Tag Archives: divorce

THIS is What Life is All About

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Experiencing the wonder of the world with someone you love.

Last night, I went to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. While I’ll likely use another blog post to debate the wisdom of stretching Tolkien’s classic into a three-part movie, I cannot criticize the movie makers for the breathtaking scenery throughout the movie. Filmed in New Zealand, this — and the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy — showcases some of the most stunning backcountry locations in the world.

There’s a scene in the movie when Thorin’s Company (13 dwarves, a hobbit, and a wizard) are traveling along a ridge in the mountains, high above the clouds. The scene, obviously shot from a helicopter, reminded me of two other scenes, one from a movie and the other from real life:

  • One of the closing scenes in the 1965 classic, The Sound of Music, when the Von Trapp Family is escaping the Nazis by hiking through the alps.
  • A particular moment on my July 2012 helicopter flight over the Cascade Mountains, when I crossed a specific rocky ridge surrounded by low clouds within sight of Mt. St. Helens.

That entire July flight was amazing, but it was this rocky ridge that popped into my mind while watching The Hobbit in a crowded Florida movie theater:

Cascades Ridge

And it brought me to tears. Even as I write this, perched on a stool at the breakfast bar in my mother’s kitchen on a Thursday morning before dawn, I’m all teary-eyed thinking about the amazing things I see and experience almost every day of my life — usually alone.

As I blogged after that flight:

I also felt more than a bit of sadness. There’s no way I can describe the amazing beauty of the remote wilderness that was around me for more than half of that flight. And yet there I was, enjoying it alone, unable to share it with anyone. Although I think my soon-to-be ex-husband would have enjoyed the flight, he was not with me and never would be again. I felt a surge of loneliness that I’ve never felt before. It ached to experience such an incredible flight alone, unable to share it firsthand with someone else who might appreciate it as much as I did.

Over time, I’ve come to learn that it’s more important to experience life than to be a slave to the material things we think we need to survive. I’m not independently wealthy — I do have to work for a living. But I’ve learned to work hard and smart and to live somewhat frugally so my money goes farther. By staying out of debt — and I’ll be completely debt-free (at least for a while) when my helicopter’s final loan payment is made next week — I’m not stressed about having to generate enough income to make credit card and loan payments. I can take time off to enjoy the experiences that make life worth living. In a way, I’m in a sort of semi-retirement where I mix work with play and really enjoy life.

Unfortunately, I’m one of the few people I know who are able to do this.

Reflection Canyon
Another example of the great places I fly for work; this shot was captured by my helicopter’s “nose cam” during a photo flight at Lake Powell.

My choice of career has also enabled me to enjoy amazing life experiences while working. I can’t begin to list the incredible places my work has taken me — or the incredible things I’ve seen from the air and on the ground while simply doing my job. That dawn flight across the Cascades is just an example — I did it for work, to reposition the helicopter for a required maintenance. In other words, it was part of my job. Not only did it entail a pair of amazing flights on consecutive days, but it also included a day spent wandering around Portland, a drive along the coast, a great dinner of oyster stew and fried oysters in an oceanside restaurant, a walk along the beach with my dog, a night in a beachfront motel, a beautiful foggy dawn, breakfast in a historic hotel, and a scenic drive back to the Portland area. What some people might do on a pair of days off, I was able to do as part of my work. How great is that?

What’s not so great is doing it alone.

Although my soon-to-be ex-husband promised me he’d join me on the road during my annual migration to points north — and I worked hard for years to build a business capable of supporting both of us — he backed out with excuses about needing to save more for retirement. I always hoped he’d see the light — and I was somewhat patiently waiting for him to do so right up to the end. The end came, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog, when he replaced me with another woman — someone who apparently doesn’t mind watching him be a slave to his material possessions and debt, enjoying life on weekends and during two weeks of paid vacation time each year.

It’s a shame, really. While I feel that life is all about experiences, those experiences are somehow better when they’re shared with someone else. For nearly 29 years, some (but not all) of my best life experiences were spent with the same man who I really thought appreciated them as much as I did: A road trip down the Pacific Coast from Seattle to San Francisco. A motorcycle camping trip down Skyline Drive and the Shenandoah Parkway and back up the Atlantic Coast’s barrier islands. A dash across a mosquito-infested field in the Everglades to a rental car, followed by an intense swatting session. A sunset soak in abandoned hot springs along the Rio Grande, watching wild horses graze in Mexico. A jet ski journey up the Colorado River from Lake Havasu to Laughlin. A river rafting trip down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. A horseback ride on the beach in Costa Rica. A hike up a slot canyon with friends on the shore of Lake Powell. Time trials at a Bridgehampton race track in my Toyota MR-2. A day spent exploring the ruins of Chichen Itza. A sunrise at Montauk Point, followed by a nap in each others arms on a flat rock overlooking the Sound. An afternoon spent snorkeling in Cozumel. A view of the broken clouds of a marine layer moving in beneath us during a helicopter flight down the coast of Oregon. Long walks on beaches in too many places to count.

These are all memories I cherished, experiences somehow made better at the time because I shared them with someone I loved. Someone I could talk to about them long afterward. Someone who could browse photo albums with me and reminisce about the scenes they captured. Someone who could say, “Remember when we…” and I could remember with him.

That’s all gone now. Yes, I still have those memories, but they’re no longer shared, no longer cherished. Instead, they’re a reminder of how things change, how people grow apart without even knowing it, how love dies, and how easy it is for some people to replace a “life partner.”

I’ll have new experiences and build new memories of the amazing places I go and things I see and do in the years to come. Maybe I’ll have someone to share them with. Maybe we’ll stay together for a long time — long enough for the word “forever” to have meaning to me again.

But I’m certainly not going to wait for that someone to continue enjoying what’s important to me in life: experiencing the wonder of the world. The world is out there now and it’s not waiting either.

Hiking the Horse Trails

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Bringing back — and adding — memories.

The house I own with my soon-to-be ex-husband in Wickenburg, AZ sits on 2-1/2 acres of horse property on the very edge of town. The area is hilly and the house, which sits on the side of a hill, has plenty of privacy — indeed, there’s no real reason to close curtains or blinds. Beyond our neighbor’s 10-acre lot are more rolling hills in state and BLM (Bureau of Land Management) public land. The land is crisscrossed with dozens of horse trails that are in regular use during winter months by Rancho de los Caballeros wranglers and trail riders, as well as local horse owners.

When we first moved there, I distinctly remember hitting the trails with my dog, Spot. We hiked up the road to the trailhead just beyond my neighbor’s driveway, followed the trail to the fence, opened the gate, and slipped through. Then we hiked through the wash and up and down the hillsides past tall saguaro cacti and other desert vegetation planted and cared for by Mother Nature.

I remember climbing a trail out of the wash to a hilltop where a tall saguaro stood. Sometime in the distant past, its top had been broken off, possibly from strong wind or a lightning strike, about 3 to 4 feet off the ground. Three big cactus arms had grown up just below the break point, rising another 15 to 20 feet into the air. To me, the cactus looked like a hand reaching up with a thumb and two fingers pointing up to the sky. I have a picture of me there with my dog — I suppose my soon-to-be ex-husband must have taken it — with that big cactus behind us.

At that point, I got an idea of how vast the desert was and how many miles of trails there were to cover. And that’s when I realized I needed a horse.

The Horse Trails

I’d been riding with a friend on the other side of town, on the horse trails she rode from her house. The horse I always rode was a retired barrel racer named Misty. Misty had navicular disease, a malady caused by the constant pounding on her front feet as she raced. My friend eased her pain before and during rides with a dose of Phenylbutazone (“bute”). She was fine for trail riding and seemed to love getting out. I bought her from my friend for $500.

(I should mention here that within a year, I took Misty to a Scottsdale equine surgeon for a Palmar Digital Neurectomy, which pretty much ended the pain. Unfortunately, a few years later she suffered a bowed tendon in one front leg and an abscess in the opposite front foot. The combination of these two problems at the same time eventually led to her death. I replaced her with a beautiful paint horse named Cherokee.)

We set up a horse corral with a shade on our property and brought Misty over. We had a shed built to store hay and other feed and her saddle and other tack. And I started riding on those trails.

My soon-to-be ex-husband also wanted to ride. For a while, we took turns taking Misty out. But I wanted us to be able to ride together, so I bought him a horse, too. His name was Jake and he was a retired ranch horse. We added a fenced in area down in the wash below our house so the two horses would have more room to move around. During the rainy season, we’d bring them back up to the original corral just in case heavy rain caused the wash to flood.

In the years that followed, we’d take Misty and Jake out to explore the miles of trails, saddling up at the house and then just riding out. When my dog, Spot, died and was subsequently replaced with a Border Collie/Australian Shepherd mix named Jack, we’d all go out together, with Jack and sometimes even my neighbor’s dogs in tow.

We’d do this a few times a week just about every week. In the warm months, we’d do it early in the morning, before it got hot out. In the cooler months, we do it in the afternoon. My soon-to-be ex-husband said our life was like “living on vacation.” I couldn’t argue.

We did this for years and learned just about every trail within 5 air miles of the house.

Golf Course TrailWe gave the trails names. The Golf Course Trail was the one that went from the gate to Rancho de los Caballeros’ golf course. Deer Valley Trail was the one that rode through a valley where we almost always saw deer on a morning ride. Danny’s Trail was the one our neighbor, Danny, showed us on the only time he went riding with us. The Ridge Ride was the one that stretched along a high ridge overlooking the golf course and points north on one side and the big, empty desert and points south on the other side. Yucca Valley was the strip of sandy wash filled with an unusually large number of yucca plants.

Places had names, too. The Ball Field, for example, was a flat area of mostly cleared desert roughly the shape of a baseball diamond. For a week or two in the spring, it would be carpeted with California poppies.

We’d plan a ride using these names — for example, “let’s take the Golf Course Trail to Yucca Valley and up to the Ridge Ride and come back through the Ball Field.” We both knew exactly where we were going to go.

The horses knew the trails, too. Every time we came to an intersection, they’d try to get us to turn in the direction of home. But if we wanted to keep riding out, we’d stubbornly pull them the other way. At the next intersection, the same thing would happen.

We’d gauge the length of our rides by the number of gates we had to pass through. An average ride was two gates: the first gate and a second one about two trail miles away. A long ride was three gates.

As the years went by, however, we began riding less and less frequently. I developed an interest in flying and began building a business around it. My soon-to-be ex-husband took a job in Phoenix and, after buying a condo down there, was gone most of the week. Jake eventually got too old to ride, got sick, and had to be put down. With me gone all summer and my soon-to-be ex gone all week, it seemed silly to replace him. So we found a home for Cherokee (Misty’s replacement), gave away the remaining horse feed, and closed up the tack shed.

In all, we’d been horse owners for about 10 years.

Hiking the Horse Trails

Although our horses were gone, the horse trails remained, maintained by the wranglers at Rancho de los Caballeros. I just didn’t get any opportunity to see them.

Time passed. I went away this past summer and lost 45 pounds. Hiking became an important part of my life, a way to get exercise and enjoy the outdoors with my dog and friends. I began hiking regularly with a Meetup group (and others). When the hiking host of the Meetup group mentioned that he wanted to do a hike in Wickenburg, I volunteered to lead a hike on the horse trails behind my house.

Of course, to do that, I had to make sure I remembered the horse trails. And I had to make sure I could put together an interesting route 3 to 4 miles in length, something we could cover at a slow to medium pace in a few hours. That means I had to hike the trails myself in advance.

I called my friend, Alta, and invited her to join me on a hike. We went out at 9 AM on a Thursday morning — just me, Alta, and Penny the Tiny Dog. I wanted to take the group through the slot canyon accessible from about a half mile down the wash from our house, so that’s the way we went. I soon realized that a half mile in sandy wash followed by a mile snaking up a narrow, rocky canyon didn’t make for a good hike. So after climbing out of the canyon, I extended the hike to familiarize myself with the trails I had once known so well.

And that’s when the memories started kicking in. You see, the only times I’d been on all those trails were with my horse and usually with my soon-to-be ex-husband and long-gone dog. Although the memories of all those trail rides were good ones, they were tainted by the events of the past six months — namely, my husband’s lies and betrayals. I remembered the rides, I remembered the great times we’d had out there on horseback. But none of that jived with the way my husband had discarded me, after 29 years together, for a woman he’d met only weeks before on the Internet. All those good memories became painful. More than a few times, hiking with Alta that day, I found myself in tears.

Vulture PeakAs we reached the highest point on the Ridge Ride trail and stopped to look out over the desert, I remembered toasting the new year with my husband and friends on New Year’s Day rides. I began to regret volunteering to take my new friends on these trails. Would I be able to keep it together that day? Would the pain I felt so intensely be noticed by my companions?

I didn’t have much time to think about it. The day after our trial hike, I was caught up in more divorce bullshit. First, returning the truck that my soon-to-be ex had assured me several times I’d be able to keep in the settlement. Then, the next day, going to our Phoenix condo to beg him to allow me to take home my things so I could pack them. Later the same day, watching him retrieve random belongings from our Wickenburg house during an “inspection” he’d demanded by using lies to convince the court that his possessions were in danger of damage or theft. By the woman he’d lived with for 29 years. He apparently trusted me even less than I now trusted him. The difference: I’d done nothing to earn that mistrust. He’d been lying to me for months, if not years.

More pain, more tears.

I spent Sunday hiking with my Meetup friends again and flying Santa Claus to an appearance at Deer Valley Airport Restaurant. It did a world of good to help keep my mind off my divorce ordeal.

On Sunday, the hike host reminded me that he needed a description and photos of the hike. When I emailed the description and two photos to him on Monday, he said he’d try to get them online quickly. They appeared Tuesday and folks started signing up for the hike.

In the end, on Sunday morning, we had just eight hikers and seven (!) dogs.

Atheist HikersI led the group out onto the trail, feeling a weird mix of emotions. But as we hiked and as I talked about the things we were seeing, the ghosts from the past stayed away. Although I thought about those long ago horseback rides, I was more focused on sharing the trails — my trails — with my friends, pointing out plants and rocks and other items of interest. I realized, as we made the final ascent to the highest point on the Ridge Ride trail, that bringing my friends along helped me make new memories of the trails, fresh memories that helped the old ones — and the pain they conjured — fade away.

Cactus PortraitThe only time I got teary-eyed is when I stopped at that “three-finger cactus” and asked one of my friends to take a picture of me with my dog. Even then, I don’t think anyone noticed the tears behind my sunglasses.

My companions enjoyed the hike. It was the right difficulty (relatively easy) and right length (4-1/2 miles) for the group. And the pot luck lunch at my house afterward really completed the day.

But what I got out of the hike is something far more valuable than a day out with friends: I got a chance to reclaim the horse trails with new memories.

What Is Truth?

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I thought I knew, but now I’m not so sure.

One of the things I value most in life is truth.

Maybe I’m old fashioned. Maybe I’m idealistic. Maybe I’m a dreamer.

Maybe I’m just an idiot.

But throughout my life — especially as I got older and began understanding the world around me — truth became a guiding principle. When I ask a question, I expect an honest reply. When I watch the news, I expect to see and hear what really happened. When I look at a photograph, I expect it to be an accurate representation of what was in front of the camera lens when the image was captured.

To me, it’s impossible to function effectively and make the best decisions unless the information you have is the truth.

Lies waste time. They build distrust. They lead to bad decisions. They destroy relationships.

And there’s a funny thing about lies: they’re usually discovered and the liar is revealed as a liar.

Lying is stupid.

Truth in Today’s World

Sadly, truth seems to have little value in today’s world. The most recent political campaigns really brought that home. There were numerous advertisements that misrepresented the facts to the point of actually spreading lies. The most notorious examples were Mitt Romney’s Jeep ads which played in Ohio and elsewhere, and claimed that Chrysler was sending Jeep manufacturing jobs to China (among other things). This had already been proven false after Romney made the same claim in a speech just days before. But they aired the ad anyway, purposely spreading lies.

And no, Romney wasn’t the only liar out there this past campaign season. There were plenty of other liars on all points of the political spectrum. It got so bad that numerous fact-checker websites and news site features popped up to share the burden with established sites such as Politifact.com.

But this post isn’t about politics. It’s about truth. And lies.

The public these days seems to have little regard for the truth. They hear various versions of something that interests them. Rather than take the time or effort to determine which is most accurate, they choose the story that best matches what they want to hear — the version that supports their belief or their decision. Everything else is disregarded — either forgotten or categorized as untrue.

Anyone with an email inbox and a second cousin or uncle knows the kind of crap that floats around the Internet. Crazy stories, conspiracy theories, links to articles that anyone with a skeptical eye would cringe at. The problem is, that second cousin or uncle believes what he’s sent you is true. And he got it from someone else who also believes it. And so on and so on. It supports their beliefs or decisions and that’s all they really care about. They want you to know the “truth” so you can share their belief or decision.

As you might imagine, this drives me — a person who values real truth, no matter what it might lead to — bonkers. Life’s too short to waste it with lies. And some decisions are too important to make them based on lies.

Am I the only person to understand this?

Is it Okay to Lie?

In an effort to replace my soon-to-be ex-husband with a suitable partner, I’ve resorted to online dating services. (A big mistake; I’ll blog about it in detail when my experiment is over, hopefully soon.) The topic of truth vs. lies applies to these sites in a number of different ways.

When you sign up for these sites, they ask you a series of questions about yourself and your ideal mate. Some sites have very rudimentary questionnaires. Others have extremely lengthy questionnaires. Indeed, one of the sites I’ve tried offers more than 10,000 questions for you to answer.

One of the multiple choice questions on one of the sites went something like this:

Is it okay to lie?

• Yes.
• White lies are okay.
• Not usually.
• Never.

This question reminds me of the old puzzler, the Liar Paradox, which is sometimes expressed with the single statement, “This sentence is false.” Is it false? It can’t be true or false, hence the paradox.

Similarly, if a person responds that it’s Never okay to lie but he’s lying, how much else is a lie? But, as usual, I digress.

Side Note: My unwillingness to lie got me into serious trouble years ago at a family gathering. It’s a kind of funny story, so I’ll tell it here. I can use a good laugh. The trick is to tell it without names so I don’t get in trouble again. Here goes.

My soon-to-be ex-husband’s Brother was married to Wife. Wife absolutely hated Girlfriend who was the girlfriend of Brother’s Cousin. Got that? Two couples: Brother and Wife, Cousin and Girlfriend.

At a huge Thanksgiving dinner at our old house in New Jersey that Brother and Wife attended but Cousin and Girlfriend did not, Wife asked me, “Would you rather have Cousin and Girlfriend here than us?” Not knowing how to answer that loaded question without lying — because I honestly liked Cousin and Girlfriend much better — I simply didn’t answer. Wife exploded in anger. “You rather have them here than us?!”

Needless to say, things between me and Wife went downhill from there. No great loss, fortunately. I have no patience for that kind of petty bullshit.

I had a problem with this question. In general, I don’t believe in lying — and I don’t generally lie. When asked a question I’m not comfortable with being 100% truthful, I’ll avoid answering the question or I’ll dance around the truth or I’ll make factual statements that might not answer the question or I’ll answer part of the question that I have no problem with. In other words, I’ll do everything within my power to avoid lying.

But then I started thinking about white lies. To me, a white lie is something you tell to spare another person’s feelings. It’s not true, but it’s also not harmful.

Every man should know, for example, that the answer to his wife’s question, “Does this dress make me look fat?” is “No,” no matter what the truth is.

But even a white lie like that could cause harm. Suppose the wife is going to her 20th high school reunion. Suppose that throughout high school she was teased mercilessly about being overweight. She wants to look her best — indeed, it’s important to her that she look great. And suppose the dress doesn’t really make her look that good at all. Wouldn’t it be better for the husband to recommend another outfit or even suggest going shopping for one? Isn’t it better for his wife to make the decision for this important event based on factual information?

So what’s the answer to the dating site question above? I think I might have chosen “Not Usually” — and that’s because I wanted to be truthful with my answer. But, as you might expect, most of the “matches” for me that answered this question said “Never” — leading me to wonder how truthful they were being.

I’ll save my rant about honesty on dating sites for another post.

Lies and My Life

Because I don’t lie and I don’t believe in lying, when someone else lies, it really bothers me — probably a lot more than it bothers most people, given my earlier discussion about truth in today’s world. And when those lies are about me and they’re presented in a place where truth is vitally important — I’m shattered.

That’s what happened to me last week. Without getting so detailed that I get myself in trouble, I’ll just say that court-submitted documents accused me of performing several acts that I not only did not do, but I would never do. These documents also lied about the ownership of a specific asset that was mine.

Reading these documents was like being stabbed in the heart — especially when I considered where the lies had come from. Listening in on a phone call with the judge who might be making decisions regarding my financial future and hearing these same lies repeated was like getting that knife twisted. Someone was lying about me to a judge and I was unable to defend myself properly. To me, there’s nothing worse than being in this situation.

I realize that I’m not the only person on the planet to be a victim of lies submitted in court. It’s just nightmarish to find myself in this situation.

The FugitiveThink of all the movies you’ve ever seen, all the books you’ve ever read, all the news stories you’ve heard about, where the protagonist — a “good guy” — is victimized by lies told about him to make him seem, to everyone else, like a bad guy. You watch or read or hear what he’s going through and you squirm, feeling for him, rooting for him, glad that you’re not in his shoes.

Right now, I have a pretty good feeling of what it’s like to be in those shoes. And trust me: it sucks. There’s nothing worse than the thought that a decision about your future might be based on lies presented by other people who will benefit from your downfall. And that’s what I’m dealing with now.

After the phone call, I went to my regularly scheduled appointment with my grief therapist. And I spent the entire hour crying. There was simply nothing else I could do.

It wasn’t just the situation I was in — hopefully, the falsehood of the claims (established on Saturday) and my lawyers will be able to fix some of the damage done to my character. It was the simple fact that someone I used to trust had lied about me. Lied extensively. Lied cruelly and hurtfully. Lied for a selfish, hateful purpose.

As someone who doesn’t lie, it was hard for me to accept that this other person would — even though events of the past eight months have revealed more lies than I can count. It’s just so hard for me to accept.

Black and White

I’ll admit that one of my big problems with truth is that I’m always trying to categorize something as true or false. This caused a lot of trouble between me and my soon-to-be ex-husband throughout the later years of our relationship — and it continues to do so today.

You see, the problem is that he saw shades of gray where I saw black and white. He’d say that he couldn’t make a conclusion about something because there was no yes or no answer (shades of gray) and I’d clearly see a yes or a no answer (black and white).

Don’t get the idea that I never saw shades of gray — I certainly did in many instances and still do. But often, when I saw black and white, he saw shades of gray. That would cause arguments that often went unresolved. I couldn’t convince him of my point and he couldn’t convince me of his.

Sometimes, this would frustrate me to no end. I understand that not everyone sees things the same way. I understand that not everyone has the same knowledge or experience on which to base a conclusion. But in many of the instances where we argued, I simply could not understand why he couldn’t see the situation the same way I did. And near the end of our relationship, I began to suspect that he was arguing with me over it because he didn’t want to admit that I might be right. Or just for the sake of arguing.

(In the 20-20 vision of hindsight, this should have raised red flags with me. But I had too much invested emotionally in our relationship to admit that there was a problem. I thought he was an honest person. I didn’t realize that his personality would allow pride to trump truth.)

I saw my soon-to-be ex-husband on Saturday and was able, for the first time since July, to speak to him privately. It was an eye-opening experience. Either he’s the best actor in the world and should be given an Oscar for his performance, or he is not the evil monster I thought he had become. I’m left confused, unsure of what is the truth. Is this black and white or gray? I don’t know.

Or is it a case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? A lot of friends and family members have been talking about this being “midlife crisis” and I think there’s a distinct possibility that some physiological factors — perhaps even andropause (discussed in this WebMD video) — may have triggered his seemingly irrational actions over the past year or so. I’ve certainly seen him present himself as two different people, depending on circumstances. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. These days, I just don’t know who I’m dealing with.

But to be fair to him — which many of my friends and family members will argue is a waste of my time — I’ve tried to think about some of the things that led to the downfall of our relationship. I’m not talking about how he ended it — that’s black and white to me. I’m talking about the points where we disagreed.

He said on Saturday, for example, that I wanted a business partner instead of a husband or lover. (I can’t remember his exact words, but I know he said “business partner.”) I never thought of our problems this way. I certainly wanted a loving husband: someone to do things with, cuddle with, make love with. Someone to plan and share a life with. And I think we did have that kind of relationship for most of our 29 years together. But I admit that I also hoped he could be part of my business life.

There were two reasons for this:

  • For the past 8 years or so, he’d been bouncing from one unsatisfying job to another, never really finding a job that was a good fit for him. Throughout that time, I offered him options to work with me part time in my business endeavors — real estate, FBO management, and helicopter charters — hoping it would help me grow the businesses enough to support both of us. But he never seemed interested in fully committing to the work I needed him to do. More often than not, he’d let me down and I’d give up. The last regular job he had before we split was making him absolutely miserable and I wanted so badly to help him — even going so far as to offer to relieve him of the debt he had from a property he’d bought that had gone underwater with the housing crisis. But he simply wouldn’t let me help.
  • Around the time we got married in 2006, he promised that he’d join me in my business when he turned 55. Since then, I’ve been planning and working hard to make this transition not only easy for him but financially feasible for both of us. Although he broke this promise — he turned 56 in May — I always had hope that he’d still fulfill it. I saw a great future for us, migrating north in the summer for work, goofing off wherever we wanted to for the rest of the year. A sort of semi-retirement. I thought we were on the same page with this goal. He never told me we weren’t. He only said he wasn’t ready “yet.”

I’m trying to think back on these things, trying hard to see them from his point of view. But it’s difficult, probably because he wasn’t honest with me when they happened. Was he just agreeing to things I suggested and pretending they weren’t a problem for him the same way we tell “white lies” to spare people’s feelings? I don’t know. I hope not. I value truth — I want my life partner to always be truthful to me, no matter how much it hurts. (“Yes, that dress makes you look fat.”)

But he waited until our relationship was over — and he’d replaced me with another woman — before telling me the truth in a long overdue conversation at the edge of a parking lot.

And that hurts.

It also makes me wonder just how many of those 29 years was spent living with lies.

Why did he keep putting off the conversation the marriage counsellor said we should have? Had he already planned his escape from me? That’s what I’m left wondering. Is he evil after all? What is the truth?

Twisting the Truth

But even the truth can be twisted into something that’s not quite true. Something black and white can be turned into something gray.

That’s what I’m facing now. Certain facts — truths — are being used as “evidence” of something that really didn’t happen as described. This is being done primarily by exaggerating the importance of these facts, blowing them out of proportion, and neglecting to present other facts that reveal their true significance.

Here’s a purely hypothetical example. Suppose you bought a small house as a rental property. You chose the building, you made the downpayment, you got the mortgage in your name, you were making all the payments. You were the property owner and solely financially responsible for it. Now suppose you needed to move some furniture and do some repair work. You ask a friend of yours for help and he says yes. You move the furniture together. He fixes a leaky faucet while you scrub the toilets. There’s no talk of payment for his services; he seems happy enough just to let you buy him lunch or spend the rest of the day doing something else with him. Meanwhile, throughout your friendship, he asks for similar favors to help him with things he needs done and you’re more than willing to help. This goes on occasionally over the course of a few years. Eventually, you get tired of being a landlord and sell the property at a profit.

Now, years later, imagine that friend stepping forward and saying, “Hey, you owe me a piece of that profit because I helped you manage the property and you never paid me.” He doesn’t mention any of the things you did to help him out over the years.

The truth is, he did help you with some of your management chores. The truth is, you didn’t pay him with cash for his time or efforts. But can he twist these truths to prove that he had a financial interest in the property? I guess he could try.

Is it right? Well, I could launch into yet another long discussion of right vs. wrong, but it would likely read very much like my truth vs. lies discussion here.

Everyone seems to have their own idea of what’s right and what’s wrong. Personal ethics apparently vary from one person to the next.

Even when someone knows deep down inside that a path he’s going down is morally or ethically wrong, he can convince himself that it’s justified, often by reminding himself of the truths that support his path. It’s easier to look at something with a sort of “tunnel vision” that only shows the facts you want to see than to see the big picture and all the facts and make an ethical conclusion.

It all depends on your conscience — and whether you have one.

Deep Thoughts Indeed

This blog has only a few categories or blog topics. “Deep Thoughts” is one of them. I created the topic to categorize posts that explored issues that were more philosophical than anything else. In this topic, you’ll find posts about politics and religion, as well as thoughts I have about life, relationships, injustices, emotions, communication, and, of course, divorce.

This is where I bare my soul to readers, where I let them into not just my life, but my head. This is where I share what I think and why I think it.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me about these things. All I expect is for readers who read these posts to think about what I’m saying. Maybe my point of view isn’t the same as yours, but maybe reading what I think can help you understand how others might think.

At the same time, I welcome non-abusive comments from readers. What you have to say about my blogs posts can help me better understand the way you and others think.

This discussion of truth was difficult for me to write — mostly because I had to draw on recent experiences to illustrate the points I was trying to make. Those recent experiences have been extremely painful to me. Every day brings more confusion, more disappointment, and often more pain.

Although I have such strong feelings for the idea of truth and want to see it throughout my world and life, I know that’s not much more than a pipe dream. Truth is hard to come by — which is what probably makes it so precious to me. Lies can and do hurt. And truth can be twisted so far that it could become a lie.

But is it too much to hope for truth and honor and ethics in our everyday life?

I hope not. Because when we get to the point where truth, honor, and ethics are no more than old-fashioned concepts defined in a dictionary, I don’t think life would be worth living.

Communication Breakdown, Part II

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How could he not understand?

I wrote a a post back in September about a breakdown in communication between two people who had been living together for a long time and the breakup and heartbreak it caused. Obviously, the story was not as hypothetical as it was written. Twenty nine years is a long time. I still can’t understand how he could throw it all away — especially when things were finally getting good again.

I think he tried to communicate with me today. How? Well, we had to swap trucks. Despite the fact that he told me I could keep his truck in the divorce settlement — both verbally and in writing — he changed his mind. I fetched the truck from Washington a while back. Although my lawyer offered him the keys, he ignored that and took his demand to the court. (I did mention that he had a problem with communication, no?) The result was a truck swap this afternoon. He got his Chevy back and I got my Ford back. Whatever.

I didn’t notice his attempt at communication until I got home. I was taking my things out of the truck and noticed some papers folded up under the center console. I opened them up and found an odd collection of email messages from me, as well as a tweet I wrote to @MikeTRose yesterday in response to one of his replies to me:

The emails may have been his attempt to explain why he hated me. That’s the way I saw it. But when I read the emails, I could see no reason to hate. All I could see was my attempt to communicate the level of frustration I was feeling from his actions. I loved him but he was driving me nuts.

It seems that every time I pointed out a problem with our relationship, he took it personally and just sulked about it. He kept all those old emails and printed them out and left them in my truck when we swapped trucks today. Who keeps emails from four years ago? Why the hell didn’t he just talk it out with me then? This is what I don’t understand.

We had such a freaking good life together — an enviable life. He was — note the use of past tense — a great partner. What the hell happened to him? When did he forget that life is for living?

For example, back in 2008, when I was doing helicopter tours at Lake Powell (making really good money, I might add), he scheduled a trip back to New York to visit his family. Not only did we have a dog back home that needed to be cared for, but his aged horse had become seriously ill. He expected me to drop everything and return early to watch the dog and care for the horse. My email response summarized why I thought he was being unreasonable. After all, couldn’t he have scheduled that trip for another time? I’d be home in a week or two anyway.

Is that worth hating me for? I don’t think so.

(He wound up leaving anyway. Our neighbor was present when the vet put his horse down. I came back from Lake Powell for a few days to take care of things at home. But I don’t get any credit for any of that.)

In another message, which also showed part of what I was replying to, we both lamented about feeling alone while I was away, working in Washington. Yet for years, he’d spent a full week (or more) every single month in New Jersey, leaving me in Arizona to care for the house, dog, horses, and chickens. Add that up and you get three months a year — about the same amount of time I spent in Washington that year. Later, he spent four days every week living in his condo in Phoenix — that’s more than half of his time — when I was home in Wickenburg. Yet back in 2010, he apparently expected me to sacrifice the business I was building to keep him company. I complained that I wasn’t interested in staying home to watch the animals and cook his meals, just to be rewarded with an evening of television every night.

Is that worth hating me for? I don’t think so.

The rest of the messages were in the same vein. I was working hard away from home, building my business — a business he promised to join me in. I spent a ton of money buying an RV that was big enough to house him, me, and our dog when he turned 55 (last year) and hit the road with me for half the year. I built up my cherry drying contracts and brainstormed for ways we could work together to make money. He even got his helicopter rating so he could ferry the aircraft while I drove the trailer when we were in transit.

But when the time came, he made excuses not to join me. I waited, hoping he’d change his mind. Instead, he waited for me to leave this summer, got a membership on Chemistry.com, and was sleeping with another woman a month later.

Yes, I trusted a man who let me down, cheated on me, and then lied to me. Yes, I’m a chump. Hell, I trusted him. Wouldn’t you trust someone you’d lived with for 29 years?

Is that worth hating me for? I don’t think so.

But what I still don’t understand is why he thinks he should hate me for wanting a better life for both of us. For working hard to make it happen.

And I can’t understand how he could give up on us — especially after asking me to see a marriage counsellor to help patch things up — when we were on the verge of getting everything right again. He finally had his dream job with travel for two of us and a work-from-home schedule. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel he’d been in with a long string of unsatisfying jobs. I could see blue skies and smooth air ahead.

But I guess he didn’t want the woman he’d spent more than half of his life with. The woman who’d taken care of him and made a home for him all those years. The woman who had introduced him to motorcycling, horseback riding, flying. The woman who shared her things with him — horses, trailers, jet skis. I guess it was time to dump the woman who spoke out when she wasn’t happy in favor of the first new woman who slept with him and agreed with everything he said.

Yes, baby. Whatever you want.

That’s not me. And the man who wants that is not a man I want to live with.

I just wish he’d been more of a man when he ended our relationship. A real man would have done it in person, before he started sleeping around. This man is a lying, cheating coward who can’t even talk to me, face to face, when he’s alone with me in person. Instead, he leaves old email messages hidden away in my truck for me to find and read when he’s not around.

And who hates me for reasons I still don’t understand.

What Happened to This Guy?

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Going through old papers, I find a reminder of the man I loved.

I’m clearing out old papers and stumbled upon this cutout card, made from a red and pink file folder. Here’s the outside, which was folded in half:

Card Outside

Inside looks like this:

Card Inside

In case you can’t read it, it says:

Hi Honey,

Not a bad cutout for a 42 year old. Maybe I should not mention my age because you are only 5 years behind. I wish we could be together on your birthday. I a sad because we are not.

Happy Birthday any way!

We have spent alot of years together. It is very strange to me not being together for such a long time and I miss you!

I hope you go out with Diane(a) for dinner. Don’t spend the whole day working. take some time off and have dinner or something. Maybe a horseback ride.

I have felt incomplete without my better half around. Enjoy your day! Keep up the good work. I miss you!

Love Mike

P.S. I have other birthday presents for you here. Look forward to them.

My birthday is at the end of June. He was 42 in 1998. That would make it right after we moved to our Wickenburg house. In those days, he telecommuted to a job in New Jersey and made a monthly week-long trip back there. He had an apartment in Totowa, NJ that he stayed in when he was there. Judging from what he’s written, he may have been away for longer than just the usual week. At that point, we’d been together for about 15 years.

Diana was a friend of mine who introduced me to horseback riding. I may have had my own horse by then, but I’m not sure. I probably still rode with Diana at her place.

What a sweet note.

I’m surprised that I didn’t cry when I found it or when I read it. I think it’s a sign that I’m getting over my loss.

I sure do miss the guy who sent me this. I wish he was still around.

Ironically, this was in a bundle of miscellaneous paperwork that the angry old man who took his place tied up with string and left on the floor in my office. I wonder if he would have thrown it away it if he’d seen it. I guess I should be glad it never made it to the hangar with so many other bundles and boxes of paper — if it had, it would have been destroyed forever by the flood that got the rest. I may never know what other remembrances were lost.