You’re on the phone with your ex, courteously discussing a pending issue related to your kids or your divorce.  Suddenly, ‘it’ happens - his voice turns whiney and he starts singing the poor-me blues. Or maybe he throws in an unexpected mean remark.  Or maybe, just maybe, he decides to start venting - and you find you and your character under attack.

What are you going to do about it?  Get mad?  Get even?  Cry?  Be defensive?  I’ve done them all.  And in the end, they all yielded the same outcome: the pending issue wasn’t resolved and both of us hung up feeling more upset and angrier than before.  What the hell?  You ask yourself.  Why can’t he focus on the issue instead of using our communication as a way to vent/process his feelings?

This is where I step in as a newly divorced mother  to offer (wise) words of advice.  First of all, why he can’t control what he says to you  is NOT your problem to figure it out.  Trust me - the last person he wants to hear advice from is YOU.   Secondly, study the following five words and etch them in you brain:  LEARN TO BITE YOUR TONGUE.  Figuratively AND literally if need be.  The bottom line is that if he can’t ’stick to business’, for whatever reason that may be, your words are falling on deaf ears.  And not being listened to feels even worse than any seconds of pleasure you gain from retaliation.

I’m not saying you should be a doormat and just sit there on the phone taking his abuse;  NO, not at all.  You can calmly say, “You may not speak to me that way. Either call me back when you’re calmer or I’m hanging up.”  Or, if your instincts tell you this issue will not be resolved without emotionally battery, stick to, “You may speak to me that way,”  hang up, and then bring it up with your lawyer.  Please note that I DIDN’T say to threaten him with legal action.  Just bite your tongue, get smart, and talk to your lawyer.  Period.

On my divorce journey, I’ve rarely had face-to-face altercations with my ex.  They ‘ve usually gone down by phone, email or text messaging where we didn’t have to look each other in the eye.  Nonetheless, emails and text messages can be just as upsetting and easily turn to into a war zone.  Here’s how tongue biting applies using these mediums.

When you receive an upsetting or infuriating email, hammer out a response in the heat of the moment but DON’T PRESS SEND, the cyberspace equivalent of tongue-biting.  I know he called you a mean name, I know he’s being sarcastic and slanderous and acting like a total jack-ass.  But you don’t have to buy into it - YOU are the one who’s going to take care of business; you, my dear, are the smarter and bigger person.  

The next step  (and this might be a toughy) is to wait a few hours or maybe even till the next day before reviewing your response letter.  The first thing you do is go to the cc box and type in your lawyer’s name ( a fake address if need be).  Now, go back into your email and rewrite it in a way that portrays you as the level-headed, respectable woman you are.  Stick to business only.  Oh, I know that one sentence you wrote about him being a dead-beat dad feels good - and it’s the truth - but you will delete it anyway and focus on the issue at hand.  Focus, stay clear on the task at the hand, and bite your tongue!

You will be amazed at how quickly your ex will clean up his language if he knows a third person is privy to his emails.  Especially if it’s a lawyer - the fear of legal action is a great motivator.  Also, make sure you inform your ex that you save all his emails.  This might make him mad, but what’s he going to do about it?  Write you another mean email that he knows will go into the legal stockpile?  Believe me, he’ll think twice about his hotheadedness; at the very least, he’ll bring it down a few notches.   

Text messages are definitely one of the easiest, quickest ways for an ex to instantly blast you.  I’ve seen downright Text Wars erupt between couples that get so out of hand, they last for days.  My philosophy on texting the ex is simple:  keep it minimal, ie: only use it for minor details like alterations to the kids’ pick-up times.  I’ve come right out and told my ex that he should email me at home cause I usually don’t carry my phone.  And if he sends me a mean or cutting email, I do the cellphone tongue-biting equivalent:  I don’t respond.  Silence, my friend, speaks volumes in the land of text messages -  just as tongue-biting has a place in the divorce process.

Related Articles: Survival Mode:Existing Post-Infidelity & Divorce,  The #1 Thing I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Divorce

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“Hang tough Delaine - things are going to better.   You really are better without him…”

Many, many times I heard these words from girlfriends when I found out my ex was cheating.  I knew they were right, that at some point things HAD to get better.  But while in the throes of my grief, those words felt empty - nothing but sterile, void sylables.  For I felt like a shell of a woman…numb and shattered on all levels of my being.

I’d been betrayed before by men - in high school and university.  But the pain of marital infidelity was beyond compare.  We’d built a life together, had children, and I’d trusted him with ever ounce of my heart and soul.  How COULD he?  How COULD he jeopardize all we’d created together, stuff that was so meaningful and important, just to get his rocks off?

I couldn’t comprehend it.  It was a full-blown mind-body-heart attack that bludgeoned and shocked me to the core.  In my mind’s eye I could actually see my heart in two pieces.  My chest ached, the rest of my body felt entirely numb, as if all blood flow had been cut off.    I looked at the world around me through the eyes of a lost soul within flesh, cut off from my body’s sensations, imprisoned by my skin.   I couldn’t eat, weight poured off me, and I couldn’t sleep.   God…nighttime, how I hated it.  No matter how exhausted I was, my brain would ruminate incessantly, trying to problem-solve, so anxious to help me find my True North.  I just wanted to turn it all off; to curl up in my darkness of Rock Bottom and disappear.

But I kept going - I existed, and ‘did time.’  At the back of my mind a little voice kept saying, “Just - keep - going.”  I had no idea where I was headed and quite frankly, I didn’t even care - all I felt was numbness.  In my mind’s eye, I could see myself trudging, chin down, through a dark, hostile Wilderness, arms dangling, with the burden of my sorrow on my back.  But strangely, sometimes, from above the treetops, I’d catch a glimpse of my Higher Self;  She was still with me, I hadn’t been abandoned, and it was She who was pushing me forward.  And I wondered: had some part of me CHOSEN to arrive in this  hellish Wilderness?    There HAD to be a bigger reason for it all, didn’t there?

I still don’t know the exact  nature of that reason.  In fact, I’m still not even sure where I’m going.  But I know that time continues to be a saving grace and reveal things to me when I’m ready.  And looking over my shoulder, I have a new yardstick as to far I’ve come and how strong a woman I really am.  And I wouldn’t have learned these things had my world not completely shattered and forced me to reconstruct from scratch.

So with my body as my guide, and a smile that I can now feel, I continue onwards.  Through the ups and downs.  Over the hurdles and unexpected obstacles. This year of my life has been like a school of hard knocks, one of tough self-love.  And the one thing I know for sure is that I’ll never settle for a life of mediocrity again.

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Don’t expect to be friends with your ex.  Not at the start anyways.  This is what I wish someone, or many people, had told me.

I’m not saying you should expect to be enemies; no, not at all.  I’m saying you should aim for something in the middle - like a ‘professional working relationship.’  It should be polite, somewhat distant, but functional.  No more, but no less.

“But why Delaine?”  You ask.  “Isn’t it in our best interest to be friends?  Isn’t it in the kids best interest?”

Because I’ve seen the same negative cycle repeat itself over and over again with me and my ex, AND other divorcing girlfriends:  We start getting along well with the exes, it feels good…we may go the ‘extra mile’ for them in some way like drive the kids somewhere far away to meet them, or invite them in for dinner…and then IT happens:  a mini-bomb, some kind of comment or event that hurts us, angers us, and leaves us spiralling for days, if not weeks. We all thought we were ‘moving forward’, that things were going so well, that we were ‘big enough’ to move beyond the enormity of the divorce crisis…

But we are human.  And we are grieving amidst a huge life transformation - ALL of us are, exes included. And even though it feels good to connect with our exes, even though it seems comfortable in some ways (though in some ways it’s also strange), the bottom line is our sensitivity levels are high, and people grieve in different ways.  Each person needs the time, space and consideration to grieve in his/her own way and if that isn’t offered, if time isn’t allotted to the recovery process, it’s a countdown till explosion.

I really wanted my ex and I to be friends at the beginning for the kids’ sake.  I wanted to ease the transition into their lives, as any good parent wants, of course.  But two things I MUST point out: first, it is very confusing for the kids to have dad at the dinner table one night, only to then have mom in tears for days and ignoring him the next time he comes by for ‘pick-up.’  It’s no good for the kids to have an unhappy mom, period.  And even though we do our best to hide our sadness and anger from them, little ears pick up on our phone conversations with girlfriends.  Little eyes see when we’re vacantly staring out the window with swollen eyes…. You get my point, I’m sure.

Secondly, in my opinion, young kids (which is what I and my friends all have) are less resistant to change than we give them credit for.  Many of the fears I had around the effects of divorce on my kids were just that: mine.  Yes, I had to work hard to ease the change, yes, I had to ’get in the know,’ read books, and always monitor their speech and action for signs of emotional damage.  But children respond to how WE ( us and our exes) are handling the crisis.  If tension, criticism, and anger abound, they feel it, even if they don’t see or hear it.  On the other hand, if they see mom and dad smiling at each other, talking politely, and acting ‘professionally,’ their world seems safer cause mom and dad are showing kindness and setting a good example of how life change can and should be handled.

So this is the #1 thing I wish someone had told me about the divorce process.  Am I a professional divorce coach or counsellor?  No.  Do you have to take my advice?  Not at all.  But I do believe women (and to some degree, men) learn from each other’s stories.   And if I were sitting having coffee with you, what you just read is what I’d have said to you as a friend; one warrior woman to another.

Other Articles:  Fairytale endings: Movies Are Programming My Daughter,  Cheating Spouse: REVENGE!,  I’m a Single Parent…A feeling I’ve always known

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Out of the blue, my aunt emailed me this photo tonight.  I’m not posting it because I want you say I look cute.  I’m showing it because it made me burst out crying. 

Look at how innocent I was.  My God, the face of an angel with hair so white.  “What was I like back then?”  I ask myself.  I don’t remember.  I think I’m about four.  I think I was a good kid, always easy to get along with, always wanting to please everyone.  Yeah, mom always said I was a really good, easy child.

Look at my dress.  I don’t remember it either.  My mom used to make a lot of my clothes back then.  In that era there was a lot of wacky, tacky prints and frills.  But my mom dressed with me love and in my heart I knew I had a loving family, a safe unbroken home; that I was wanted and protected and taken care of.  Through the window in the background I think I see my mom, her younger self.  God, she must be younger than I am now.  What was she busy doing?  What never-ending line-up of motherly chores was she tending to?  She had a family of four kids.

In my mind’s eye, I age me and I see me at 8, 10, doing cartwheels around this 4-year-old me, so happy, so playful, so free to live each day unencumbered.  But I bring myself back to this 4-year-old me and ask myself again, “What were you like?  You were newly here from the Other Side, a soul of pure light, your conscious mind untainted yet by life.  What was your soul like?”

Still, I don’t remember.  I sit and I wait for the feeling of her in my skin.  And I can’t feel her.  All I feel is a pain in my chest and tears in my eyes.  How did I go from there…. her…

…to here?

My daughter is now four.  And I’m going to show her this photo.  She sometimes asks me if I was ever a baby or a little girl.  She comments on the lines on my face and asks me why they’re there.  “Because I’ve been here 38 years,”  I tell her.  “Everyone gets older.”  I know she doesn’t understand time and how much living was required for me to get here.  A part of me doesn’t want her to know, I want her to savor her ‘in-the-moment’ carefree happiness.  And yet another part of me wants to tell her about this earth school of hard-knocks, to prepare her for this journey of tough self-love.

So I’ve stared and wept at this photo for awhile tonight.  I feel the cargo I’ve added to my back over my lifetime, the heaviness that I am yet to amputate.  Yet this photo brings me pause.  It brings me back to the beginning, to my essence.  It takes my breath away.  And it makes me cry.  Cause I don’t remember.

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I’m not sure why the memories came at me tonight. Perhaps it was the fresh fallen snow and smell in the air that triggered them; Xmas is coming after all. Perhaps it was because my ex moved last weekend to a small town outside Calgary; I know he will now spend even less time with the kids. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because I was tired from yet another weekend alone with my kids.

My ex worked out of town for all our marriage. He was absent about 70 - 80% of the year. Because of this, I gave up my just-taking-off career to be a stay-at-home mom to our three kids. And that is still my fulltime job, though I ALSO work fulltime as a writer.

Tonight on my porch, I looked around at my kids’ toboggans and boot prints covering my front lawn; and I smiled. My front lawn has looked like this for many winters. I drifted away in the memories - pulling all three of them in one toboggan, the times they peed in their snowsuits, their pink, rosy cheeks, the triumph each child exuded when he/she made it down the hill standing up on a board.

BUT…

I couldn’t remember ONE memory of my ex out there with us.

C’mon, I told myself, there MUST be a memory in there somewhere - dig deeper. But no - those were in the spring and fall. And no, those times he was putting them in the car (and he was scowling). Try as I did, my mind only remembered visions of me and kids.

I gave up trying and returned to the now. My brain was too tired to excavate. And in the big picture, I knew my efforts were pointless; what’s past is past. And now we’re divorced.

This will be my second winter as a divorced woman. And I’m still kind of scared and still kind of overwhelmed by the changes that have swept through my life. But I know one thing will remain the same this year as it always has: the feeling of being a single parent.

Other Articles: Fairytale endings:Movies Are Programming My Daughter,  Cheating Spouse:REVENGE!, Internet Dating:10 Expert Tips to Get You Started

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