabama and me in Delaware. I just couldn’t let go emotionally, and, I should have.
I was too far in…and could not let go emotionally of all that I thought would be the way things would go and that I had set my hopes upon. I was fully attached and bonded to him, and the thought of ending the relationship felt more than I could bear at that time.
I have learned that in many such situations, we will save ourselves much grief if we do hard things. But, I have also learned that sometimes, we truly and in “good faith” wholeheartedly believe in something and there is some “veil” which somehow prevents us from doing that thing–whether it is somehow that God’s plan does in fact include us making some very wrong turns/decisions, I do not know.
I should have never married my first husband, either…yet, I would do it all again (this is moot theory) to have both my sons exist, at the very moment of their unique creation. I firmly believe when it comes to life being created that this is a sacred thing planned in the mind of God before the foundation of the world. The bible is full of dysfunctional stories of humans making all kinds of decisions and God bringing about His will and ultimate purposes.
As I write all this, the heartbreak of so much is something I will never fully resolve. I trust that “God works all things for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.”
I have often over the past five+ years identified with the Psalm that says, “I would have despaired had I not believed I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living…”
The immense sense of death and destruction that ultimately satan (not my second husband per se) has brought in terms of destruction of many aspects of my family and each of our lives as I thought they were and would be back from the vantage point of 2010 seems to have no end.
Surely I am not alone in such a story as this…these things happen all the time I suppose.
Yet, when we are in it, we are forced to our knees.
“Somewhere Under the Rainbow”
Sometime after my first divorce, I remember hearing the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” as performed by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole. I became obsessed with this upbeat, beautiful, romantic, dreamy version. It seemed to express the kind of optimism I had about life and openness to all the beautiful possibilities the world holds, back then. I can remember thinking that I loved the song so much that maybe someday in my far future I might ask my sons to play it at my funeral. These days, I have become much more aware of the darkness in this world. I don’t know if I will ever again experience a sense of a “good normal.”
As it was, I decided I wanted it played at the church wedding held in Delaware on April 22, 2012, for me to come “down the aisle” with my sons on either side of me. Many women end up being the more romantic “wedding planners”…and my second husband and I had discussed what we wanted and we had come up with “Hope” as the theme of our “formal wedding” where our kids/family/friends/church community could be present.
I had married him legally a month before I moved, with a JP in Alabama. I had enough sense not to give over my home and move to the south without a legal marriage. (I was over-mortgaged, sometimes on the grace period but never delinquent or paying late fees, and literally signed my home away to the mortgage company for “voluntary foreclosure” without going through any lengthy process, to expedite the move south, due to some factors/pressures coming from down south in the unfolding situation.) So many things could have happened, had I not been legally married before taking my belongings/life south, that would potentially leave me stranded in the south without proper legalities.
I do remember being at my DE church’s blended families group shortly before the move…we asked for prayer and I cried. I said, “What if I move to Alabama and something happens…he has a heart attack or something…how would I get back home?” I remember one person in the group kindly said, “Don’t worry…we’d get you back home…”
That’s how much these folks loved me, and true to the situation even though that person was no longer there, the church played a central role in helping me store a lot of my stuff, and other emotional support, when I first returned (quite broken and distressed) in January 2020.
Anyway…at that church wedding, just as the other music ended and I was supposed to walk in (wearing my dress a church friend made me, with its rainbow sash and veil) somehow mysteriously there must have been confusion because only a few strains of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” were heard and then sudden silence. The sound system seemed to go off. I was escorted in by my sons in silence…that part of the service I imagined would be beautiful did not happen.
I could say so very much about it all in retrospect.
The invitations had “Grow Old Along With Me” by Robert Browning, and we had as many rainbow-themed things as possible, and asked the minister to preach on “Hope.” It seemed for both of us, this was our chance at “Hope” for our bright new future together. A future where I had been told there will be no “your kids, my kids” but we will be “one family.”
Oh how much my heart wanted that…and oh how I believe I gave this marriage all that I could. I gave his kids all that I could. In fact, as it unfolded in reality…I realize how very much I lay on the “altar” of this other person–even my own children’s well-being–although I would have never done that had I known how it would all actually play out.
By the end, I suppose it was all so upside-down.
As it turned out, it was “Somewhere Under the Rainbow.”
So very much was “under the rainbow” almost from the first day in Alabama, but, I kept hoping. And, I kept quiet. I kept so quiet, that when I announced the divorce situation on Facebook in 2019…and mentioned my immediate needs…many were blind-sided.
We did write our own vows in 2012, and, as he wanted, we did not read them until that day of the church wedding. My minister had read mine beforehand, and commented that he liked it…that I had intermingled traditional vows and promises within my own poetic expressions of my heart.
There is so very much more that wafts in and out of my mind about all of this. This is my story. This is what has brought me to this day–December 19, 2024.
I still do not know the future, nor do any of us.
It still feels so very hard.
And I’m still navigating so much personal devastation of so many kinds. If you have read to this point, thank you. Please give me some grace in whatever you have read. Maybe I should have remained silent. But something of this magnitude still carries all kinds of griefs. It deserves something worthy of acknowledgement of this five year mark.
Acknowledgement.
Would that help me to let go…to forgive…to forget?
I don’t know.
The only way that seems fitting to end this writing, is through pictures. It’s the best I can do at the moment…
Thank you to those who are still closely walking with me on this journey, and especially those who are in prayer for me and for those I love and hold dear.
#heartbreak
Below, the last night in Delaware I took my boys out for Chinese buffet. It was an emotional time, and later, we went back to our bare empty home and took a sharpie marker and signed the bottom side of the fireplace mantle. I slept there that night on the floor, and my boys went to their new living situation in a house they were sharing with an older friend from our church community. They had decided once they knew at Christmas I would eventually move to Alabama, to speed up their own plans to move out that February. It surprised me. Jonathan was already 18, it was his decision, but he was finishing up the last few months at Newark High.
Below, the gift I gave each of my sons–a painting of our home with a message on the back–Christmas 2011.
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