What Divorce Can Look Like

9 of us drove 300 miles to vacation together and 300 miles back home again. 9 of us in one minivan. 2 of us were ex-spouses. One of us was the new(ish) spouse, and one (me) was the boyfriend. Plus their kids and her kids and my kid.

When we arrived on South Padre Island on the Texas coast, we stayed in an Airbnb condo together for 4 days and 3 nights. It was beautiful place. Flora does her research. I’m too optimistic by nature to be good at picking the Airbnb. They all look great! They could all be perfect! And they are great. But clearly, Flora has a knack for picking the actual, and not just potential, perfection.

We shared driving and expenses. We took turns cleaning and shopping and cooking, without any discussion or planning or scheduling. We just did it. We played together. We took care of each other. We swam in the waves. We dug in the sand. We played board games and went out to eat and never turned on the TV. We all took turns reading to the 3-year-old. That’s what divorce can look like. Still family. Still loving.

To be fair, it doesn’t look like that on my side. On my side, we do OK. We can be civil when we text each other about the business of child-rearing. Sometimes we speak in person. Sometimes we get together to talk out the details. Usually we don’t. Usually we text. 4 years after I moved out, I think we do best when we text. When we talk, I tend to use too many words, and sooner or later, one or more of them gets me into trouble, though my intentions are always good. The trust that we are both acting and speaking in good faith with good intentions has been slow to rebuild after the things we said to each other 4 years ago.

It wasn’t that our divorce was adversarial. We didn’t fight over money, or property, or custody. At least, not much. It wasn’t a battle when we broke up. We didn’t go through mediation. We didn’t spend thousands and thousands of dollars on litigation. But still, we didn’t make it through as friends. There was no trust. I got a lawyer because I was afraid of what she might do, and I was certain she was capable of doing it. I don’t know what she thought, because it’s best if we don’t talk about it. But I’m sure she didn’t trust me either. We never went to battle, but we definitely put on the armor and picked up the weapons. The last 4 years has been a slow, very slow, lowering of swords and shields, but our eyes are still watchful and suspicious.

So how did Flora and her ex-husband keep the loving family and the best friends part of their marriage in place when the marriage ended? I don’t know, exactly. I’m not sure she knows exactly, either. It’s not that hurtful things were never said. I’m not sure a break that fundamental can happen without some hurtful things being said. Humans are human, after all. It’s not that it wasn’t sad and painful to see the dreams and plans of a lifetime come to an end. It was devastating for both of them.

But…

They took 3 years to divorce. We took 11 months. They were dear friends in high school, and dear friends for years before they dated or married. We met, became friends, became lovers, moved in together, and were engaged in about 2 years, at the age of 21. And even at our best, we were never very good at being kind to each other under stress. We established the patterns of how we treated each other when we had no idea who we were or who we would be, and we struggled unsuccessfully over the years to change those patterns. Divorce did not make us better at it.

So…

It takes love and kindness and trust. It takes more than putting the kids first, though that helps. It takes 2 people who are both committed to each other as friends and as family, though they have both let go of the idea of being married to each other forever. Both. Committed to each other.

And…

It takes new partners who are secure and not threatened by that commitment.

I love being part of this new kind of family. I don’t have the vocabulary to name all of our roles, but it doesn’t really matter. I’m not a step-dad to Flora’s kids. There isn’t a word for what I am to her ex-husband, or to his wife, or to her kids. But it feels like family, and I’m lucky to participate in it. I’m grateful to be a part of it. It’s something special. It’s clearly an anomaly, though, and I hope it becomes more normal. Maybe some day, when people hear about this kind of family, they won’t say, “Wow! That’s amazing! How on earth did you pull that off?” They’ll just say, “Cool. Have a great vacation!”

Oh! I almost forgot: when Flora’s ex-husband was driving, he even stopped to let me indulge in my historical marker collection! Now that’s a true friend. He didn’t say, “That’s weird.” He didn’t say, “We have a schedule to keep.” He just pulled over.

#5496: “Tuleta: The Rev. Peter Unzicker led a group of Illinois settlers here in 1906. Buying 53.4 acres of land of the original Uranga Grant and later Chittim-Miller Ranch, he founded Tuleta, named for the daughter of J. M. Chittim. A rail depot and post office were opened. In 1909 Pastor Unzicker organized one of Texas' first Mennonite churches. Townspeople established the innovative Tuleta Agricultural High School in 1910, with Miss Amanda Stoltzfus as principal. Once marketing center for this fertile farming area, Tuleta also had a union church and several business houses.”

And later, when we hit another one at a rest stop, I got to talk about Zachary Taylor and the tension between James Polk’s desire to win the Mexican-American War and his desire to not make a viable political rival out of the general he sent to win it, and how Taylor died in office almost as soon as he became President. I read about all of this in Ron Chernow’s biography of Grant that Flora gave me awhile back. I misremembered, thinking that he had the shortest term, but it turns out that was William Henry Harrison, who lasted only 31 days, as opposed to Taylor’s nearly year and a half. But I got to talk about how that cynical and racist land grab of a war that he waged served as practice for the Civil War, with the lieutenants and captains in Mexico becoming the generals who would conduct the war over slavery. I think a lot these days about the United States I live in, the lies upon which its culture is built, its history of exploitation that we decided for so long to cover up and gloss over, and how the whole thing is built upon the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many. I didn’t say all of that at the rest stop historical marker, but I could have. This big, loving family would have let me. Because that’s how we roll. #2143: “Under this tree General Zachary Taylor, commanding the Expeditionary Army of the United States sent to Texas in 1845, encamped on March 15, 1846, while en route with his troops from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande.”