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How to survive the Holiday Season – For the Newly Divorced

Date: December 17, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Depression, Divorce, Relationships, Uncategorized
Comments: 7 Replies

IMG_0347

This is a topic I have written about extensively in the past, but since I consider myself a divorce advocate I wanted to re-visit it.  The holidays are rough…hang in there guys! 🙂 

I wanted to write this piece because I really think a lot of the “Advice for Divorced People” websites, books and other resources might be written by people who have never actually been divorced.  Some of the post-divorce holiday advice is extremely helpful, and some comes across as overly chipper, insensitive and a bit clueless.

My first Christmas without my husband I felt completely numb.  I had made the mistake of having an intense rebound relationship before I was ready.   That brief affair ended dramatically less than a month before Christmas.   On the big day itself, I sat in my aunt’s house surrounded by my family and felt nothing.  Everyone looked at me as if I was a ghost.  It had only been six months since I found out the truth about my marriage.  Nine years of my life that I thought was the strongest relationship I had ever had, was now a fraud.   I found it especially painful that I was sharing the holiday with relatives who were in my wedding party.  It meant so much for me to have them a part of that day.  I wanted to go up to each one of them and apologize for letting them down.  We were all actors in a play that had gotten re-written midway.  Instead of a happy ending, it closed with a surprise twist and tragic finale. My loss overwhelmed me with a deep sense of shame.  None of my relatives blamed me, but I couldn’t escape the guilt.  Ultimately, I had picked the wrong partner. Little did I know things for me were going to have to get much worse for me before they got better.  I was about to spiral out of control into an episode of life-threatening depression.

That was three years ago, and much has happened in my life since then.  I haven’t really had much romance, but I have healed and moved forward.  My marriage had been the center of my happiness.  I had made myself co-dependent on one person and I paid dearly for that mistake.  Now I have this crazy network of unique, creative and astonishingly wonderful friends to whom I am eternally grateful.  I never want to go back to isolating myself emotionally to one person.  The trauma of my divorce also helped heal wounds I had with my family.  I feel healthier and happier than I have in years.  But there is always the holiday season, when the gray clouds loom and I find myself fighting back the demons in my head.

If you are newly divorced and reading this, I am not going to sugarcoat your obstacles. Divorce is hell.  It can cause a slew of emotional problems and even trigger mental illness.  The catastrophe of divorce can also fuel substance abuse and any number of self-destructive behaviors.   Anyone who has gone through a divorce understands the added loss of friendships and family members.  Some friends you thought were lifelong will drift away post-split. You might also be worried about your children, or blame yourself for failing them.  For many divorced people the biggest hurdle is overcoming the feeling of shame.

Don’t listen to those negative voices.  Marriages fall apart for all sorts of reasons.  Many couples just fall out of love, or learn they can’t live with each other in a healthy environment.  Other marriages are frauds from day one with partners victimized in green card scams, serial cheaters, or deceitful spouses.  You have every right to feel angry and to express pain, but at the end of the day, it is better to focus on repairing the damage and moving forward.  Regardless of who ended the marriage, both partners experience damage.  You can succumb and spiral downward or you can fight back.   Get help if you need it, either through therapy, counseling or medication.  Don’t let depression or substance abuse take over your life.  It will get better. Your fairy tale may have fallen apart, but you will have another chapter.  Even though it might feel like it, your life is not over.

There is no substitute for time.  However bad you feel now, know that it won’t always be like this. The holiday season is just hyped up to make a lot of people a lot of money.  In the long run it is just a short time out of the year and it will be over before you know it.  A better day to celebrate might be seeing a movie with your kids, or a football game with your dad, or just having drinks with your best friend.  Don’t let the build up of holiday parties and family obligations get to you.  As I have said many times on this blog, no one is fortunate all of the time.  We all have our ups and downs, and if you are recently divorced, you are going through a lot.  Just remember, things will get better, and you are not alone.  Much Love.

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Dating Online: The Liar – A Hall of Famer!

Date: December 9, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Dating, Dating - NYC, Dating After 35, Dating After Divorce, Dating Online, Hall of Fame, New York City, Relationships, Uncategorized
Comments: 15 Replies

pants-on-fire

I am launching a new category on this blog: The Hall of Fame.   Anyone I place in the online dating Hall of Fame will be a person who expresses the most extreme traits of an already established archetype.  To protect this man’s identity  for the purposes of this article I will simply call him, “The Pretty Boy”.

It started out innocently enough.  Tired of my inbox filling up with 22-25 year olds trolling for cougars, and geriatric men who lie about their age, I did a quick match search.  My query was simple, men who live in New York City ages 32-47.  After scrolling through dozens of profiles I ended up emailing exactly two men.  One was an extremely attractive man, almost too pretty for my taste.  Most of his photos were professionally done, and he had one shot of himself holding a guitar in front of a large crowd of what looked like several thousand people.  The caption read “I was a rock star…about 10 years ago”

This photo was the first red flag. I questioned why he would put something like that on his profile.  I also wondered if this man might be promiscuous; as the lifestyle of most professional musicians isn’t exactly one of steadfast fidelity.  My roommate looked at his photos and said immediately.

“He is probably gay, he is way too pretty to be straight”

I disagreed as I have met many pretty straight men.  I was more concerned with, “How could a man this good-looking really have much of a problem getting a date, especially if he was a rock star at some point in his life?”

I have come across many extremely attractive people on dating websites.  However this man was model good-looking.  He was gorgeous, and that is rare on dating sites.  I wasn’t really interested as I am really attracted to bookish nerdy guys or artistic types; but, his profile was so over the top I felt compelled to contact him.

I sent him a brief one sentence asking him for a “drink or something”, to which Pretty Boy responded.

“When you said ‘or something’ did you mean sky diving?  Or a book reading? Something a bit more exciting?”

I found his response rather annoying.  Here I was a total stranger sticking my neck out to ask him out and he is scolding me for not being bold enough in my request.  So I responded…

“No actually I meant just coffee.  I would hate to ruin an experience like sky diving with a total stranger, not to mention it is rather expensive.  If we went to a book reading we wouldn’t get a chance to talk much and well…you are a total stranger so it is better to actually get to know you”

And then the first shoe dropped and I get this response.

“Well I would love to meet for coffee but I actually live in Los Angeles but I will be moving to New York soon…so that is why I have New York on my profile.  I will be in town on Dec. 10th if you want to hang.”

I wish I could say this is the first time I found an inaccurate profile, but unfortunately a lot of guys lie about living in New York.  I guess we New York gals have a bit of a reputation for being fabulous.  I have no idea.  I should have just walked away; but, for reasons I don’t understand, I shot back

“Hey man if you live in LA you should say you live in LA.  And if you are moving here soon, maybe you should focus on moving here before you try to date anyone.  If that is what you are looking for, I am not sure.  Anyway good luck to you, New York is a really difficult city to date in.  I wrote an article about it, trust me it is hell.”

And because I thought this would be the end of the conversation I sent him a link to my #1 hit as it were, “Dating After Divorce in a City of Sluts.”  I have no idea why I did this.  I had never done it before.  I guess I meant it as a nice parting gesture.  I was just trying to give him my perspective on dating in this city. I just forgot how opinionated and worked up people got about that article.

About twenty minutes later I get this long rambling response written mostly in text speech with the letter “u” substituting for the word “you” and some of the worst grammar and spelling I have ever seen in my life.  I would have just ignored it but his tone set me off.  The line that pushed me over the edge “I disagree with the very notion of writing about it in the first place.”

Plenty of people disagree with me, and I don’t mind a healthy debate.  However telling me I shouldn’t write about any subject was incredibly disrespectful and insulting.  It was also incredibly difficult to respect his opinion since he couldn’t write in complete sentences, spell simple words or even make his opinions clear.  My writing is not perfect, but his writing was simply abominable.

I will paraphrase as our correspondence got somewhat heated and long-winded.  My first tactic was to  defend my article.

“Look you may not agree with me, but I have every right to write about whatever I want.  This is my personal experience so you may disagree with my point of view, but I wrote it from the heart.  I got hundreds of new followers on twitter, it was shared thousands of times on the internet, and I even did interviews based on the article.  So you may not agree with me but a lot of people did.  I am not bashing men as this is a universal problem.   As I stated in the article: women, men and people of every sexual orientation and gender identification deal with this predicament”

His next response is when things really got weird.  As he took my attempt at defending my piece as me bragging about my accomplishments.  His response was to try to out-brag me…again paraphrasing for length.

“Look I have sold millions of records, I have been on TV, was voted one of the most beautiful people in the world and I have been married for 15 years I am just on a hiatus and I have four children”

Well this is news now isn’t it?  He hadn’t indicated on his profile that he was MARRIED, nor that he had FOUR CHILDREN!  I was floored, and kept reading. He may have not realized the verb tenses he used but the words “have been married for 15 years” implied he is still married.  Also the use of the word “hiatus” made me feel he was not even legally separated much less divorced. He went on,

“And because of all of this, I have had a lot of experience with women…all over the world”

And I started doing the math in my head.  So if he is 38 and married for 15 years, and is probably still married…if he was screwing a bunch of women 10 years ago when he was in a band, then he was cheating on his wife.  Wow, this man was a catch.

“And so what about your article who cares?  I also know I am attractive.  Why?  Because thousands of people have told me so.  Including millions of readers in a certain popular magazine that called me one of the most beautiful people in the world.”

At this point I started cackling.  Yes this man was attractive, but obviously he had put a lot of his self-worth into what he looked like as I had not brought up his physical appearance.  I realized he misunderstood my defense of my article.  I wasn’t actually trying to brag, just point out that yes my piece was controversial but plenty of people loved it.  Now it seemed he was hoping that I would rue the day that I had snubbed him.  After all he was one of America’s Most Beautiful people, a fact he mentioned twice in his rant. If he only knew how many other pompous beautiful men I have turned down over the years.  I finally ended this madness and wrote.

“Well if you are so famous and attractive, then why have you resorted to online dating to try to meet women?”

And then I blocked him from contacting me.  I was kind of insulting myself  and everyone else on dating website when I wrote that.  I didn’t mean to diss everyone on a dating website as plenty of people find love online.  I just thought it was funny that this man who kept bragging about how he was so beautiful, had appeared on television and sold millions of records was trying to find a date on a free dating website.

I WILL NOT reveal this man’s identity on this blog but after a fairly quick google search I found out he had what looked like one big hit and a couple minor hits about a decade ago.  I didn’t recognize him or his musical partner, nor had I ever heard any of their music.  It was bland light pop and I am sure they had a loyal following for a brief time.

I have been on and off OKCupid now for over two years and I have never found a profile that proved to be so blatantly fraudulent.  He had no mention of children, still being married or living in a totally different city.  He tried to defend his actions by saying he was only looking for “friends and activity partners”.  That was the only honest thing he had written, but  I can’t imagine his wife would be overjoyed if she found his profile.  This was the ultimate liar, and from the looks of his ranting a fairly insecure liar.  Perhaps he should try to find some groupies who might still be starstruck.  He will learn soon enough, most New York women won’t give a damn that a popular magazine called him a beautiful person.  If he wants casual sexual encounters he will have no problem getting them, he just shouldn’t pretend he would rather go skydiving instead.  Had he been honest from the start, he would have saved us both a lot of trouble.

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Getting Married? A Divorcee’s Guide to surviving the worst case scenario

Date: September 6, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Divorce
Comments: 1 Reply
Divorce Ring

Divorce Ring (Photo credit: Jewellery Monthly)

Are you are getting married soon?  In the US the average wedding costs around $25,631  The US wedding industry is said to be about $120 BILLION dollars, with $50 Billion on wedding costs and the remaining $70 billion on purchasing and furnishing a new home or residence.

All of this is great and it certainly helps keep photographers, florists, bakers, caterers, dress makers, makeup artists, hair stylists, stationary companies, event spaces, real estate brokers and wedding planners employed.  And don’t even get me started on the obnoxious marriage proposals that are springing up all over the internet and ridiculously over produced wedding websites.  For whatever reasons…WE LOVE WEDDINGS!

With all of this focus on creating the perfect day, where is the energy and time spent on planning for the worst case scenario.  People call me a naysayer but the divorce rate has been at around 40-50% for several decades.  I am hardly being unreasonable to suggest that many couples will face a divorce eventually.  In fact in the US the average length of a first marriage that end in divorce is only about 8 years.  In the United states the average age for first marriages is 27 for brides and 29 for grooms.  Even though the age for a first marriage has risen over the years, most of us embark on this huge life experience while we are still very young.

Reasons such as, infidelity, midlife crisis, secret lives, criminal activity, untreated mental illness, substance abuse, financial problems or just two people who can’t stand the sight of one another anymore…you name it marriages fall apart as a result.  Well having lived through an extremely painful divorce, here are my words of advice.

Consider a prenup – I know it sounds unromantic but if you have assets or even expected inheritance you will want to protect yourself in case you get a divorce.  No two prenups are alike and you  can custom yours to your specific needs.  You can even have clauses in case of infidelity or if the marriage has lasted past 10 years that nullifies certain restrictions.  Since a marriage is a legally binding agreement, you want to make sure you protect yourself in case the worst should happen.

Keep some investments separate from your spouse – Depending on a lot of factors your spouse could still lay claim to these assets.  You never know what could happen as some people can go insane during a divorce.  Most joint bank accounts can be legally emptied by one spouse without consent of the other.  Legally you can sue to get your half of the account back, but if the money is already spent and your spouse is not employed you will probably never see that money.  Any stolen amount could come out of shared assets, if you have any left to split.  So be careful how much money you keep in joint accounts.  Always leave some money in individual accounts.

Credit Cards – Just as assets can be wiped out in a divorce, one spouse may rack up debt in anticipation of a divorce or in an attempt to ruin the other partner.  I am not saying to never have a joint credit card, but be careful.  Always have your own line of credit so if you do divorce you have a credit history and accounts that your spouse cannot max out.   Even joint cell phone contracts can be next to impossible to split in half without full co-operation from one of the spouses, never assume these things can be easily resolved.

Investments – It is a good idea that if you have investments in your own name before the marriage to keep those investments as individual accounts.  If the investments are in the form of stocks or mutual funds and the accounts are joint, getting them split in half requires murderous paperwork and a lot of co-operation between you and your former spouse.  I would recommend NEVER getting a joint stock account, you can instead make your spouse the beneficiary .  There are a multitude of legal ramifications to pensions and retirement accounts regarding a divorce depending on your circumstances.  Your pension may not be entirely your own in a divorce, but it does help to keep it in your name so your spouse can’t try to raid it in a fit of rage.

Property – There are so many things that can go wrong here and scenarios that I couldn’t even begin to list them.  What I would recommend though if you already own property then see a lawyer about possible scenarios BEFORE you get married.  Never assume things will go smoothly in a divorce.  The lawyer might be expensive but you will save yourself so much grief later if you protect yourself now.

Going into business with a Spouse – Plenty of couples do this without any problem, but you cannot assume that you will be one of the lucky ones.  If you do go into business with your spouse get some type of legal written agreement before you do.  Create some type of safety net for yourself if things should sour in the marriage.  To have your marriage fall apart is bad enough, to lose your income at the same time is devastating.

Don’t keep Financial secrets – Even though I would recommend keeping separate accounts, you should not hide things from your spouse.   In the case of a sudden death, or tragedy the surviving spouse should know where everything is, how to pay all bills, and the amount of debt owed.  In any marriage, ignorance is not bliss when it comes to financial matters.  Some spouses let one run the show financially and then find out to their peril when a divorce financially cripples them.

The laws regarding marital property vary from state to state and no two marriages are alike.  And getting a fair settlement may cost you  dearly in court, and enforcing a divorce settlement is something else entirely.  People have ways of cheating the system, plus paying lawyers to fight on your behalf is extremely expensive.  Protect yourself before you end up in divorce court, or in a mediation.    If we only had half of the industry set up to help divorced people that we do on planning that wedding, we would have a lot less suffering and disenfranchised people.  Love will blind you to the harsh realities that could await you if things go South.  Take care of yourself first, and always.

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Dating in NYC: The Cool Detachment

Date: August 3, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Dating - NYC, Depression, Divorce, New York City, Straight Spouse, Uncategorized
Comments: 8 Replies
Emotion

Emotion (Photo credit: rexquisite)

Since my divorce, I can’t seem to do anything right when it comes to dating.  I try to hard, I don’t try hard enough, I go out too much I stay inside my apartment for days on end, it doesn’t seem to matter.   I have read multiple books on dating, even ones on male psychology and they don’t seem to help.  I have sat down with male friends and tried to get feedback on how their brains work.  I have shared numerous stories with fellow single women all which end in a similar refrain a lot of heartache and disappointment.  I just don’t get this city.  But I think I am starting to figure out the missing element, and it isn’t something that I can grow overnight, nor do I necessarily want to develop.

It’s the cool detachment, the emotional wall, the blase manner, the cavalier treatment of other people like they are hardly worth a moment’s notice.  Detachment is the style of the many tribes in this city.  And I am like tissue paper, desperately trying to suppress emotion and play things off like I don’t care, but I desperately care.  I want what I lost, but the longer I keep looking for it the more it seems like an unattainable goal.   I push down my emotions and smother them as best I can, because the more my emotions show the more they scare everyone away from me.  And yet I still do everything wrong.  I try to play it cool, act as if I couldn’t care less, and I get away with it most of the time.  But then I start to care, not full throttle, just a hint.  I let my guard down for a moment and try to let someone new into my life and the whole thing collapses before it begins.  I don’t know what to do.  I try to do the right thing.  I don’t see the point in going out with someone who is still tortured by his ex-wife, or an ex-girlfriend, so when I meet men like this and I meet many…I politely walk away.  And I won’t go out with someone who is already married or in a relationship, I don’t need that kind of bad karma.  And I would never do to someone else what another did to me.  So I try to allow things to slowly grow and give things space and time but it never works out and I remain alone and broken.

So I hide and try to erase the past decade or so of my life.  I tell myself “Don’t talk about your divorce, don’t talk about your divorce” and it feels like not talking about everything that has completely re-built and shaped me for the past three years.  Don’t talk about your fears, don’t show weakness, don’t show that you actually care or give a damn.  Just play it cool, the others around you are doing it and they are winning.  Well they might not be winning but at least they seem to play the game better than I do.  But I am who I am and that is a fairly emotional person, so it feels like shoving myself into a vice that is pinching me on all sides.  And I see it on the faces of new men that I met, when I was younger it seemed like there was more excitement in the game, now it is everyone trying to out “cool” each other.   Everyone tells me to just be myself and it will all be OK, but when I am myself nothing works out.

How did we get like this?  How is it the only way to successfully date in New York City is to get so jaded and so burned that you just stop showing any passion.  I don’t want to turn into that person, but I honestly have no idea how I can go on like this.  Never more than a couple of dates and the whole thing implodes, and in some cases it just dies without much fanfare at all.  Men fall for the image of me, not my reality – a complicated, damaged and world-weary soul.  But I have survived so much horror and lived to tell about it.  I have nine years of a relationship that went to hell and back and didn’t give up on it until it was obviously beyond hope.  Shouldn’t my loyalty and dedication count for something?  I would be the last person to flippantly leave a relationship over something trivial or the next big thing.  I guess in a city where everyone is replaceable and there is always a newer, younger, shinier version walking down the street, none of this matters.  I sometimes think that the overwhelmingly promiscuous nature of this city comes from people who have just grown so tired of trying for something more and they give in to anything to ease the feeling of loneliness and pain.  And at least a fleeting moment of human contact can smother it, if for a second.  But like any drug used to feed a hunger that it cannot truly contain, more and more is needed until it the fix becomes insatiable and the cycle continues.

So many have called New York an emotional desert and I just keep trying to prove them wrong.  I am not going to become a deadened human being, I refuse to let that happen to me.   And I have to be true to myself, so I will keep hoping that something will change.  At this point I have very little left to keep me going besides hope, so until I meet someone who can put up with Ms. emotional over here, that is my reality.

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Life After Divorce: When you Lose Half your Friends

Date: July 6, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Divorce, Gay Husband, Relationships, Straight Spouse, Uncategorized
Comments: 10 Replies

Divorces are in some ways like wars between two rival factions.  Just like a city that has been carpet bombed, some closest to the impact are vaporized while others remain completely unscathed.  Who remains standing is almost random.  In-laws might also completely abandon the non-related spouse regardless of the reasons of the split.   When a couple decides to separate they usually have no idea how many other relationships they might damage or destroy in the process.

Bending Reality

For some friends who want to stay close to your spouse, they will bend, twist and invent reality in order to justify their loyalties.  In one such case I can think of a spouse who had not one but multiple affairs.  The affairs were blatant, public and included some of his spouses’ friends.  When the couple finally split, it was almost shocking to hear certain friends of the couple declare.

“That poor man, she won’t even work on the marriage”

So was it the wife who wouldn’t work on the marriage or was the husband having multiple affairs?  Maybe she had just given up at that point, it wasn’t a one time fling while on a business trip, he had full-blown affairs with other women including one that was on-going while they were working out the terms of their divorce.  I know I am picking sides here, but I would say the husband was probably more to blame in this situation than the wife.  Numerous serial affairs including people she trusted and called friends over a period of several years, and somehow the divorce was her fault?  It makes the mind spin.

The Public Relations War

When two celebrities divorce it is just a given that professional publicists are feeding stories to the press to make their clients look as good as possible  The same thing happens on a smaller scale when any couple splits.  Both parties act as their own public relations team leaving out horrible misdeeds and cruelty they have inflicted on the other.   In some cases total fabrications emerge.  One couple I know the wife has created fantastical tales of abuse even criminal behavior on the part of her ex-husband.  Her stories are not incredibly believable, in part because the stories get more and more extreme as she retells them, and she doesn’t keep her facts straight.   As I have caught her in several inconsistencies I just don’t give her much credence.

The best thing to do in these situations is to try to stay calm if your former spouse is trashing you to your social group.  The more you fight back the worse you will look, although if they are making wild accusations that might jeopardize your occupation or child custody, you should seek legal counsel and try to defend yourself.   I made every mistake possible during my divorce and made many things public that probably should have remained private.  If anything my behavior just caused people to be concerned for my well being, I was hurting myself more than my former spouse.

Then you are going to have friends who will simply project their own divorce hell or baggage onto your situation.  I had one such experience with someone I considered a close friend.  He basically hated his ex-wife.  Hated her with a passion that would be difficult to put into words.  When I was going through the worst of it, he didn’t feel I was treating my ex with enough respect.  Now mind you, our divorces were in no way shape or form similar.  My former friend was angry with his ex-wife and projected his own feelings about her onto me.  He started making cruel comments to me about my divorce right away, until it finally escalated to a point that I would not tolerate it anymore.   I do not consider this person a friend, and given the circumstances I am better off without him.

Lost Baggage

One of the more positive things about a divorce though is that you no longer have to keep up relationships with people you never liked in the first place.  Anyone married for any length of time has friends and associates that are only around them because of their spouse.  Consider your split one of the rare opportunities when you get to drop those unwanted acquaintances without any social stigma whatsoever.  No one will blame you when you stop talking to your ex-husband’s Poker buddies, or your ex-wife’s work out pals.  It’s time for a clean slate!

And of course some friends will surprise you.  They won’t pick sides, or if they do they will side with you and not your former spouse.  I was lucky to have some people in my life who have been extremely supportive and caring throughout my ordeal.  But overall I have been deeply hurt by those who basically abandoned me.  In some cases I tried to reach out to those who have cut me off and with others I simply let those connections atrophy and die.  It definitely has made me more careful about who I allow in my life now, and who I consider a true friend.   And it has strangely given me a tougher exterior, I just don’t flinch when cutting someone out now.  I don’t really like this new quality of mine, but I think it is here to stay.  When the dust settles, and it may take years for it to finally be over, you will see who stood by you when things got rough.  Those who remain are worth keeping around, those who left you don’t know what they are missing.

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Dating After Divorce: When will you be ready to date again?

Date: July 2, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Dating - NYC, Depression, Divorce, Gay Husband, Relationships, Straight Spouse, Uncategorized
Comments: Leave a reply
The Dating Game

The Dating Game (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So since I started this blog I have gotten amazing email from people all over the country and people all over the world about their own personal struggles of living a post-divorce life.  Most of the questions and concerns are about dating.  And I certainly don’t have all the answers as I am a bit of a mess in that department myself.  But the question I get a lot is

When will I be ready?

And all I can say is that the answer is different for every person.  It has been three years for me, and I am not even sure of the answer for myself.   One of the problems of a newly divorced person is that nearly every waking thought is about your divorce and about your ex.  Of course this isn’t the case with everyone, but I have found it is more the norm than it is the exception.  A potential partner can and will pick up on this, and it will be a huge warning sign to them that you aren’t ready.  For instance if everything the other person says on the date leads you to say in response…

  • That is just like my ex
  • I can relate because of my divorce
  • Do you know what my ex did?
  • I had the same thing with my ex

Basically the more times you bring your ex up, the crazier you are going to sound.   And you are a little crazy as divorce is an extremely traumatic event in any adults life.  So, here is a trick that my therapist gave to me, and I recently repeated to a friend that will help.

Stop referring to your ex by their first name, instead reduce them to simply…”my ex”

You don’t have to do this with people who know your ex well, or family members.  In fact doing that might read as insensitive.  But if you are meeting a potential date, mention your ex as little as possible, and if you do don’t use their first name.  You will find in time this will become effortless, and you won’t find yourself even having to think about it.   Also try like hell not to talk about your divorce, your settlement, custody agreement, or the reason why you got divorced to a new potential partner.  Again much easier said than done, as I know I still have this problem.  I am worlds away from where I was a year ago, or two years ago but my divorce is a huge part of my life.  It doesn’t help that I am currently working on my memoir.  Writing a book isn’t exactly a casual affair as it tends to take up most of my thoughts, most of the time.  So I am in an especially strange situation of working for hours on something I shouldn’t talk about when meeting someone new.  Hopefully you aren’t writing a book about your divorce!  So talk about anything and everything else!

Also try getting your feet wet without plunging into the pool.  Don’t set out to have a committed relationship right off the bat, and do NOT think of terms of replacing your ex.  Try to date multiple people casually, maybe even without much of a sexual component to the relationships.  Go on group dates with your friends instead of forcing yourself to sit across the table from a virtual stranger before you are ready.  Surround yourself with people who love and support you, rather than putting yourself out in a dating pool full of sharks.  Some men and women seem like the answer to your prayers at first, only to drop you like a hot rock when they find a less complicated mate.  Some are just player types who want to bed as many people as they can and care little about your feelings.  Others might be just as screwed up as you are after a divorce and you could find yourself in a co-dependent nightmare.  You don’t want to be a burden on someone, you want a balanced healthy relationship.  In order to have a healthy relationship you have to be able to stand on your own two feet before involving another person.

I really don’t have a definitive answer on the exact length of time post-divorce and anyone who gives you an exact time frame should be viewed as suspect.  You will know when your divorce and your ex does not consume your every thought.  You will know when you are not so desperate for a replacement for what you thought you had with your ex.  You will know when you are comfortable and happy on your own, and it could take a few months or maybe a few years before that happens.  Again I say this from experience, as a very deeply flawed person that I am myself.

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Life After Divorce: The Kinship of Divorce

Date: June 9, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Divorce, Gay Husband, Relationships, Straight Spouse, Uncategorized
Comments: 4 Replies
LOL Just divorced. And no, that's not my car.

LOL Just divorced. And no, that’s not my car. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A few months ago I had to make yet another trip to my bank to sort out some lingering financial ties with my ex-husband.  I had no idea when I set up our mutual funds as joint accounts, that getting them cut in half once divorced would be next to impossible.  Splitting mutual funds or any investment containing stocks requires such an overwhelming amount of challenging paperwork it isn’t even worth explaining here.   This trip to the bank was my third attempt, and the mutual fund company had given me the wrong information, again.

Sitting across from me, in one of those cubicles for private banking transactions was a manager, a small woman with dark hair and olive skin, maybe about 10 years older than myself.  She was firmly explaining that I would have to re-do my paperwork and bring in my ex-husband with me before they would sign the necessary form to get our joint account split.  I kept explaining what the mutual fund had told me, yet she wouldn’t back down.  It went back and forth like this for at least 20 minutes slowly escalating as I got more and more worked up, until finally I said simply.

“Do you know how hard these things are?  Do you understand why I don’t want to deal with my ex-husband with this?  Have you ever been divorced?”

To which she replied simply.

“Yes, I have and it was awful”

My mood immediately changed and I said.

“I’m sorry”

She then went on to explain to me how her husband had ruined her, she had managed to get full custody but through a ridiculous loophole on his part got no child support.  She wouldn’t go into too many details but said simply.

“I don’t care, I have my daughters and that is all that matters to me, I live paycheck to paycheck I am not sure how I am going to make it but I am free and I don’t care about his money, I just wanted out”

And I started crying.

She whipped out a box of kleenex and told me

“Look, this mutual fund is only for $2,000 don’t make yourself crazy over $2,000.  I know you want to put it in your IRA but it isn’t a lot of money and it isn’t worth this.”

I shook my head.

“I know, I just want it to be over.  I was ruined too, I lost everything even my ability to pay my rent.  I have looked for work and there is nothing out there, so I just do whatever I can to keep from starving, I used to work with my ex.  He is doing great and I can’t even buy food”

Then we just sat there for a few minutes sharing different parts of our stories.  In the end we got up and hugged each other before I left, as she gave me more specific instructions on exactly what I needed to do the next time to get my investment split.

I have had many other experiences like this since my divorce.  Perfect strangers instantly become friends the minute they say.

“I am also divorced”

I know many friends who have tried to empathize with me, with a long-term split that was not a marriage.  I have written before about the differences between a long-term relationship with cohabitation ending and a divorce.  In most cases a divorce is more traumatic, as both parties entered into a marriage thinking it was a lifetime partnership.  The wedding, family members getting much more involved, lifetime expectations are all different in a marriage than just a relationship.  Divorce is just so hellish, so terrifying and so life-altering very few things compare in terms of trauma.

But one of the strange unexpected side-effects is what I have found is the kinship I feel immediately between fellow divorced people.  It is immediate, and it doesn’t seem to matter how long the marriage or the reasons for their divorce.  We both understand each other in a way that non-divorced people don’t quite get.  I felt it with the bank manager as soon as she said she was also divorced and that her divorce was a difficult and painful one.  We became instant friends, the argument disappeared and I had empathy for her and her daughters immediately.   I didn’t have this before, in fact I didn’t really understand divorce as it is rare in my extended family.   It is as if going through the fires of hell and then surviving it, we form an army of battered souls.  Our fairy tales didn’t have a happy ending, in fact for some of us the entire dream was just a farce, a lie, a fraud.   So we aren’t going to see the world in the same way again, we aren’t going to have that sunny outlook necessarily on romance or romantic partnerships.  But we enter into an odd kinship with others who have been in the same place.

I tell anyone newly divorced to seek out fellow divorced people, sit down with them and talk.  Talk about everything and anything and most of us will listen.  I had another friend, who recently had a bit of a breakdown.  She had entered into a relationship immediately after her divorce and seemed really happy.  I marveled as she was the only person I knew that once divorced didn’t seem to go through the stages of self-destructive behavior or rebound romances that so many of my other divorced friends went through.   I didn’t know how she managed it, but she seemed relatively unscathed.  But a couple of years after the fact she finally melted down.  She called it a “ticking time bomb” that little by little let out its poison.  She had not yet mourned for the marriage and hadn’t allowed herself to heal properly and as a result the new relationship ultimately fell apart.  I really felt for her, I thought somehow she had escaped the torment by being in a healthy relationship right after her divorce, but I was wrong.  The demons caught up with her, and it was a little heartbreaking to here her talk about it.

Divorce really is one of the worst things an adult can survive, but we do survive and move forward.  Most of us worked hard on our marriages and never thought it would happen to us, but it did and now we have to live with our shattered lives.  If nothing else my divorce has caused me to become far less judgmental of other people’s situations.  It has also given me the gift of empathy of a depth that I really didn’t have before.  Unfortunately I have developed a wall of ice about 12 feet thick around me that doesn’t seem to allow a new partner anywhere near me, but I am working on that.  When I first left my husband I had no such defenses and got hurt horribly, so I learned to put that wall up.  A few months ago it was probably 20 feet thick, so in time it will melt away.   At least I hope it will, but at least I have this strange unexplainable kinship with anyone out there who has been through a divorce.  We will get better, but it will take time.  Solidarity to anyone out there recently divorced, you are far from alone.

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On being a Straight Spouse – Broken Memories

Date: May 7, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Depression, Divorce, Gay Husband, Relationships, Straight Spouse, Uncategorized
Comments: 118 Replies

I am normally a comedian, but anyone who knows comedians know we tend to be a little morose from time to time.  For some reason it seems to help me get past some of these dark moods when I write them down and put them on my blog.  Don’t worry regular readers there are some things I wouldn’t never put on this blog, they are just too personal or might unintentionally hurt someone, so they stay on paper never to make it to cyberspace.

The other day a relatively new person in my life wanted to know the specifics of my ex-husband‘s realization that he was gay.  Most people assume at some point in our marriage, my ex simply found the courage to finally be honest with himself and me.  I wish that were the case, but I was not given that consideration.  Like many straight spouses, instead of the truth being revealed to me,  I had years of lies, excuses and finally betrayal.  It wasn’t until I found hard evidence of his true sexual orientation that I could finally move on.  Even with this proof right in front of his face, and all pretense removed, he still tried to deny reality.  In the weeks that passed he finally admitted his inner-deception.  I was then faced with the harsh realization that on some level my entire marriage was a fraud.   The depths of deep sorrow are hard to describe, and the confusion of others towards me never really ends.  Many cannot contemplate how insidious the wound of being a straight spouse, cuts right through a person.  Meaning well they will flippantly try to reassure me with lines such as…

Well at least he didn’t cheat on you with a woman
 

All I can think is, well if he cheated on me with a woman at least I could understand that.  Infidelity is common in many marriages and some even survive the trauma.  If he had cheated on me with a woman we might still be together. Depending on the specific circumstances I might have been able to forgive him and move on.  Marriage is a lifetime commitment and a lifetime leaves plenty of chances to make some fairly big mistakes. As it stands I have to live with the knowledge that he never really wanted me.  That realization is horrifically painful.

You know he really loved you. He couldn’t help he was gay

I guess but, if he really loved me he wouldn’t have used me in this way.  He knew what he was doing to me, he knew his was keeping secrets, he knew he was lying.  I don’t quite understand the concept of “The Closet” as he has admitted he has known since he was a child, and then in the same breath tried to reconcile his relationship with me.  So which was it?  I can’t help but think he was just suppressing what he knew was there all along and I was his collateral damage – nine years of a life, years of sacrifice and compromise, and romance that wasn’t real.

 A straight spouse has to deal with a lot: damaged sexuality, loss of trust, social stigma, and wounded self-esteem.  To make matters worse, a straight spouse cannot even look back to happier memories, as even they become tainted.  My happy memories are broken like crumpled photographs that cannot be flattened properly no matter what method I try.   As if the photographic images have scratches ground into them permanently across smiling faces.  The first time I met my ex, our first kiss, and of course my entire nine years of sex with a man who didn’t really want to be there.  Our first apartment, our first Christmas, every memory is now clouded and defamed.   And I wonder what are these memories like to him?  I can’t imagine and I don’t really care.  He generally acts like he was never married.  I don’t exist.  It was just a bad dream.  

My feelings for him have changed so much, he was once so important so central to my being and now he is just someone who knows me so well but I really never knew at all.

Our entire wedding haunts me now, as one big farce.  I had an absolutely beautiful ceremony, perfect weather, supportive families, and a wonderful, gorgeous celebration.  I look back at it now and want to erase it from my brain.  I’m not angry anymore as I gave up on the anger a while ago.  The rage was doing nothing more than grinding me down, so I released it.  But I still feel a deep sadness that will flare up from time to time at times completely unexpectedly.  I will find myself staring off thinking about one aspect of it, and others around me will comment that I look sad or lost.  I don’t realize I’m doing this, it is as if my mind just takes over for a few minutes and I sink back into the sorrow if only for a moment.  My trust issues are tantamount, I can’t fathom being married again, it is just so foreign a concept after what I went through.

I could have chosen to keep it hidden, continued the secret to protect him and protect myself from judgment and labels but since “The Closet” nearly destroyed me I would rather leave its door in charred splinters and not continue the pretense one more day.

Now I live with the shame and the invasive questions along the lines of…

How did you not know?

As if there is something wrong with me, as if I somehow brought this upon myself with a shortcoming or character flaw.  Not that I was just prey for a self-serving person who needed, a partner to hide his secret life.  I know there are some that laugh at me and mock my situation.  They aren’t surprised that this happened to me, as if it is a joke, or I am not worthy of a normal relationship.  Somehow my fiercely feminist bent lead me to a gay emasculated husband.  Even though my ex is an extremely strong personality who dominated our relationship and marriage.  He was hardly a push-over or hen-pecked wimp.  He was the center of everything all the time. He didn’t mince about or act effeminate, he didn’t lisp or act in a flamboyant manner. He was just a man who acted if anything somewhat asexual rather than overtly gay.  We had a sex life that was normal, but it slowly become dysfunctional.  A decreased sex life is not unheard of in traditional marriages.  I begged my husband to seek treatment for what he claimed was erectile dysfunction, and the more I pushed the worse things got.

So I look for solace, calm, and peace and I am beginning to find it.  But in order to move on I have to wipe out whole sections of my past.  Every memory is now clouded and opaque.  I have to instead focus on how much stronger I have become after nearly being destroyed.  How I have gained compassion and empathy towards others and courage I didn’t know I had in me.  I have learned to forgive myself for all the damage that I wrought in the aftermath of the fall.   If anything this personal hell has taught me that no one has it easy in life, even those who seem to have everything they want.  Their loved ones die for no real reason, they suffer loss, disappointment and tragedy.  We can choose to wallow in the muck or pull ourselves up out of it.  I strive every day now, to move forward. As painful as it is for me to write some of these blog posts, I know it is helping other people.  For whatever reason when I throw these demons into cyberspace they grow quieter in my head.

One thing that has helped me in my recovery are the many straight spouses that read this blog and have shared their stories with me.  No one really understands this torture except someone who has gone through it.  And we will survive it, it just takes time, patience and a world of strength.  Solidarity to anyone who found this blog who is going through the same thing.  It will get better.  🙂

For more help a wonderful resource – Straight Spouse Network – Chat rooms, discussions, stories and you can even find local support groups in your area.  I am a semi-regular member of the NY city chapter.  You will rarely find people that truly understand our unique situation.  I can’t say enough good things about this organization.

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Dating After Divorce: If my Online dating profile was Realistic

Date: April 23, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Divorce, Gay Husband, Straight Spouse, Uncategorized
Comments: 5 Replies

If my online dating profile was my inner monologue it would go something like this.

Divorced.  I am putting that first because some of you guys can’t handle it.  So there it is.  DIVORCED.  But hey at least I tried marriage, you are 40? 42? and never married?  So what’s up with that?  Maybe you moved around a lot, maybe you got out of something long-term but otherwise…seriously what’s up with that? And I ask because once you find out my story you will judge me, and oh yes you will…so here we go.

My husband was gay.  No really gay.  Yes we had sex, I am not an idiot.  But the sexual relationship became dysfunctional, and to be quite frank it happens in a lot of marriages.  A quick google search of “sexless marriages” will yield plenty.  And no, he didn’t act gay.  No one thought he was gay.  He wore beat-up clothing with stains on it, and cared very little about his physical appearance for the most part.  He was ripped though.  Should I have known from his buff physique and extensive work-out routines he was really on the down-low?

You might think that since I was married to a gay man that I don’t like sex or that I am asexual.  Oh what I won’t tell you, but that is hardly the case.  I am a one-man type of woman in that I like having one partner at at time, and I like to get to know my partners before having sex with them, which is hardly uncommon, especially for women.   I am not frigid or asexual, in fact I had plenty of perfectly normal relationships before I got married.  I was miserable living that way and I never want to go back.

But enough about him…but you will ask about him, because you will probably find my blog.  And then after you do you will freak out.  Look I am not going to write about you.  I dare you to find another person’s name on my blog other than my own….you won’t. I feel like I have to tell you about the blog, after you find out my name, thanks to powers of a google search.

I was a good wife.  Loyal and ridiculously faithful.   I bent over backwards to make my husband’s life as easy, and I was extremely supportive of his career.  Sacrificed my own career ambitions for him and in the process kind of painted myself into a corner.  This is my fault and I take responsibility for it, but I thought that is what a spouse is supposed to do.  I won’t do it again. Not sure if I would ever marry again…the divorce was so horrible.  Haven’t really dated much so the idea of re-marrying seems really crazy…anyway.

I hope you aren’t one of the many socially awkward types that I seem to go out with.  I don’t know why but it seems that most of the men I have been on dates with have difficulty having a normal conversation, so I am forced to blather on and reveal way too much.  Or they sometimes try to impress me with tales from their youth in which they did hardcore drugs.  Well drugs aren’t an accomplishment so much as a bad habit, so the drug stories don’t impress me.  Anyway, I am a bit awkward myself.  Please don’t be intimidated by the fact that I go onstage with a microphone, or the fact that I liberally use the “f-word” both on stage and in my every day life.  Don’t freak out that I wear a pink wig, don a huge pink polyester dress covered in applique and pay a crazed children’s performer for adults named Princess Sunshine.  Don’t lose it when you hear my song “Man Whore” or “Younger Piece of Ass”.  And everyone knows the accordion is the sexiest musical instrument, second only to the ukulele. I play both, how lucky are you!?!

Look I am fortunate in the genes department and I look 10 years younger than my actual age, I am naturally ripped and slender.  If you are into women with huge breasts and a sensuous curves, you will want to keep looking as that is not me.  But if you like an athletic build…I might be your girl.  And yes I am a vegetarian and I don’t drink alcohol often but that doesn’t mean I am an uptight shrew.  I used to cook meat for my ex-husband all the time.  I am so not uptight that I go out all the time to see my friends take off their clothing for fun.  That’s right…burlesque…I perform in that too…but as an emcee, not a dancer.  Not that there is anything wrong with being a burlesque dancer.  Sorry if that freaks you out, it probably does.  What can I say?  I am a total weirdo.

And to those of you who want babies and are worried I am 39 years old.  Well my grandmother had her last at age 42 and my aunts all had lots of healthy children.  No one in my family has had even the slightest problem with fertility.  And to the men who have kids and don’t want more…well I would have to meet yours and we could figure this out.  Kids love me.  Just don’t tell them about the “f*ck” part of my vocabulary or that I play whacked out characters all over New York.

And I am writing a book!  With a literary agent and everything…no deal yet…it is about being married to that gay clown…oh that’s right he was a clown too.  And I am sometimes a clown, trying to get out of it….but it is honestly how I make a portion of my income.  I dress up in a huge red skirt and go by the name Lulu.  Have you freaked out yet?  You probably have stopped reading at this point, or your just doing it out of curiosity.  I am a regular walking freakshow.  I have actually worked at the Freakshow, a few times…mainly as an emcee or comedian…down at Coney Island.

So if you aren’t a socially awkward man, and you don’t mind that I am a starving artist, and I don’t have a normal job.  Or that I was married to a gay man…and that I am out late when I am performing shows and all of that…we could be the perfect match. 🙂

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Life After Divorce: Just Keep it Simple?

Date: April 6, 2012
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Dating - NYC, Divorce, New York City, Relationships, Straight Spouse
Comments: 2 Replies

I Want a Divorce

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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