I Was Planning Our Divorce, But Instead We Installed a New TV

Divorce seemed imminent, but I caved in to a simple comfort to avoid grief.

When my husband and I ended our open marriage experiment in the summer of 2020, things had gotten messy.

I had fallen in love with someone I met online, and in the middle of a global pandemic. I was very close to leaving my husband for this man.

I tried with all my might to devise a solution that wouldn’t involve destroying my family. I asked my husband for a “Parenting Marriage,” and I tried to convince him we could somehow be the kind of divorced parents who make life seem totally normal for their kids.

But I kept coming up short.

My husband had no interest in that type of arrangement, and those arrangements only work with two parties on board. He did not want a divorce or a parenting marriage or anything other than what we had, which was a semi-functional arrangement where we shared no physical affection but poured all of our energy into loving our two boys.

So I ended my relationship with the other man, and thus began an obsession with divorce that still occupies my thoughts two years later.

My thoughts about divorce are all-consuming.

I devour everything I read online about the topic, searching for someone whose story might resemble mine. I follow the Instagram accounts of divorce coaches, listening to their advice as if walking myself through the motions of this alternate life.

In fact, I started sharing my stories on Medium because of a writer here who had shared her own story of an imminent divorce. Her stories about her broken marriage and her fear of hurting her children gave me comfort.

Though my interest in divorce can feel obsessive, my thought process feels more like a dizzying see-saw than a path toward any decision.

Some weeks my husband and I bicker constantly. My son with special needs has moments of complete dysregulation, and in those moments it takes every ounce of patience for both of us to remain calm and not lose our minds. We rarely get nights of good sleep. Our sons scream at each other, and the tension builds.

Those are the moments that I reach for divorce as my escape. I spend every free minute looking up apartments online and running through my finances. I try to imagine what each step would feel like, somehow building up an armor to protect myself when I finally decide the time is right.

Then there are the other moments.

There are moments that remind me of the comfort of my family, of the joys of living in my home and planning our future together. There are family vacations, and visits with grandparents, and the family photo books I make on Shutterfly and keep in a basket by the couch.

During these times, I cling to my family. I reason with myself that I can live without a passionate romantic life forever if it means I get to hold my sons’ warm bodies when they wake up every morning.

About a year ago, I found myself in a moment of intense divorce planning. I had even come so close as to email a renter on Craigslist about an apartment a mile away from my home. I was planning a script to recite to my husband, and a script we would use to announce this news to our children.

But there was an obstacle ahead — spring break. We had planned a road trip to South Carolina with our sons. We would stay in a resort community by the water. I had visions of warmer weather and my sons riding their scooters to the beach.

I’ll do it when we get back, I told myself. We will have the vacation, and then I will do it when we get back.

Our trip was pleasant but uneventful. We barely had time to talk just the two of us, and we spent almost no time together separately from our children. I would often fall asleep in the king bed next to my oldest son at 8 pm and wake up at midnight forgetting where I was.

The house we stayed in was beautiful — it was a newly renovated home decorated in crisp whites with huge windows and a view of an ocean bay. I spent the early mornings with my boys cuddled in a big bed that had a fancy TV mounted right on the wall next to it.

The TV screen was mounted on an expandable arm that allowed you to set it at the perfect angle. It felt so luxurious lying back in bed and watching movies with them in this way. In our home, we had only a small TV screen in the basement.

When we returned home from this trip, I did not go straight back to my private divorce planning. The comfort of holding my boys in that bed still felt too immediate to consider leaving.

At one point, over dinner, we reminisced about our trip and that fancy TV. Wouldn’t it be fun, we agreed, to have a TV like that in our house?

So we bought a brand-new TV online, with an expandable mount for the wall. My husband installed it in our bedroom the day it arrived. I still find it thrilling to have this screen right next to my bed, available for me any time I need it.

Now our marital bed, which we still share, is the place where our kids cuddle together with us to watch family movies. It’s where I lie next to my sick child getting him to take sips of juice while he watches another episode of the Octonauts, and where I indulge in watching movies alone at night when my husband is out with friends.

I am still consumed by thoughts of divorce. But this obsession with planning out my alternate future continues to ebb and flow. There are moments where I fantasize about the instant freedom of an unknown path as a single woman, and there are moments when I cling to my children under the light of our fancy TV screen and feel grateful to live with this family of mine.

I keep thinking that if I wait until the next vacation is over, or the next holiday, then I may be ready to give up these comforts I cling to in order to find happiness elsewhere. Yet I find I keep returning to this TV.

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