It’s so strange ending a long-term (26+ years) poly relationship while still being in a long-term poly marriage (almost 32 years).
In some ways, it’s nothing like a divorce. Jed and I didn’t own property together, we didn’t have children together, we don’t need to sort out any finances, we didn’t entangle our lives in those hard-to-separate ways. Ending this doesn’t significantly impact my finances; I don’t need to think differently about housing or educating my kids. There won’t be any negotiations over custody or co-parenting. The kids know I broke up with ‘Uncle Jed,’ but nobody has to move house.
So it’s not like a divorce, clearly.
And yet it is like a divorce.
As an initial step, Jed and I were very publicly in a relationship, with many mutual friends and acquaintances, so it felt to me like we ought to inform them all (or as many as we could reach that way) with a public note, if only to avoid lots of awkward “So where’s Jed?” over the next few years.
And while I don’t think either one of us is likely to ask our friends to ‘choose sides’ (there aren’t really sides in this, just sadness), there has been a process of…differentiation? Separating out whom to talk to more frankly. Who are the people I’m going to irrationally vent to, when I’m tired of trying to be fair. Which of our mutual friends are more his friends, and during this post-break-up period when he’s asked for no contact, refraining from contacting them either, to avoid putting them in a difficult position.
There’s all the second-guessing too, and the regrets, the questions of whether we could have fixed things if we’d started sooner, tried harder, spent more time together in person, spoke more frankly….gah. It’s maybe useless thinking these things, but I’m a pretty analytical person and seem unable to avoid the thinking, so I guess I just keep moving through the questions and hope they ease up over time. Maybe I’ll exhaust myself.
More than anything, grief for what’s been lost, and the uncertainty about where we go from here. Can we be friends again, once some time has passed? That’s all up in the air right now, and it’s all unsettling to the deep foundations of my life.
So it is like a divorce.
And yet, last week, when I was having a very bad time with it all, and just could not cope, I asked Kevin if he’d make me beef and potato curry, which is my favorite of Amma’s dishes. He said sure, then asked if I wanted him to just prep the onions and potatoes and beef for me, which is something he often does, because I like cooking and seasoning myself. But I had no heart for any of it that day, so I asked if he could just do it all. And he did, and it was delicious, and I gorged myself on it.
So it’s not like a divorce.
No conclusions here, just confusion.