An Eight Word Divorce Agreement
This is a true story about a divorce. I’ve been with my second wife for about twenty-four years now. Before that, I was married to my first wife for over twenty-six years and that marriage ended in divorce, which is what this tale is about. According to my first wife Lois, when a marriage is dying, the best option is a good old-fashioned divorce. Lois might have been mad with me, but I wasn’t mad with her. I don’t believe she was mad either, and only felt like it was time to change the dishwater so to speak. She was always a very pragmatic woman.
I believe now that Lois had been thinking about divorce over a long period of time, but it hit me without warning. Sure, there were some early warning signs I never noticed, like more fights, and meaner ones too, with name calling, things like that. The build up of those sorts of things just creeps up on you without noticing if you're not paying attention. After our split our teenage kids said they could see it coming because of the more frequent verbal fights and other signs obvious to them but not to me, apparently. I just never noticed the pressure building up in Lois and that inability to notice such things is likely the main reason our marriage ended in divorce as it did.
That eventful Sunday morning began just like many others. I got up early and fixed a nice breakfast for the family - me, Lois, and our two kids. It was my routine on Sundays. I liked doing it and the rest of the family enjoyed it too. We all sat down together and laughed and bantered like we always did and nothing seemed much out of kilter. But thinking back on it later, Lois had seemed a little bit quiet at the table that morning even though she participated in the goings on. Later after breakfast, I was putting the dishes in the dishwasher, just being a good responsible husband and father I figured. I cooked just about as often as my wife did, although she did most of the other household chores while I took care of the yard and anything else. I tried to be a good cooperative husband that way.
Anyway, there I was bent over putting the dishes into the dishwasher when Lois walked back into the kitchen. She was still in her bathrobe.
“That pan doesn’t go there.” She said sharply, or words to that effect anyway, and in kind of a hard tone if you can understand what I mean. It’s hard to describe. It’s the sort of tone you recognize as meaning a lot more than the simple spoken words. Immediately I noticed the extra sharpness in her voice and my ears pricked up just a little. But her words didn’t really seem foreboding, just a bit harsh for some reason. I suppose I assumed she had a headache or something and I answered in a normal tone.
“Oh, it’s OK there.” I said. “That’s where I always put it.”
I have kind of a thing about being told what to do, and might have even expected a sharp retort from Lois because of her earlier tone. But she surprised me big time. The very next words out of her mouth were simple, deadly calm and directly to the point;
“I want a divorce.” She said in a hard, flat voice with no inflection or emotion.
Her voice was firm and determined, and her mouth was set in a grim line as I looked up at her. Her face was like set in concrete. I recognized it immediately as high density and very firm concrete, the kind where there’s absolutely no flexibility.
Whoa! Just like that. She must have been on the edge of saying that all along that morning and only waiting for the kids to leave the room. My innocent response about the pan was merely the trigger needed to fire off her broadside. But even more surprising were the very next words which sprang out of my own mouth involuntarily then;
“OK, you’ve got it!”
And there it was. Just like that. Total and unanimous agreement achieved in eight little words! Obviously, it was time. Things never changed afterwards either. It was just like our instantaneous verbal contract was carved in stone forevermore. Our marriage had simply died right there in the middle of our kitchen of sudden cardiac arrest! We both knew it too.
We weren’t mad with each other, or bitter, neither then nor afterwards. Our fighting and arguments ceased and we treated each other with more respect. Throughout our divorce process we maintained a friendly and cooperative attitude with each other. We even utilized my business attorney together, who must have been supremely disappointed we didn’t have a long and bitter fight over kids or assets, and particularly over assets. I confess to a bit of malicious delight in the thought of his disappointment. Goodness only knows I’d paid him enough over the years.
Anyway, I gave everything to her. House, car, financial assets and bank accounts, you name it. She got almost all of it. I reserved for myself only a few thousand dollars in cash and one beat up, but quite serviceable pickup truck to haul all my personal tools. I immediately decided to make a clean sweep of things, sell my struggling business and move on.
‘FYJIMO’. That was the name a guy I’d recently met had given his big new sailboat. Thinking the name had some sort of exotic Japanese meaning I had asked him about it.
“Oh nothing like that.” He’d said. “I just got through a bad divorce and the name is my own acronym for ‘Fuck You Jane, I’m Moving On.’ I sold everything and bought this boat and I’m literally moving on.”
“And, I’d made damned sure she knew about the name too.” He’d added.
Such are some of the hallmarks of bitter divorces. Lashing out, insults, lawsuits, accusations, bitter invectives, spite & revenge. At the time I thought that guy had reacted cleverly to his divorce, although my own was in no way bitter. Besides the small reserve for myself, all the rest of what we owned would go to her, bless her. She seemed delighted, and I was pleased too since now I didn’t have to deal with selling the house or disposing of any other tangible assets. I hate that sort of thing. I simply gave her Power of Attorney to deal with things as she saw fit.
It was the best damned thing I ever did too, besides marrying Lois in the first place. As it turned out, Lois had been really fearful I would go after the rather large amount of money in her retirement account. It was after all, considered community property in our state. That was the very first thing she brought up with our attorney.
“What about my retirement account?” she had asked with a set, grim look of determination on her face in the attorney's office. She was obviously ready for a fight.
“I don’t want any of it.” I said simply.
She actually blanched then. I know she was thinking the polar opposite, and a look of vast relief washed over her, as it sank in that I wasn’t going to fight her over financial assets. And I didn’t. I was so agreeable on everything that Lois bent over backwards with smiles to agree on any of the small things I asked for myself. She was 100% agreeable.
A marriage can get old and run down just like an old car. And the longer you are married to the same person, the more pieces will fall off the marriage so to speak, any marriage. If you’re tolerant and lucky you can replace the bits that fall off with new parts and keep the marriage going. But you have to be tolerant, lucky and wise to maintain a happy marriage for a lifetime. Not only that, your partner has to be the same way too. If any one of those things is off, your marriage is usually doomed and that’s probably what happened to us. I lay the fault for the failure of our marriage entirely at my own feet since I was the one who didn’t recognize the signs. Retrospect is 20/20 as they say.
At least one of us didn’t shoot the other. As I said, neither one of us were mad at the other, just disappointed to the point where one of us - my ex-wife - felt she had to change the course of our marriage by ending it. While it was a disappointment and shock to me, I understood, and respected her for taking that first momentous step. Lois was a strong woman and had the wisdom and grit to end the marriage when she did. I still admire her for that. Left entirely to myself, I might have muddled along in an unsatisfactory marriage forever. As I said, and sadly like many men, I sometimes just don’t notice what I ought to.
Some people believe a divorce taints you forever, but I don’t buy into that. Using the automobile metaphor once more, sometimes you just have to sell the old car and move on. That may sound a lot more callous than I mean it to be, but I think you can understand the point I’m trying to get across here.
Lois and I went our separate ways then, but stayed in touch especially because of our two kids who were in college. We cooperated in providing enough financial aid to keep them from having a crippling load of debt when they graduated. I believe each of us were pleased with the lack of conflict and were able to remain good friends long after the marriage ended. She remarried a while later to a good man, but her husband died after a few years. Some kind of brain defect she said, and she herself died two years ago. We saw each other occasionally, and talked often. I still feel her absence, especially on our son’s birthday and the anniversary of his death a few years ago. I remarried too and these days try had to be sensitive to my wife’s emotional needs. Hopefully, I am, and will be successful.
A couple years after the divorce, I was talking with my older brother about it. He, by the way, was on his own fourth marriage, and I knew his previous divorces had been bitterly fought ones. When I told him what I’d done about the financial assets, he was appalled.
“My God, man!” He said. “You gave it all to her?”
“Yep, every damned bit.” I said.
“Do you realize what you’ve done?” he had wailed. “You gave away the store with your divorce! How could you do that? You just don’t realize what the hell you did.”
I asked my brother then how much his last divorce had cost him.
“Somewhere around $500,000.” He said. “plus, I’m still paying alimony.”
My brother had a lot more assets than me, so it’s all relative I suppose. He had asked me,
“So what did your divorce end up actually costing?”
“An even $600.” I said. I tried hard to avoid a smug look but that was totally impossible.
*This story is true, and only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
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