When it was clear which way the marriage was headed, I was ready to tell my kids, then my family and then share some — not all — of the details with my friends.
There’s a fine art to telling people about your split, one most of us don’t know how to manage very well, just like we don’t know how to react to people who tell us that they’re divorcing, good intentions aside. “I’m sorry” doesn’t always work; neither does, “I never really liked him anyway” — and I’ve heard both.
While there may not be a perfect way to talk about it, after consulting with counselors on how to tell our boys, then 9 and 12, about our divorce as well as their teachers — whom we knew would see first-hand the fallout of our decision — I felt relatively confident. As for telling everyone else, there were plenty of self-help books available although I tended to follow my gut, which worked fine unless there was an extra glass of wine in it.
The one person I didn’t know how to tell was my boss. Actually, it wasn’t that I struggled with how to tell her — I didn’t even think I had to tell her.
That might have been a mistake.
In the months before and after my divorce, I was often distracted, weepy, and alternately depressed and relieved. In other words, I was a mess. How could that not impact my work?
Try as you might to hide things, someone’s going to notice, no matter how many times you slip into the bathroom for a cry break only to return to your desk with puffy red eyes accentuated by black mascara streaks. It wasn’t my best look.
When I finally told my boss that I was going through a divorce, she was empathetic — at first. But it’s not as if your marriage ends and you slip easily right back into your old life; you don’t have that life anymore!
As much as I could compartmentalize — work is work, private is private — a divorce is pretty devastating. The emotional toll takes a long time, not to mention all the time and energy needed for meetings with lawyers or mediators and shrinks, looking for a new place to live, and then packing up and moving. Plus the need to keep your kids’ life as normal as possible, a daunting task. And, time to grieve, even if you were the one to say the words, “I want a divorce,” as I did.
So, was I wrong to tell her?
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Vicki Larson contributes to Around the Watercooler at Mommy Tracked. She is a journalist and single mom who also writes at The OMG Chronicles.
