The Guys I Went to High School with Did This During My Divorce

I shed tears at the contrast between them and the man I married.

I listen to a message on my phone. It’s year four of my divorce and I’m emotionally and physically exhausted. I dial my friend back.

“Colleen,” he says. “I’m so glad you called me back. I didn’t know if you would.”

“What’s up?” I say.

“Listen,” he says. “A few of the guys and I have been talking. We want to help you. I’ve talked to four of us and I know when I call the other guys they will want to help too.”

I’m overwhelmed.

These are my guys.

We’ve been friends since high school.

We are all the same year and my high school boyfriend and they are all best friends. We’ve never lost touch. When other people are curious about that, I always say the same thing.

“How are you still so close to your high school friends?” they will ask.

“It was like a college,” I say. “It was way too big a school and we were way too unsupervised.”

My friend contacts me when things are especially desperate.

My youngest son is begging me to get him out of the house.

Who could blame him?

He’s living with foreclosure notices, sheriff’s deputies showing up with warrants in debt, and repo guys in our driveway…his home is no longer a safe place.

His father’s extreme divorce financial abuse has stolen that security.

But I am financially vulnerable.

I have no money to find housing and my husband has ruined my credit.

“My sister is a stay-at-home mother too,” says my friend. “I don’t know what she would do if she were in your situation. You’re such a good person. We want to help you,” he says.

I am fighting back the tears.

These good men, my long-time buddies, all these years later are here for me.

I try not to let him know I am crying.

“I can’t believe you called me,” I say. “I could never accept your money. But I will never ever forget that you guys would want to do this for me.”

And then I said something I’ve said many times since.

“I should have married ‘in-state,’” I say.

Instead, of meeting a guy out of state in college that I really didn’t know. I knew the guys I grew up with. We had the same path and the same values. We never lost touch.

We never abandoned one another.

Unlike a man who had vowed to love me for life…

But had done the unthinkable to me in the end.

I hung up the phone and I cried my eyes out.

Sometimes people ask me if I’m disillusioned by the man I married. They ask if I write about my life experiences because I’m disillusioned with men. They want to know if I’m a man-hater.

I get it.

The experiences I survived with my ex-husband were brutal.

I write about it to help others, not because I hate men.

The majority of men I know are the best men I know. They have a bigger sense of the world than just themselves. They have integrity, values, and a strong foundation.

They love big and they love for life.

They call a girl they met when they were teenagers.

To remind her they are still here for her.