An involuntary divorce is, quite frankly, a terrible event. I doubt that will surprise anyone. There are dozens of expected perils and adjustments. It is tragic, and painful beyond belief.
But that pain does, eventually, well and truly end. One adjusts. Balance returns. Life becomes fabulous again.
But occasionally, there are bits of adjustment that are just plain odd or unexpected.
The one of these, with which I struggle constantly, is whether to use the plural first person pronoun, we, to describe events in the past that were performed when there was a we. Do I say, “We always wanted a daughter, and had the name Naomi chosen for many years,” or should it be, “I always wanted …”?
As the time passes, I still find myself waffling on this one. Some weeks I strongly lean toward, “I will describe things as they were,” and other weeks I think, “No! I have to be clear that I’m single. What if some unmarried Nobel-prize-for-science-winning* supermodel missionary gal is eavesdropping on this conversation and mistakenly thinks I am married?”
Anyway, these are the kinds of post-divorce things that nobody talks about.
Cheers.
*No, the Nobel Prize for Economics does not count. (I have standards, you know.)
(And, yes, I know that I am not using parallel structure in the title. The rhyme seemed more appropriate.)
‘My ex-wife and I’?
Or if you don’t like ‘ex’, ‘my former wife and I’…?