I had Réveillon dinner with a friend who is potentially going to separate / divorce.  

I shared with her my experience on divorce – my ex ante expectations and considerations, and ex post experience and reflections. I also vicariously shared another friend’s choice to stay married, under circumstances in which I would almost certainly have chosen differently, and offered my perspective, which is that: we all have different opinions, priorities, and different thresholds of what is acceptable or not. And whatever decision she makes, she has to make herself, and I can only share my experience and the way I thought about decision. I hope she knows that I am not advocating for one decision or another, because it is such a personal decision.

At the end of the day we are all individuals, with our own perspectives, shaped by our experiences, and it is up to each person to make their decision. Having our own agency and freedom to choose, is a blessing and curse of the human condition.

The way I thought about my decision was, on one side: 1) Assume status quo where things do not change in the marriage into infinity, 2) Assume the worst case scenario post divorce, and probability-weight that. And ask yourself, is the worst case scenario is risk you are willing to accept and endure, given: 1) the probability-weighting, 2) but also knowing that if the worse case comes to pass, it will be your 100% reality; what would you do in the worst case scenario – is there an “out”, what are your mitigation strategies. Would you be able to live with yourself under the status quo, would you regret your decision if the worse case scenario came to pass?

Although she didn’t ask the question, whether life was better / I was happier after my divorce, I volunteered the answer, which was Yes and No. In so many ways, life is so much harder after divorce – suddenly there is no safety net and risk diversification that you get as part of a team in a marriage, there is no dividing and conquering of so much tedious and soul-sapping life admin (which I had been really shielded from), when I have the kids and work is busy it is all on me and I just have to manage somehow even when my nerves are frayed, and there is no one I can turn to when I am stressed and afraid. It can be lonely and scary. On the other hand, when I don’t have my kids, I have more freedom and time, I can explore new interests, I feel freer to be me and to evolve, and I can live with hope. On one hand, I’m not living “my best life” to the fullest potential, that I would have liked to do, given the hurt I caused. Because I caused pain and hurt to people I love, it feels like I should be at least be much happier now, so that overall the good (overall happiness) outweighs the bad (overall pain and unhappiness), and the outcome is net good. But I like to believe that better and brighter days will come for everyone, and outcome will be net good eventually. And so even though I deeply regret the hurt I caused, I don’t regret the decision per se. But just because I don’t regret it now, doesn’t mean that I may not regret it at the end of my life, if things persistently remain crap to infinity. But at the point I made my decision, I made the only choice I felt I could make. 

I said to my friend that sometimes though, I get really sad, mostly when I think about the potential impact on my kids. I mentioned that I was crying recently, and my kids asked me why I cried. I tried to brush it off as an “adult thing” that they won’t understand and they shouldn’t worry about. But my younger boy F insisted that I tell him. And I started by saying: “I love both so very much. I want you to know that, and remember that. I’m crying because I love you much.”

And in my rambling way, I explained to my kids that sometimes when I think about how I get all shouty and mad when I’m stressed, or like the other day when O couldn’t sleep, and I kept asking him “are you worried, or stressed about anything”, and I get upset that I’m a shittier mother than I want to be, because I’m more stressed than I probably would have been if I was still married… then i get really upset, at whether I’m hurting them or damaging them. Whether I made the right choice, or whether it was selfish of me… am I messing their lives up, how much worse are the outcomes for them because of the choice I made. And these thoughts are what make me the saddest and the most scared, and then I start crying. But I want them to always just remember how much I love them. I also remind them that part of the reason I made the decision to divorce was because I thought in the longer run, I would have been a worse mother if I had stayed married, and that’s why I made the decision.

I don’t know how much children can understand these complex “adult logic” and adult emotions. But I think my boys understand it, because they seem calm, and generally confident in my love for them. And I remember that I definitely understood my mum’s complex family situation and feelings at 8 years old.

She said that parents probably inevitably fuck up our kids anyway, no matter what we do, even though we do our best not to. And she reassured me that by communicating clearly and reassuring them of my love, I’m probably doing the right thing and giving them the psychological safety and security that they need. She then also shared some of her family saga, which illustrated her point. I shared a bit of my own family context, and she was like: “Wow I didn’t know such things still happened in our generation, I thought it only happened in our parents’ generation.” She warned me to deal with the complications otherwise it might mess me up, because she thinks her mum didn’t resolve her issues. I think on balance I am fine, because I found out about the “skeletons” as an adult, when most of my self identity was already formed. But it is true, when I’m feeling more fragile and inclined to self-pity / being emotional, as I often do in the past 24 months, I’m more inclined to feeling over sensitive, and my sad / negative feelings can be magnified, making me more volatile. In theory, I can intellectually identify and separate my past from my present, which is why I don’t need therapy per se, but it’s just difficult to separate the emotions.