I'm somewhat resentful and frustrated by aspects of my parents' marriage and divorce but that hasn't blinded me to the lessons to be learned.

I've learned from my parents' marriage not to let a few rocky patches turn into decades of dissatisfaction. Their betrayals of each other — big and small — and their unhappiness across the years show how easily people can get stuck in terribly unhealthy relationships. So with Rob, I've delved into couples therapy. And if that doesn't work, I'm not going to stay put forever.

I've also learned — and this is a big life lesson — how to muster feelings of compassion toward very difficult people. I can't forgive my father for his betrayals, or forget how he could make his kids feel like unwanted nuisances. But as his Alzheimer's disease rapidly progresses and he becomes further forgetful and confused — and, ironically but most helpfully, increasingly nice and gentle — I can let my resentment go and help him. He didn't take care of me so well, but now the roles have reversed, I don't need to repay his unkindness.

In all the crap life throws at us, divorce and disease are up there among the worst. But it is short-sighted to dwell on their difficult aspects only. Lessons to be learned, silver lining, lemonade from lemon, "challenges" — call them what you will — I'm not letting anything get the best of me.

Though...I'm on duty with my dad for the next few days, so let's just wait and see what I have to say after that.

I've blogged about contemplating separation from Rob, but barely discussed how I recently became a child of divorce. After 37 years of marriage, my parents split when a marathon argument revealed the details of my fathers' many affairs...the longest and most significant of which was with my best friend's mother. (What a jerk, right?)

My mother's decision to leave my father did not rock my world at first. I had felt, for many years, she owed it to herself and her kids to get out from under his cloud of darkness. The illogical behavior and unreasonable mood swings grew worse over time. Finally, she was taking action.

The tragedy is this: months after their split, my father's crazy behavior was diagnosed as early-stage Alzheimer's disease.

And just a year later, the disease has ravaged his intellectual capacity and ability to communicate. This once angry man is now a gentle giant in need of my care.

I'll never fault my mother for leaving. But the timing of Dad's diagnosis weighs heavily on her, as if she should have known and stayed to care for him. (Traditionalists might point to marriage vows and agree.)

But I can't spend time helping my mom feel better about herself. My siblings and I have more pressing concerns. My dad, the man who put the anguish and anxiety in my childhood and who betrayed my entire family, now like a child, is a serious responsibility.

When her marriage started to falter, Kara, a 35-year-old Bostonian, hoped her in-laws would provide the glue that might hold everything together. While they had fought the intercultural relationship at the beginning (Kara is of European descent and grew up in the Midwest, and they are Lebanese Christian), marriage changed everything.

“They were totally accepting once we married,” she says.

And they didn’t believe in divorce.

“When I didn’t want my marriage to end,” she says, “I knew my in-laws would be helpful in trying to preserve it.”

Despite their help, Kara and her husband eventually parted. Because of the family culture, and its views on divorce, she knew she would lose contact with most of them forever.

She would especially miss her nieces and nephews — in Lebanon and in the States — and asked her husband to tell them she loved them.

“I knew it would be like I had never been there, part of the family,” she says. “But I had.”

Perhaps that’s what I was feeling up in my husband’s old bedroom last Christmas. Reeling from my father-in-law’s comment about my family and -- by extension -- me, I vowed never to return and, without really thinking, picked up a pencil from the floor and scratched my initials on the soft underside of the desk as if to indicate “I was here.”

It was out of fear of losing the connection she had with her in-laws and their world that Dani, also a 35-year-old Bostonian, stayed in her relationship for too long.

“I used to talk on the phone to [her husband’s] mom, who was so different than me,” she says. “She grew up on a reservation, and I loved the connection to the culture, the people, the geography that I had through her.”

Dani also worried Walter’s family would think poorly of her, because Walter had left his life out West to move to the Northeast to be with her.

Just how central a role do in-laws play in some women’s decisions to stay or go? For 27-year-old Nancy from Ontario, Canada, it couldn’t be simpler. “I considered leaving both of my husbands because of their mothers, quite frankly,” she said.

Indeed, a nasty in-law can be a catalyst for departure. “My current husband is a dream, but if his mother opens her mouth one more time I swear I will walk out until she is dead, and then return after the funeral like it was all an unpleasant dream,” she says.

“I wish I was joking.”

To give up on Mr. Right because of his mother would be a tragedy. On the other hand, three husbands whose mothers drive her crazy? That’s at least bad luck.

Tracy, a 34-year-old Midwesterner, suspects that a man who can’t keep his mother at bay — and out of the most important moments in their lives — might not be worth the trouble.

Her doubts about her husband started just before the birth of their first child.

“There was no way in God’s green Earth that I was going to allow his mom into the delivery room. He assured me he would tell her.”

But he didn’t, and his mother, who had made the long-distance trip just for the occasion, had other ideas.

“You’re going to have to let go of that modesty,” her mother-in-law harped early in Tracy’s labor.

In the end, Tracy had a nurse announce that all guests must leave the room.

Situation resolved.

“But now his mother reminds me of the abrupt realization I had that my husband wasn’t going to stand up for me,” she says, “even when it was incredibly important.”

The feelings about her mother-in-law persisted, and Tracy and her husband are pursuing marriage counseling to help them work through everything.

Last, Part III – Inlaws and Keeping a Marriage Together

Last Christmas, I hid for a few moments of solitude in my husband’s boyhood bedroom, as my in-laws flitted about below, making dinner, greeting guests. Though I had been contemplating a split from my husband, Rob, for months, I was along for the holiday as a favor to him, a good-faith effort that I was committed to getting through our rough patch.

Frustrated with the decision I had made, and feeling trapped in family festivities I didn’t want to be part of, I sat down on the faded rug in his room, leaned back against a small painted desk, and cried.

Voices wafted up from below and I heard my father-in-law say “Now that’s a family with problems.”

He was talking about my family.

My parents had recently divorced and within a few months my mother had remarried and moved far away. I felt his judgment not only on them but on me, as unbeknownst to him, I was thinking of leaving my husband just as my mother had.

I cried harder.

From worrying about what they think of us, to wishing them out of our lives, to not wanting to say good-bye to them, in-laws can loom large in our thoughts as we contemplate separation or divorce.

It stands to reason, since many of us work so hard to fit into our in-laws’ family (or at least make the relationship work on a practical level), that extricating ourselves is not easy.

In Part II – Inlaws and the Decision to Go

The Foils (I first introduced them in "Meet the Foils") recently visited the city for the weekend, two of their four kids in tow.

The Foils are a lovely couple, and they have achieved everything Rob and I cannot — the gaggle of happy and healthy children, the strong family bond, and the clear mission to ride the ups and downs in their marriage, come what may. I can't really relate to all that togetherness, and it gives me serious doubts about my marriage.

Rob and I took charge of the kids Saturday while their parents attended a wedding. We went to the zoo, indulged in ice cream, rode the train (to kids from the country, subways are wondrous), and enjoyed a festive Mexican dinner. An incredible day.

I expect the kids talked about their city adventures during the entire seven-hour ride home with their parents.

Of course, kids must feel safe and secure to enjoy themselves in new territory. That's not easy when you're not their parents. So it's all the more precious that Rob and I pulled that off together. But I still don't want to have kids with him.

I'm in my mid-30s with a bit of time to spare, so perhaps I will be a mother in the next chapter of my life?

Or so I've been hoping. Yesterday a friend in the 30th week of her second pregnancy said she must endure more monitoring and tests this time around because she is considered by the medical establishment to be of "Advanced Maternal Age." What? I guess sooner than later, I need to move on. 


I went to New York for a little fun with an old friend this weekend. Left alone, Rob went on a drinking binge and played violent video games through the night. I came home to find him exhausted, ill, and depressed. This is not a new thing.

It takes a couple of days for him to physically recuperate and he feels down for a good week. He tells me he feels terribly guilty and sorry, that he doesn't want to do this to himself anymore. Clearly he wants my comfort. For the first few years, I complied.

Once he did this the night before an important morning meeting at work, when we were to leave on an international flight later that day. He was still drunk and playing when I found him that morning, eyes red and swollen from peering at the screen. Scary.

About six months ago I came home from an evening out with friends to find the apartment door chained against my entrance. After no response to my calls, I broke in to find him with some sort of communications headgear on, yelling to his platoon-mates in real time as battle waged on screen. What?

We've read books and consulted therapists. He has worked to otherwise channel his anxieties at my absence. I'm reassuring before I go out for a night or away for a couple of days, and supportive and careful with him as he recuperates. He has cleared the hard dive of games and imposed drinking limits on himself, but only to re-purchase more violent games and binge once again.

My patience has limits. I can no longer be the one to comfort him when he acts out in response to my independence within the marriage. I'm curious about other people's take on this dynamic and, short of leaving, how else I might deal with it.

Soon after my parents' recent divorce, my father was diagnosed with rapidly progressing Alzheimer's Disease. My brother, an alcoholic, took on power of attorney and health care agency for our ailing father, and guilted me into agreeing to madcap schemes for his care. Though I had already written the mean old man out of my life for neglecting and hating me as a child, there is no one else to help (mother is happily married elsewhere), and so I took a bit of responsibility, embroiling myself in a disastrous mess. The dysfunction is off the charts.

Through it all, Rob has listened carefully, offered sane advice, and accompanied me on difficult visits to my father.

So despite the lack of romance, attraction, or even sex, I can't say our relationship is without incredible benefits.

However, by now I've bucked up enough to deal with my father and brother without collapsing at every new turn. Last year I didn't dare give up on my marriage because I needed Rob's support elsewhere in my life. (Writing that, I realize I'm a bit of a user.) Now that I don't need him, and there's nothing else keeping us together, a new unraveling has begun.

This is getting hard. When you know you want to leave — indeed, are trolling for apartments on craigslist — spending time as a couple with extended family members is unbearable.

Rob and I haven't told anyone in our families about our troubles, and we haven't called off our standing weekly dinner with some of our closer family members. This is a gathering we host, so to call it off, we'd need a good explanation. Like the truth. Until we can bring ourselves to be honest with everyone, we entertain as if nothing were amiss.

At last week's dinner, our typical good-spirited attempt at cooperation completely broke down. As family members sat contentedly in the living room, sipping wine and enjoying appetizers, we were seething at each other over the pot roast in the kitchen, screaming in whisper.

Okay, we've all been there, secretly fighting with our mate behind closed doors but in front of our guests acting as if the world couldn't be more right.

But during this argument, something shifted. This time I didn't care about appearances. This time, I could have cared less if anyone heard. Maybe I even raised my voice a bit so they could.

It was if my subconscious were surfacing, compelling me toward honesty. Maybe the pressure of lying is getting too much? Maybe it's time to spill the beans?

I read Lori Gottlieb's buzz-worthy Atlantic Monthly article "Marry Him!" with a sinking heart. Her thesis that older singletons hoping for motherhood should settle for Mr. Good Enough seems dangerous.

Yes, it's silly to wait for an ideal Mr. Right who doesn't exist. Yes, you and your child will have the immeasurable benefit of a participating father. Yes, you get a co-manager in the maintenance of your home and lifestyle. But you must be sure the price at which you procured these things for yourself was right. And you have to be certain you are capable of living with your decision.

Worse than remaining partnerless — and now I'm talking as someone who did what Ms. Gottlieb suggests and regrets it — you could find yourself spending days, months, years in secret agony wondering, is my husband indeed Good Enough or not? Do I ignore the needs he cannot meet, perhaps forgoing them for the rest of my life? Do I just need to focus on settling my mind as I did my life? Or perhaps, am I worth a bit more than I bargained for?

To anyone thinking of settling, I'd say be sure you can live without the things you bartered away in exchange for the security, motherhood, or whatever it is you settled for. Of course, women considering settling are likely not surfing the blogs at First Wives World. But perhaps some women who have settled, and who are contemplating reversing that course, are.