I Want a Divorce (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am adding the following disclaimer to all of my dating related blog posts.  I change details, and create composite characters when I write about dating archetypes such as “Mr. Houdini, Mr. Angry, etc.  I would hate it if someone wrote about a high energy blonde comedian negatively in a blog, so because of that I never include a person’s occupation or anything about their physical description.  I also change enough details that I doubt anyone I am referring to would even recognize themselves if they read one of my articles.   I have split one person into three, or taken several people and put them all into one example.  So simply put, I am very ethical on this blog.

Online dating profiles are a window into a person‘s soul.  Most profiles don’t really tell you that much about a person, but the usually tell you enough to know when to send an email and when to keep moving.  One such profile popped up as a match on my OKCupid.com profile.  The man was generally attractive, age appropriate and seemed obsessed with cycling.  But he also had one overwhelming theme that was repeated throughout and that was

“When it comes to life, I believe in keeping it simple”

He said this around four times, including in the

“You should message me if….you believe in keeping it simple when living life”.

I hate to say it, but that was the final straw for me and I decided not to message him.  Sure we can all keep things simple in that we try to hang out with people who love and support us and avoid self-destructive behavior but if my divorce has taught me anything it is life is hardly simple.  His obsession with this premise just made me think he might be shallow or dim witted, and since I have sat through some fairly painful dates with both shallow and dim witted men I decided against contacting him.

Human relationships are nuanced and full of many shades of gray.  Life is in fact quite complicated, not simple at all.  My relationship with my ex-husband is complex to say the least.  Up until June 21, 2009 I considered him my best friend, my closest confidant, and then in an instant found myself staring at a man I hardly knew.  A bond and trust like that can’t be immediately severed, instead it took months and years for it to morph and change from overwhelming feelings of anger and resentment to a now familiar attachment that is difficult to describe.  What has been actually more troubling are the other relationships I lost when my marriage fell apart.  People I thought were as close as family just drifted away without so much as any real condolences or understanding.  In fact from some of them criticized me for being too hard on my ex.  If they only knew the layers of sacrifice and burden I had to endure for much of my marriage, the deception and betrayal they would never dare say something so profoundly uninformed to me.

As I witnessed many of my friends also go through difficult and painful divorces I experienced the extremely complicated nature of human relationships.  Some of my friends sabotaged their marriages with blatant infidelity or with downright abandonment towards their spouses.  Do I cut those friends off because of the way they treated their marriages?  Or do I understand the relationship was between those two people, and only they understand the torment and struggle they were going through.  Other relationships simply fell apart due to the every day wear and tear we put each other through, and any couple who has been together more than a decade or more knows, sometimes two people simply do grow apart.  And of course I had friends who were subject to cruelty and betrayal on extreme levels from their spouses.  Some of the stories still cause me to tear up when I think about them.  Married for twenty years only to be thrown away for a newer model and to find out the betrayal stretched on for the entire duration of the marriage?  Again anyone in a long-term committed relationship knows how much two people can go through in that time span especially when they have children together.  And then what of the children?  Damaged by the failure of a marriage and scarred up from the feeling of abandonment by one or both of their parents.  Not to say that the children won’t heal and might be better off in a divorced situation rather than a toxic household, but divorce is traumatic for all parties involved.  Or how about instances when one spouse is horribly treated by another then has to manage a healthy co-parenting relationship after the fact for years.  Life is not always so simple, and human relationships are hardly simple.  In fact they are quite complicated, and anyone who has survived a difficult divorce knows this truth all too well.

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