Stages of Divorce - I Got A Lot A' Livin' To Do

So you get someplace else to live, and you get new towels and drapes and the cable TV hooked up. A big box of Cheerios and six Lean Cusines. And then you cannot stand to be there.

Sooner or later, you meet someone else who cannot stand being at their home either. And you run. Run, run, run. I met the girlfriend of one of the guys in my theater group, and she was freshly divorced too. We went out dancing, dancing, dancing, usually till two in the a.m. Which is remarkable, being as how I can usually go asleep at about 8:30 p.m.

It doesn't have to be bar-hopping. You can get super-involved in almost anything. Volunteering, lawn work, tailgating. Even errands. There's just a restlessness to it all that draws you out, out, out of the house.

It doesn't last forever. And it's not all bad. It teaches you things, about how very little the pick up lines have changed, how exillerating it can be still, at your age, to neck like a banshee. How guilt-riddenly late you can eat supper, how big the dust bunnies under the piano can grow.

And it teaches you, in a physically exhausting way, how to be comfortable in your own skin. That's important work, so that you don't fall right back into a new but awful relationship.

Just remember, it does no good to sew your wild oats if you have to pray for a crop failure afterwards.

It also teaches you, in a very visceral way, that you are out of the old relationship and that you have the freedom to charge straight forward into a Brave New World.

The Stages of Divorce - One - A Calmer Place to Sleep

My friend Beth thought she had the ideal marriage right up until her husband came home and told her that he was in love with somebody else. That if Beth truly loved him, she would want him to be happy.

The problem was, he would not Establish Separate Residence. He kept his clothes at Beth's house. He came over once a day, around 5 a.m., showered, and changed clothes. This was lawyer-advice for holding on to the financial asset of the house. (When I got divorced, the lawyer told me to move my clothes out last, the very last.) He also had the receipts for his new Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous goings-ons mailed to Beth's house. And it all had the effect of making Beth even more miserable. She was stuck in a very early stage of divorce – that place where you hurt so much, so often, so actively that you feel like you're being peeled by the world's largest potato peeler. And all you want is a little something pleasant and familiar and good and not-not-sad.

Divorce is a form of processing. You move through the stages, maybe at your own pace, but you do move through the stages. You have to, to stay healthy and actively involved in life and to keep from scaring your loved ones and boring your friends.

The first stage is often a dichotomous blend of abject calm and abject misery. This is because as your physical and emotional surroundings calm down, your mind starts to process. At its worst, this can take on a form similar to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. At the best, the former spouse will get out of your life enough to let you start processing. You will come back to equilibrium in your own time.

The opposite of Love is not Hate. The opposite of Love is Indifference. Hate takes tremendous psychic energy and eats you up inside. And, as Mark Twain said, "Always be pleasant to your enemies. It costs you nothing and it annoys your enemies." You don't have to be a doormat, but just refuse to participate in any type of dysfunction. Then you will have a calmer place to sleep.

And remember, getting out of a bad relationship is like throwing out old underwear. It feels so much better when the creep is gone.