The Grace of Divorce

Whatever it was that got you here, there's not much left to do with those reasons. You've decided, or someone decided for you that your marriage is ending. If you're the latter, it doesn't really matter how you feel, the cleave is there without your consent, perhaps without you even knowing. I can think of no worse way to be blind-sided.

If you're the former, the divorcer, you have your reasons and they've delivered you to that precarious precipice. The reasons become rules, perhaps, for subsequent relationships. You know better now than ever what you want and what you don't want, what you'll endure and what you won't suffer. The trick for the grace of divorce is to remember those rules.

The precipice is the change and the enigma. It's as simple as dividing titles and as complicated as dividing time with dependents. What a ridiculous term. From this point, typically, children become the collateral damage of the divorce decision. Separating for reasons outside of abuse, from irreconcilable differences to infidelity, if there are kids involved, someone is going to get hurt, even with the best intentions. Their lives will be punctuated with that median before divorce/after divorce.

That's okay. Fortunately for adults, children are more resilient and adaptive than big people.

It's precarious for these very reasons; you and your kids. No kids? Then not all of these words will apply. This blog is written for the new single-parent and the person about to become one, stepping out of old paradigms established by religion and family, culture and the psychology of expectation, archaic values and enduring hope, or false hope as your case may be.

This is written for you, the risk-taker who has decided that life can be better, that it's time to take yourself back, that you are better than this, that you want to be happy, that you can use the grace of divorce to get where you want to be. You're done settling, putting up, faking, enduring, suffering.

Despite this impetus, divorce has a bad rap. Even though half the population goes through it, culture and society still denounce it, people still disparage it and those whose names land on the front page of the decree.

And it's time for that to stop.

The Grace of Divorce: Expectations

It's pretty common, even stereotypical to believe that marriages fail to sexual indiscretions. Hester's stigmatic red A might not be so ubiquitous if one were to consider even deeper relational infractions than breaking the chastity barrier, not the least of which is the acrid disappointment that festers in our brain when we find our partner has once again fallen short of expectation. Nowhere near the severity of adultery, but most relationships don't go terminal at the moment of infidelity. No, that malignancy may have happened long before the two of you ever met.

Much contributes to the ideals we garner about each other. Our parents set certain standards either by compliance or omission, and media certainly have established relational mores, many of which are based on gender roles that culturally are expected to play out through matrimony. There's nothing wrong with gender roles and expectations until someone gets disappointed.

It's a foregone conclusion that the person you divorced is not the person you married. Or maybe not, perhaps that just dawned on you. Either way, as long as at least one of you adhered to the expectations established early in your relationship, and even earlier in your ideals, at least one of you has been disappointed, repeatedly.

The Grace of Divorce: Fear

The thing about chaos is the longer it's observed the odds are someone will find a pattern in it. Human behavior isn't much different, especially in relationships, specifically in terminating them. There's also a pattern in the chaos of why people stay together; reasons just as carcinogenic as causes to divorce.

Fear tops the list. Hands down, no-brainer, even odds on this one. Fear paralyzes. Fear constricts, it changes the speed of the rotation of this ol' earth. It dulls senses, squelches the hunger of lust and melts away esteem. No one ever found themselves simultaneously beautiful and afraid.

There's much of which to be afraid. No hierarchy withstanding, let's start with yourself. Nothing compares to the hit your self-concept takes when terminating a relationship with a living being with whom you've invested deep intimate soul-arching disclosure. Throw pregnancies, births, and child-rearing on top and there seems to be so much invested that anything short of complete destitution would be recoverable in a divorce. All the blunt edges in your life, the songs shared, the stories, the holidays, the summers, the dinners, the sex, everything, every thing becomes a razor, and every cut they make make you second guess the critical decision to split.

Confidence wanes, inner beauty pales, and the value of your very soul goes on clearance. That's pretty scary, enough for millions of women to endure a bad marriage.

Next in the lineup is family. Love 'em or hate 'em, they'll all have something to say and feel they have some room to judge you. And the in-laws; ruthless reaches new levels in definition when one of their own has been seemingly betrayed. And there's nothing you can do or say. In fact, it's not even worth the energy. That's enough to save face, put up with more of the same, day in, day out. At least you have your kids.

Don't kid yourself. Kids are the wiser here because they haven't learned to be afraid yet.

And then there's everybody else. Some people around here call them "Church." The judgment, the gossip, the pointing, the avoidance on the aisles at the grocery store, the clandestine lunch dates with the girls that you unwittingly crash. The clique is caustic and can burn away any modicum of self-confidence with a choral glance.

And if that's not enough to scare you into enduring well to the end, there's post-divorce dating.

No wonder you're afraid. So you stay. You'll stay right up until your body makes the move before you even think about it, until your mouth proclaims the words that can no longer be squelched in the ashes of your heart and the battlefield of your brain, "I want a divorce."

It's triumphant and chaos starts to disappear.

The Grace of Divorce: Children

It's a noble intention, a selfless commitment, the notion of sticking it out for the kids. The spike in empty-nester divorces hits sixteen percent higher than the mean divorce rate, an indication of parents holding on until the baby's gone. It might not be surprising that more women file than men.

Kids can tell. There's an innate sense of authenticity in people who love each other. Children find continuity and security in that authenticity. When love is feigned, even Santa Claus becomes more credible.

Take a look for yourself. We're all still split on the noble intention. Sift through the rhetoric in your research and you'll find the narrative advocating parents to stick it out no-matter-what supported by Christian conservative agendas. Progressives disagree. Find your center and everything else will fall into place.

Selfless v. selfish. I don't see the dichotomy that way. If you're going to be any good to anyone else, especially your children, you need to be good to yourself first. But that's another chapter.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger would advocate wives and husbands sticking it out for the kid come hell or high water, short of abuse of course. Even then, exhaust all avenues before the fatal decision. I think she's wrong. Children deserve stability and continuity and if that's only found in a single-parent home versus the turbulence and uncertainty of a marriage soiled by disappointment and suspicion, I believe the child has a better chance.

The numbers are funny on this. Google children+divorce and you'll be terrified of the outcomes of divorce that pop up in your browser, no matter how dire the circumstances of the marriage. These numbers come from well intended therapists and family counselors bent on saving your family and marriage and capitalizing on it. No agenda there. Other research indicates that eighty percent of children from split families grow up to be functioning adults. I wonder what the number is for kids from nuclear families, including the ones that put the "fun" in dysfunctional.

So I can't back this up quantifiably. Common sense and life's experience have taught me, though, that kids who remain the focus and priority of parents who find themselves single due to divorce are more likely to model positive communication approaches than kids who remain in domiciles where their parents are faking it.

What's most disturbing about the notion of using children to sustain a marriage is the flawed therapeutic pablum being slathered on childless couples who struggle with their marriages. In the context of where I live and teach, many of these couples are advised to have a baby. That's it, a baby will smooth things out, give purpose to your lives, pull you away from your self-centered ambitions in your relationship.

I'll write it again, every child born deserves stability, continuity and authenticity. Better that that comes from one parent than nothing from two, regardless how noble their intentions.

The Grace of Divorce: Inertia

Yes, the Newton idea; objects in motion and so on. Marriages are like that as well. In this case when it comes to why couples keep hanging out, for most it's just because. There's nothing acting against them, no friction, no resistance, no opposing forces.

Being the big deal that weddings are, great momentum is brewed with all the well-wishers and gift registries, announcements and photos, tens of thousands of dollars, all leading up to that glorious day - and well it should. What a wonderful thing to celebrate. That momentum along with the rice and the limo push young newlyweds into a new life and if that push sustains them along even for years, without anything acting against them, chances are they'll keep hanging out for no other reason than nothing has stopped them.

The usual stuff isn't enough, like buying a house, having a (healthy) baby, or landing the new job, all American dream stuff. It just adds to the inertia. It's the crisis of faith, the loss of self-worth, the death of a child, bankruptcy; these cause friction, these equal and opposite relational forces.

You've probably felt a symptom of inertia. Happened to me while watching a movie with my first spouse. It was Bed of Roses, Christian Slater and Mary Stuart Masterson. We'd been married about twelve years. There we sat in the theater. I'm safe enough with my own concept of masculinity to confess that I don't mind chic-flicks, and this one got under my skin. I got caught up in it, in that feeling, that new idea of someone remarkable, that complete saturation that leaves you instantaneously thirsty the moment you're apart. Somehow this movie nailed it and I sat there, suddenly aware of my romantic deficiency.

Deep inside is that whisper, "wow," that ache that reminds you that you don't feel that way anymore, not in a twelve year-old marriage. New love. Eros. In love.

So much different than what I felt for that woman sitting next to me in the dark. We'd been through so much together; buried one son, had another, more life changes than most people have in a lifetime in that first decade together. Despite it all, despite the victory of even being able to sit there in that theater with her, defeating opposing forces and maintaining our inertia, I was no longer in love with her, and I missed that feeling.

There it was, illuminated, 16:9, in living color. In love.

When you find some level of satisfaction outside your marriage, be it fantasy or vicarious, in movies and novels, TV shows, the Internet or even in the lives of others, chances are your relationship is hanging in there through inertia. The trouble with Newton's law is that while couples continue the relationship, they're not doing it because they're in love.

So, I'm going to go out on a limb here, way out for some.

There's a relational cycle, personified in a popular Marilyn Monroe film, of seven years. More recent study shows the cycle is moving toward eight, while conservative studies reveal that it has been reduced to two. Most relational scholars tie that cycle to eros love, that Bed-of-Roses love, that in-love love. After a period of time it diminishes. Love becomes a rut. Kids and work and money eclipse the romance of the relationship and like a tide, the cycle snubs the spark.

Much has been written and said about monogamous tendencies of the human heart, masculine and feminine. Women tend to be more so than men. Ongoing and trend studies show that more men cheat than women, or that men or more polyamorous than women. Helen Fisher begs the question, "Who are these men cheating with?"

Following that logic I'd have to assert that perhaps both genders may have polyamorous propensities. Simply, everyone has at least the capacity to wonder if the grass truly is greener. Paul Simon nails this sentiment in his song Train in the Distance in the refrain, "The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains."

Could this be due to falling out of Bed-of-Roses love? What if, barring all the cultural mores and social expectations of couples, we really only have the capacity to be monogamous for two or seven or eight years? What if the rest of the time relationships are the product of inertia? Do we have the ability to be in love forever? Or is that just Hallmark and Moses talking?

For as long as we've been able to love, poets and songwriters (especially those County Western ones), novelists and play and screenwriters have interpreted that lamentable time when the flame is reduced to embers.

Granted, there are those who know how to bring back that lovin' feelin'. I tried no less than seven times in nineteen years in my first marriage.

And there are those who keep moving along because that's what's expected, or because the inertia of their relationship has not countered a force equal and opposite enough.

And there are those who allow themselves to be affected by those forces, especially when it's a new person with whom they fall in love. And we all know what kind of trouble that leads to.

We've demonized infidelity long before Hester. Tough to argue with a note from God written in stone. But, while I've reached the leafy part of this branch here, I might as well say it; what if deep down inside, as part of our genetic code most of us were wired to love madly and passionately for a certain period of time and then move on and fall in love all over again? What if Newton's laws like gravity and momentum and inertia didn't really apply to human hearts?

I hate to leave this in the parenthetical, so let's wrap this up by saying one of the reasons why people stay in marriages is because nothing worse has happened, and nothing better has come along. If something does on either end of that dichotomy, there is at least the grace of divorce.

The Grace of Divorce: Emotional Attachment

The one in the relationship with the least amount of interest is the one with the most power.

It's a simple concept that wields a punch. Upon hearing and understanding its meaning all kinds of flashbacks zip through your mind. That's how my mind responded years ago when I first discovered and taught this axiom of relationships. A line of women marched through my memories, not unlike Simon's Kodachrome and I realized the wisdom in the axiom. I wonder what wise person put it into words.

This power concept capitalizes on the notion of emotional attachment, another reason why couples stay together. While this can be a positive motivation, love can certainly qualify as emotional attachment, for too many it's a dysfunctional power play.

Consider love, though, while we're not too far away from the subject. Classic philosophy remains for me one of the best contexts to do so, though I'll take it a step or two farther.

In the rhetoric of love there has been contended a number of emotions that one might consider to be love.

Eros love as discussed in Inertia is a love of beauty and sensuality. It's undeniable attraction, a sexual chemistry, a force as unstoppable as the rotation of the planet itself. It's rooted in lust, that wonderful spa of sensation only available to the open heart, mind and pelvis. We like this, our senses aspirate its affects on the cerebral cortex and it makes our bodies want to party. It's the love that drives us together.

A close cousin is mania. Take eros, strip away the sensuality and beauty, replace them with fear and jealousy and voila, mania love. It's that very feeling when you realize you're the one in the relationship with the most interest. It's stalker love or that feeling you get when you call their cell and the ring has that little beep at the end that tells you they're on the line with someone else and you're already mad that they're talking to someone other than you. Mania is not flattering, it's doesn't sell greeting cards, and it leads to crimes of passion.

Pragma love is one of practicality. It's your-daddy's-rich-and-your-momma's-good-lookin' love. Driven by security, one of the drivers of relationships, pragma finds satisfaction in having temporal needs met. Combined with eros and there's much satisfaction in having sexual needs met.

It's also the love-the-one-you're-with love. Many pragmatic relationships begin on twelve hour shifts. If you're spending more time with a dynamic, fascinating, beautiful, intelligent person at work than the one you married at home, the heart does the math in minutes and hours, and before you can say "workplace romance" rumors about your marital status are already blazing their trails.

There's more; storge, philia, ludus and agape love, and chances are these will be addressed in additional posts. For the sake of emotional attachment, eros, mania and pragma are the loves at work in this reason why couples stay together.

By emotional attachment I'm talking about causal love. I stay because you have a job. I stay because you're good in bed. I stay because you cook and I don't. I stay because you're the babysitter. I stay because you let me control you. I stay because you control me.

The emotional part is the relational impetus and the attachment part is the dependance clause. I [eros] you because you're good in bed. I [mania] you because you let me control you. I [pragma] you because you babysit.

And the result is attachment. Place the word grasp in those brackets and you'll have an even clearer picture.

Sogyal Rinpoche in the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying says,

"So often it is only when people suddenly realize they are losing their partner that they realize they love them. Then they cling even tighter. But the more they grasp, the more the other person escapes them... How often attachment is mistaken for love! ...love is spoiled by attachment, with its insecurity, possessiveness and pride."

I didn't like that the first time I read it. It was my first wife who gave me the book with little purple asterisks around those words. Rinpoche continues with a concept pretty foreign to us westerners who do all we can to avoid uncertainty.

"How, then, can we work to overcome attachment? Only by realizing its impermanent nature; this realization slowly releases us from its grip."

Impermanence. Phew. What happened to always and forever? All time and eternity? It was the death of my son, the hardest lesson of my life, that taught me that nothing in this life is forever. Not even love, or rather love defined in the composite of eros, mania and pragma.

The one who does the most grasping is the one with the least power. That's my take on it. Let go. Allow the one you love to rest in your arms instead of your embrace. When they stay it's not because of attachment, it's because they want to. When they go and you let go with gratitude, you can have the grace of divorce.

The Grace of Divorce: Commitment

No other two tiny words in the tongue we speak bind more folks than these, I do. And while there are many variations on this declaration, the outcome is the same, at least on a legal level. You're committed.

Promise, pledge, devote, give, dedicate; notice the pattern here with the synonyms, they're all outgoing. The idea behind this matrimonial monosyllabic rhetoric, I believe, is that both parties direct this outgoing intention to each other, resulting in a bond. A powerful tenet.

It's also a compelling reason why couples stay together.

The rabbit died and the doctor says you're in love. I used that euphemism on my students and they had no idea what I meant. Back in the day, before PETA at least, rabbits were used to determine pregnancy. If the bunny died it meant positive, which meant you're in love, which meant you have entered into to the most surface level of commitment, the have-to level.

Or her daddy says you're in love, the shotgun level of commitment.

In this culture I can't think of any other reasons why a couple of kids would have to commit other than, and here's perhaps the nastiest euphemism, legitimizing the knocking-up. If you can think of another reason please post it. If you can think of other euphemisms I'd be interested in those, too.

To prevent the have-to type of commitment, there's the ought-to level. This one has a few more implications. We'll work from simple to complex.

Two kids, head over heals, keeping their ideals, and fighting all those hormones and desires. In some cultures it's quite the badge of honor to make it to the altar with all things in tact. This demographic has the shortest engagement span in young couples, for good reason. We can't have them out there fornicating. So maybe they ought to get married. Make an honest man out of him. Still not sure what that makes out of her. I'm euphemismless.

Or maybe the couple is so gorgeous that their genetic aesthetics should be perpetuated in procreation so they ought to get married. See how that works?

A more long-term influence on the ought-to level is the doctrinal notion that you can't make it to the highest spot in heaven alone. Ladies who subscribe to this theology can't make it into heaven without a man. Men, living the higher law, can take as many women as they have bound to them. Old maid takes on a whole new meaning here.

I used to think there was nothing wrong with the ought-to level. Like staying together for the kids, there's a certain nobility to the idea of making promises and keeping them, especially if it fills the mansions in heaven. As righteous an impetus as it may be, it's not enough to keep people together.

Maybe the want-to level is. This being the purest intent of promise, pollinated by no compelling reason other than you just have the desire to commit your life to another. It stems from agape love, the I-love-you-for-no-reason love, the toughest and most enduring love to come by. The unicorn of love, if you will.

The want-to level is the antithesis to divorce. It is perpetuated though by grace, that clear idea that grants hope to two people for no other reason than they are happy together, symbolized by two tiny words and the purest intentions.

The Grace of Divorce: Unrealistic Beliefs

As indicated in expectations, chances are the terminal blow to your marriage wasn't infidelity or the loss of passion, instead it stemmed from something the two of you may have brought into the relationship long before that smoke-filled crowded room.

Dyads are modeled for us long before our first cogent thoughts. You've noticed this with your own kids, or go babysit three year-olds for awhile and you'll see what I'm talking about. Mommies and daddies and babies. Doesn't matter if we're playing dolls or Hot Wheels, with dogs or kitchen utensils, kids will make relationships out of them. Playing house is the YouTube of that child's construct of beliefs in how relationships should be (not necessarily how they actually are). Certain values pop up to the surface in play, like domestic management, pleasing others, providing and security. Some may be drawn from living impetus while others come from virtual influences.

Regardless how they come together, they forge a network of beliefs upon which children and you and me will eventually, or have already asserted into our grown-up relationships. And some of these beliefs set standards or expectations that are impossible, or at best, unrealistic.

Toward the end of my first marriage my spouse and I decided to spend Thanksgiving in Las Vegas. We live a couple hours away, so it's no big deal to go. Got the kids into the car and headed to the strip, and while this doesn't sound very traditional, tradition failed us the previous year, so here we were open to new possibilities.

Our first stop was the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage. We practically had the place to ourselves and the kids loved it, tossing beach balls to dolphins and watching exotic tigers. Beats the NFL any day. We went on to other attractions and ended up at Treasure Island's Thanksgiving buffet. The only downside to this was no leftovers.

After a long, full, fun, happy day we made our way back home to St. George, through the scenic lobotomy of southern Nevada. Along the way I noticed my spouse locked on to the horizon outside her window.

When you're married and travel often with your companion you develop certain travel habits. In the car for us it was the squeeze of affective reassurance, something I'd seen demonstrated thousands of times with my own parents from the back seat of a Buick. I'd reach my right hand out, left hand on the wheel, and place it on her knee, and squeeze, squeeze. She'd then put her left hand over mine and curl her fingers between and we'd ride until sweat or numbness got one of us to move.

There we were, just outside of Vegas, eighty miles an hour and she a million miles away right next to me, and me sending out the troops of my right hand to her knee. They land, and squeeze, squeeze.

Nothing. Squeeze, squeeze. No response, so the troops retreated back to navigation, she continued her stare out the window while I kept the car between the lines on I-15, the kids sound asleep in the back.

About the Overton turnoff I sent them out again, this time with a bit more fervor, squeeze, squeeze, rub, rub. Wait. Still, she's distracted, not a move.

My last opportunity was just before the Virgin River Gorge, a strip of banked curves and elevation changes that require both hands on the wheel. Third attempt; rub, squeeze, rub, squeeze.

She breaks away a million miles back to her seat, and she's says,

"Do I have to touch you for you to believe that I love you?"

Hand back on wheel. "No," I say, on the outside.

"Hell yeah!"

On the inside. If I'm showing her affection she should be showing me affection.

Unrealistic belief: my companion should always feel affection for me.

Christmas Eve at the mall. Alpha males lead packs of less enlightened men through the trivium of retail Christmas, Bath-n-Body, Victoria Secret, and Zales. These are men immune to the influences of the dog-eared catalog pages sitting on the toilet tank, or the Lands End website page of sweaters continuously left up on the screen. These guys don't pay attention to these subtleties. They don't know how. Instead they become the victims of an unrealistic belief: my companion should know what I want without my telling him/her. This leads to fly reels and Ronco lettuce washers and disappointment.

Granted, lists aren't very romantic, and there's something to be said about the guy who pays attention, connects the dots and follows through on Christmas morning without even a suspicion. This happens in the movies and on diamond commercials, the unrealistic belief factories.

The toilet seat is up, toothpaste is flat in the middle, milk is swigged from the jug, feminine hygiene evidence trains in the bathroom trash, the toilet paper hangs from the inside, her shoes have taken over, there's hair in the sink and stubble around the ring in the tub. "You know, if s/he really cared for me s/he'd be more considerate."

Sound familiar? Or how about, "If s/he really cared for me, s/he would do what I asked."

Or this, "If s/he truly loved me we wouldn't be fighting."

You could argue that these unrealistic beliefs are innocuous. I can't imagine anyone retaining a divorce attorney over toothpaste and toilet paper. As I wrote about expectations, it's the "acrid disappointment that festers in our brain when we find our partner has once again fallen short of..." fulfilling our beliefs, reading our minds, satisfying our romantic notions, and all of these result in disappointment.

Disappoint turns to dissatisfaction, that turns to feeling unfulfilled or empty, that opens doors to other possibilities.

And the next thing you know, you've retained an attorney.

She was right, my ex-wife. And that wasn't my only unrealistic belief, nor was I immune from unrealistic beliefs about how her husband should be. We both brought into our marriage ideals, beliefs and expectations that we never talked about, but rather assumed each would have some inherent understanding of our own quirks and idiosyncrasies, or at least tolerate them.

The Grace of Divorce: Undefined Expectations

It wasn't until after my mother passed when I had a number of revelations about how she managed our home when I was still living in it. Not sure how much nostalgia changes memories, and death certainly can sanctify even the most unsaintly (there's hope for me), but I don't recall seeing my mother doing laundry.

Either I wasn't paying attention or she's magic.

There was plenty of evidence; hospital corners on starched sheets, pressed tighty whities and t-shirts, creased Levis, and all organized and stacked so neatly as if the laundry fairy were a live-in. But I don't remember her using the ironing board, the oldest appliance in the house, or changing loads. She must have done it somewhere between the full breakfast she made for my dad every morning, making my lunch, and selling real estate. I was home for most of the rest of the time, and to my chagrin of admitting it, I didn't help much.

So, naturally, the first week of my first marriage when it became clear that the laundry fairy didn't get the wedding invitation, I asked my wife, "Think we could get some laundry done around here?" (We is such a funny first person, personal pronoun in these instances, because we all know it means second person singular.)

Not really, I didn't really say that. I hope I didn't say anything like that. After awhile, though, some default gender roles and expectations started to evolve and challenge us on levels from balancing the checkbook to filling the car with gas.

All stuff too boring to talk about when we were dating. Like our parents, we'd default to undefined gender expectations over the course of our marriage, which works within the context that both parties might be used to. But it doesn't take much to change the happy context of any couple, plunging them into unknown territory.

Like unrealistic beliefs, undefined expectations aren't much of a threat at the outset until resentment settles in. Laundry is not a reasonable irreconcilable difference. When undefined expectations climb the hierarchy of what matters, from ironing to bathing babies or mowing lawns to climbing corporate ladders, the range of disappointment extends as well.

She decides to continue her education while he debates the costs of day care. He buys the new compound bow while she shuttles to the laundromat. He travels the world with his career while she raises the children. She brings home the bacon while he telecommutes. He spends Sundays at the pulpit while she wrestles children in the pews.

The longer expectations remain undefined, the more self-sacrificing the support, the more turgid the regret. Pile up these swelling excuses for negotiation (you got your diploma, now I want a boat), and the more the both of you feel slighted, cheated, unfulfilled, wronged; all ingredients of that relational black mold of regret. It's usually not discovered until it's done it's damage.

The Grace of Divorce: Terms of Extreme

Quick. Think of something you always do or did for your partner.

What is it about relationships that drive us to hyperbole? The best sex ever. Always and forever. Lester Burnham's "Spectacular" from American Beauty. There's something about being whooped that seems to limit our vernacular. Everything is amazing when you first fall in love, and everything about your new partner is even better. That, in and of itself is hyperbole, best identified in the extreme term used to generalize, the word everything.

We use words like these on both ends of the relational spectrum, falling in love on one end and falling out on the other, only the adjectives change.

It's the adverbs that stay consistent, like always and never, extreme terms that erode relational foundations. Here's how they do that:

Once again you've worked beyond your schedule. It's dark outside, yours is the only cubicle illuminated and you break from whatever it is that's keeping you there late and look at that photo of your significant other. You know you could knock off and go home, but another twenty minutes and you could put that project to bed. Besides, the last time you worked late your SO said something like, "You're always working late." Well, they think you're always working late, so what difference is twenty minutes going to make?

It's Bunko night, high stakes this time and on a Friday night to boot. You text your SO, "Bunko night, home late." No, actually it's probably more like, "Bunko 2nite, crib l8." You get the idea. And you get a text back, "ur ALWAYS playing bunko friday nights!" No emoticon. And then you do the math: "If s/he thinks I'm always playing Bunko, and there's a game tonight, then I might as well go."

Time to go, really go and it's the two-in-the-morning bathroom shuffle to the WC. You sit only to find that icy porcelain rim, impetus for your early morning pillow talk, "You never put the seat down." The next time he's whizzin' standing up, what's he going to recall? Right, that he never puts the seat down. Why start now.

The trip's been planned since October and the youngest is throwing up. The car is packed and grandma is waiting and when you suggest you all ought to stay home this Thanksgiving your SO says, "You never want to visit my mother." We all know where this is going.

You are taking forever.

You don't do anything.

This is just impossible.

Funny how this syntax changed from;

I'll always love you.

I'll cherish you forever.

You're everything to me.

So, did you do it? Did you come up with something you always do or did for your partner?

Me neither. No one always or never does anything. Sure, you probably have an exception or two, but aside from autonomic responses like breathing and beating hearts, chances are you're not always late, that you are home on some Friday nights, that you do put the seat down, and that mom is worth a visit.

But as soon as we lock in the extreme accusations the consequences become self-fulfilling and terms of extreme become relational termites.

The Grace of Divorce: Change

The rotation of his old orb creates two relational influences, of which we can do nothing about. One is time and the other gravity, both of which can be caustic to a marriage. While they are as predictable as a sunrise and a waterfall, they also give us a false sense of certainty, where, in fact, they are catalysts to change. And we don't like that.

We're uncertainty avoiders. We live by the predictability of appliances and automobiles, wireless hubs and browsers to the point that an entire day can ruined if we can't log on to Facebook. Few things are more disconcerting than silence after you've turned the key in the ignition, or the sounds your house makes during a power outage. We like certainty, sureness, predictability, security even more so in our relationships.

That's what's so deteriorating about change. There are so many forces at work it's inevitable, change happens. But we like things as they are right now because we know how to deal with them.

We know how to deal with good health. We know how to deal with what we believe. We know how to deal with the people we love. Throw in a carcinogen or two, a crisis of faith, a void of trust and suddenly your world is rocked. Slow changes are even more malignant, especially when we resist them.

When you first got married you had an idea of what you were getting into. Not that the idea was correct, it was your supposition, your hope, your vision all captured in that psychological Polaroid. We do that because we like our ideas, our ideals, and are banking at the time that they will endure, that they're not subject to ebbs and flows of time and gravity.

That notion pops pretty quickly, perhaps as soon as the nuptials are over; an errant fart, the first lack of consideration, even the resurfacing of an old habit safely tucked away during courtship can weasel its way into surprise. These are little changes, no deal breakers necessarily, because the way love works we overlook these little surprises in the beginning and take them for what they're worth. Everybody farts.

Spin the planet a year or two farther and more significant changes emerge. We call them children. They change everything right down to the way you look. No longer that couple in the wedding picture. Pregnancy does wonderful and terrible things to the female form. Some side effects impact the male one, and arguably for the most part, things will never be the same. I must say that it's been my experience that the female form survives and rebounds from childbirth much better than the male.

Other physical changes have entire industries devoted to their taming, from weight gain to hair loss, sagging boobs to crinkling crows' feet, falling arches to failing spines. For some reason, we don't think this is pretty. Younger is pretty, at least according to absolutely anything we've ever paid attention to electronically.

A change of mind is no less insolent, especially when it isn't ours, but is much more earth shaking. Try it. Switch political parties. Go from Coke to Pepsi. Convert religions or disbelieve altogether. Say you've had enough.

If it's your mind changing you have that dynamic certitude, a conviction of direction, a get-the-hell-out-of-my-way determination that sets you on a new path. If you're married to that changing mind you're in for a ride and there's nothing you can do except go along or bail. I believe the ride can be exhilarating if you let it. Others though, many others don't do well with a change of mind.

A change of heart is continental drift. It's not just love enveloped in that cardiac metaphor, it's all emotion that is impetus to all our action.

Grief is a change of heart, irreconcilable to so many, unassuaged for so long, it can make a heart irretrievable, a change no level of astrophysics could thwart.

Lust is a change of heart, or rather a change of lower organs connected, sometimes inseparably, to the idea of love. Shifting the intentions of sexual affection will change a relationship even if there's no one else involved.

Depression is a change of heart. Like heaving ice it quietly separates. A change in disposition invites all kinds of fear and suspicion, where its root may not have anything at all to do with the relationship. Left unchecked it digs deep and subjugates hope.

Fear is a change of heart, enough for emotional paralysis. It can hemorrhage jealousy and change relational affiliations in a heartbeat.

And certainly love is a change of heart. When it's a change towards, the heavens sing with cherubs. When it's a change away, one is left to the mercy of their own heart, and a breaking one has little to give. It's here we want to spin the world and get behind us that blind sided moment we wish to never suffer again.

Outside the universe of the self, change certainly has its impacts. Financial stability, post-traumatic stress, a change in acceptance and hundreds of other dynamics work their havoc in relationships to a point where earth's rotation slows and gravity's pull increases, miring us in that horrid feeling of not being loved.

The Grace of Divorce: Depreciation

Four years into my first divorce I was dropping my kids off at their mom's house. My little girl was six and my son was twelve at the time and we had reached a point where the routine of visits had established some continuity in their lives. Yes, it took four years. Up to one night in particular, my daughter would often ask when she'd be going back to mom's house long before departure time and the inquiry would sting me to the core. On that one particular night, though, as we sat in my truck outside their mother's house, my little girl lingered at my side, slid her arm around mine and squeezed.

Her brother hopped out and grabbed his homework, but she didn't relent, holding me tighter. "I don't want to leave you," she said. She didn't want to leave me. I had waited for this moment, worked so hard to gain her trust back after years of taking her seeming rejection so personally. The logic of her being a mom's girl was lost on me, instead I felt like a depreciated dad, despite my efforts. Selfish and narcissistic, I know, but that's where my angry mind was.

"It's okay, sweetie." I tried to assuage. It wasn't the best of timing. I was working in broadcast news at the time, directing a ten o'clock nightly show and was needed back at the studio by nine to start the run-down. I was already late and there was no one to call.

"I want to stay with you." It was a school night on top all else that was pressing. "Come to the studio with me tonight," I said, the wrong call. She didn't like it there, the stress of a live show turned me into Mr. Hyde, though more of a Disney version. She knew I had to go, squeezed me even tighter and kissed me, and reluctantly slid across that bench seat and dropped out to the sidewalk. "I love you."

She closed the door and joined her brother at the porch and the two went inside waving as they did. I put the truck in drive and had a heart attack.

An unusual one, albeit. My jaw clenched, pain radiated down my left shoulder and arm and I did my best to ignore it. Made it all the way to the studio, in fact. I made it to the lobby where I was met by a producer who immediately sized me up, "You're having a heart attack," and down I went. He called the paramedics.

I had a second more severe MI later that night in the cardiac care unit, not a bad place to have one. Cardiologists ran the usual gamut of tests with puzzling results; damage, but no blockage, no plaque. After a lengthy interview about the day's events and those in my life that had brought me to that moment, the cardiologist pronounced that I had a broken heart.

Indeed. I lived with that diagnosis for two weeks when it was then revealed that a medication I had been taking for the past three years was causing heart damage. But to this day, I'd stick to the first diagnosis. It wasn't oxygen deprivation that caused my pump to fail, it was depreciation.

Read through my blog and you'll find that I've had my share of joy and pain. The pain parts I'd never wish on anyone, suffice it to say I understand grief and mourning, I've endured physical and psychological stress to extents of post traumatic stress, but all of this pales when put aside the devastation of being discounted. I can think of no ache worse than being rejected by someone you believed once valued you.

Now, let me stress, my broken heart was not the result of my little girl. In fact, she's my healer. Instead it was the result of my agreeing with the contextual circumstances of my perceived depreciation.

The depreciation that ends marriages happens long before the outright rejection and is symptomatic in the absence of gratitude. This takes hold as relational time increases and sensitivities wane, obscured by routines and worries, or obliterated by ego and narcissism.

The daily grind is enough to make many sensitive souls numb to feeling or expressing gratitude. Throw a crisis on top of the grind, the loss of a job, an illness, a death in the family, and most quickly wounded hearts lose the capacity to appreciate, intent, instead, on just surviving the ordeal.

Worse, though, and truly the damaging plaque at the heart of any relationship is the mind's growing incapacity to appreciate due to selfishness. Disappointments ferment to regrets, expectations amplify in their own justification, and resentment displaces kindness. Kind actions go unnoticed, kind words remain unspoken where entitlement instead becomes the default response. As soon as we believe ourselves to be entitled to better treatment, chances are we've stopped appreciating.

Depreciation grows a discounted soul. While there are men who know this feeling, I'm writing about the exponentially greater amount of women who suffer depreciation on account of their image, their sensuality, and their efficacy in living.

Guys don't get it. This is a rash generalization, but I'd bet you'll nod your head here in just a moment. We do not understand the impact of comparing a female companion to any other woman. It's one thing to appreciate beauty, but quite a depreciator to leer at it. Such is the grit of pornography. No partner, female or male, is ever going to compete with the silicon version of a fantasy sex partner, even if aesthetics are equal. Why?

Because pornography has no conscience. It doesn't care how sexy you are, how adept you can be at foreplay, how often you can orgasm. Porn doesn't have to roll out of bed in the middle of the night to calm a child, or in the morning to provide that first or second income. What porn does so well is spawn expectation and when unfulfilled, depreciation. While I'm positive that neither sex is immune, I'd wager that men default here faster and deeper than women, because porn turns women into parts for men, while it turns men into fantasies for women.

I'll throw in a caveat here. The inclusion of erotic material in a couple's sex life can possibly be a good thing, but left to one partner in a relationship, the outcome will at the very least depreciate the other partner's image and sensuality.

Male narcissism has reached levels of being diagnosed as a personality disorder and perhaps is one of the most recognizable influences in depreciation of women. Self-righteous and aggrandizing patriarchal orders have been culturally perpetuated for generations and thrive in conservative contexts. Where masculine and feminine roles are discriminately (some might say traditionally) defined, the feminine roles tend to be discounted in value. One need not look too far to witness cultural subjugation of women in earnings and education and when this metastasizes into expectations in the home where women hope to be equal, depreciation becomes the malignancy.

So, I've mixed metaphors here, heart disease and cancer. Anyway you look at it, the discounted soul is not healthy. Here is the importance, then, of grounding your value within yourself, a self-appreciation, unlike narcissism, a habit of personal communicative behavior that upholds inherent values of efficacy, beauty, intelligence, spirituality, power, strength and worth. When personal foundations are grounded in internal values versus external expectations, rejection loses its destruction and gratitude can prevent a broken heart.

The Grace of Divorce: Sex

Between the subdivision where I lived in California and the high school I would eventually attend was a farm with a small stream and giant eucalyptus trees and a trail upon which it seemed okay to trespass. And it was there where I came across my first centerfold one afternoon on my way home. I think I was fourteen.

It wasn't a Playboy centerfold, it was Penthouse, and I had heard in locker rooms and on baseball diamonds that Penthouse was the more desired of the two. It was just off the trail, unfolded, she was looking up at me, inviting me to take a closer look. And I did. She was stunning, my senses tingled with the way her body looked and all I could smell was eucalyptus.

I didn't dare pick it up. Who knows what would've happened, especially after health class where it was drilled into our young minds that sex would lead to ghoneria, chlamydia, or herpes, that great American open sore.

And church, my goodness. Just looking I was already committed to seeking absolution, for I, for the first time, had lust in my heart.

So there she laid, waiting, beckoning with all the desire a woman like that has on a sexually terrified boy. I looked at her for a long time.

The heaviest sexual thing I ever did in high school was accidentally cup the breast of my girlfriend while we were taking a nap. In my drowsiness I thought she was facing me and that I had in my hand her shoulder blade. Once I realized we were spooning instead and the errant wandering of my hand I quickly removed it, only wishing that I had lingered a bit longer in my awakened and aroused state, check things out a little bit. Who confuses a breast with a shoulder blade? At eighteen?

That would be me. While the little criminals and drug addicts I had grown up with were scared straight, I was scared naive. Sexual intercourse, the only appropriate and allowable sex, was only available for those bound in the sacred bonds of marriage. Chastity was its replacement for the rest of us. Clean, chaste, moral, virgin were the words used to describe those who managed to abstain. Think of the antithesis of each of those adjectives and apply them to those who fell off the wagon.

In his book, The Mastery of Love, don Miguel Ruiz dedicates a chapter to sex. He calls it, "Sex, The Biggest Demon in Hell." A must-read for anyone with a vagina or a penis. Sex certainly has been demonized, on so many levels and to so many extents, from the natural man being an enemy to god to an erection lasting four hours. Somebody call a doctor. For both.

I live in a state that has an extraordinarily high rate of suicide among young men. It's been the second leading cause of death in young men from 14 to 25 years with numbers substantially higher than national comparisons. Statistically, around a third of these men were gay and much has been said and done to draw attention to this tragic trend. Nothing, though, has been done otherwise.

I have a theory. In this monotheistic culture, homosexual males are counseled to deny their sexuality and adhere to heterosexual influences that may "cure" their deviant attractions. How different, then, are young straight men (and women) who are counseled to deny their sexuality, to put away their "natural man" because he's an enemy to god? Demonized. No drugs, no alcohol, no chemical influences are contributing here, just the notion that if you feel undeniable and unstoppable natural sexual urges there might just be something wrong with you.

Along comes marriage. The ceremony sanctifies the relationship and intent of the couple, and in front of god and witnesses these two souls have been legitimized for sex. And somehow everything's going to work out just fine. Forget the psychological whiplash of going from believing that normal sexual tendencies and desires are verboten to it's okay to consummate.

Such is the paradox of chastity and such is the demonization of a natural human condition, as natural as hunger and sleep.

Take that human condition and throw in unrealistic beliefs and undefined expectations, regulate it, glamorize it, prescribe it, perform it and seat it as the ultimate physical expression of love and it's going to become a reason why marriages fail.

Which is sad. Really, it could be a substantial reason why relationships succeed.

Too much sex, not enough sex, you-want-me-to-do-what sex. Sex is a weapon, sex is a bargain, sex is a hold out, sex is a reward, sex is a comparison, sex is a performance, sex is power, sex is submission, sex is sex with everyone you have sex with, sex is what you think is in her head while she thinks it what's in yours. And vice-versa.

What sex isn't is talked about, early in relationships, because if we've taking that vow of chastity (remember where I live) and if we start talking about it... well, you know.

Sex is a basic human need. A need of the body. Ruiz says it's the mind that's taken over that need, like it's done with hunger and the need to clothe yourself. Chances are an apple will satisfy hunger just as easily as cheesecake, but which makes your mouth water? Sears' indestructible kids' jeans will cover that bottom half just as easily as meterosexual low-ride, peg leg, designer ones. But which ones have more potential to embarrass you as a father?

Take the need away from the mind give it back to the body and sex is sex. The body is made for sex. It responds to possibilities for sex. Sounds amoral, I know, because it is. What would relationships be like if we could just leave sex alone, leave it just for what it is? Well, they'd be much like relationships in places where puritanical influences have dissolved over time, like Europe. Look at sex within any indigenous, ancient culture.

What the mind needs instead of sex, is love. When sex replaces love, it's not enough to sustain a relationship. Can romantic love exist without sex? Only, apparently, if you sing a hymn. Both the body and the mind are the stakehoders in a relationship and when one or the other is constrained or exploited, if either loses the ballast of the other, the bond becomes vulnerable. Demonized sex has the power to do that.

My favorite place on this planet is a cove on the Pacific Ocean in the middle of California's coastline, San Simeon. It's lined with eucalyptus trees.

No wonder.

The Grace of Divorce: Anger

Just a little warning; this gets graphic.

I was working on what I had procrastinated most of the last semester of my undergrad work, shortly after I got my four year-old son through his bedtime routine and off to Sandmanland. The routine was anything but ordinary, but for my special-needs boy it was what we did.

His mother and I were home in opposing temporal contexts, minimizing as much as we could having anyone other than the two of us taking care of Berrett, which might explain why our marriage lasted as long as it did. I had the night shift, and though that might make it sound like a bad thing, it certainly wasn't. I cherished that time together.

The routine was a bath, jammies, a breathing treatment and percussive respiratory therapy, gravity feeding by g-tube (a catheter that passes through his abdominal wall into his stomach), a bedtime story and a lullaby, usually in that order. His bed was elevated to alleviate back strain on us caregivers and beside it was a solid oak bar stool upon which we lit for bedtime feedings and stories and singing.

With all things satisfied on the Berr scale, I went back to the phosphorous green screen of my 8088 and continued pounding out my senior thesis. It was around nine o'clock.

Berr had a way of gaining attention on a number of levels, the most extreme being honking. He'd reach his little hand up to his nose and pinch it off, and with his mouth open would force air into his nose which would be diverted out his mouth making his uvula vibrate at frequencies that could attract Canadian geese. This sound resonated in any context and draw an immediate response from either parent no matter their proximity.

By nine fifteen, he was honking. I ran into his room to assess the matter. (More backstory here, due to his limitations, Berr seldom had regular bowel movements. He'd go days, four, sometimes five before vacating.) And at that moment, he had vacated. Pampers does not make a product that can contain the pounds-per-square-inch pressure of a week's worth of poo bursting past the confines of the fecal vault. Those little elastic leg bands are rendered decorative, channeling poo at ninety degree angles to the chute. It's on the wall, all over the bed, on the carpet, the cat's trying to shake it off; it's poo-a-rama.

This became routine, too. The Berr is extracted and cleaned first, bath, diaper, jammies, then anything that can be removed is taken to the driveway for an initial rinse and then to the laundry machines to work their miracles. New fitted sheet, new bumper pads, new blankie, new quilt. Next, wash down and disinfect the walls, steam clean the carpet, the cat, the curtains, reintroduce the very relieved boy back into cozy clean-smelling bed, story, quick lullaby, and he's back to sleep.

It's eleven and I have a paragraph. I'm up to a couple of pages before the honking starts a second time. Poor little guy.

I can smell it before I get to his room. Not poo, but stomach acid. Not vomit either because Berr had a nissen fundoplication, a surgical procedure that kept him from regurgitating into the back of his throat exacerbating his chronic reflux. It was the contents of his tummy after he pulled out his feeding tube. Making this worse, the little balloon that inflates to keep the tube in place inside his stomach had not deflated. He managed to pull the whole catheter out, scoring the tissue around the tiny stoma that accommodated the tube. Ooze stomach acid onto that and it's very painful, even for a boy with pain tolerances that make me look like a little girl.

All his bedding was saturated, his jammies and diaper soaked, and fluid still oozed from the hole on the side of his body. We had a routine for this, too.

A departure to that routine, though, was getting angry. This emotion began seething in my chest, not at Berr, not for keeping me from getting done what I desperately needed to do, but for the cruelty of his condition, one that he had well fought now for four years.

I put him on clean linens, washed my hands and arms, got a new catheter, syringe, tape, gauze pads and other accessories, cleaned and prepped the site, lubed the tube, placed it in his tummy, fill the balloon, and dress the site. He'd hold so still. I pitied him, adding to my anger about the situation. New feeding tube in place, another bath, another set of bed linens, new jammies, another feeding, another breathing treatment, another story, another song and my tired little soul of a boy slept while I got angrier. No child should suffer so.

My anger has manifest into tears at this point as I sat there in front of my dinky computer. I felt like I was kidding myself.

I pounded away a bit more, maybe an hour and the honking started a third time. The angst pressurized me into his room to see what it could be this time.

Another blow out, this one loose stool, a colloquialism for runny, tarry shit, absolutely everywhere. Berr looked at me, an apology in his eyes, as if he had something to do with it. He didn't.

I blew. I clinched my right fist and slammed it into the top of that solid oak stool at his bedside, and it disintegrated into thousands of shards and toothpicks. I was baffled by my response and its effect. I looked at Berr who was both impressed and frightened. I took a deep breath and felt a rush of endorphins as if I'd run a marathon, flooded with an incredible sense of release and pleasure despite that I had just scared my little boy.

I'd felt that way one time before, when I drilled a pair of vice-grips through the trunk of my Fiat X1/9. If you've ever owned one of these cars you'd understand completely.

I'd also felt that way a number of times when I reached orgasm, and this was problematic.

Studies have found a distinct correlation in how men feel when they release their anger in a fit of rage and when they release themselves in orgasm. The aftereffects stem from the same endorphins, the same levels of escalating serotonin and plummeting dopamine, in essence the same or very similar responses to two different, yet tragically combined contexts; anger and sex.

While there are no absolutes, there are patterns of male behavior in response to anger that become caustic to relationships. When a couple is in deterioration, chances are no one's having orgasm, at least not in a coupling. Men, who like that feeling very much, find it when they can pop off in anger, that building frustration fed by the mind in all its entitlement, building to that inevitable rage-induced explosion manifest by a fist through a wall, a slammed door, a kicked dog, or much, much worse. The hypothalamus kicks in and regardless how heinous the manifestation of the anger, it feels pretty damn good after.

And this is so incredibly dangerous, because it can become addictive and so easily satiated, much easier than sex. All he has to do is find a reason to get mad.

That's what I did. Years later in my marriage while we were feigning happiness, I'd find reasons to get mad. I wouldn't manifest violently, just yelling or giving the silent treatment, or beating the hell out of a Fiat was enough to satiate me, a cycle I've since broken. But I scared my wife in the process, distanced my kids and realized too late for my marriage that anger is destructive. It has no purpose.

Well, maybe except for two; anger begets anger and fear. It does have its side effects. Anger makes me stupid. All rationale, any critical ability upon which I pride myself, especially in conflict, would evacuate me and be replaced by nothing more than paralinguistics befitting a Chihuahua. Not very flattering.

My second spouse is the antithesis of this. She's smart to begin with, but when anyone pisses her off, she gets dastardly brilliant, wickedly eloquent. Sometimes I'd hang out in potentially volatile situations just to watch her and learn.

Anger truncates communication, retarding any attempt to stay within the parameters of an effective argument. Conflict, handled well, meaning without anger, advances relationships through a rhetorical, critical process, especially if both involved have defined for themselves the rules of engagement when it comes to conflict. Anger turns conflict into confrontation. It gets nasty, personal, defensive, selfish, attacking, physical, violent, abusive. If you've used any of these words to describe how you feel about your companion, particularly your husband, your relationship, if it hasn't already, is dissolving.

Guys, sorry, I'm kind of slamming you here. I don't mean to paint with such a broad brush. While there are certainly exceptions in the female gender, when anger is a deteriorating influence in a relationship, I'd put my money on the man.

Berr, my sweet buddy, I'm so sorry I scared you.