Admit It – You’ve Considered Divorce
It’s not pretty, but sometimes it’s a fun daydream when you’re steamed. Divorce is a very common occurrence and while I might poke fun lightly at my husband from time to time, I’m of the sticking variety. We’ve had our ups and downs, but despite the occasional glaring silence and vague threat when we don’t get our way, we’ve got a good deal going.
Others can’t say the same.
So far, I’ve had two friends get divorced. One was only about 34 and on his second divorce. (His wife was cheating on him big time – I would have left her, too.) The other friend was the kind of divorce that really stings. She got married to a guy she loved. She was perfectly happy until one day he told her that he’d realized he didn’t really love her and wasn’t really very interested in staying married to her. Ouch.
Fortunately she’s since remarried a guy who DOES really love her and she’s expecting her first child. All this and she’s only 27.
I’m not going to say that divorce is wrong, but I do think it’s considered a bit too lightly by many parties. After all, everyone is doing it – it must be okay, right?
That being said, I’ll admit freely I’ve considered it on rare occasions. Usually those occasions are when my adorable husband makes sweeping generalizations such as, “Why can’t you just keep the house cleaner? Women throughout time have managed to raise kids and clean at the same time – why can’t you?”
*teeth gnashing and stony silence*
I gently informed him that this is simply not the comment you make to your wife of six years who has born his gigantic children, obtained a master’s degree, holds a full-time job, has her own freelance business, and takes care of all of the accounting – both household and corporate.
Not to mention he spent most of his time that month playing WoW allegedly surrounded by “my†mess. The problem was resolved, but I enjoyed various thoughts of torture and divorce while trying to keep from scratching his eyes out or selling all his level 70 characters.
Do we squabble? Yes. Have we threatened divorce? Yes. Would we ever do it? Nope.
But sometimes, like with my friend that was cheated on, a divorce is a necessity. In his case, he and his wife’s wandering eye used easy divorce forms to file for their own divorce. They didn’t have kids and sold their house to make splitting assets easier. If you’re going to divorce – that’s the way to do it. They even lived in the house together while they waited for it to sell.
Divorce is nasty business. It’s not really just breaking up as if you were dating (although many people seem to think it is.) Apparently there are more divorces in Texas than most other states. It surprises me that so many of my neighbors seek out Texas divorce papers, but I guess if you’re going to do it, you should do it here.
Texas is a common law state. That means I get half of everything the next time I daydream about divorce while trying not to beat my husband upside the head. I’m totally going to take the kids, the dogs and the warlock.
Unfortunately, I know EXACTLY where you’re coming from.
I used to work at home as a medical transcriptionist and medical editor. Because of patient privacy laws, I could not have the speakers on; I had to listen via headphones, so my husband could not really hear what I listened to while typing.
Now, fortunately, my children go to school, so I had a few hours to work while they were away, but in this field, the more you typed, the more you earned.
I ended up leaving that occupation to pursue my dream of owning my own business. I run my office from home, but have a climate controlled warehouse for supplies and basket components, but my husband does not understand all the “running around”; he doesn’t understand the whole entrepreneurial thing; he understands 9-5, come home, clean, fix dinner, etc.
We’re trying to get our oldest child into a special school for gifted students, which means we have to spend more time with him (thereby neglecting the house) doing extracurricular things to make him look more “well rounded”.
I haven’t had a “date night” alone with my husband in over five months. I’ve asked, but because the house is a wreck (and admittedly, my husband helps out a lot more than other husbands), we can’t have a babysitter come over, and even if we send the kids somewhere, I feel guilty going out when there’s stuff to be done at the house.
It’s a trap. On paper, it looks wonderful. But working in any capacity at home takes commitment to a schedule. It takes being able to say “no” to a neighbor who wants you to run an errand for her because “you were home anyway”. It takes being able to basically ignore your kids for an hour or two in order to complete a task (which is actually not doable if your youngsters are too young or special needs).
I hate to admit this, but being a WAHM also takes a bit of a *itch attitude to say, “do it your *darn* self!” from time to time.
I really don’t know if this comment actually contributes to your post; but I saw it and wanted to vent a bit.
Thank you.
Dawn the Basket Lady
Comment by Dawn the Basket Lady | March 11, 2008
Ooohh I’ve been there. Especially with the house cleaning comment. To which I like to reply, “Hi I work too. You couldn’t afford me any other way” but ah well. I agree I am the sticking variety and I’ve been stunned when two of our friends announced they were splitting up. I don’t know, maybe “sticking” isn’t the word I would use for me then, probably “stubborn” LOL.
BTW… I found you through DP! Great Blog!
Comment by Nikki | March 21, 2008
Sorry it took so long to get to your comments ladies! I’m afraid life and a very nasty house-buying and move (although not a divorce!) got in the way of this particular project.
Thanks for your comments, and I wish you the best of luck!
I’ll be updating the blog again soon – I promise!
Comment by Rebecca | June 4, 2008