You probably know what I did this summer.
I filed for divorce.
The news of my divorce appeared in the Huffington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Bay Area Reporter, the CBS news, and on many local radio stations. It also appeared all over my soon-to-be ex-wife’s Facebook page. She has 2000 plus friends, so you can imagine word travels fast. It was the same time former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s marriage to Maria Shriver was imploding, a great reminder that marriage equality includes divorce equality.
Needless to say, it was surreal. It is one thing to have your joy and advocacy for marriage equality out there in the public eye, quite another when it’s your personal pain being publicly paraded. I did not answer media queries during that period as I felt the need to process the ending of my marriage privately.
Ending my marriage has not been an easy process. The other day someone told me that they were one of the 18,000 couples who were married in California before Prop 8 passed. I responded that I was one of the 18,000 couples who were married in California and one of an unknown number of those 18,000 couples now going through divorce.
For over a decade, I’ve devoted my life to marriage equality. Now like over 50% of married heterosexuals I am going through the Big D. I’m trying to understand what it means to be a marriage equality advocate going through a divorce.
The reality is that many marriage equality advocates marriages and partnerships have ended in divorce/dissolution like straight allies Mayor Gavin Newsom and Mabel Tang and pioneers and named plaintiffs in the marriage equality movement Genora Dancel and Ninia Baehr (Hawaii Court Case1993), Julie and Hilary Goodridge (Massachusetts Court Case 2004), the Woos (California Marriage Court Case). Many of the activists I’ve worked alongside for over a decade have divorced and are on their second marriages. Isn’t that cool? If we repeal the Prop 8 ban, LGBT people can have their second and third gay marriages too, just like straight people.
But seriously, getting divorced sucks! It is truly one of the hardest rites of passage that I hope you don’t have to go through unless it is for your soul’s evolution. As a coach and therapist who also does couples’ therapy and couple’s coaching, I recommend that you give that a try before you make a big decision like ending a marriage. I continue to recommend John Gottman’s books Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, 7 Principles of a Healthy Marriage, etc. and his workshops. Divorce is like a death, so if you can bring your relationship or marriage back to life, then go to the mat for it.
Sometimes, however, we change in directions that are different from our spouse/partner or we are in relationships that are abusive or co-dependent. If you are unable to break these unhealthy cycles or if you find that you and your spouse are just on different paths and incompatible, then I encourage you to try to disentangle yourselves in as healthy of a way as possible. Couples therapy is also useful for helping you to talk through the challenges and get support in letting one another go peacefully. Talking to a trusted spiritual mentor such as a pastor, rabbi, minister, imam, etc, is also a good idea.
If you have an unwilling partner, or for safety reasons you cannot meet with a neutral third party, I strongly recommend getting into your own therapy, finding a divorce group, a coach or a clergy member or spiritual practitioner who can support you during this transition. Having support can help you deal with your feelings of grief and loss and minimize your reactivity to the hard process of disentangling.
One other resource that I have found helpful in looking more deeply at the demise of my marriage and processing my feelings is the book Spiritual Divorce. I have included an article about it and I hope you will read this and share this with others who are going through a divorce. As this book will help you look at your part in your relationship dysfunction, it could also be a good book for those who are considering divorce, but who want to see if they can salvage their marriage.
