GRACE AND GRAVITY

by Adrienne Benson

these women leap from the man’s memory into the present and, when they do, they drag the interior topography of the ex-husband’s emotional life out with them. They spread it carefully, like an old paper map, and then settle at the table between us. These ex-wives are a ghostly presence that fades in and out like breathing. I imagine they follow my conversation with this man who loved them once, whom they once loved back. 

The advice is to never talk about your exes on the first dates. Why drag them into what could be the beginning of a new, potentially long-term, relationship? Yet, as a fifty-four-year-old mom dating after my divorce, I’m reflexively drawn to the topic. There’s so much personal history and emotion underneath the subject that even stepping carefully around its edges is revealing. Sometimes I bring it up first; sometimes they do. It always starts innocuously, “How long have you been divorced?” It’s a standard question that never has a standard answer. Between separations and drawn-out negotiations, the real question isn’t how long ago the divorce became final, but rather: How long ago did the pain of it release its grip? This is where, like the insides of a delicate insect spliced and examined under a microscope, the biology of a man’s marriage and its aftermath is revealed. I calibrate the terseness in these men’s voices—if they are still too angry with their ex-wife, they are not ready to date; not ready to see a new woman as anything other than a version of her.

It seems like it’s always the wives who wanted the divorce. This observation is reflected in fact—American wives initiate seventy percent of divorces. In many cases, the husbands are shocked. They couldn’t see the problem; they never thought it was that bad; they would have hung in there and made it work. If the man’s pain is fresh, I can watch the bewilderment bloom again in his eyes. For these men, the ones who sit across from me nursing a beer, the ones I’ve exchanged flirty messages with before taking the plunge to meet them in person, the question about their divorce is an invitation to talk; a temptation they can’t resist. 

I was a wife. I initiated my divorce, and it stunned my husband. But by the time I said I wanted to leave the marriage, I’d grieved its death for years already. Saying the words aloud was the hardest part, breaking through the silence I’d nursed for so long—but once that was done, it was only a matter of watching the ashes settle around me. For my husband, though, my words were the detonation of a bomb that exploded his life in one swift, unexpected second and left him—at least for a time—with the same psychic wounds I see in these men. They are good men, kind ones, hardworking men who were true to their wives and, in their ways, tried hard to please them—just as my husband did. 

The wives, their invisible presence in between the man I’m with and me, breathe and shift in their seats. I’m deeply aware that I hear only one side of this marriage story. I don’t need to hear the other side, though. Not really. After all, I’ve lived it. The husbands talk about wives who didn’t work once the kids were born, who stopped responding to affection, or who grew angry or detached. No truly insurmountable problems. This oddly innocuous list is the same one my exhusband probably has about me. Some marriages fall apart for stark, clear-cut reasons like abuse or addiction. Most fall apart from neglect, from quiet resentment seeping in like carbon monoxide under the doorsills. Most marriages end quietly, not with a bang, but a silence. 

I used to have a standard line when a date asked me why I got divorced. For a while, it felt like the truth boiled down into a single sentence: “I felt like I couldn’t speak.” I said this to one man who carried his fresh separation carefully, like an egg. We were in a dim neighborhood bar, noisy with patrons escaping a wet, early winter evening. His face suddenly took on a haunted expression, and he said, “My wife said that to me, too.” And I suddenly feel sorry for him, because, like my ex-husband, he’s a good man. He tells me he worked weekends and evenings after his regular job for a solid year renovating their Victorian house, that he wanted to stay married, that he was the one who suggested counseling. She left anyway, he says. She left anyway. The anger that stains his words is understandable. He felt blindsided, he thought he was doing all the right things—supporting his family, sustaining his then-wife’s wish to stay home with their babies, helping her with bath times and diaper changes, and not complaining about the biweekly dinners with his in-laws. In his mind, he was a solid husband who, especially compared to his own father, went out of his way to help. I understand that what he’s saying is exactly what my ex-husband would say, and I know they are both right. And yet…and yet he and his ex-wife and me and my ex-husband still ended up seeing past each other somehow. We occupied the same space and breathed each other’s breaths in bed together every night. We discussed taxes and whether to spend any refund money on a new roof or a vacation. We walked together in a little family cluster through the zoo, and the park, and the museums. We looked perfect. We looked happy. I used to think the silence that birthed in my marriage was a sign that I had just picked the wrong man, that he was an ill-fitting partner. The right man for me, I thought, would help me find my tongue so the silence wouldn’t have space to grow. Since my divorce, since listening to all these other women’s husbands, I’ve realized how wrong that was of me, and I’ve come to see the stake in the heart of my marriage that I unknowingly placed. 

Back in the dim bar, the man I’m with orders us another beer, and I wonder if I should tell him that all of what he did was wonderful and good and yet it was never enough; never exactly right to give voice to a wife who, like me, cut out her own tongue. I look at him and realize he and I are sitting in an echo chamber of our own lives. I can tell him exactly about the silences that grew in their family home—just as they did in mine. I can describe the stalagmites and stalactites that pushed invisible from floor and ceiling and created barriers neither husband nor wife could see. They each sensed them, though, and they each began to tread more and more carefully around one another, avoiding the bruises of impact, the discomfort of confrontation. I could tell this man how I felt I could see my husband clearly. I could touch him. I could speak to him. He could touch me and speak back, but, increasingly, we were foreign to each other. I know he would relate.

I could describe to this man all the things he didn’t know; the things his ex never could explain to him—how she might have lain in bed next to him, listening to him snore, and how the knowledge that she’d trip over the pants he’d dropped on the floor for the eight thousandth time made a little fire inside her and, night after night as the tiny infractions he unknowingly made grew in number, the tiny fire did too. Eventually, it grew into a rage she shoved down inside herself during the day, but which flared up in those sleepless nights and tempted her to scream and push him out of bed, or get up, throw on a robe, slam the front door behind her, and walk until morning. But she never spoke it, and I never spoke it, either. 

I connect with men online that I like. I connect with ones who seem willing to commit, to try again. I trade a few messages, and by the time we meet in person, I already like them. Each time I meet a man, I want him to be the last one I date. Each time, as I listen to him talk, I want to take his side. I want to murmur how reasonable his expectations were, how heroically he acted in trying to keep his marriage together. My instinct, as his date, is to take his side, to imply it would be different with me; that he had a woman who didn’t understand him, didn’t take the time to see the positives he brought to the relationship. But I know that across town somewhere, my ex-husband sits with his new wife and when they started dating, they must have had this exact conversation. I don’t know what she chose to say to him about it. She’s an ex-wife, too, after all. I hope she remembers that silence can become a living thing in a woman’s throat. I hope she remembers that silence is a thing that stands between a couple, that it can grow in weight and size so that, over time, it becomes too big to even try to push aside. 

Silence in marriage is big and heavy and stifling. I don’t know why it’s mostly the wives who recognize the intractable nature of it first, or why they decide so much earlier it’s no longer worth trying to push aside. I do know now that, in my case, the silence grew from my own history of trying to please. I saw giving as an art, as a one-way road, or a toy train that chugs in circles over and over on its track so convincingly that you begin to think there’s no end and no beginning. I started my marriage with a desire to appease, to make things easy. I saw it as forever, and when little disagreements came up, I smiled and edged them aside. I didn’t stake myself or my opinions or my needs in the marriage as much as I learned to swallow them. Eventually, I said to myself in those early days. Eventually, it will come back to me. Instead, it all became a dark habit, a shroud of resentment I hid under and smiled through. Talking about myself and my needs became too hard—I was like an innocuous balloon filled with toxic air. Nobody—not even me—knew how dangerous my silence was until the balloon’s rubber casing snapped under the pressure and the toxins were released in a rush. 

I feel sad when I think about the hurt I inflicted on my ex-husband. I feel sad when I think about how my asking for a divorce stunned him and seemed out of the blue. I feel sorry that these kind and good and handsome and funny men were also left staggered by their ex-wives’ decision. But I’m not sorry I left my marriage, and I bet the other ex-wives aren’t either. I had to find my edges because, when I look back now, I clearly see that my ex-husband wasn’t married to me. He was betrothed to an illusion who didn’t know where she began or ended until the moment she exploded. 

I’m not jaded; I’m intent on falling in love again, and it’s likely it’ll be with someone else’s husband. I’m okay with that. I’ll pick someone whose ex-wife’s ghost has faded away, leaving him here at the bar with just me sitting next to him. We’ll look into each other’s eyes and recognize each other in a way we’ve never done with anyone before. He’ll know I’m real because I’ll tell him what I want. I’ll speak the truth about myself even when it’s ugly. This time, if I do marry again, I’ll watch the geology of us, I’ll re-sew my tongue. I’ll practice using it. I’ll stamp out or knock down any rocky growths that threaten to encroach upon the space between us. I won’t let the silence settle in but will reach through it. I’ll be braver this time. And, because we’ve each pulled ourselves out of broken pasts, we’ll know how to share a language, to teach each other what our words mean. 

I’ll touch his shoulder. Speak to me, I’ll say, and I’ll speak, too.

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Adrienne Benson is a DC native who grew up in Sub-Saharan Africa. She’s the author of the novel The Brightest Sun (Park Row Books). Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Foreign Service Journal, ADDitude Magazine, and several anthologies. She lives in Washington, DC, with her kids and her cats.