The ex-husband.
I’m going to a concert with my ex-husband in the fall.
We were supposed to go last fall, but we weren’t really talking then, and definitely not spending time together—not by our own choice, but because the man I was with wasn’t okay with it. I’d met the man at a strange point in my life; separated for nearly two years from my ex-husband, yet unable to file the papers and move out until I found stable income, which my freelance career was not providing during a pandemic. It was either live with my ex-husband in our guest room, or move back in with my parents in Florida. I chose the former, naturally, given my ex-husband and I had already been living together as friends for so long, and we didn’t have bad blood. We never had, really. Our split happened because our brains caught up with our bodies. Bravely, nervously, we had admitted to each other we’d always been more friends than lovers. Our marriage was open at that point (an attempt at filling the gaps in a relationship structure that wasn’t quite right for us) and we’d both fallen in love with other people—but halfway through the pandemic, those relationships ended, and we didn’t come back together. You know you don’t want something anymore when you have the opportunity for it everyday and don’t take it.
It started easily enough for us, transitioning to friendship—we’d already been there for years unknowingly. But eventually, it became hard, being stuck in a pandemic with a former partner; hard for each of us to move forward, hard to explain to romantic interests that we were no longer together but still best friends, hard to process the inevitable grief of our loss individually. We processed our ending together. And I was grateful for that, and grateful I could stay for the stability, but in time, I felt trapped. As did he. We were annoyed with each other, no longer playing our spousal roles but still having to navigate life as domestic partners in some ways, sharing a bathroom and a kitchen and couch and a history we had built for a decade.
The man came along, and promised me a lot of things very quickly. I fell hard and fast. I was tired of trying to find a way out on my own. I was depressed, confused, scared, looking for what I’d lost, but greater. I thought I’d found it. So I did a crazy thing, and I listened to the man, instead of my gut, and I paid a heavy price for it. The forfeiting of a decade-long friendship with my ex, on top of a near-constant cycle of psychological and emotional abuse by the man that, nearly a year after leaving, I am still struggling to work through.
It’s better, I think now actually, that my ex-husband and I go to the concert this year. Our favorite band has a new album out, and we’re both finally living new lives in new apartments in new cities and states. We’ve had the space to process on our own, to explore aspects of ourselves we never had the chance to before. We’re different now, in many ways. And that feels good. But we grew up together, and there’s a deep knowing between us that remains. A certainty that this person will always see you and have your back, no matter what form your connection takes, and no matter who you become.
Being close friends with an ex-spouse is an unlikely thing, but if I’ve learned nothing else from my divorce, it’s that life, and love, and our connections with others—none of these are easily quantified and defined. Maybe instead of trying to force ourselves into boxes, we could simply let it all be what it is.