The DHX: The Doughtie Houses Exchange

By Katherine Shirek Doughtie

I think one of the most seering side-effects of divorce is how it affects all the relationships in your life, not just that between you and your ex. Mutual friends are forced to choose sides. People start projecting your divorce into their own lives and avoid both of you like the plague for fear it’s somehow contagious. For me, the most devestating loss was that of my ex-husband’s family, whom I love dearly.

Suddenly I was the outsider, the person shunned (or at least it felt like that). And its no joke that being the outcast is one of the worst feelings in the world. Those Amish have a really good point: people will conform to almost any set of behavioral laws in order to avoid that feeling of being shut out, banished, outside.

One of the great things about maintaining a civilized friendship with the other family is, of course, that the secondary and tertiary relationships no longer become collateral damage. If you and your ex and your respective partners are all still friendly, then the outlying circles can relax somewhat and not feel like they’re betraying either of you by staying friends with the other.

It’s still hard, though. Let’s not make any bones about how hard it is to do this. No matter how strenuously I try to ignore it, the fact is that the other family is an intact unit and I’m the outsider. What I realized, though, today, is that I think in this situation everyone feels like an outsider. Jill has said many times she feels like the outsider because she’s not a biological parent. G must feel like an outsider because he’s a man flanked by two women who have historically been just as chilly with each other as they’ve, at other times, been warm. And flanked not in a good, Big Love, kind of way. Flanked in a way that probably makes him feel like an alien just dropped down into an unfriendly, uncertain new planet.

I think everyone must feel awkward and outside of their comfort zone to some extent in a situation like this. In getting into a relationship, people are seeking a sense of safety and security and love; with blended families on social terms, everyone is constantly reminded that things do not always work out as planned, that we ebb and flow through relationship, that one woman’s happiness is, almost always, another woman’s tears. (Or, as my favorite phrase goes: No matter how hot you think he is, somewhere some other woman is sick to death of his shit.)

Extending the olive branch to the other woman, and/or accepting it, means you’re going to be confronting these uncomfortable places more often than if you just kept up your walls and stayed completely separate. It will be awkward. It will occasionally be painful. But, I’d suggest, that as much “outsidedness” that you feel, you will also be able to retain that much, if not more, “insidedness.” You will stay connected with friends and former relatives (if you so choose) much more easily. (And you have such a great excuse if you didn’t like them that much to begin with.) You will stay more inside your children’s lives. Separations will be fewer and less rigidly defined.

Doing the right thing isn’t always easy or joyful or soothing to the soul. But if you look at things backwards (”I have kept my connections” rather than “I am now outside this other family unit”) I think it’s a lot easier to greet these situations with openness, and a deep gratitude for the flexibility of the human heart.