DINK Divorce

The split with me and Beloved Ex was not happy-fun-times for either one of us, but once done niether of us has stooped to hate the other one. Even at the time, though there were recriminations and ugliness, the fact that we respected each other was part of the problem, some days. It made divorcing each other the more hurtful, not less; and I think was central to the length of time the process finally took. We weren't speed demons about it.

Yesterday was the seventeenth anniversary of the day we married each other. As we have since re-establishing contact several years after the dissolution, and becoming friends, we called each other to mark the occasion.

B.E. is, strangely or not, one of the people I can depend upon in this world above most others. He is supportive, sympathetic, and available in ways sometimes even my best friends can't provide. Being a man, he has been kind to me on the "men" front more times and in more ways than women generally have the perspective to be, too. He thinks I'm worth a lot, and he's accepting of my choices, in ways a lot of people who think they love me best don't.

B.E. occupies, this all is to say, a unique place in my life, and certainly in my cranky old heart. One of the reasons I married him in the first place was that he is a good man - he always was - and those are hardly thick on the ground.

My stepfather wonders why, then, we are divorced. Heh. I suspect sometimes my mom's in sympathy with that questioning, herself.

It would have been so much easier if I had committed fully to B.E. It certainly would have made sense.


Apparently, I am not a sensible lady.

But I am grateful, if little else. For his respect. For his presence, even at 500 miles away - heh. For the friendship we have now, that I never thought to forge with him when we were actually *together*.

Happy seventeenth, Sweetness. Be well.