Photography by Brian Velenchenko
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Singled Out
By Karen Westerberg Reyes, July & August 2004
One woman’s insights into life after marriage
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We both watched the middle-aged couple walk into the restaurant. He held the
door open for her, she telegraphed a silent thank-you as he guided her to the
booth just across from where my friend Joan and I were sitting. You could just
feel their connection, love, the electricity between them.
"Do you ever feel cheated?" I asked. Joan pulled her eyes away
from the couple to give me a questioning look.
"I mean, when you see a couple like that, do you feel that should have
been us, because, you know, when we married our husbands that's what we
thought we were getting. Someone to love and love us for the rest of our
days?"
"Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes I feel damn cheated." It was almost a
whisper.
Like Joan and millions of women like us, I was steeped in the myth of
"Till death do us part." We married young and thought that was it.
Most of us were married for two, three, or four decades. Joan's marriage
lasted 27 years, mine 25. For all of us, divorce was traumatic. Many of us are
still a little angry. And most of us will always feel a lot betrayed.
I married the love of my life, an energetic, bright, and beautiful young man
I met in college. I made a good home for him, worked hard, had his babies, and
loved him with all my being. We struggled, we cried, we had successes,
failures, ups, downs. But no matter what, we always had each other. And that
made life more bearable during the worst of times and more glorious during the
best of times.
'I still think about my divorce. Not with the same
sadness, but with a certain curiosity.'
I can't say when our marriage started to fall apart. I've thought
about that a lot. I play back scenes in my mind like old movies. I know we were
still fine during our 12th Christmas. We had just had our third child. One
night he came home from work early.
"I lost my job," he said. I panicked. "We'll be
fine," he assured me. And we were.
I flash to our 20th anniversary. I decided to write him a letter instead of
buying something that he didn't need. I envisioned a missive so eloquent,
so heartfelt, so filled with my feelings that it would somehow melt the
disconnection and discontent that I was starting to feel creep into our
relationship. Feelings as vague as a dull headache that you know is there, but
it doesn't hurt enough to stop and take an aspirin. Yet.
Then there was that Saturday several years later when I was sorting clothes
for the dry cleaner and found a piece of paper with a phone number scribbled on
it in his jacket pocket. Written above the number, the name Kimberly. Who
belonged to this number? I dialed. A woman answered, all soft-voiced and young.
I quietly hung up. I threw the paper away. But I couldn't make him throw
her away. We separated three years later, and our marriage ended after a couple
more years of marriage counselors, promises, tears, and anger.
I eventually recovered from the overwhelming shock and grief of that
horrible time of my life, although the scars will be forever etched on my soul.
I still think about it. Not with the same sadness that I once did, but with a
certain curiosity. I think about the whys and what-ifs. I pick them up the way
one picks up shells on a beach. I look at them, touch them, then throw them
back into the ocean of my mind.
I know the divorce was the best thing for both of us. Indeed, it was
probably the best thing for our kids. He and I promised each other we would not
let our personal problems affect how we finished raising them. For the most
part it worked. But there were times it almost didn't.
When our daughter married, my by-then ex-husband wanted to bring his
girlfriend to the wedding. I threw a fit. How could he bring this stranger into
our family's midst? This event wasn't about him and his girlfriend. It
was about our daughter. He ended up coming alone, as did I. And we did the
whole father- and mother-of-the-bride thing. We danced, talked to the in-laws,
ate cake. And we both admired our beautiful daughter and her new husband.
It's been many years since my divorce. Most of my friends are also
divorced. We hang out together because the coupled world doesn't open its
arms quite as wide to us, its single friends, as it did when we were one of
two. We're quietly banished from tables where the places are set in even
numbers. Almost forgotten until we again become a couple. But that's not
all that easy, either.
The men I dated, once I got up enough nerve to enter that new realm, were
divorced themselves. Some hid their scars better than others. Some wore their
bitterness like dirty shirts, for all the world to see. The emotional remnants
of the divorces were always there in some form or other during our dates. For
both of us. Sitting between us like an unwelcome chaperone.
When I was a young woman I always worried about what to talk about with the
boys I dated. Now when I date I always worry about what not to talk about.
There are so many places a divorced person doesn't want to go. So much
baggage to step over.
I can't picture myself marrying again. My life is very full. There are
my friends, my family, and my work. I am, most of the time, quite content.
Sometimes I'm even happy. But there are still times when I ponder the
ethereal rightness, the cosmic correctness of having a mate, a partner. And
sometimes when I come home to an empty house, or go to a movie alone, or watch
a couple enjoying the comfortable warmth of their own familiarity with each
other, I feel a pang of sadness.
Then, just for a moment, I too feel cheated. Damn cheated.
Karen Westerberg Reyes is this magazine's planning editor.
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