Will we always feel a connection to our partner even after the relationship ends bitterly?

           I looked across the table over the heads of the two lawyers.  Our eyes met and I felt a huge surge of love flowing in both directions and then a wave of despair rolled over me.  Wasn’t it only yesterday – 8 years ago is like yesterday when you are my age – when we looked across at each other in a very different setting with a huge surge of love.  I had just seen our wedding photos.  He had introduced them into evidence at the trial.  I did not want to cry here in front of him, the judge and the lawyers.  It was difficult to hold back the tears as my lawyer began to ask me the questions that are a prerequisite to the granting of a divorce.

            The love was still there and at that moment it felt as strong as it had on our wedding day.  Why hadn’t we – he and I – been able to build on that powerful feeling of love to create a fulfilling and lasting relationship?  I wanted to shout to the judge – stop we still love each other – we could still make a go of it.  It had to be a mistake if that feeling could last through all of the acrimony of the last two years.  What if we just changed a few things – then it would work.  I forgot.  We, or at least I, had already tried all of those things.  Then the reality set in.  It was over.  The feeling of despair swept over me like the force of a powerful wind.  I felt like I swayed from the power of that force.  I had to sit down for a moment.

            He had already moved onto another relationship.  It was eerily similar to what we had shared – at least outwardly.  When I heard this I felt a huge emptiness and I was angry with myself for having that feeling.  As if feelings can be bad!  But I was raised on that.  By this time I understood that we can’t control feelings only our response to them.  But of course that went out of my head in the power of the moment.  He was creep, a cad.  He had used me.  How could I be stupid enough to still have feelings for him?  Love – in whatever way shape or form is such a mystery. 

I wanted to reconnect even if just for a few moments after the judge announced that we were divorced.  We had actually connected briefly a little earlier.  I was sitting in a small conference room with my lawyer waiting for the trial to begin.  The door opened.  “Can I talk to you alone?” he asked but it was his eyes that pleaded with me to let him in.  This was probably just another con or so I thought.  I hadn’t seen him or spoken to him in over 6 months.  Any contact was too acrimonious so I stopped communicating.  I finally accepted that this marriage would never end in even a remotely amicable fashion.  So I was very surprised when he poked his head in the door.  I signaled to my lawyer that it was OK.  She left the room reluctantly. 

His voice and demeanor were so soft and loving that I couldn’t help responding.  It was such a complete contrast to the anger and animosity of our communications of the past two years.  He started talking to me about his new life and business.  I wondered to myself why I was listening.  What did I care about his new life and why would he think I would care?  Still I listened.  I found myself listening intently, asking questions, caring if he was happy.  He confided in me.  But I was better now at distinguishing between his lies and his truth.  I needed to engage my brain to remind me that no matter how I felt at this moment – this relationship was over – it was not good for me even though he was right now acting like the person I had fallen in love with.  He was at his best but, as in the past, circumstances would call up the worst in him.  That is not to say that was not true for me as well but only that this is my story to tell, not his.

Stress was his Achilles heel.  Stress brought out the worst in his personality as, I think, it does everyone.  Just like pain some people have a lower tolerance to stress.  For him stress was created by anything that didn’t go his way.  He couldn’t adapt.  That forced me to unconsciously work to create a world for him where everything went his way.  It was exhausting and I lost myself in the process.  It seems the more I compromised and the harder I tried the less he tried.  Could I have forced him to compromise more by being more unyielding myself or would it just have sped up the inevitable demise of the relationship?  The seeds of the end were planted at the very beginning.  Here we were at the legal end.  I so wanted it to be the emotional end as well.

He seemed anxious to return to his new relationship and busy life.  The new life that was so eerily similar to the life we had shared.  I suspect that helped him bury the pain if he felt any.  We sat and talked in that small conference room adjacent to the court room in that intimate way married people can and do.  It amazed me how easily we slipped back into that mode.  He asked about my children.  I asked about his.  We asked about each other’s parents.  We had a history of experiences and connections that was unique to the two of us.  We relived that connection if only for those few moments.  I knew that a part of him was trying to tap into that connection in order to get a good deal in the divorce but it still felt good to connect again.

After a few moments we had nothing else to say to each other.  He said what he really came to say – a dollar amount he wanted from me to settle the matter.  I nodded and said, “Let me talk to my lawyer.”  He tried to get me to agree without her but I resisted.  He silently left the room. As I waited for my lawyer to return I was struck by the irony of it all.  The most intimate relationship in the world was boiling down to a business decision about money.

As I testified he continued to look at me with that same loving look he had in the conference room.  I was frantically searching for some way to get through this time on the witness stand with some dignity.  Tears were welling up in my eyes.  “STOP,” I wanted to shout.  We can make it work.  We still love each other.  Didn’t our meeting in the small conference room prove that?

“Counsel if you present me with the divorce decree tomorrow I will sign it,” the judge pronounced.  “You are excused,” he said to me in the witness box.  The pronouncement felt like an execution – at least of the relationship.  We gathered up our papers and left the courtroom.   The bailiff locked the courtroom door behind us.  The closing of the door and the clicking of the lock resonated with me. It was like the door to our relationship was forever closed and locked but unfortunately not forgotten. 

He ran ahead and hurriedly got into the elevator alone.  He had many important things to get back to or at least that is the impression he wanted to give me.  I walked more slowly discussing and dissecting what had happened that day with my lawyer from a legal standpoint.  This settlement had come as a complete surprise to both of us.  The halls, along with my soul, echoed with emptiness as the bailiffs shooed away the last few occupants of the building.  I was alone when I left the courthouse.  This was it. This was the end to a beautiful beginning which had been so full of promise and love that even after all the intense animosity of the past years my composure was shattered thinking of it.  I kept telling myself how stupid I was to feel this way but that didn’t help me regain my composure or feel less pain.  Change is so much our enemy and so much our friend.

         I called him on his cell phone after I left the courthouse.  He answered.  We talked more about his life.  He talked of including me in his new life with an offer to play some part in one of his new business ventures.  I think we both knew that would never happen but we discussed it anyway.  We talked for 30 minutes or so and I hung up only when I reached my friend’s house where I was to have dinner.  He called me back about an hour later while I was still at my friend’s house.  I didn’t answer the phone.  My friends wouldn’t understand.  He didn’t leave a message. 

        My friends wanted to go out and celebrate the granting of the divorce.  I couldn’t stop crying.  You see he and I had loved each other very much once at least I thought we did. We were happy together for a number of years.  In spite of the ordeal of the last few years I was sad over the loss of that love. 

I am not bitter.  I think you can only be bitter if you blame someone other than yourself for a situation.  I have acquired at least enough maturity and experience to realize that I am responsible for the present situation.  I made the choices that brought me here.  I alone am to blame, not him.  He could only be who he is.  I could not expect him to be otherwise.  Sure he could have changed if he wanted to but he didn’t want to.  His number one priority was getting what he wanted and I was a means to that end.  When I stopped serving that purpose the relationship was over.

“Maybe we can celebrate another day” I said to my friends.  I stayed home that evening and cried.  There seems to be something so wrong about celebrating the end of a beautiful beginning. I couldn’t do that.  I haven’t spoken to for heard from Warren since the day the divorce was granted.  I am thankful for that.