The Advice One Woman Gave Me About Divorce Should Be a Warning to Everyone

I loved her like a mother, but I still didn’t listen

I whistle for my chocolate lab Hazel and connect her leash.

We head down our long driveway.

Hazel pulls with excitement. I take in the beauty that surrounds me. Our home is nestled deep within a two-acre wooded lot. It’s on an equally gorgeous rural street.

We make it only a few steps before I spot my husband’s car coming toward us.

Knots consume my stomach.

What is he doing here? What does he want? What is he going to do next? It’s nearly a year into what will become my abusively never-ending divorce. But I don’t know that yet.

I stop in front of my neighbor’s house.

My husband rolls down his car window.

He’s got his cell phone pressed to his ear.

“Hey,” I say.

“Stella died,” he casually says.

“What?,” I scream.

My body collapses onto the pavement.

I wail in agony. My grief is incoherently loud, and it provokes a question from the person on the other end of my husband’s cell phone.

“It’s Colleen,” I hear my husband say.

It turns out it’s a family member he is speaking with. Technically Stella is a member of my husband’s family. I inherited her with marriage. I have changed her name to protect her dangerously loyal love for me.

Hazel nervously circles me.

My husband stares down at me from his high Lincoln Navigator perch. He’s completely unphased by the loss of someone in his family. He’s equally disconnected from my devastation.

He has delivered this news as nonchalantly as ordering a cup of coffee.

I am still in a puddle on the pavement.

I watch as my husband drives off.

I’ve now become accustomed to believing who this man is. But even in a divorce, the average person could show some human compassion. Some degree of emotion especially since it is a member of his own family.

But my soon-to-be ex-husband is not a typical man. He lacks empathy and this moment just drives home the severity of his disorder.

I think of the warning Stella gave me a year ago.

I call her the day I meet with a divorce attorney.

“I’m finally leaving,” I tell her. “I’ve gotten a lawyer.”

It’s a very quick phone call. It’s a relief that I’ve finally mustered the gumption to leave my husband. It’s not one of the typical exchanges between Stella and me.

We can usually chat for hours.

It’s something her husband whom I also love dearly will laugh about.

I am in my early twenties when I first meet Stella.

I bond with her instantly.

When I move to get married my Mother has a chance to spend time with Stella. My Mom didn’t want me to move even an hour away from her. It broke her heart because she knew I would be out of her day-to-day life.

“Now that I’ve met Stella,” says my Mom. “I won’t have to worry about you.”

It is such a beautiful declaration of love.

A mother is happy there’s someone she believes will love her daughter.

My Mom is right about Stella.

When I lose my Mother a few years later, Stella is there for me. I begin to understand why I have bonded with her. She shares so many commonalities of the love I was raised with.

Stella lights up at the sight of me.

Just as my Mother always did.

I can barely make my way inside her home before she offers me tea and something to eat. Just as my Mother always did. She can chat for hours about nothing and everything and ease my worries. Just as my Mother always did.

When my children are born she lights up even more.

She loves them as if they are her own grandchildren.

When my marriage begins to struggle she is still there for me. Despite it putting her in a relatively uncomfortable situation. Remember Stella is technically not mine.

I have inherited her.

But we agree that I see her as another mother.

And she sees me as another child.

She has gotten me through the agonizing years that led to the end of my marriage. The uncharacteristically traumatic and sporadic drinking behavior my unhappy husband has newly adopted.

She sat on the other end of the phone while I cried my eyes out.

Not once, not twice, but over and over again.

She patiently listened to a girl who couldn’t bring herself to leave a man.

I know it hurt her to see our suffering last for so many years. I know she must have been frustrated by my absolute inability to give up on a guy who was tearing our home apart.

She loved him because he was her family.

But she loved me too.

And she was devotedly in love with our children.

Stella only said one thing to me on that day. Or at least, so little that it’s the only thing I remember. Or maybe because it was so jarring that her words surprised me.

“Whatever you do,” says Stella. “Don’t trust him.”

But now Stella was gone.

I couldn’t ask her why she had uttered those words.

I couldn’t figure out why I had never followed up with her. Why hadn’t I taken the time to be more inquisitive? She had spoken these words many months before.

I had a multitude of opportunities.

I missed every one of them.

At the time, I thought Stella was being motherly.

I thought she was advising me to be self-protective. I thought it was the parenting advice of someone worried about their child going on a new and potentially upsetting journey.

I would discover how wrong I was.

As my divorce became more financially abusive and overly elongated, I knew Stella had not been sending a generic warning that day. I should have known by the tone of her voice.

It was uncharacteristically stern.

Stella was attempting to alert me to danger.

Stella knew something. But remember she had already been dangerously loyal to a girl she had inherited. She was trying to delicately walk both sides of the divorce fence.

When Stella tried to warn me, I was still a believing enabler.

I finally had the courage to leave my husband. But that didn’t mean I had given up on him. I wanted to believe he was a good man. I didn’t have any self-protective instincts or boundaries.

I foolishly believed ‘divorce’ was the boundary.

I didn’t know divorce wouldn’t protect me.

I didn’t realize I shouldn’t trust a man I once loved.

I thought my husband would be sad about the demise of our marriage. I thought he would be fair once the dust settled. But with age, comes wisdom.

Stella had that degree of wisdom.

Divorce is the end of a marriage. It’s typically preceded by years of unresolved conflict or sudden relationship death caused by cheating or substance abuse. It’s predominantly a grief-inducing, ugly experience.

You must self-protect and not naively enter into it.

The advice one woman gave me about divorce should be a warning to everyone.

You shouldn’t trust your spouse in a divorce.

I loved Stella like a mother, but I still didn’t listen.