“High maintenance!” Rod barked, as he told me all about his former partner of a decade or more. “I just got to the point of realising that women aren't worth the amount of work and upkeep required,” he continued, bitterly, though in a calmly resolute and philosophical fashion. Rod has three teen-aged children to his former defacto spouse (Denise) and they’ve been separated for five years now. He says the kids have rebounded very well and life’s never been better for him. Life is “simpler.” Denise, however, has since married again and then divorced, and is now in his words, ‘broke.’ She has her problems in his view. He doesn't listen sympathetically... he tries to stay out of her business. I get the impression he chuckles within himself whenever she is proven to struggle; perhaps his sentiment is, ‘She brought it all on herself.’ After all, she initiated the break-up in the first place.
I asked him how he’d adjusted, and how he coped with the separation; I listened intently myself, interested to see how other men have dealt with a similar situation that I’ve had to deal with. “I had to harden up,” Rod said. “I was lucky, very lucky, that I had some guys to guide me who’d been stung badly (financially) and that wasn’t going to happen to me... they advised me to get a good lawyer... I don't think a lot of women realise how much work it takes to give yourself to a business and to work hard and the sacrifices it takes... when it came to having lots of legal stuff chucked at me I was quick to engage the best lawyers to give her a fight she asked for... she didn't see it coming... and it cost me $40,000, but I won much of what I fought for.”
Rod feels convinced that he responded in the best way, and perhaps in his mind, the only way. His angle was ‘don't get mad, get even.’ One truly wonders, however, if this way is really the best way.
I wonder who the winners are from this situation; and perhaps the best way to define the winners from a situation like this would be to identify the losers.
Well, the winners could not be any of the family in question; for starters, Rod probably has never dealt with the emotions of the event, and the emotional consequences for his family, having focused whatever emotional investment on his legal action and ongoing tacit resistance toward his former partner. Now he’s missed the boat to deal with it. Instead of choosing to get better, he got bitter. His defacto spouse has not achieved anything of what she hoped to achieve by the sounds of it; she is no closer now to being loved in the way she’s always wanted to be loved than when she was with Rod. The children could not be winners either. No matter how you look at it the family did not win. They all lost.
So, who won? Well, the lawyers got a healthy sum didn’t they. Are they winners though? Did they advance their profession, or did they advise vexatiously? What about Rod’s ‘trusted advisers?’ Did they help him? Finally, what happens when children see their parents at war with one another? Do they see role models of how to ‘do life’ in marital relationships?
Copyright © 2008, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
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