Divorce Part 2
Kathy and I had agreed to divorce. The following Monday I went down to the Santa Clara County offices and pick up all the required forms to start the process. Having been through this process before I had a good idea as to what was required. Of course the last time I had a lawyer do all this for me but I had paid attention and still had the final papers for a reference. I completed all the paperwork and then Kathy came over so we could go over everything and both sign-off on them. It was a sad, tough afternoon.
There's a song called “Breakfast at Tiffany's” (not the movie) by Deep Blue. It's about a breakup and I think it captures it well. The song is sung by the guy. It starts with him questioning the woman who is breaking up with him about her reasons. Her reasons for the breakup: they have nothing in common, going in different directions, that kind of stuff. As he sings her side the song is calm and more quiet. Then he sings his rebuttal and the song's volume picks up as his voice is more agitated. He finds something to contradict her with. His response essentially is “Nothing in common? We both liked “Breakfast at Tiffany's”. I have found it common in relationship disagreements that one person will say something that they feel is true in general. The other person, who doesn't agree, then brings up an instance where the suggested point is contradicted. But what this song captures for me is how often when a relationship ends it ends for one person first and they mostly grieve the ending of the relationship (usually silently) before the breakup. Then when the breakup finally happens it's the other person who starts to fully grieve the loss of the relationship. At the actual breakup, the first person's grief is coming to an end. So in the song the woman's part is softer because she's already gone through the bulk of the pain of the breakup and is more calm due to feeling relieved while the music for the guy is more harsh and loud because he's feeling pain and helplessly trying to grab on to something. Having gone through multiple breakups I find this to be commonly true, at least for me. So with all that, while I'm sad, I am actually relieved as I've been grieving the loss of this relationship for quite awhile and I am more than ready to move on whereas Kathy is just starting to fully experience the pain of the ending of our relationship. It was hard to watch. I may not have wanted to stay married to her but I still cared about her. It was not a fun day.
Kathy and I completed and signed all the necessary papers. I then went down to the county offices and filed them in early October. I was now a free man, well almost. Once filed there is a 6 month waiting period before you can finalize the divorce so technically I was only separated but still officially married.
Marriage is coming together, two families joining, sharing friends, whereas divorce is separating all that. Suddenly mutual friends can feel awkward. Who do they invite to gatherings since they feel they need to make a choice? How do they do that without insulting the other person. There's now often a strain between two families. That said, my mother and Kathy stayed in contact after our divorce regularly exchanging letters and cards. Divorce is not supposed to be to be a happy circumstance, but for me, I am happy, or certainly happier than I've been. As you would expect the friends we brought into the marriage went with us. Our friends from GBS though were both our friends prior to our marriage. I kind of assumed most would gravitate towards Kathy since she was the more extroverted one and I was the one who initiated the breakup. But as time went on I found that they actually gravitated towards me. Many of them had not been sold on Kathy and I as couple and were understanding. I suppose I should have talked to some of them them a little more before I married Kathy but then of course I had moved to Sacramento leaving them behind in the Bay Area. All in all I was surprised because I thought most people would blame me for the breakup as I did myself.
I started going out with friends again, mostly with my friend Larry up in SF and with my brother Pete and his friends down the Peninsula but also some old work friends. I now had a 3 bedroom house all to myself and I only needed one bedroom. There was lots of room, so after Kathy moved out, Pete and Frank moved in with me.
I began to participate in many more work social activities. I joined the company golf group even though I had only golfed a couple of times since high school, and only with my dad. I joined a company co-ed softball team. I made a couple of new male friends at Tymshare, Graham and Jack. Jack would become a very good friend. I would stay close friends with him up until my next marriage. He moved out of the Bay Area himself around that time and I lost track of him. Jack would be my last really good male friend for a long time. I seem to be very good at losing track of people I like and I was running out of friends to lose track of....
I was now divorced twice but I was still pretty young (32) and single again, well soon to be anyway. It was the 80's and I was working a good paying job in the hi-tech field in the Bay Area that was filled with lots of young single people all looking to have a good time. I was ready to join them.
Kathy married a third time a few years later and like myself, she is still happily married today. I guess we both needed to look elsewhere to find our one true love.
Comments
Post a Comment