My friend, whom I will call Bill, is divorced with two teenaged sons. The boys live in the marital home with their mom. Bill still lives in the same town and sees the boys as often as his work & visitation schedules will allow. He misses them a lot. Unlike some of the families I am fortunate to know, Bill and his ex-wife are not friends. They can barely stand each other, and after a pretty bitterly contested divorce, blame each other for a lot of what is wrong in each of their lives.
I saw Bill just before Thanksgiving and was thinking that he probably has some schedule where the kids spend half of Thanksgiving with Mom & the other half with Dad, or someone has Thanksgiving on Thursday and then the other family has it on Friday. And, in my experience, as bifurcated as Thanksgiving may be, Christmas would only be more so.
Imagine my happy surprise when Bill told me he would be eating Thanksgiving dinner with his children his ex-wife and his ex-mother-in-law all at the ex-mother-in-law’s house! The secret to how he received this invitation floored me. After what he has been through, and the money he has spent on lawyers, court hearings, alimony, child support, and maintenance on a house where he does not live; Bill said the last thing I ever expected to hear.
He was paying for a full catered holiday meal to be sent over to the mother-in-law’s house, at his own offer, for the family. He didn’t even do it in anticipation of an invitation (how could he have anticipated a gracious response?). He just knew that it would make the women’s lives easier if they didn’t have to cook, so he offered to have it catered for them.
No Judge ordered Bill to feed his angry ex-wife a feast. No court order makes the ex-wife graciously insist that Bill join them. The truth is that Bill and his ex, as little else as they may have in common, both really want their sons to have a happy childhood. So, they put their egos to one side for the annual family holidays and come up with creative solutions for reducing conflict and stress.
What We Love: It is never too late to have a civilized divorce. Any one can still make decisions that reduce conflict and increase happiness.
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