A few weeks ago in one of my classes, two women happened to write about ex-husbands. The prompt had nothing to do with spouses, though it did ask about people’s relationships to love. What is auspicious and amazing is that, out of 28 students in all my classes, only these two wrote about ex-spouses.
What’s also amazing is the
difference.
One person, student #1, wrote about her
ex-husband, from whom she split only a few years ago. The other, student #2, about her ex-husband from over twenty years ago. With their permission, I am sharing part
of their writings, to really show what a difference time makes.
These
are very different women with very different former marriages; I don’t mean to
imply they are the same. Yet something about the two of these side-by-side
really spoke to me. It’s hard to know when we’ve had enough time to have
perspective on difficult things in our life – even if it hasn’t been enough to
find equanimity, we should still write about it. But it is also hard to keep a
feeling of connection, even if we have found some balance. With distance, we
can neuter our story, make it seem benign; if we are too close, it can feel
very strong and we are unable to get out. Both of them have found middle ground between proximity and distance, with time, of course, but also a lot of work and reflection and compassion for themselves and their former spouses.
I'll let student #1 tell you:
