The author, Charles Martin, with his sons Joseph, left, and Michael. (Photo: Charles Martin)
“As long as the kids are okay.”
Those words were the North Star of my divorce. A simple mantra that reinforced the idea that, though the marriage might have been ending, we would always be a parental team. Take care of the children first and everything else will follow.
We got married too early. That was the problem, the All-American mistake. Too young, too naive, and with too much curiosity left for the world and all its wild ways. We managed to stay together fifteen years. A testament to our patience with each other and all our mistakes, great and small. A house, two kids, two dogs, and a true and powerful affection for one another. Yet, even love can’t bind forever when it is so dwarfed by history.
We made comics together. That was when we felt the most perfect, when we were creating side-by-side. She was a brilliant writer with elegant, simple, but evocative illustrations. And clever. So very clever.Gay Zombies Attack. Elvis Is Undead. Frankenpimp. Progressive social commentary through satirical exploitation. She was good. Her noir-inspired family portrait still hangs on the wall. I think often that I should take it down, but its presence comforts me.
She took a job in the corporate world so that I could stay home with the kids and write. She pushed hard to advance within the company, slowly clawing us out of poverty while I talked her out of quitting. There were many mistakes on both sides, but not recognizing that the stress was crushing her remains my biggest regret.
“You need to be patient and let yourself mourn,” my mother told me shortly after the initial separation. “Divorce means losing someone important to you. It is like there has been a death.”
Yet, it’s not the same, not really. There is a sad nobility to mourning death. Mourning a dead love felt pathetic and sick.
But as long as the kids are okay.
And they were. We got through the divorce without alienating the children. Instead, we only alienated each other, which is to be expected. The gameplan, some of it discussed, much of it formulated on the fly, was meant to insulate the kids from as much fallout from the divorce as possible.
“‘As long as the kids are okay’ is a simple mantra, but not an easy one,” Paulann C. Canty, a licensed marriage and family therapist atGrowthLines, told me. “The idea of a ‘parental team’ or partnership is important. How that team operates is unique to each couple, and is determined, and redetermined, across time, circumstances, and development stages. Being partners in parenting is critical whether the marriage dissolved after two years or twenty, and continues through children becoming adults, marrying, and having children of their own.”
Our strategy started with never talking about the ex-spouse in a negative light. Never. Especially when we most deserved it. As long as the kids were safe and healthy and happy, we kept our criticisms to ourselves. Peace was difficult to achieve and even more difficult to maintain in those first two years while the emotions were still so strong. Clear boundaries helped considerably, yet those boundaries broadened over the course of the divorce until we were left with near silence. I talk to my ex-wife’s new husband more than I talk to her. I can’t say if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but the kids are okay, so I let it be.
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