The Other Side of the Fence

I would complain if not for the fact that divorce has become my cause; much like someone who must deal with a personal illness may take up a cause for cancer or heart disease.

When a parent has lost a child to a drunk driver and they become active in MADD.

For me, divorce and I have literally been siblings in constant rivalry since I was eleven years old. We've been forced together on a very long, tumultuous path where we've tussled, pulled each other's hair and tripped one another up along the way, only for the two of us to finally come to a fork in the road.

Now I have to make a choice of whether I will continue to fight with divorce or finally win.

I've decided upon the latter, and I'm going to help others win, too.

Now, don't misconstrue that this means winning at the expensive of an ex-spouse, that's not what I mean by winning. There are no winners in divorce between former partners and certainly not for the kids who find themselves innocently involved.

Rather, I look to rewrite everything we've come to expect in terms of divorce; even marriage for that matter, to somehow put a stop to divorce being victorious over one out of every two marriages.

I just haven't figured out the how, yet.

At least I know the why as I try to get the after-effects of my own divorce straight, keep a healthy emotional balance, and do what is right, especially with kids involved.

A member of my divorce support group once gave the advice, as I shared my more recent struggles to keep a healthy balance, that when it comes to kids in a divorce you have to treat it like a business. That the former spouses are business partners, nothing more. As business partners your goal is to make the business productive and successful, that being the kids.

Makes sense and I can appreciate this analogy but it also makes everything cold.

It coats a beautiful wedding day in ice.

It makes the miracle of not one but two births mechanical.

It makes every word ever spoken between partners with love, devotion, and sincerity seem like the same long-winded words being spoken in a business meeting that has dragged on for an hour too long.

After a less-than-savory exchange with my ex-spouse a couple of weeks ago, that included the always tumultuous and much dreaded chatter over child-support, I found myself desperate to figure out what would make this easier. (Besides the snarky obvious) How does one make divorce easier, how to make child-support less of a battlefield?

I turned back to emailed conversations with John Logan, CEO and Chairman of, Wedlock, and mulled over my idea for legislation geared towards mandatory divorce insurance.

Is this the only way to make divorce, and such touchy subjects as child-support, easier?

Or is the answer to be found in our being far more proactive? Where a stark warning tag comes along with the engagement ring that lists the sad percentages for divorce and the names of local divorce attorneys?

That a marriage license becomes akin to that of a driver's license with so many hours of schooling required and so many hours behind the wheel, or in the case of marriage, so many therapy hours beforehand?

The only thing I know with definite certainty, besides the fact I loathe everything that is divorce, is that I preferred the other side of the fence, the married side; at least that side was a far more fun topic to write.

The mother of two munchkins, Bethany J. Royer is an independent contractor and writer currently studying psychology with Florida Institute of Technology. She is actively seeking a publisher for her first completed novel while working on a memoir about her personal trials and tribulations with divorce. She blogs prolifically at motherofthemunchkins.blogspot.com and can be reached at themotherofthemunchkins@yahoo.com.