When Do I Get To Be Angry in This Divorce?

I initiated it, do I have to keep being nice?

If you’re reading this, you’re already divorced or contemplating it. Which means you’ve read dozens or hundreds of other articles about divorce. Personal memoirs go into detail about events leading up to the I-Want-A-Divorce event and about life after. No one writes about the purgatory in between.

I thought Divorce Purgatory lasted only as long as it took to separate assets and decide custody. Take a few weeks to split stuff and figure out custody. Sure, it could take years if you have a massive company and your spouse wants to make your life miserable, but that’s not the average person’s dilemma. File the papers, wait for the required cooling-off duration (6 months in my state), then sign. Let the post-divorce life begin.

I’m approaching month 2 of Divorce Purgatory. It seems the first 30 days are allocated to letting the other spouse experience grief and extreme rage. We smile around the kids and sometimes he breaks out into tears over something sentimental, like when the family sang him Happy Birthday. At best, it’s awkward. When it’s bad, he’s metaphorically going for the throat.

My first mistake was thinking he’d be okay with us focusing on parenting the children while doing our own thing. I wouldn’t assume that if someone says, “I have no romantic feelings for you and I want to be with other people” that they’d say “Nah, I’m good. I’ll just stay with you despite the rejection.” There was crying. Lots of crying. Meltdowns curled up in a ball on the floor. My heart broke but I made sure I didn’t say anything that would imply we could work things out.

Things briefly chilled out. I told him, “I know I had lots of time to process this whereas this is all new for you. I’m not rushing you or telling you anything you’re feeling is invalid.” He agreed to read more about Parenting Marriages so I sent him content, but he didn’t understand how it worked in practice. I then set up a meeting with a divorce/relationship counselor to explain how it works.

Unfortunately, before that counseling session, his extreme sadness turned to incredible anger. He was angry because this wasn’t what he signed up for when he got married. Yeah, I didn’t sign up for a shitty marriage either but here we are. He was angry that I wouldn’t wait and make more efforts together. He was angry that I made a decision that he had no control or input over. He was angry that instead of planning a future for the good of the family, he now had to focus on what would be good for him (such as the financials of it all). There was a lot of cursing.

I’m damn impressed with myself. I’ve stayed cool and have repeated that everything he’s feeling is valid and I understand that he’d feel that way. There’s been plenty of crying on my part but I’ve stayed firm in not letting him goad me into an argument. My go-to reply is, “See? We can’t even agree on that.”

Until last night.

I lost my cool last night.

Somewhere in his crying, he tells me that I’m having a midlife crisis. Not sure how that’s possible. I’m not looking to move into a bachelorette pad, I’m not hanging out with single friends, I’m not out on Saturday nights, and I don’t think my Soccer Mom SUV screams “sexy single cougar on the prowl”. He insists it’s because of a dermatologist appointment I have for wrinkle prevention.

That bothered me. THAT bothered me. Of all things. You don’t fuck with me and my fight against aging. That’s not new. I’ve been scared of wrinkles since highschool.

I tell him later that I’m going to give him space, but I do need to clarify something. It went like this…

“I just want to make sure you understand this before you think I’m off getting a ton of cosmetic stuff done. I’ve been getting Botox and fillers for years. I have filler in my nose because it’s simpler than getting the nose job I want. If it were up to me, I’d get a thread lift which is where they poke wires in my face to make scaffolding so my cheeks don’t fall. My Botox chick insists I should get my lips filled, but I think my lips are fine. I’d get a mini facelift but I’m so done with surgery. ”

My voice starts to elevate.

“I have creases in my neck that I would love to have filler put into. The tummy tuck scar revision was just supposed to be the scar (I’m not complaining, the surgeon went in and redid the shitty job the previous doctor did) and people commented on how high it was from the start. That’s not new. Do not say that I wanted the scar lowered because I want to look hot in a bikini for men. I have never gone anywhere since having kids where I’ve had to wear a bikini without you except that trip last summer with friends which I only went to because you told my friends I was free!”

Now I’m full-on yelling.

“Do you know why women wear makeup and dress up for clubs? It’s not for men! We do it because of other women! Look who my friends are! Do you wonder why I dress up when I go out with them? Because they plaster their shit all over Instagram! That means I end up on Instagram looking like an old lady and it’s awful! If I wanted to go out and get banged tomorrow, wouldn’t I have had my jacked-up boob implants redone when I went under for the scar revision?!”

Cue my final screech.

“IF I WANTED TO GET ALL THE STUFF I WANTED DONE I WOULD HAVE HAD MY FLANKS LIPOSUCTIONED AND THE FAT PUMPED INTO MY HANDS!”

He looks at me and says, “Okay. I believe you.”

Of all the accusations and hurtful comments, it takes my wrinkle-prevention strategies to set me off. Not sure if that’s comical or downright sad.

Truth is, I’m hurting too. And like Joseph, I also waffle between feeling incredible sadness and crazy rage. I hide the latter because I’m working my hardest to make this amicable and not add to the added emotional tension in the house.

A spouse is entitled to feeling mad up until they request a breakup and destroy the other spouse’s heart. It seems I have given up any and all rights to my own anger going forward because I made the ultimate Finishing Move.