When I first saw where my husband had lived during our long divorce, I shrugged it off. I told myself he was playing the part of the poor, penniless man to pretend he didn’t have any money. It was an apartment attached to a crowded, dirty house.
I knew it was intentional because I knew how much rent he was paying. He could have lived in a much nicer place for that money.
We finalized our divorce and he moved into an expensive rented townhouse. The neighborhood and house were beautiful. One day, I had to stop to get something from him.
I was surprised when I walked on the first floor.
All I could think was: “Who lives like this?”
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I immediately remembered something one of our kids said: “It’s weird, it’s worse than a college kid’s place.” And I didn’t know what they meant until that moment.
The kitchen was a mess and things were everywhere. There were boxes (his work boxes) scattered around the room. There was no furniture in the house without an office space, a floating island from our old kitchen, and a bed. He had a lot of money. He was living like this by choice.
It doesn’t look like a functional human being’s home.
Especially someone who has lived there as long as it has. It was frustrating. All I could think about was thank God I divorced him. Thank God some self-preservation instincts kicked in. Because I greatly underestimated the extent of my husband’s personality.
Eventually, he’ll furnish the living room with some things. But even though I was divorced from my husband, it bothered me because it didn’t seem naturally effective. I knew it bothered my kids.
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He began frequenting the bar at least six days a week.
He was sitting at the bar and hanging out with strangers. He did not meet his friends and did not come to look for our children. To be fair, all of his local friends had turned away from him after witnessing the severe financial abuse he was inflicting on his wife and children.
There was some illicit dating – that is, unavailable women. He was making choices that had us all shaking our heads. My husband has grown increasingly distant from the man my children believe their father is.
Yes, he was very financially abusive during our divorce and it hurt. But I think our kids were hoping it would be temporary. I think they wanted to believe that their father would show up again after the divorce.
Great guy, a father who cared, and a fun guy. But that person is long gone and our children know it.
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My kids would ask me one question in many ways.
“What’s wrong with dad?”
“When did my father become like this?”
“What happened to my father?”
“When did Dad get so weird?”
The other day I was on the phone with a friend.
They were explaining how their ex-wives’ behavior had become out of control. It’s starting to affect their children. It was confusing in many ways.
I said, “I’ll tell you what I told my kids.” “Because you suffer from something similar. When my children ask me what was wrong with their father and when he became this way, I say one thing.”
I’m not suggesting my friend tell his kids that. I’m trying to help my friend understand behavior that now seems so off the charts that it’s beyond bizarre and extreme. We both had very difficult divorces.
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We both divorced with extreme personalities.
“The short version I tell my kids is this,” I said. “Your father is who he’s always been, it’s only when we lived as a family that we absorbed so much more of him. We helped keep his life in order.” Now this is the long version I told my friend.
“Here’s the thing,” I said. “This person hasn’t changed. He is who he is. He is who he has always been. But he no longer lives with a husband who absorbs a lot of that behavior.”
When my friend took my comments, I continued.
“When we were married, we just couldn’t understand their extreme temperaments,” I said. “We made their world go round. They were in control and they got what they wanted, and while we did our best to please them, there was a respectable world order.” My friend took my word for it.
“It took a divorce to understand exactly how extreme the people we married were,” I said.
“These are stubborn characters. They have spent their lives getting their way. This is part of the reason they punish us so severely during a divorce. They can no longer control us. But it also indicates that even though we were the ones being controlled, these are individuals.” “They needed us in many ways to survive, and we were the stronger, more trusted couple.”
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Perhaps our ex-husbands were outwardly trying to show that they were doing well. But this does not necessarily mean that they were.
Difficult personalities need someone to understand their moods, desires, and demands. Like spoiled children, they need someone to bear witness and become hostage to their tantrums. They were going through the motions of moving forward.
But again, that doesn’t necessarily mean they were.
Divorce can be a wake-up call.
If you were to talk to my ex he would insist that he takes care of me. But nothing could be further from the truth. In many ways, I was more like a parent than a husband. He needed something taken care of and I did that.
