D is for Divorce(d)

Free at last, free at… Oh, come on, you know the rest, don’t you?  Anyway, as of Thursday, May 7, at about 2:00 p.m., I re-joined the ranks of the single folk.  After 10 years of marriage, I am officially dee-vorced. 

How does it feel?  Well, I am NOT going to Disneyland.  (Can’t afford it anymore.)  But it does feel pretty good.  

It’s kind of like banging your head against a wall.  It hurts, but if you do it long enough, the pain becomes a part of your life — so much so that you no longer even realize that you’re IN pain.  Until you stop, that is, and realize, “Holy shit, that HURT.  My head really fucking HURT for a LONG fucking time.  And now it doesn’t.  And that feels really fucking GOOOOD.”

I am not gloating here.  Basically, I got my ass handed to me in the divorce settlement.  The divorce business (and make no mistake about it, it IS a business) is one of the few in the world where being a man is a distinct DIS-advantage. 

I had a final, blinding moment of clarity about this on the day of my divorce, when I looked around for sympathy and saw my lawyer (a woman), my ex-wife’s lawyer (a woman), the two court-appointed mediators assigned to our case (both women), and the judge (a woman).  One of these things is not like the other.  Oh, wait, it’s ME!  As Kenny Rogers said, you got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, and, son, it was time to fold ‘em.  So that’s what I did.

Still, all is not lost.  I am now poorer in wallet, but richer in every other way you could possibly imagine.  At the tender age of 41, I am REBORN (and rising, baby, always rising).

Having survived this experience relatively intact, I feel obliged to “pay it forward” — to impart the lessons learned along the way to those of you who also will someday stop banging your head against that dreaded wall.  In no particular order, here they are…

• Use a mediator, not lawyers, and, if at all possible, get it done without any of them — It’s a difficult process emotionally, but if you had asked me nine months ago to sketch out the broad strokes of where things would have ended up, I would have come pretty darn close.  Everyone thinks their situation is unique.  Basically, NO ONE’S situation is unique — but people getting paid by the hour have very little incentive to tell you that.  You can spend $50K to figure that out or you can just take it from me.
• Pick your battles — For me, I wanted to have frequent access to my kids.  (Awwwww….)  I was willing to go to the mat for that.  Everything else was negotiable.  No one gets everything they want.  Not even the women. 
• It’s only money — No, it doesn’t grow on trees — not even in the backyard of the dwelling I used to call my home, contrary to popular belief.  But money IS overrated and, like Doritos, you can always make more.  Toward the bitter end, I asked my friend, Liam, for advice.  “If she asks for $50K, give her a hundred,” he said.  His figures were off by a factor of ten, but, philosophically, he was exactly right.  Probably explains why he’s been happily married for about 17 years. 
• Be nice — In the course of getting divorced, there are about 4,000 opportunities to be decent or to be a dick.  Be decent about 3,995 times — not for the benefit of your ex, but for the benefit of YOU.    

So there you have it.  I hope you never need it.

Tags: divorce