I actually laughed at that point. "As far as I'm concerned, there's no marriage to fight for. Understand this, Theresa, the marriage is over and there are no choices or negotiations anymore. Please be sure to make that clear to Megan, because, frankly, I don't really want to talk to her any more than I have to."
Theresa looked stunned as I slowly closed the door in her face.
I found that ending a marriage isn't as easy as closing a door. Sure, I'd made my decision and I knew that it was the right one since I knew I couldn't possibly live with the arrangement Megan had wanted. But, even though I'd smugly declared the marriage over to myself to Megan and to Theresa, I was having a lot of trouble adjusting to the situation. All the time and all the emotion and all the effort I'd put into a 5 year marriage seemed wasted and I couldn't shake the feeling that every moment of happiness I'd had with Megan was either a lie or had been tainted by what she had done.
It seemed that everything I did and everywhere I went reminded me of Megan and happier times. I found myself walking out of a restaurant without finishing because my meal was the same thing I'd ordered the night I asked her to marry me. The tulips blooming around the neighborhood were a painful reminder that they'd been her favorite flower. Labradors were her favorite dog, rock her favorite music, vanilla her favorite smell. Sunny days reminded me of days outside, camping or gardening or simply taking a walk. If it rained, I was reminded of lazy days by the fire, snuggled together in a comforter, slowly succumbing to the urge to make love. It became impossible for me to sleep in 'our' bed or eat at 'our' table or even live in 'our' house and I eventually had to move out of the duplex altogether.
Honestly, I was absolutely miserable and I wanted to believe that she was feeling the same loneliness and sense of loss that I was suffering from and that she'd at least voice some sort of regret. The marriage was over, I knew that and I knew that it had been my decision, but I desperately wanted some sign, some signal she had valued our relationship and that, on some level, she deeply regretted her choices. Sadly though, other than a few halfhearted attempts to get me to change my mind, she essentially gave up and it was clear that she was more than willing to let our marriage go quietly.
I knew it was probably easier for her, because she had a lover, someone she could be with that would blunt the pain and make it easier for her to move on. It seemed unfair to me, somehow, that Megan got to continue with half of what her life had become and I was left without any of mine, particularly since the half she had included some new and apparently exciting things. Although I didn't and couldn't know everything she did that summer before the divorce was finalized, I was aware that she spent most of her free time with Palmer and Theresa and their group. I also knew that she took at least two vacations with him, one a weekend to San Francisco and another week long trip to Europe. If she was missing me in any way, her new lifestyle was surely mitigating the pain.
The divorce was finalized a few months after my doorstep conversation with Theresa and without much acrimony. The financial stuff was fairly straight forward. Since I had originally stayed in the duplex I had to give her some cash for the furniture we owned, but otherwise, things sorted out pretty uneventfully. We each took half of our savings, our own clothes and our other personal stuff. She took her car, I took mine.
Even though I was the one that initiated the action, I couldn't shake the depressing feeling that it was maddeningly easy to end a marriage that we'd each promised would last until the day we died. And, even though I was already having a tough time adjusting, I was surprised with how empty I felt when we finally signed off and I watched Megan walk out of the lawyer's office, no longer my wife. I was staring off into space, thinking about how strange and sadly surreal and clinical the divorce proceeding had been when I heard Taylor clear his throat. I glanced over at him and saw a look of concern.
"You ok?" He asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine, why?'
"Well, you don't look fine."
"It's been a tough day, you know? End of something that I thought was good and that I thought was going to last forever. Hard to swallow." I was shaking my head slowly, trying to keep my emotions in check.
"Are you having second thoughts about whether splitting up was the right thing to do?" Taylor asked.
"I don't think so, no. I mean, she completely betrayed me when she started shacking up with Palmer, so I wanted out, I wanted a divorce, even though I knew it would hurt." I thought for a minute. "But, I guess I wanted her to pay some sort of a price. I mean, she's the one that trashed our marriage. She's the one that should be in pain. But here I am, I can barely function I'm so upset and she walks out of here to her boyfriend and will just go on. I guess I want her to feel some regret too. I want to hear her say she screwed up and that....that I'm the better man or something. I want her as unhappy as I am now."
Taylor listened to me carefully, nodding sympathetically with what I was relating. He seemed to want to say something, but I got the feeling he was debating whether he should or not. Finally, he cleared his throat and carefully started talking.
"Look, I've seen a lot of marriages dissolve and I've seen a lot of ex-husbands and ex-wives wish for just what you said. They want their ex to suffer for what they've done. They want them to have some sort of an epiphany that they've made a mess of their lives and they want the satisfaction of having them come on bended knee and cry about how unhappy they've become and how sorry they are and how much they wish they could change what they did." He looked at me closely, a look that said he wanted my full attention.
"But here's the deal. That almost never happens. And, even when it does, even when the tearful ex admits in exquisite detail everything that they've done wrong and all that they're sorry for, the admission doesn't do all that much for the smart people, because they're the ones that adjusted well after the divorce, that have moved on. They've got a new wife and new kids and a new house and a new life and they've stopped caring all that much about their old life and their old wife and their old hurts. Look, I don't know for sure, but my guess is that, someday, Megan is going to regret what she's done in a big way. But you can't wait for that day. You have to start living your life in a way that you really don't care all that much how she feels. It's the only way to stay happy. Hell, it's the only way to stay sane."
I didn't take Taylor's advice at first, although I thought a lot about it over the coming weeks while I stumbled through life, trying to adjust to the great gaping emotional wound that Megan had left me. The wound demanded my attention, reminding me of my loneliness, of her betrayal and of my apparent failure as a husband and as a man. In my best moments it was like a tethered wolf, snarling to get my attention and threatening to overwhelm me if I let it unleash itself. At my worst, it felt like some sort of mortal injury that would inflict an unbearable and relentless pain until it utterly consumed me. At work I was essentially unapproachable, writing code in silence, never talking or smiling with my associates. When I was with my friends, I moped, almost aggressively, and brought a dark miserable cloud of uncomfortable gloom into their homes. When I was alone, I'd stare at the TV or the words in a book or at the ceiling, waiting for the hour hand on the clock to magically move me closer to something resembling happiness. When I slept, it was only after I had cried.
This kept up for weeks, maybe months. I wanted to take Taylor's advice. I wanted to stop thinking about Megan and just be happy. I wanted to have a new wife and a house and a baby and a dog. I just couldn't see how I could get there from where I was at. I felt like some man without clothes or tools or even a map, sitting on an ice float in the middle of the ocean who just wanted to get home or at least get warm. How do you will yourself to become something that you aren't? To feel something that you don't?
Ultimately, I guess it was my friends that started to break the ice up for me. Over time, in their company, I slowly started to enjoy things that I used to do; playing games, watching sports, hiking, going to the movies. They were good enough to keep putting up with my moods and relentlessly tried any number of things to help lead me out of my melancholy. And so, with each passing week I'd talk a little more, smile a little more and, eventually, laugh a little more.
One night after we'd all had dinner and played a couple of video games, they all ganged up on me and insisted that it was high time I started dating again. In mock anguish, I accused them of trying to get rid of me and that they wanted to pawn me and my problems off on some poor, unsuspecting girl. They pressed on and presented me with an ultimatum, an offer that they thought, correctly, I couldn't refuse. They had 6 tickets to a concert that I was dying to go to. One of the tickets was mine, if and only if, I could get a girl to go with me. Of course they knew I might try to scam them just to get to the concert, so there were a couple of provisions. She had to be unmarried and unrelated. She had to be roughly my age so I couldn't invite one of the old widows from work. And she couldn't take money in exchange for a date, which pretty much ruled out my first plan of inviting one of the working gals from downtown.
There was a cute brunette with a nice figure at work I'd been a little friendly with that turned out to be available and willing to go. I felt awkward at first, but in the end, we had a reasonably good time. The concert was great and we stopped off for a late night snack and some drinks afterwards and I even got comfortable enough to ask her out again. We saw each other a couple of more times and had some fun, and, while we both knew that we were never going to be a couple, the time I spent with her gave me the courage and the ego boost to keep trying. Over the next few months I gradually started dating with some frequency and it wasn't long before I was going out pretty much every weekend. I found that there were a number of girls at work or at a gym I joined or from a couple of parties that I attended that were more than a little interested in me. Their attention and interest really helped me feel better about myself.
While I really enjoyed their company, I didn't, or maybe, couldn't get serious with any of these women. I got close enough with a couple of them to have sex, which, for the most part, was very good and sometimes even a little bit wild. But, it was all purely recreational, not the kind of sex that grew out of a desire to get really, really close, the kind you had with someone to tell them how you really felt about them. The kind you had with someone you wanted to marry.
