Monthly Archives: July 2015

Chump Meetup

27 Monday Jul 2015

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little girls cry

One of the lingering effects of my divorce is social isolation. My married friends all faded away after Voldemort moved out, I don’t have outside employment, and we moved out of the neighborhood we’d lived in for 13 years. I signed up for Meetup.com to expand my horizons, but found that quite a few of the meetups were either for young moms or poorly disguised attempts to sell stuff.

I’ve made a lot of acquaintances through the college classes I’ve taken, but they’re “in the moment” kinds of relationships.

I finally signed up for the Chumplady.com forums and found a SoCal group. I was excited and a little hesitant to go to the planned lunch meeting this weekend, but I’m so glad I did. There were eight of us on the outdoor patio of a restaurant in Old Town (exactly what it sounds like, a part of San Diego devoted to making money from the city’s history, which is mainly Wild West cowboys and Spanish missionaries). Seven women and one man, all chumped by our cheating spouses. We ate, drank, and talked for more than five hours. It was awesome, fun, and educational.

First, I learned that having a cheater spouse really, really isn’t the chump’s fault. Every single one of us at that table was smart, funny, kind, and attractive. No one drove their poor, misunderstood spouse to adultery. I knew this intellectually, but seeing other people in the same boat, I finally accepted this truth into my bones.

I also learned that in so many ways, cheaters follow a playbook. There are habits and characteristics they pretty much all have in common. The lies they tell are similar, the excuses follow predictable lines, they really don’t have much imagination.

The imagination seems to come in with their selection of affair partners. One absolutely beautiful woman’s ex-husband had his last affair with a granny porn star. (I was captivated by this story. Granny porn is a thing? Yep. As best we can figure it’s porn starring women over 40. Uh-huh. In the porn industry over 40 = granny.) Best part? The stunningly pretty woman who spent 15 years with this cheater was laughing the whole time she told her story.

The pain was finite.

Sharing our divorce experiences was eye-opening. I now understand why my lawyer said I got the best divorce settlement she’s ever seen. I thought she was full of crap, but I don’t have to share custody with a man who shtupped our kids’ babysitter. I didn’t have to move out of the family home so a string of random women could move in. I really am very lucky in many ways, but especially custody. It’s been super easy to go no contact with Voldemort since he pretty much just disappeared. I’ve embraced my gratitude about that. It sucked for a long time, but everything is so much better now.

It was a gift to spend time with people who get it. They understand not wanting to date for now or maybe at all. There’s no surprise at the insistence to never re-marry. Those who are dating are doing so with eyes wide open and sense of humor intact.

I hope to see some of the local chumps again in smaller settings and become better friends. It was a relief to be able to let the scars and warts show — and laugh about it all.

Getting to it

10 Friday Jul 2015

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I got a phone call yesterday afternoon from my lawyer.

Her: Congratulations! As of July 2nd, you were legally, officially divorced.

Me: It took them a week to tell me?

Her: It took them nine months to do it, be grateful it only took them a week to let you know.

So the court finally got to it. Sheesh. And, of course, the fun (and legal bills) still aren’t over. There’s the QDRO, the life insurance, and the wage assignment. But at least I’m no longer legally bound to He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

Hallelujah!

The Long and Winding Road to Final Judgement

06 Monday Jul 2015

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Recap of my divorce so far: Voldemort sent me an email announcing his imminent departure in March 2012 and moved out the next day. I was served with divorce papers in August 2013; our settlement meeting was in December 2013. The family home closed escrow in October 2014 and the signed final Marital Settlement Agreement was filed with the judge in November 2014.

In April 2015 our file was reportedly at the top of the judge’s pile.

In July 2015 the Court’s response to an inquiry as to status of the final decree was, “We’ll get to it when we get to it.”

We passed ridiculous months ago.  Now we’re in a previously undiscovered ring of Hell.

Sort, Purge, Repeat

02 Thursday Jul 2015

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(An artistic representation of me and my garage…if my garage was a bit more organized)

 

The week after Voldemort moved out in Spring 2012, I got busy packing all of his belongings. My purpose was two-fold: I wanted to eradicate his presence in our home because it was pissing me off and bumming out the kids, and I’d changed the locks so I needed to be able to point him to the garage should he show up for his stuff (which never happened).

After I was served with divorce papers in Summer 2013, I emailed Voldemort multiple times to pick up his 50+ boxes of stuff (he finally did and has been bitching about the way I packed ever since). Then I started purging and packing to leave the marital home. We were moving from a 2,700 square foot single-family house to an 1,100 square foot townhome, so there was a lot of purging to be done. It took me more than 2 months with multiple Salvation Army truck pick-ups, a huge garage sale, more trips to Goodwill to drop off bags and bags of items, and one shamefully large truckload to the dump to get things down to a manageable level for the new place.

I did a pretty good job, but my garage remained a pit of despair. I’ve held on to multiple boxes of sentimental items, including our wedding china, but that’s not really the issue. No, the issue is that despite my best intentions and efforts to purge and let go, I still clung to quilts, comforters, blankets, linens, clothes, and all manner of household items I simply don’t use. A couple of weeks ago, I went into the garage with the goal of sorting through one bag/box/container a day. Good grief, the stuff I’ve hung on to. It’s appalling.

There’s a quilt that hasn’t been used, at all, for at least 7 years. What was I thinking to move that? There were three handbags stashed slyly out of sight, because purses are my drug of choice. There was a box of Christmas wrapping supplies sternly marked “Use by December 2013 or recycle!” None of them have been used in almost two years — I forgot I even had them.

I’ve realized that a big part of the garage problem I have is that I fear lack. I fear letting go of something in case I (or a family member) need it in the future and are unable to buy a new whatever-it-is. And in the present that means I’m aggravated by the state of my garage; can’t find the just-in-case-items if I do need them; and have completely forgotten what I was storing.

Gah, it never ends.

I don’t have a desperate need for my garage to be pristine or used for any purpose beyond storage right now, but I do think getting it more organized and efficient is important. My giant box of divorce-related paperwork is a mess. If I have to dig something up from that abyss, it would take an entire weekend. There are a number of things that I will probably keep for the rest of my life and I’ve made my peace with most of it. At some point I may offer up the china to my kids and extended family. If none of them want it, I’m almost okay with donating it. Every-frickin’-thing else needs to have a purpose in my life or move on to someone else who can use it.

Living in fear of not having enough spatulas is absurd.