The past two years have been pretty life-altering. After 15 years of marriage, the wife and I decided to end it. I won’t go into the grisly details, but if 18 months of divorce proceedings is any indication, it wasn’t exactly fun times in happy land. Thought it says on the final paperwork that we have joint custody of our kids, they’re with me most of the time, which is what they wanted.<\/p>\n
Hmm…it occurs to me that I should have a name for the ex. Nothing cute readily springs to mind, at least nothing that would be very kind, but I’ll let you know when something comes up. For now, “The Ex” should pretty much sum it up.<\/p>\n
The Ex moved an hour away about a year ago. She wanted to live near her parents. To say it’s put a strain on the whole joint custody thing is a bit of a understatement. But as the months go by things get easier as routine so delicately sets in. And if you’re keeping up on the timeline, that means that we were together under the same roof for over a year after<\/em> we decided to split. Yeah. Good times had by all.<\/p>\n Now while it would be far too easy to have this as the dumping ground for all my post-marital angst, I’m going to do my best not to do so. For one thing, no one wants to read that shit. Well, I’m sure there are some, but they need a hobby. Secondly, I have a written journal for that shit. Venting is all well and good, but some things do not need to see the internet. At least that’s my opinion. Countless others obviously disagree by posting absolutely godawful videos, images and words that would make Satan toss his cookies. Thirdly, there’s a good chance my now-teenage children would read it. And they really don’t need to see it. Besides, if I put that much effort into biting my tongue when they’re within earshot, why would I possibly subject them to a format that can be re-read ad nauseum<\/em>.<\/p>\n For the time being, I’m devoting my energies into learning how to be single again. Married life, which as part of the divorce statistics I can really claim no expertise, translates to compromise. And when you’ve been married for a decade and a half and suddenly find yourself single, it means having the freedom to no longer compromise. Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful. But it can also be downright terrifying. I’m guessing the feeling is very similar to how inmates feel after being released. But at least they have a parole officer who can guide them in the right direction.<\/p>\n Good lord — how long did it take for me to equate marriage to imprisonment? Like, two minutes?<\/p>\n Oh, and before I forget: If you should ever find yourself looking down the barrel of divorce, do yourself a huge favor and thoroughly check out the background of any potential attorneys you want to hire. I thought I’d covered my bases pretty well. Unfortunately, my choice ended up getting disbarred for embezzling money from his clients. Had I looked a bit closer, I may have chosen a different lawyer. Live and learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The past two years have been pretty life-altering. After 15 years of marriage, the wife and I decided to end it. I won’t go into the grisly details, but if 18 months of divorce proceedings is any indication, it wasn’t exactly fun times in happy land. Thought it says on the final paperwork that we have joint custody of our …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/smirkingcynic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/smirkingcynic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/smirkingcynic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/smirkingcynic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/smirkingcynic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/smirkingcynic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15,"href":"http:\/\/smirkingcynic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/smirkingcynic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/smirkingcynic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/smirkingcynic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}