A Shocking Confrontation Proves That The ‘Divorcee’ Stereotype Is Alive & Well
I was standing behind my kids’ elementary school, watching my daughter play on the monkey bars, when a neighbor friend suddenly marched up to me. “I need to talk to you, Delaine,” she said seriously.
“Sure,” I said concerned; I could tell something was wrong. “What’s up Lori?”
“My back is up and I’m feeling very territorial,” she said angrily. Then she started talking about some episode that had transpired at my house that I couldn’t remember. I stood there confused wondering, “Where is she going with this?”
Then she started talking about a time I had ‘deliberately ignored her.’ Still confused, all I could say was, “If I ignored you Lori, it wasn’t intentional – I’m sometimes out to lunch… that’s just me!”
Then she was talking about some time I had told her not to give my kids ice cream, and yet later, she’d seen them eating ice cream from an ice cream truck. I said: “Ummm… the nighbours up the street bought them the cones when I was in the house.” What the heck is her point? I wondered.
Well I soon found out. She thought I was deliberately being mean to her because underneath all my ‘neighborly actions’, I was after her husband!
“You’re kidding right?” I asked, my mouth agape.
Nope, she sure wasn’t. And she made it VERY clear that I was to BACK OFF, that she was on to me, and she would fight me tooth and nail to save her family.
I was so shocked at the entire eposide, that it took me awhile to recover. Sure, her husband and I talked, but only in a friendly way; our kids play together all the time and go back and forth between our houses. I’d NEVER even remotely flirted with him and had been very respectful of the fact that he was married. And truthfully – I thought him very physically unattractive! (I should have told her that and yet it seemed too rude!)
I know that this ‘confrontation’ had everything to do with her own insecurities, not mine. Nonetheless, it got to me, and saddened me. Deserved or not, I guess my being the ’divorcee’ on the block means people will judge me and wag their tongues.
10 comments
[...] I had an ugly incident occur similar to Sonya’s: six months ago, a neighbor friend of mine blindsided me with accusations of wanting to steal her husband and break up her family. Her totally [...]
Only someone very insecure could jump to the conclusion that you are after her children just because you were being “mean” to her.
It is typical though with some women. I’ll never forget sitting in a restaurant at a table near two married couples from my church. The husbands greeted the boys and I, were very nice. Talking not only to me but my boys also.
The wives sat like stone giving me the evil eye. I was, after all a divorced woman and surely after their paunch bellied, balding husbands.
Like you said, it is her issue. Not something to concern youself with.
I have to wonder if this has anything to do with you being divorced or if it’s just that women feel threatened by other women who aren’t firmly attached to a man already? Insecurities run deep and I don’t think divorced women are exclusively or even preferentially the target of this kind of projecting.
In my experience it actually has more to do with appearance than anything else – slim, attractive women make the insecurities more pronounced and so seem much more threatening. Probably because they subconsciously fear that their husbands will be more attracted to these attractive, single women than they will be to their wives.
In highschool I had a friend who was very attractive but also very insecure. While she didn’t ever project her insecurities onto me in the form of suspicions or accusations, she would never let me meet her boyfriends, because she was always worried that they would find me more attractive than her.
BTW, do you have some crazy scripts running on this site or something? Every time I come to Divorced Women Online it slows down my computer like crazy and there’s always major lag whenever I try to scroll down the page or anything like that. This is the only site that does that.
my first thought: someone is after her husband (or she already suspects him of cheating) but she’s not sure who it is…so she’s telling off anyone she thinks could be the one. This happened to a friend of mine recently.
my second thought: maybe that’s why the girl down the hall isn’t talking to me anymore..lol. i accidently run into her boyfriend alot (we live in the same building, it happens) and have mentioned to her “i said to so-and-so”…maybe she thinks i’m seeing him behind her back intentionally. lol. although, if i was, i doubt i would tell her what we talked about. lol. oh well. i figure, as long as WE know we aren’t doing anything wrong, that’s the best we can do.
Crud you have my sympathies, I watched what you described from the sidelines a few years ago, everytime someone new moved into the nieghborhood are nieghbor was the first to welcome them, be friendly and all that goes with it, but was quickly pushed to the sidelines because she was a single divorced parent.
The sad part of all of it was her two kids who seemed to suffer most because momy was out to get a “man”. in the wives view point, her kids were off limits to, so future contact with the men folk could be limited to lol.
Hopefully site’s such as Iheart and others can slowly change that stereotype, because it is very onesided, being a single male devorced parent I can honestly say I have never had the “talk” from the male’s where I live, which if you think about it would be funny as hell all things considered.
A girlfriend of mine whom I told of these goings-on said she thinks this woman’s husband said something to her – maybe something nice about me, and it got her back up. Regardless, it’s like whew honey, don’t take your insecurities out of me!
In all honestly though, I stood there and defended myself as if I needed to prove my innocence; I was just so shocked by the entire ordeal. I have been nothing but respectful and kind to these people and their children, I just can’t believe she’d assume I was a home wrecker on the make because I’m friendly!!!
LMAO
….sorry that you got accused of that Delaine, but it was soo funny I nearly fell of my chair, especially about the part that you find him physically unattractive he he he he.
WOW!
Shame the poor thing, she must have some huge insecurity issues to have gone off on you like that. However I know the feeling. All of a sudden people avoid you and if you talk to a person that happens to be a male and he happens to be married then you have his wife hovering around just to make sure nothing other then pleasantries are being exchanged!! So I made it a point of avoiding every married man, and if I happend to speak to someone I would stand at least 1 metre apart from that person and I would be making polite conversation about his wife! Yes I really did that, especially at church.
I did realise that at some or other stage this would happen and I didnt want my name being linked to any unattractive married creature. Ewwww
I think that society has this idea that just because we are divorcee’s we are chasing after every male that makes himself available married or not. Hello!!?? Some of us do have pride and a guy that was remotely linked to a relationship/marriage/dating someone for longer then a week, I wasnt interested in. I wanted someone that was free and unattached as I wasnt planning on taking the title for divorcee and homewrecker……no thanks!
I was told once by a lonely single mother that these things often happen, I remember how I used to make a special effort to invite those single women to my parties and barbecues because that point had been made so poignantly to me. But, sadly ~ it was true. When my marriage broke, I was no longer invited to places anymore because I didn’t have a ‘him’ to hang with (on to). As if I actually would have wanted those guys who were my neighbours, my friend’s partners, family men, men whose skeezy antics I had watched over the years. Yes I was squeezed inappropriately, I was butt-patted, I was chatted up when I might happen to be in places where they were ~ but no longer at the parties that I would normally have been invited to. Don’t those frightened and territorial women realise that those guys do what they do no matter what? That it has nothing to do with your being single or independent ~ just that it happens because you are a woman? (Or a man…) Those poor, frightened wives must live empty lives behind their doors if all they can do is worry about what you are up to.
It is unfortunate that our children suffer the most when a marriage breaks apart. While I fully expected not to socialize as much with my married friends after my husband left, I never expected my kids would stop being invited over to friends’ houses or that other children would no longer be allowed to play at my house. Although my work schedule does limit the number of days I am able to host playdates, I am always happy to have my children’s schoolmates over on my days off. It is sad that some families in our town decided our family wasn’t good enough anymore, but at least we know now who our real, albeit few, friends are!
Kate, I’m so sorry to hear that it has affected your kids as well. That’s one area I was lucky in because my ex always worked out of town so people were used to me being solo whether it was out mowing the lawn, or at social events, even weddings. I think that helped when it came to organzing playdates – people were accustomed to their kids playing in pretty much a single-parent home already.
I curled inwards when I first divorced when it came to socializing with more distant friends – I sort of assumed they were judging me, that they were looking at me differently, and to this day I don’t know if that was real or imagined.
Sometimes, when some kind of ‘incident’ goes down between the kids in the neighbourhood, ie, someone ends up crying, I do worry that people will think “Oh, Delaine’s kids must have caused it cause THEY come from a broken home.” But again, I don’t know if that’s coming from me…or I’m picking up on the judgements of others.
Great point Maya – suddenly a few memories spring to mind of husbands giving me ‘that’ vibe while I was still married. Too often I still gave them the benefit of the doubt. The problem I face now is that when wives sense or see a ‘vibe,’ they blame me instead of the husband; I’m the easy target. Makes sense, but truly, this is drama I want NO part of.