(a note from me)
Hi there, I do hope you’re having a fine start to your week.
I managed to poke my head into Savannah, Georgia a city I lived in for a few years. I’d say one of the happiest times of my life. It’s always nice to revisit those places. I’m sure you have a place, whether it’s a city or a block or a park bench, that always places a smile on your face.
I wrote up a little travel story for Lonely Planet earlier in the week, so if you’d like to check that out here’s a link.
As for the story today, stepping back into the town I met my ex-wife in (and had nothing but fantastic experiences in) brought back all kinds of memories, so I wanted to touch on that a bit. Perhaps you’ve gone through something similar.
But for now, have a fantastic rest of the week.
Greyson
Intimate With My Wife Years After Divorce
I closed my eyes to the dark room. To the shapes and shadows. To the world.
I felt her skin against mine, but with my eyes closed, it wasn’t her skin. It wasn’t her hair. It wasn’t her voice.
The fingers she dug into my back didn’t belong to her. They belonged to another. To the woman, I saw with my eyes closed. With my mind blocked off to reality and open to what no longer could be.
The woman, her hot skin, her quick breaths, her sweat, she said something to me. I don’t know what. I said something back. I don’t know what. She gripped me tighter. I kept my eyes closed. She moved quicker, pulled me in harder, her mouth let out moans and yells. It forced my brain to work overtime. To cover it up. To blot it out. To reshape the woman I was with to match the woman in my imagination.
My ex-wife.
The woman writhed and wiggled and clawed and squeezed and then, went flat. Silent, except for her breathing. The hot against my ear. It didn’t match my memory. The memory I wanted for reality. All I could do was bleed the two together.
She puffed hair out of her eyes. I opened mine. A blackened shadow, but a street lamp from outside snuck in under the blinds, making sure I saw her outlined. Making sure I understood with my eyes open I no longer lived in imagination.
“How was it?” She asked.
I don’t remember what I said. Because I don’t remember how it was. Because I didn’t do anything with the woman now lying next to me. I only saw the outline of her face looking at me. Everything else I did existed only in make-believe. In a reality I wanted but never would occur.
Intimate With A False Reality
Months earlier I cursed the idea of her. I cried at the idea. I yelled and huffed and paced and ran and hid. A crumbling marriage pulling from both sides. When I still loved her but felt I needed to hate her. Emotional tug-of-war with my soul in the middle.
She built up so much emotional equity over the months and years that amount of hatred felt forced. It’s probably why it no longer exists. I don’t hate her. I don’t even dislike her. Of course, I haven’t seen her in well over a decade, but there’s no amount of animosity there (at least on my side of the spectrum). And yet when it all fell apart, when “we” no longer existed, so much of what was to come felt like floating through a foggy dream. A reality, and yet one my mind continually distorted, because it wasn’t the reality I’d so often planed out. The reality I’d seen before me far clearer than the actual life I lived following our divorce.
When emotionally tethered to another with no hope of reeling it in, it’s difficult to cut that line. In many ways, it’s impossible to do so. At least I found it impossible to do so on my own. In the end, the erosion of time the only thing capable of eating away at the feeling.
Distance, separation, the inability to communicate, all helped define the space between us. It widened the canyon until eventually, I could no longer see the other side.
But until that point happened. Until whatever feelings for her were swallowed by sand in the hourglass, I found it difficult to fully let go.
Including while intimate with another.
Sometimes I’d want to be with the other. I didn’t end up with them in a darkened bedroom without those intentions, and yet the mind wants what it remembers. What it’s comfortable with. It’s why grown adults continue to buy toys from childhood movies (no judgment, I do the same). There’s a connection of when things were easier. Happier. So why not continue it on?
When my eyes closed, I couldn’t help but draw the outline of my ex-wife. Intimate with a false reality. Sometimes it bothered me. Other times it took me longer to return back to the room, back to the person I actually lay next to. Sometimes I wondered if the person next to me had just done the same. Lived through their own dreams with my body as the conductor.
Not that it matters now.
I guess it didn’t matter then.
Opening Eyes To Reality
I’m not sure when it happened. But eventually, I stopped thinking of my ex-wife. It went from picturing her with eyes closed to ideas of her occasionally percolating to the top of my head, to not being there at all. A slow transition. Perhaps that’s why I don’t know when it ended. There was no celebration or tape to cross. Things simply went as they should when with someone else.
Whether eyes closed or open, I no longer saw her. At times I struggle just to imagine what she even looks like. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that. Even in the calmest of times the ocean of time doesn’t hold things idle.
If you’re struggling with such a situation. With trying to move beyond a relationship, a marriage, a connection, there are no sure ways to speed it up. Meeting someone new won’t do it. The new person might eclipse what you left behind, but thoughts will remain. Buried feelings are still feelings waiting to be unearthed. Only time will help. If you’re like me the idea of a former significant other would visit me without any warning. I’d imagine them from a smell or a sound or for no reason at all. If you’re going through that don’t worry. Don’t bash your head or try to run. It just takes time.
Regardless of if your eyes are closed or open. It just takes time.
Like relationships, I think our responses to their disillusion are hard to predict, but often do take time to work themselves out.
When I met the girl who became my new wife and mother of our children she was more reticent in our coupling, but definitively more engaged in the moment. It was hard not to prefer her physical company from the start as my ex had been readily available, but never seemed particularly engaged. The net result of those experiences was I never found myself thinking of her when I was laying with my new petite candy blonde girlfriend.
My ghosts arose when incidents reminiscent of my aborted start were triggered by life incidents and passage.
Ironically, some years after the fact I wrote a letter of apology to my ex for my failures during our short time together when public notice of her mother's death came to my attention (her Facebook picture at the time was one taken at my parent's house years ago with me cropped out). The single line response I got informed me she still didn't care, threatened to contact the police if I ever contacted her again and was signed with just the first letter of her first name (I guess her full name was just too personal). In retrospect I found it ironic she used a picture for herself of a person who really didn't exist anymore (age, or role), and I had also chosen to remember her in this same role and form. I was somewhat surprised by the lack of comity and compassion, but, maybe not really. The occasional unexpected dreams, with me waking in silent tears ended about the same time. I think both of us had failed to discard those illusions we dreamed had intrinsic value for too long a time.
What remains for me, I think, is what 2 Corinthians 13:7 describes, Love . . . perseveres (or in this case, maybe is better expressed as endures). For me, that has meant it was transformed into something else, but it will always be there even though the relationship was physically severed a long time ago.
My only real regret today is the emotional baggage I brought into my second marriage (approaching our 35th anniversary this year) and which I think created an emotional space between me and my lovely wife when we started out 35 years ago.