Abandonment, Divorce and Piloting the Crash Landing Solo
Being married (or in a committed romantic relationship, but what follows is primarily focused on marriage and divorce) can be like riding first class in a luxury airliner; whatever turbulence there may be on the outside, you are in love, riding along together, enjoying the fruits of a life made easier by sharing the load.
One day, you may have an argument that goes further than you expected. One of you may be taking an interest in other passengers on the flight. You call the flight attendants, but no one is able to help you get back where you were comfortable before. It starts to look grim, like maybe your arguments are somehow disrupting the engines, or maybe the plane is running out of fuel, or the weather outside has worsened.
One of you decides to bail out. It may be alone or with one of the other passengers whom one of you met while walking back from the lavatory or back when you were boarding the plane. It's like a bad dream come true; you are now alone, abandoned on a plane once filled with joyful passengers, attentive flight attendants, comfy pillows and salty snacks, soaring through blue skies toward some far off destination.
The pilots are gone. Everyone is gone. You are alone. Do you remember how to fly one of these things? You think so. You remember flying solo before you were married. Heart pumping fast, nerves ringing chills and tremors down your spine and arms to your fingers, blood pressure rising, head buzzing with fear you head for the cockpit. The plane now seems much darker, emptier and older. You hadn't noticed the machine you were riding in is an old model, something really passed down by a previous generation of owners who by now have lashed the monstrosity with more than just rivets and solder, but also laws and regulations restricting what you can do and how you can do it (which you never paid any attention to when the ride was going well and you were enjoying it).
What happened to all the pasengers? You climb unsteadily into the pilot's chair, relieved to sit down, but adrenaline surging as you steady yourself and start lightly touching the controls with your fingertips, taking in all the switches, knobs, dials and labels. You look beside you at the co-pilot seat, disbelieving, hoping, but there really is no one there with you. Lightning flashes outside and you catch a glimpse of dark, billowing clouds rolling toward you. Heavy rain pelts the windshield. The fuel gauge on the panel in front of you is in the red. You're going to have to land this thing somehow. You reach for the seat belt straps without realizing -- certain habits of survival begin to kick in. You wipe your face and take a deep breath and reach for the wheel.
Welcome to abandonment! You have been left by your spouse and are now at the controls of a massive machine known as your marriage! I bet you did not know that your marriage was such a complex and old machine, nor did you think one could pilot it alone. Well, it is really not intended to be flown solo, and, in fact, cannot be, but it can be crash landed with minimal damage to you and the surrounding countryside. The plane however, will be demolished beyond repair.
This is my attempt to describe the feeling of being the one left to tie up all the loose ends; the one doing all these things that must be done to survive crash landing a marriage to escape safely to a new, single life:
"Crash landing" the marriage is my way of describing the process and the way it feels sometimes to be the one left with the lion's share of responsibility for cleaning up after the marriage and dismantling the major pieces. When divorce is initiated by abandonment, as in my case, it can be very hard to get your erstwhile spouse to participate in the work of dismantling the marriage because the abandonment was preceded by a private process of lost hope, self-involved pitying and mental preparation (to protect themselves from guilt and bolster their resolve against friends and family who will urge them to go back and try to work things out), which makes them so self-involved and well-armored against feelings that you have little to no bargaining power with them unless they are concerned about money that you have and they want.
Another metaphor that might be apt is "burying the corpse of the marriage," but because of the amount of work, responsibility, time it takes and the detail-oriented tasks involved, it's better compared to nursing a terminal patient to a graceful death. There really is no corpse to bury; marriages are cremated in the legal fire of divorce decrees. :-)
One day, you may have an argument that goes further than you expected. One of you may be taking an interest in other passengers on the flight. You call the flight attendants, but no one is able to help you get back where you were comfortable before. It starts to look grim, like maybe your arguments are somehow disrupting the engines, or maybe the plane is running out of fuel, or the weather outside has worsened.
One of you decides to bail out. It may be alone or with one of the other passengers whom one of you met while walking back from the lavatory or back when you were boarding the plane. It's like a bad dream come true; you are now alone, abandoned on a plane once filled with joyful passengers, attentive flight attendants, comfy pillows and salty snacks, soaring through blue skies toward some far off destination.
The pilots are gone. Everyone is gone. You are alone. Do you remember how to fly one of these things? You think so. You remember flying solo before you were married. Heart pumping fast, nerves ringing chills and tremors down your spine and arms to your fingers, blood pressure rising, head buzzing with fear you head for the cockpit. The plane now seems much darker, emptier and older. You hadn't noticed the machine you were riding in is an old model, something really passed down by a previous generation of owners who by now have lashed the monstrosity with more than just rivets and solder, but also laws and regulations restricting what you can do and how you can do it (which you never paid any attention to when the ride was going well and you were enjoying it).
What happened to all the pasengers? You climb unsteadily into the pilot's chair, relieved to sit down, but adrenaline surging as you steady yourself and start lightly touching the controls with your fingertips, taking in all the switches, knobs, dials and labels. You look beside you at the co-pilot seat, disbelieving, hoping, but there really is no one there with you. Lightning flashes outside and you catch a glimpse of dark, billowing clouds rolling toward you. Heavy rain pelts the windshield. The fuel gauge on the panel in front of you is in the red. You're going to have to land this thing somehow. You reach for the seat belt straps without realizing -- certain habits of survival begin to kick in. You wipe your face and take a deep breath and reach for the wheel.
Welcome to abandonment! You have been left by your spouse and are now at the controls of a massive machine known as your marriage! I bet you did not know that your marriage was such a complex and old machine, nor did you think one could pilot it alone. Well, it is really not intended to be flown solo, and, in fact, cannot be, but it can be crash landed with minimal damage to you and the surrounding countryside. The plane however, will be demolished beyond repair.
This is my attempt to describe the feeling of being the one left to tie up all the loose ends; the one doing all these things that must be done to survive crash landing a marriage to escape safely to a new, single life:
- paying the bills
- closing joint accounts and credit cards
- consolidating debts
- feeding and cleaning up after the pets
- doing your own dishes, laundry, cooking and cleaning
- collecting unforwarded mail for your spouse
- sorting belongings and packing things for your spouse to pick up someday
- explaining to friends and family what happened
- selling the house, which includes:
- working with contractors and/or an electrician and paying for repairs
- keeping the house clean for showings
- working with a realtor daily on the phone
- leaving the house at odd times of day when buyers come for showings
- looking for a new place to live at the same time
- coordinating signing of paperwork with a spouse who has high diregard for returning phone calls or emails until and unless it is entirely convenient for him/her
"Crash landing" the marriage is my way of describing the process and the way it feels sometimes to be the one left with the lion's share of responsibility for cleaning up after the marriage and dismantling the major pieces. When divorce is initiated by abandonment, as in my case, it can be very hard to get your erstwhile spouse to participate in the work of dismantling the marriage because the abandonment was preceded by a private process of lost hope, self-involved pitying and mental preparation (to protect themselves from guilt and bolster their resolve against friends and family who will urge them to go back and try to work things out), which makes them so self-involved and well-armored against feelings that you have little to no bargaining power with them unless they are concerned about money that you have and they want.
Another metaphor that might be apt is "burying the corpse of the marriage," but because of the amount of work, responsibility, time it takes and the detail-oriented tasks involved, it's better compared to nursing a terminal patient to a graceful death. There really is no corpse to bury; marriages are cremated in the legal fire of divorce decrees. :-)
posted by Scott M. Stirling | 11:33 AM
1 Comments:
Thanks, Mary Ellen. I appreciate it very much. I hadn't read this myself for quite a while. I'm glad I wrote it and glad you liked it. It still rings totally true to me today.
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