Random Texts from the Ex

I’ve heard people talk about receiving the ‘random text’ from an ex, or even someone you went on a date with once or twice and never heard from again.  I’ve also received random texts from the guy I went on a date once, who only text me on holidays at closing time at the bar. (I haven’t gotten one of those since I moved.)   I do think it’s amusing when you receive a random text, I mean completely random, not sent on a date with symbolic or historical meaning from the person in that past relationship.  Not sent because you were two freight ships passing by and looking the other way, not sent because he’s Facebook stalking me (I assume).  Completely random on a Friday night, without any meaning to me at least, not having spoken to each other in about 3 + years – just random.  So I will use this opportunity to tell you, my readers exactly what happened. J

I had just finished playing a co-ed softball game on Friday night, walking back to my car my phone text message alert goes off, I think it’s my boyfriend but no…it’s my ex-husband.  Out of the blue, completely random he sends me a text.  At first it made no sense to me since we haven’t spoken in 3+ years AND it wasn’t a symbolic or historic date in our past relationship.  Obviously something must have triggered a memory or triggered me to his memory, but something prompted him to send me a random text.  Seems even after all these years he still has no idea what the true reason for our divorce was or stemmed from.  I wasn’t about to respond back with the list of the series of events that led us down that path to remind him.  I wasn’t about to start hashing out the past.  It’s the past, I’ve moved on and he should too.

I can’t say I’ve ever written this way before about what happened to that relationship, other than I wasn’t number 1 as every wife thinks they will be once they put a ring on it.  I can’t say I’ve ever felt so angry before either, how this text made me so mad, mad at the fact that he hasn’t moved on and that he consumed a portion of my Friday night.  Then I laughed, I laughed pretty hard actually.  So I write, because now I feel better knowing that at least in the virtual world I have closure to what the dry ink says on paper.  A chunk of my life is gone, it’s in the past, it had its great times and it had its ending.  Knowing that in my current life, my happiness is what matters, my life is complete now and I’ve moved on and have grown up from the random texts (but they still make pretty good stories).

Surviving the Big D: Lesson’s Learned

Now that you’ve ‘survived’ here’s your “Lessons Learned” – it’s not easy and it’s another painful experience to go thru but you will survive – hey hey! It will also make you a wiser, stronger person in the long run.

**Disclosure: The following is an excerpt of my experience with my ex, my friends, my family as I went through the divorce.  This does not have any reflection on your current situation.

  

Do not expect:

The ex to be civil, easy to deal with, able to get things done.  Do not expect phone calls to be answered or returned, certified letters to be received/accepted either.  Sometimes the most important things are never on their priority list.

For your divorce do not go thru a Mediator – he or she will want you both to work it out yourself, this takes longer (took me almost 2 years).  Get a good lawyer, it will all pay out in the long run and there will be less frustration on getting things done on time since you have legal assistance (and the ultimate threat of ‘going to court’).

Make sure you incorporate due dates into the Property Settlement (it took 5 years for him to refi because I neglected to add ‘due dates’…hence why you should not use a mediator, it also took a letter from a really good Lawyer to push the issue)

What to Expect:

1. Expect your family not to understand.  Expect them to offer unsolicited advice such as “Have a baby it will fix things”.  No it won’t, it would have made things a lot worse and more difficult. 
2. Expect friends to disappear and take sides.  The ones that stick around were you true friends in the long run.
3. Expect to be abandoned by your married with children friends.  You were once part of their network because you like many others were married and expecting to have children.  Now you are single and without children, they may not want to hang with you or be a part of your new life. **I do not know how it is when you have children, I can only speak from my experience. This hurts at first, but it is okay, you will again realize who your true friends are, you will also make new ones.
4. Expect to feel like an outcast for a little while.  I hid from co-workers and some friends for a very long time, I did not want them to know my business, what was going on.  You’ll feel like you’ve done something wrong and this is ok.  What you’ve done was try to make it work, it didn’t so you moved on to find your happiness.  Life is too short.
5. Expect to feel like this at holiday events – don’t worry you’ll get used to it and they’ll get over it.
6. Expect to be the poster child for a “Plan B”.  Expect your unhappily married friends to ask you ‘how did you do it?’ what process was needed, the pain, pitfalls, emotional stress, etc.  It’s okay, everyone needs support and its best to get it from those who already went through that experience. You may even get a referral to use their lawyer.
7. Expect changing your name back to be a PITA.  See what I wrote back in 2010 here.  Note to future self: if I cannot write my future next husband’s last name in one fluid motion (not breaking it up into multiple parts just to dot ‘i’s’) then I know it won’t work out.
8. Expect men from your past (who you may not have dated) to come out of the woodwork and profess their undying love for you.  Stalkers included.
9. Expect your parents, grandparents, other family members to take more time to get over it than you.  They may not understand the situation, they may ask you if the two of you still talk.  Be patient with them, they will eventually get over it and accept the new love in your life.
10. Expect to be bitter (for a while) until you seek your happiness/closure.  Question newly engaged couples, putting bets on relationships, telling ‘bachelor’ and ‘bachelorette’ parties to make sure ‘she doesn’t eat the cake’.  (Yes I still do this, I’m a true believer that eating the cake is evil)

and now that you’ve got your own place:

• Expect men from your past to come out of the woodwork now that you are single and own a place, especially those who are renting, living at home or have roommates.
• If you do not get the closure you are looking for – write him a letter.  I did, but I never sent it.

And most of all, when you are comfortable talking about it, when all the signatures are dry, due dates are met, papers are filed, tell your story to help others.  For me, its closure, its telling my side of the story to help myself, to get it off my chest, to help others who may be going thru this even if I went thru this 7 years ago.  Some would rather stay together and be miserable but life is too short to be anything but happy.

This ends my ‘Surviving the Big “D” Series’, a story of how I survived, what I experienced, learned, and am now talking about. I moved out of the apartment, bought a house (mortgage is cheaper than rent), bought the right car (I bought a 4 door pre-divorce which sooo wasn’t me), am in the best shape of my life, have my head screwed on straight and am back to doing what I love, what makes me happy and that includes spending time with my friends doing what we do best.

I hope this brings those who have gone thru a divorce and are currently going thru a divorce some comfort in knowing ‘you are not alone’, ‘you will get thru this’ and most importantly ‘you will have a happier life’.

To read the entire series visit the links on the right hand side under “Surviving the Big “D” Series”

The 'Cost' of Friendship

Throughout the years I’ve lost friends, or they wrote me off because our lives were not going in the same direction and vice versa.  Many of my good friends got married, had children and I too was married at one point without kids, now divorced without kids.  How were we going to get along? Very easy, how did we become friends in the first place?  Yes this is something the girls talk about when we’re together, the married, the single, the divorced, separated ones we talk about it.  We talk about the friends we have lost because they refuse to leave their town to go out and have a good time.  We talk about the friends we have lost because we’re the only ones not talking about our children at their bbq.  We talk about the friends we all can’t hang out with at the same time because someone doesn’t like the other one or whatever gripe it may be.  We talk about them because we can’t figure out why they wouldn’t want to go out with their friends.  But we get together to talk, to chat, to catch up.   Yet I find it funny that once their children get older, they all of a sudden have time for you, years have passed by and they think its okay now to catch up.  I’m still not sure how I feel about that because so much time has gone by and no effort was ever made on their part (no Christmas cards, no text conversations, no emails).  If they truly wanted to catch up, there’s 9 digits to dial, an email or a text to send, a halfway between houses to meet up where the husband watches the child for a few hours.  It all comes down to how important is that friendship.  I’m not saying that all parents are like this, just using it as an example.

I too have had a schedule full of softball games or other hobbies I am interested in, and I may live an hour from most of my friends, but at least I put it out there, even if that means meeting up after work.  For example, three weeks ago, because I know scheduling things with friends with children have to be done ahead of time, I text a good friend of mine about today for lunch.  I heard nothing back.  I’ve extended the same olive branch in a few Christmas cards to others with no response either.  Nice huh?  When do I stop putting in the effort?

I can say the same for some of my single/separated/divorced friends (with and without kids).  Try a month in advance, a few weeks to days in advance to plan something, come up with a date that’s set in stone, find a place to go, then day of I get the cancellation.  Yes this can happen to anyone and everyone who has heard all the excuses in the book.  Yes you can try to appease the situation and hope for next time, but when next time this happens again, then again and again ‘when do I stop putting in the effort?’ At what point do I end the friendship?

I’ve made efforts to drive to my friends’ houses, meet them halfway, but some of them (not all) won’t pay it back.  I shouldn’t always have to be driving to your house to go out or better yet, pick the place to go out by you when I don’t even live there.  I shouldn’t have to pick you up and drop you off when you don’t make the effort to do the same.  There are no excuses and I’ve realized that real friends compromise and make the effort no matter where you are in life, what state you’re in, how far you have to drive, even if it means rescheduling until you meet up.  Chances are if you get a ‘reschedule’ request, most of the time you end up going out anyway and making new friends (maybe next time I’ll send the ‘rescheduler’ a bill).

Party of 5

It’s amazing what can fit in my car for a weekend in AC, its also amazing how I can overpack. I’m usually so organized, picking outfits out that mix and match, along with shoes, but this time I brought way too much for the Annual Girls Weekend.  That’s just what is was and has been for the last 4 years, the annual girls trip for married, single, divorced, separated ladies.  Cheap therapy with your gal pals that is not limited to dropping a few $20s in a slot machine and sucking down a few cranberry and vodkas while discussions of children, hoo-hahs and men are not hushed.  Always that time of year to look forward to, I don’t know why any girls weekend or girls night is frowned upon.  Well, those of you that do, shame on you.  You have no idea what quality time with your gals away from your family or ‘kid free’ as an Angel put it, will do for your health.  It’s that break you look forward to, that reconnecting with your friends once a year to make new memories, play catch up, share photos, drink Starbucks and most of all have fun.  With that said on to our next adventure.

Within the first few minutes of dropping the bags in the room and venturing out to find food we were approached by a tall ‘Irish’ Bostonian (with an Irish accent) who couldn’t have been more than 25 and been my brother.  He of course, targeted me, the one who looks the most Irish out of the group.  Claiming he was with a group of 14 guys, all of which were ‘crashing in the room’ he tried desperately to find out where we were going that night.  The guy did not waste time, he even had a ‘young lad’ with him.  Being the smart ones we are, we deflected the question and he went on to ask if we were all single, trying to get our ‘lucky charms’.  Of course we answered honestly but he insisted he obtain one of our numbers.  So I not-so-kindly started to walk away and said “We’ll see you later” which in fact we did not.

We move on to bar hop, to celebrate a birthday, which if you are celebrating a birthday make sure the bartender knows.  You get better service that way, and if he’s cute he’ll pay attention.  The sports bar we ended up in had a huge cast of characters including firemen who didn’t have a calendar and Frodo who was their mascot.   Through a few winks and smiles, and men that seemed to only wink at our birthday girl and not have anything else to say we moved on to a late night fix of pizza, cheesesteaks and a grilled cheese.  Unfortunately this place was nothing like our infamous 4 am ‘noodle bar’ and Senor Pizza wasn’t back until noon.  How can you have pizza on the menu if the gourmet pizza chef only works half the day?

Finding a spot for five of us on the beach amongst families and those with children, away from anything that resembled the French guy in a speedo was a little difficult, but not unattainable.  We just had to pick the right spot, to be able to see everything and not offend anyone because we do not have a filter – there is no censor as to most adult conversations anywhere in public.  We had our SPF, our magazines, and in full agreement that the word ‘selfie’ was entirely worn out by this time.  We just continued to take silly beach ‘selfies’ of ourselves in between flipping the pages of SHAPE magazine.   Now the Beach Bar was a minor let down, our favorite bartenders no longer were there to serve one of us that killer drink.  We’ve had numerous occasions of ‘one woman down’ after drinking here.  Meaning at least one of us didn’t survive making it back out of the room at night after drinking one of their mixed drinks. I was one of them one year, and vowed never to do that again.  I missed an entire evening!  I’m still trying to understand the wardrobe malfunctions I saw, along with the ‘wolverine’ look alikes that paraded around holding their plastic fishbowl drinks.  How could their friends let them leave the house like that?  That’s where I come in with a camera..yup, smile, or don’t smile, you made the blog or at least your sneakers did.  

The guy I really wanted the picture of was wearing a suntan of a wife-beater with a sailor hat on.  Still wondering about that one – did he lose a bet?  We drank, we danced, we had fun, we even met a Peyton Manning look-alike who left his bachelor party drunk in the room to have a drink with adults.  The Angels thank you Mr. Best Man for the shot.  That was the highlight at the bar, unless you take the suggestion from the bartender to ‘not order the dirty banana’ while watching the ‘situation’ look alike get tossed out.  Who gets tossed from the beach bar at 3 in the afternoon?  I seem to have a lot of questions on this trip…but at least we’re not ‘babysitting’ like previous years.

After getting all prettied up and looking fabulous we head to dinner where I seem to be the only one taking notes watching another table which seems to be a bachelorette party (who would have guessed) actually hold up their food (with their fingers) to take pictures of it.  Chicken must be made differently in their town I guess.    We score a limo ride for the price of a taxi to Harrah’s Pool, we were riding in style - see saying its ‘someone’s birthday’ can get you places.  This is where it got interesting.  We got a discount at the door because we were all over 30, the club where I’ll never pay money to get into again because their DJ was horrible.  We also learned never give a camera to anyone under 25 to take a group picture, because he got down on one knee and shot up at us.  Dumbass.  No one got free drinks that night, not even the birthday girl.  But this is just the beginning as we all split up in groups to scour the place.  Three of us found observing a table of two guys, one wearing a suit all by themselves sharing bottle service to be interesting.  Think Chris Farley and Channing Tatum sharing a bottle service table by themselves.  Um hum.   In looking for the other Angels we ventured to the rooftop, which was a smoking lounge with couches and places to sit.  We sat for a while only to be approached by a guy who wanted us to guess his nationality.  Really? Is that all you got? He was nicely dressed I’ll give him that, and when he asked if he could sit down, I smack myself now for allowing it as he tried to sit on my lap.  His stay was short lived since he was spitting on me as he spoke about being an Egyptian and living in the palace.  See we think quick, we go with a plan, and when he asked us for our names it went like this: “Valerie, Jane, and I’m Married, thanks but we have to go find our friends.” Yup…at least that part was the truth. 

From bad pickup lines such as ‘would you dance with those Chippendale Dancers?’ to horrible music this night couldn’t have gotten any worse for our eyes and ears.  We encountered at the next bar a girl bent over puking at her table with her friend holding her hair back,  someone else with her boyfriend wearing prison stripes that if she didn’t pull her skirt down a bit more we would be able to tell what brand of panties she was or wasn’t wearing.  Apparently we missed the memo that prison stripes were the rage now since I could count on both hands the amount of people wearing them, and that includes the amount of men in Salmon colored shirts, oh and don’t forget the guy wearing the pink pants.  Whether they wore them well is a different story.  And would someone please tell these girls to keep their shoes on when they use the public restroom?  How gross!  I wonder if the girl we saw in the lobby, who looked like she was tossed out of her room with her bag did.  She was sitting on the floor in the middle of the lobby, on her phone when we heard in a half-crying-upset voice , “You left me in the bathroom for 3 hours!”  HAHA!  I was amazed how many people asked us if she was okay out of concern, my response, “She’s not in our party, not our problem”. She clearly had a phone so she could find her way home or better yet, call her parents to come get her.  I guess if you were hitting on my boyfriend I would have left you there too.

Amongst the ridiculous amount of bachelorette parties that we passed and our  ‘Congratulations, don’t let her eat the cake’ remarks to the bachelor parties (although no one seems to understand that, but we warned them) we had fun laughing at all those women dressed up to the nines who can’t walk in their shoes.  Yes we’re laughing at you because we know better.   We also laugh at men who sit together (and take pictures of them), men who sit together with a chair in between  them (huh?),  men who look like Hermie the Dentist that order Bloody Mary’s at 4 in the afternoon.  

Last but not least I’d like to give a shout out to the girl, who I mistakenly assumed was a teenage boy, for checking us out and to “Jimmie Walker” who kept calling us beautiful.  Thank you!

Every year it gets better, every year we have fun, there’s always a new story, someone else missing a spot with SPF,  a new ‘idiot’ to make the blog and the hope that one of the angels would get inked to join the rest of us.  An annual trip that we all look forward to that just might be split in seasons…look out winter and next summers ‘party’ is already planned!

I’m Still the Same Person (I just live in a different state)

My commute to and from work has given me a ton to think about. Not that its odd for me to be thinking while driving, since thinking always occurs anyway and the topics usually change.  But this topic…hmmmm..how can I say or not say it exactly.  So while I do not choose to offend anyone I’m sure I will anyway, but it’s the truth, and I’m willing to accept it if you are. 

                I’m the first to admit I’m bad at calling people back – yes actually calling people back.  I find that time is never enough and I don’t like to talk while driving either, since 90% of this summer I drove with the windows down.  (Yes I like the fresh hot humid air thank you.)  I can’t talk at work either, everyone can hear everyone else's conversations since the renovation and its horrible.  I could call at 12, or 12:30, or 1 pm.  I’m not sure how that would work either, depending on who I'm calling.  I’m not that bad at responding to emails or messages (I think).  I am not on FB 24/7 like some of you are, connected to the world 24/7 with the latest smart phone gadget ( I don’t want to be that accessible and exploit my life).  My real friends know how to get in touch with me and know what I’m up to.  I can’t access FB at work (not that I would choose to anyway) and I’m not about to run home, log on and see a repeat of what people post everyday.  I don’t care if you took little Johnny to the park (again).  I really don’t, and I wouldn’t dare post where I’m at on a Friday night in hopes that all 200+ friends of mine might see it to come join me.  Heck no!  It’s a virtual friendship network and any true friend, again, I’m repeating here, really knows how to get me. 

                While I’m apologizing, I’ll tread on this plank that I’ve never tread on before (in the virtual world).  I’ve lost friends, a ton of friends over the years.  Most of which dump me because I don’t have any kids, I’m looked at differently because I’m divorced, no kids.  Yeah and?  I’m still the same person as I was before, what’s the difference?  I admit over the years even when I was married I turned down bar-be-que and party invites for stupid reasons, partly because the ex worked a lot, the drive there, and because we might have had other plans.  I would have went alone, in fact I should have.  I regret that now, but even if I don’t make your party and I try to meet up with you over the years, at least get back to me (answer an email, a voicemail) and set a date.  I’m sorry I don’t have kids, that going to ‘bring your own kid’ parties are frustrating because I can’t fit in with the ‘mommy’ conversations.  What would I say anyway “Hi, I’m single, dating and I’m having a great time.”

                I’m an hour away from my friends or my friends that choose to disown me, I was always a distance from them no matter where I’ve lived.  But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t meet up halfway somewhere.  Hey, we’re all busy, technology makes us busy (if we let it), and so busy that we spend 2 minutes uploading a photo to FB when those 2 minutes could have been spent trying to make plans with friends you haven’t seen in a while.