Wednesday

schadenfreude

Manifest here. And here.

And some responses from me here and also here.

Really, my views on divorce are best summed up in this amazing essay by my friend and former editor Jeannie Ouellette. Like me, Jeannie married really young and had three children and ended up divorced about one year before I did. Her experience is, in many ways, eerily similar to mine.

My favorite part of her essay:

"Marriage changed me; motherhood changed me more. But divorce and its aftermath changed me the most. I no longer have the energy to be desperately deferential. I’m turning into everything I never was before. I merge fearlessly in traffic. I park in tight spots (and sometime miss). I say no. I talk about my problems. I sometimes hang up on telemarketers (though I still cringe to admit it). And now I love someone again, someone who seems to love me more than I can explain, and I’m getting married again—even though it’s hardly perfect, given our kids and our pasts and our complicated present. Now, however, I don’t give a damn about perfect. I have what I need, and mostly what I want. I’ve paid for it all, and with that I can do well enough by everybody else, most of the time."

Yeah, what she said...
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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

thats interesting because I could say exactly the same things about sticking it out in a tough marraige, looking at my role in it and making the changes in myself before just going off and blaming the other person.
there really is no excuse unless you inadvertantly married a sociopath. its also interesting how many people in these second and third marriages face exactly the same issues and either move onto yet another spouse, give up on marriage altogether or most ideally begin to get the hint that maybe its not all about just making a bad choice in another person, that maybe its about them as well. lets talk to your friend in about ten years after that honeymoon phase wears off.

Wednesday, April 6, 2005 at 6:40:00 PM GMT
Anonymous said...

Ummmm....did you even READ the essay? Because it's about how divorce sucks and how she knows that it sucks and how she accepts responsibility for her role in causing the divorce.

I'm really sort of thinking you didn't even read it. Am I right?

Wednesday, April 6, 2005 at 6:46:00 PM GMT
Anonymous said...

Ummmm....did you even READ the essay? Because it's about how divorce sucks and how she knows that it sucks and how she accepts responsibility for her role in causing the divorce.

I'm really sort of thinking you didn't even read it. Am I right?

Wednesday, April 6, 2005 at 6:47:00 PM GMT
Anonymous said...

Ummmm....did you even READ the essay? Because it's about how divorce sucks and how she knows that it sucks and how she accepts responsibility for her role in causing the divorce.

I'm really sort of thinking you didn't even read it. Am I right?

Wednesday, April 6, 2005 at 6:53:00 PM GMT
Anonymous said...

yes I did read it and if she says it sucks so much then why wasnt she taking responsibility for her marriage instead of getting the divorce and then making a lot of noises about responsibility after the fact? its like saying well I feel bad about stealing that money from the till at work but I really have no choice so I will just do it and then get up on my soapbox about how guilty I feel about it now that the deed is done. unless the other person filed and left her and wouldnt accept her statements of responsibility one is left to assume that while she was "taking responsibility" she was also plunging forward with the divorce. if you truly have no choice you do not feel guilt. If your husband is truly this unregerate that is a danger to everyone around him you may feel guilt for having picked him in the first place but you wont feel guilt for gettting into a better situation. but I bet thats not the case with this essayist. and I bet its not the case with Katie either. if you contributed to the problem, assuming the other person isnt checking out immediately, you can help remediate the situation too. or is the lesson we are really teaching our children that if you blow it in a relationship to just bail on that relationship and start fresh with a clean slate and a new person. do you teach them to work things out with thier friends or to just find new friends when the old ones get to be stale and unfulfilling? in the interim between my previous post I had a chance to go to the grocery store. i am a shameless magazine in the checkout reader. there was some interview with Andie MacDowell..the actress who divorced husband number one (you know..the one we were treated to endless interviews about how he was her soulmate and they had a perfect life on that ranch in Montana...that one...) for the former high school flame(the one who was REALLY her soulmate now..she was mistaken about that other one..they ran into some snags)...well she apparently recently divorced the second soulmate....I mean how many times do people get snookered into thinking that they have found THE ONE and when reality hits them rather than deal with the problems they decide they must have been mistaken after all...,
if you talk to anyone who works with youth they will tell you the greatest pain comes from kids in broken homes. I realize a small percentage of these are situations where someone truly married a "bad" person...but the vast majority probably could have worked things out had they had the tools to do so and perhaps the right expectations of what they were getting into in the first place. our culture does not help people with all the movies, songs, etc about "the one true love" and its supposed to be all just perfect and when they find they have selected someone that has some real gaps in thier relationship skills rather than one person determining to get those skills and lovingly insert them into the relationship its like oops....lets throw this one back into the pond and keep trying till I get a keeper. so much of relationships is not the person you select it is the person you choose to become in that relationship. and even so many situations where people truly have grown to dislike each other its not a matter of "picking the wrong person"..its a matter of they each did stuff and the whole thing snowballed...despite the nifty little essay second marriages have even grimmer odds than first ones..and third ones grimmer than that..which tells you that there are a lot of people out there thinking that it is about picking the wrong person when really its about neither of them knowing how to sustain a relationship.

Wednesday, April 6, 2005 at 9:54:00 PM GMT
Lisa said...

Good grief... who is this shrew "anonymous" who is blabbering on and on... it is such dribble I cannot even bear to read their entire and many posts. "Anonymous" ... you've MORE than made your points. Now go mind your own marriage/divorce and leave Katie alone! That's fine if you don't agree with her attachment parenting/breastfeeding ideas... then go ahead and practice your anti-attachment parenting. But let's not judge another's marriage failing... that is between Katie and her ex.

Thursday, April 7, 2005 at 12:47:00 AM GMT
Anonymous said...

geeze mamalife..who said anythign about "anti attachent" parenting. i just think the practices pushed by "attachment parenters" are unneccessary at best. you appear to be the one with the issues. you are also acting suspicously like someone who feels guilty but wont admit it. i sure dont see shrew written all over me but you are acting very shrewish in your indignation. have I personally insulted anyone? I think Katie actually sounds like she has mellowed a great deal in ten years...to be honest if I didnt know her history of militant parenting I would think she is a really nice person...heck she even likes horses and yarn..cant beat that.....I just think its real ironic that someone who used to be so hardnosed with these women online unless they admitted that it was either their laziness or were willing to blameshift onto the medical establishment about breastfeeding is now using almost word for word the same statements that she used to call people on when they didnt breastfeed or co sleep or whatever. the difference is though is that divorce is something that we all know is harmful however the attachemnt parenting practices really are up in the air how essential they are. I fully realize people are human and make mistakes. it just saddens me to see people excuse divorce as such a neccessary evil so frequently.

Thursday, April 7, 2005 at 5:34:00 AM GMT
Julie said...

I actually haven't "mellowed" a bit in my views on parenting. In fact, now that mine are 13, 9 and 7, and I am able to see some of the results of the way they are being parented, I am even more convinced that attachment parenting "works."

I am also probably more radicalized about the infant-maternal health issue of breastfeeding than I was a decade ago. Now I focus a lot more of my energy on social change as it relates to women's health (for example, I write and speak a lot these days about how infant formula companies target our most vulnerable populations).

As for divorce, I will say again that you are simply arguing with yourself. I do not disagree with you that it is far better for children to live with both parents at the same time. I do not try to rationalize how hard getting divorced has been on my kids. And as I've said, I do feel guilty about it and probably always will. I feel guilty because my children were hurt, my heart was broken, and I wonder if I had done/said something, anything differently, whether things could have turned out differently.

So really, I am just not sure what your point is here. I mean, I get that you:

A.)disagree with many of my views on parenting

.)Don't like the way I express those views in print, online and maybe in person (have I ever met you?)

C.)Think the fact that I am divorced obviates & discredits everything else I have ever done or said on virtually any topic

D.) Believe I am divorced as a result of the way my husband and I parent our children

You happen to be dead wrong on the last point (and he would tell you the same thing), but I really can't argue with your subjective assessments when it comes to points 1,2 and 3.

Thursday, April 7, 2005 at 1:06:00 PM GMT
Anonymous said...

you do seem a lot less nasty about your views than ten years ago. however might I say your kids would probably have turned out fine even if you hadnt "attachment parented". This is the thing that gets me about Bill Sears is he seems to miss the fact that in his own home he has the control group of the first three or four kids before he "got" attachment parenting"...as far as I have heard he has never said anything bout them turning out different from the later ones who were "attachment parented". probably because he is a caring man who pays attention to what his children say and responds appropriately and has taught them good values way more than the fact they slept in his bed or were "worn" or breastfed indefinately. somehow he omits this little fact in his praise of attachment parenting.
as far as the divorce....I think how people parent is very relevent to the state of their marriages. I would be most interested to know if how people parent played a role in the breakdown of their marraige before I embraced that philosophy. I am sure there are plenty of other subjects you write about that are totally irrelevent to the state of your marraige but this is not one of them.
its a sad state of affairs when people come to believe forming a relationship with their families is a choice between two equally extreme and almost equally distasteful philosophies.

Thursday, April 7, 2005 at 6:22:00 PM GMT

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