Meet the Ex-Laws
A recent article on CNN.com celebrated the rise of the “ex-law” phenomenon, where divorcees remain in touch with their former in-laws out of friendship, an attempt to provide continuity for the children, or other motives. This article stirred up a whole hornet’s nest of emotions with me, mostly unpleasant.
It disturbed me on several levels. Let us get past the first level quickly. Being Catholic, I look down on the culture of divorce that has arisen in this country. It is part-and-parcel with the late-twentieth-century disposable society, where inconveniences are to be discarded without a second thought. When I see the rise in popularity of re-useable canvas grocery bags, a part of me hopes our newfound willingness to keep things around longer than is convenient extends someday to spouses as well as shopping. I am not a “good” Catholic (by the Vatican’s standards, at least), and can understand how, in certain extreme cases of abusive relationships, it would be better for two people to go their separate ways. However, the casual nature people assign the institution of marriage gives me reason to pause.
Another area of discomfort is regarding the intimacy. One woman still discusses daily topics on the phone with her ex-mother,-in-law, “everything from sex to NASCAR.” Auto-racing seems rather harmless, but what about sex? If I discovered my ex was talking to my mother about her having sex with someone else, I would be rather upset. If she was talking to my mother about our former peccadilloes, I would be downright livid. No, this is not “all right.” This is not your Sex-and-the-City girlfriends discussing their exploits over crabcakes Benedict. This is someone who you at one point let into your life, promised a partnership to, and had children with; and then, at some point, they hurt you so deeply that you felt forced to sever the ties that bind. While I am a big supporter of forgiveness, it does not mean you need to or should share the intimate details of your new-old life with them.
The next level of despair is a less philosophical, more personal one. In 2001 I was very much in love with a woman, and wished to build a life with her. She was a divorcee, with two wonderful young boys from a previous marriage. Despite my misgivings for her divorced state, I was able to see beyond that to the wonderful person she was. I uprooted my life and moved 300 miles to be closer to her in early 2002. That, however, was when the trouble began.
She and I had spent many hours in deep conversation, where she had told me chilling tales of emotional abuse at the hands of her ex-spouse. Even taken with the understanding that I was hearing one side of the story, I could understand her need to get out of the relationship and away from the ex-spouse. However, her former in-laws were a different story.
She would regularly chat with them on the phone, discussing the day’s events. She kept photos of them on her mantel. The worst part, however, were the holidays. With depressing regularity, she would take her two boys and drive to Arizona to visit her ex-laws, spending the holidays with them. While I was never invited, her former spouse was. So here we have the odd picture of her former family reunited around the Thanksgiving table, years after a bitter divorce and custody fight. Even odder, they would all bed down together in the same house. She insisted to me that she and her ex-husband stayed in different rooms of the house, but one can understand my discomfort in this matter. This situation also led to several uncomfortable conversations along the following lines:
Co-worker: “Hey, man, happy Thanksgiving. What did you do for the holiday? “
Me: “I went to visit my parents.”
Co-worker: “What about J?”
Me: “Oh she’s in Arizona, staying with her former in-laws. And her ex.”
Co-worker: (uncomfortable silence) “Oh. Right. Well, happy Thanksgiving.”
She claimed she did it for the children, so they would know their grandparents. And that was, in my opinion, a perfectly understandable reason. So I never protested this practice. But as these occasions rolled around again and again, I found that this was a very insular circle. Something about the chumminess seemed almost incestuous.
Eventually I realized what the problem was. She was emotionally stuck. Her ex would always be the father figure in the family, no matter how many strippers he dated, no matter how far in arrears he was on child support. They needed this, so everyone else in the family played along. I was an interloper, someone to be kept in the shadows. I would never be a true equal emotional partner with her, I would never be “the dad” to her boys. As Greg Kinnear said in Thank You for Smoking, “I’m the dad. I will always be the dad. You’re just the guy who’s screwing his mom.”
And so, contrary to the article’s advice for newcomers to “swallow it,” I did the opposite. I ended the relationship, and focused on finding someone who I could enter into a truly equitable partnership with. While everyone brings baggage to a relationship, I decided that there were limits to what I would tolerate. And I did find a wonderful woman who, while having her share of former relationships, was not stuck in the past. This one, I hung on to with all my might, and am proud to say that we are now happily married.
The most charitable assessment I can give this article is that it is an example of sensationalist journalism cloaked in the guise of normalcy. It shocks people by saying, in effect, “See this weird relationship structure? Well, get used to it, this is the way things are nowadays.” But perhaps this is how we, as a society, got into this situation in the first place. Like the frog in the pot of boiling water, we were tricked into accepting environments that wound up hurting us. Now we have Britney shaving her head and abandoning her children; Paris having her exploits splashed across the internet; and, of course, the tableau of celebrities discarding their spouses without a second thought. And when this all percolates down to the personal level, to the “everyone is doing it” level, we are supposed to “swallow it” and enjoy our new, weird world. I would rather buy some canvas tote-bags.
