Dhamma in the Time of Divorce
It seems we at the BSV are a pretty
monogamous crowd, or to put it another way, I’ve not heard of all that many
divorces amongst BSV members in my 20 years of attending. As some/ nearly all
of you/a couple of you, would know, I’m
in the midst of just that…a divorce. I’m extremely fortunate in that the divorce is more than simply amicable, we
are and plan to remain close friends. My new partner Selina and I have invited
Seesee to be an Aunty to the children we are planning, that is how close my
about to be ex-wife and I are. Still there is much that I am learning about
myself and my Dhamma practice and it is this that I wish to offer. I’m not
offering a guideline on Buddhist divorce, merely my thoughts on how it is
affecting my practice of the Dhamma.
This is, in its own way, a deeply curious
time for me. On one hand I have the ending of a marriage, the beginning of a
friendship and the start of a relationship. I know that I glow these days and
the source of that glow is never far
away. I also weep in a way that I never have before. Plans are being
made, yet dreams are dying..
We are taught Forgiveness, Loving-kindness
and Patience and its importance in practicing them in daily life. Still it is
amazing to see couples who, like Seesee and myself, were married for a very
long time, suddenly treating each other appallingly simply because the
relationship has failed. Almost everyday we see in the media of a murder that
happened because a relationship failed. We practice Forgiveness throughout the
marriage/relationship and when it ends, the very first thing we discard is that
Forgiveness.
I am finding that despite the fact that
Seesee and I are friends that there is, at times, an amazing amount of hurt due
to the ending of the marriage. I have and occasionally still do, weep deeply
over the death of something that mattered everything to me. There is the perception of something
happening that shouldn’t be. Seesee & I shouldn’t have ended, yet we
did. Issues should have been resolved, yet they were not. This is where
Forgiveness walks up and asks if he can help. There is a lot of anger in me
with the label “Seesee’s family” attached. Yet what point is it to continue
having anger towards people I’m never going to see again? Yet it is still
there.
There is a necessity to forgive both Seesee and myself. It would be too
easy to blame the ending of the marriage on Seesee, yet this would be to engage
in an unfairness. I played my part in the ending, there is no one person in the
house I live in who did not play a part in the ending. Selina did not play the
role that some of you have thought she did, falling in love with Selina was the
sign that the marriage was no longer troubled, it was over. Selina was a sign,
not a cause. She is no Scarlet Woman,
despite what some are assuming, Selina did not cause the ending of the
marriage, she did not seek to destroy something. Nor is she a middle aged infatuation. Falling in love with
Selina was a sign that whatever efforts that logic was trying to make to ensure
the marriage survived, my emotional needs had already decided that they wanted
out. So I need to forgive myself and Seesee for not being able to resolve small
problems when they were just that, small
problems. There was a need to forgive a perception of failure on my part. I had
tried desperately to make it work and it
had ended. There is a deep need not to beat someone to death emotionally be
that person either Seesee or myself simply because the marriage had ended. I
saw my parents do that, and simply will not repeat it with someone I love as
much as I do Seesee. The marriage had died, love had not.
Patience is a deep friend. Patience is needed to allow the new
friendship with Seesee to grow. We are both changing as people and whilst I am
often caught up in building my life with Selina, there is the recognition that
neither Seesee nor I are the people we
were when we separated on April 1.
We both need patience in order to allow the other to grieve and to grow.
Whilst my life is centred around getting a job,
marrying Selina and starting a family in no particular order, Seesee is more
socially active than she has ever been and now sees more of her family than she
has in decades. We need to gift each other with patience and space. There are
new roles to learn and occasionally we make mistakes. I am known to call Seesee
“darling”, and occasionally Seesee will open a door that used to present no
problems, only to be met with embarrassed shouts.
Loving-kindness (Metta) has also been present. Metta is a way to simply acknowledge that for 20 years we have been friends. I can
radiate Metta to Seesee and not have to worry about a relationship getting in
the way. I can call her “Mum” and do it with love. For Seesee mothers Selina
and myself. Metta means that the need for family can be recognised and acted upon. I can and
do tell her “I love you. Selina and I want you as part of our family. We do not
want you to be unloved or lonely.” This is Metta.
Compassion ( Karuna) is present
because there is the temptation to simply stop caring for someone. I mean
Seesee is no longer my wife, why should I care if she has bad days or not?
Karuna dampens anger. Karuna means that
when one of us is grieving, the other holds them and wipes away their tears. It
is an unusual dynamic, two people
grieving for a marriage and comforting each other when they were husband and
wife. Our relationship has changed from marriage to friendship.
I am learning about Impermanence (Anicca). After 20 years, it was
reasonable to assume that Seesee and I were about to become `an old married
couple’. Instead there is a death happening. It doesn’t seem that long ago that
Seesee & I were first in love, yet here we are at the ending.
I
am also learning about assumptions. There are some who have made assumptions of
the very worst kind in regards to recent events. People who, despite their own
conceit, do not know the entirety of what was happening in my life. People who
have treated others badly because of events within their own lives leading them
to make assumptions about mine. People who never considered that they were not
hearing nor were they entitled to know everything. Understand that I am not complaining, just
making observations. Assumptions, I have learnt are dangerous and lead to a
kind of blindness. Assume the worst of someone or an event, and you will often
be rewarded with what you assumed, as a result you will miss the beauty in the
person and the event. Assumptions are often amazingly wrong. I had assumed that
I would not find love and happiness in a younger woman….yet here I am in love
and happy in a way that words appallingly fail to describe.
Because things are dynamic, I will stop with this. If this essay seems
unfinished, that’s because it is. My life is unfinished and the one thing I
know is that things will change.
Russell Dunne
