Life After Wife
How I Got My Groove Back When the World Was Already Planning My Funeral
Last week I celebrated my 59th birthday.
And the first six months of my life as a single, middle-aged woman.
Social commentary and statistics do not speak kindly to either of these benchmarks.
Older women are often written off as invisible, fragile, or despicable (witness the comments on my previous essay, in which I reflect on my own internal wicked witch). The National Center for Family and Marriage Research calls divorce in the second half of life — a “grim” predicament that sends most women straight into depression and financial ruin.
Nevertheless the number of grey divorces is rising, and most of them are initiated by women. I’ve yet to meet one who says she regrets her decision to leave a loveless marriage. In fact, for a lot of women, and for me, life after wife is a liberating dance in comfortable shoes and a kick-ass skirt.
Sure, there are moments of loneliness and worry (just as there were when I was with *Paul). But far more often what I notice is a new sense of confidence, competence, and general delight in my life. Forming new habits is a slow and circuitous journey, but here are five new things that have helped me get my groove back despite the skeptics catcalling from the gallery.
- I’ve stopped saying the words “my husband”.
Why did I ever think possessing another human being and being possessed was a good idea? Apparently, cisgender millennials are increasingly taking their cue from the LGBT community and calling their spouses “partner” to signify their commitment to a more egalitarian marital union. But the word “ex-partner” doesn’t roll off my tongue any better than “ex-husband,” or even just “ex.” I don’t want to cross Paul* out with an “ex.” He’s an individual with a name and a story and a future just like me. But he’s not mine anymore, and I’m not his.
I’m no longer yearning to be completed by a better half. Finally, I can look in the mirror and say truthfully, “I am enough.” This one individual woman with all her vulnerabilities and possibilities, desires and determination, questions and quirks — she’s what I’ve got to work with for the rest of my life. And, you know what, she’s got game!
2. I’m owning my freedom and flexibility while it lasts.
After 30 years of care-taking — raising kids, running a household, leading a professional work team, and “subbing in” when siblings or neighbors or friends needed a hand — It is simply delicious to get out of bed when I want to, cook only for myself, eat when I want to, and do what I want to, without accommodating anyone else’s schedule, physical needs, or social preferences.
When I share this confession with other women my age, I feel a tinge of guilt. I know it’s a privilege many of my contemporaries, especially women, don’t have. But those same women — the ones taking care of their aging mothers, flailing husbands, and struggling adult children — gush with envy and understanding. Constant care-taking exerts a mental load that can wither you into submission and dread. I don’t begrudge or judge any woman who has truly chosen in sickness and in health ’til death do us part or caring for a loved one, but even medical professionals recognize that caregivers need to take care of themselves first. That survival instinct is what’s behind the ladies’ lunch, the girls’ night out, and the women’s weekend retreat. If we’re honest with ourselves, we just need to get away. And for now I have.
3. I’m staying fit and enjoying my body.
On my birthday, I challenged myself to swim 59 laps at my local YMCA instead of my usual mile (which is 36 laps). Swimming laps is how I often start my day, and this birthday tradition of swimming as many laps as I am old is a way of reminding myself that getting older doesn’t have to feel like drowning. Aging is a feat of strength, endurance, and giving yourself a good laugh. Being in the water has always felt like a second skin to me. Cruising down the final length at 61 minutes, I felt my breath moving through my muscles, powering each stroke and kick, my body a joyful, animal playing in the waves. I plan to keep doing this as long as I can (or at least until I hit 75, when my swimming buddy says I can cut back to 75 lengths instead of laps).
4. I’m feeling ALL my feelings.
Perhaps more than anything else, the secret to happy separation seems to be individuation, a process of writing one’s own script for life, which might be different from the script you got from your family or your culture or the one that propped up your marriage. I invested decades in an emotional “we,” parsing every argument and stalemate to analyze who was right or were we both wrong? Asking, do I have to change so I don’t feel this way anymore? Would I feel differently if he changed? After many rounds of couples therapy, self-help books, date nights, and relationship classes, I willed myself to simply be numb and dumb. I didn’t feel anything anymore, not anger, not sadness, not fear, and not love. I didn’t feel myself.
Now, with no us to fix, and only me to be accountable for my feelings, I’m paying close attention to the emotions bubbling up from moment to moment. I cry sometimes for all the years I missed, for my adult kids who are wrestling with our separation on their own terms, and for all the hardships in life that make anyone sad. But more often, without any provocation, I feel genuinely light and happy. I watch the sun coming up outside my apartment window and think, it’s going to be a good morning. I finish my workday and pat myself on the back: you’re earning your own pay check and making your own way! I join my friends on the dance floor and let myself move with the music. I buy myself flowers, sunflowers and pussy willows and eucalyptus — signs of the spring and summer ahead that I am leaning into with gusto.
5. I’m treasuring my friends .
After my swim, I went out for a bountiful breakfast with a friend. Over eggs Benedict and cranberry mimosas, I told her how it felt to finally be loving myself, and she told me about her last few Bumble dates. They weren’t good. Finally, she wondered aloud, “You were married a long time. Do you think love is a verb or a feeling? Is it just about doing things with and for someone, or do you have to feel some deep emotion and excitement?”
My answer to that question is YES.
But more importantly, friendship — a mutual and voluntary doing things with and for — is the ocean of generosity that keeps me afloat. For now, I’m not looking for romance or that one person whose constant company steers the tiller of my life. Instead, I’m grateful for the curiosity, empathy, and support of friends near and far who listen deeply, laugh often, and approach love as a jigsaw puzzle they’ll keep working on and maybe solve, eventually.
Treasuring my friends, making time for them, reaching out to them, being honest and vulnerable with them has changed how I think about myself and about relationships. My friend Jenny says, “the trick to finding yourself is to hang on to who you really are and let go so that you can change all at the same time.” That’s a fair assessment of this project I call Life After Wife.
Embracing Individuality, freedom, fitness, feelings, and friendship is how I take one step at a time toward a more mindful and fulfilling future. “Love . . . begins with our love of self,” says Deborah Adele. “Not a love that is ego-centric, but a love that is forgiving and lenient; a love that sees the humor in the imperfections and accepts the fullness of the human expression. Only when we find this love for all the parts of ourselves can we begin to express fully the love that wells up inside of us for others.”
