Eat, Pray, Leave
When Christina met Thomas as a young adult, their relationship felt different, and right. As time goes on, cracks start to appear in their dynamic, but Christina doesn’t give up on the people she loves. But how many cracks does it take before a dam breaks?
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Transcripts are not final and are subject to change
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Nora McInerny: How are you? Most people answer that question with fine or good, but obviously it's not always fine. And it's usually not even that good. This is a podcast that asks people to be honest about their pain, to just be honest about how they really feel about the hard parts of life. And guess what? It's complicated. I'm Nora McInerny, and this is Terrible, Thanks for asking.
MUSIC
And I'm Megan Palmer, a producer here at Terrible, Thanks for Asking.
The promise of marriage is sold to girls from a very young age. It's one of the first things that I remember being taught to want, before I could even begin to understand what romantic love and long term partnership even meant.
As a toddler, I watched Disney princesses who were brave and strong: Ariel left her entire family behind to pursue her dream of walking on two legs...and the climax of her story was a giant wedding. Snow White was put into a coma by a jealous stepmother, then woke up and married a guy she'd basically just met.
And I loved these movies!
I paraded my Barbies down the aisle of my nana's front staircase, mashing their hard plastic heads together to seal the deal with a doll kiss.
[AUDIO FROM MY FANTASY WEDDING]
I started playing a computer game called "My Fantasy Wedding" when I was just 4 years old. The game allowed me to style myself as a bride and pick out every facet of my fake pixelated wedding. My mom and nana both hated that I played that game -- but someone had to buy it for me! I was four!
Before I understood most anything of the world, other people, or myself, I was taught to lust after a wedding and a marriage. The event that would be the most important thing I ever did. It would seal my womanhood in stone, etching me forever in the tradition of perfection, property, and being defined by the men in my life. Not that I saw it that way as a kid.
I saw marriage as a fact of life, the central pillar. It's why my extended family only ever inquired about my romantic life as a teenager, never my academics or athletics. It was why as a child I fantasized about my wedding more than I ever did about what my career would look like. It was never a question that I would get married. It was when --- and as I started dating as a young adult, how soon.
MUSIC
Throughout my adolescence, my feelings became increasingly complex as I navigated puberty, my sexuality, my conservative hometown, my paltry dating life, and my parents' own atrocious divorce. Who was I as an individual? Where did I get my value from? And what does a marriage really mean, especially when the honeymoon is over?
My life since early childhood has been a slow unlearning of all of these things that were embedded in me. Growing up in the age of the internet and the rise of fourth wave feminism has prompted me to imagine a life without marriage or children, if that's something I want. I'm not sure. A lot of my childhood ideals still linger at the back of my mind. They probably will for a while, especially as I reach the age where many of my peers are getting engaged and married themselves.
I don't know how I feel about marriage for myself. My opinion on marriage and my desire to have one have shapeshifted greatly over the course of my life. As the months and years go by, I'm constantly growing and learning and changing. Who I thought I was and what I thought I wanted a year ago can seem laughable now. Where can a marriage fall into all of this? Does it?
MUSIC
October is what we're calling Divorce Month at TTFA. It's a month dedicated to telling stories that we haven't given enough attention to as a show -- stories about what happens after a marriage ends. Marriage is a part of many lives...and so is divorce. And there are as many backstories and reasons behind why relationships fall apart as there are why relationships fall together.
This is the story of Christina, and how she fell into, and out of, a marriage.
THEME MUSIC
Christina grew up in the Palmdale area of California, not far from where her dad grew up in East LA.
Christina: my mom and dad grew up super differently. So my mom grew up in Colombia and wasn't allowed to date. I think when she was like 19 someone had asked her on a date to the movies and she asked her dad if she could go. And then my grandpa told her Absolutely not.
Why do you need someone else to take you to the movies? I'll take you to the movies. And my mom was just like, yeah okay, then I'm not going. And then my mom moved to the United States and that changed for her as far as not having her parents there consistently, but she held onto those values continuously.
So I think I, I think she went on maybe two dates prior to dating my dad, and those dates were like no kissing, just going out.
And my dad loved telling this story, how on I think it was a first or second date with my mom, they were sitting at a restaurant and he looked at her and was like, I'm gonna marry you one day. And for me, it was this very strong idea of and you meet someone, and you fall in love, and you just, you automatically know, and that's gonna be it forever.
[FADE IN HERE COMES THE BRIDE]
Christina: there's a picture of me at four years old, just out of the shower, and I have a towel wrapped around my head, and I'm like, I was walking down our hallway and like humming. the wedding song and telling my mom I'm getting married. And so I think it was something I was always aware of.
Loved romantic movies and TV shows. I think high school YouTubing videos, and I'd just be, like, sobbing watching engagements and proposals. And I think more than the wedding, I was really excited about like, how am I gonna be proposed to? And that was like, where my brain would go. And I think it was just always something that I really it was this like, lovely little fantasized, beautiful love story.
Christina: I remember the first time my mom found out I was having sex, and then we had broken up, and she was like, she was sobbing more than I was about this breakup of but you were so in love with him, and I was like, I wasn't, and she was like, But you slept with him.
MUSIC
Megan: For Christina, the defining love of her young life is a man who we'll call Thomas.
Thomas was two years older than Christina, and even though they're around each other in high school, they don't really meet-meet until after they've both graduated.
Christina: We met in 2000, gosh, nine when I was like, had turned 21, I like officially met him on my birthday and there was probably like two or three months of just like, we'd spend a lot of time together.
It felt different. I think that I just, he was somebody that I couldn't get out of my head and being around him. It just, it truly felt like what I imagined that feeling to be when you. know that you've met your person. There was a fun and excitement. He also was very just outgoing and had a personality that was fun. A lot of friends that he wanted to be around him.
he'd always been into jujitsu and MMA and through that had built like a pretty large community and we would go to fighting events, which I had never been into.
And I was living in LA at the time and he would come visit and that felt very Fun and adult like and yeah, I think really in that moment it was just it felt like this strong the feeling of like we're meant to be together and It was a feeling that felt so strong that I trusted it was always there and Showed up in ways.
I think that like other people I had dated maybe didn't. He had different hobbies and passions that he enjoyed that I was drawn to and just was curious about this whole world that I wasn't really privy to.
it almost felt Instant. I have, I remember the first time I told him I loved him was at this super sleazy dive bar in our town and it was at this super At a point after I had told him I don't think that we should be in a relationship right now, and I remember telling him I love you, and I think that was hard for him to believe in that moment, because it was like, oh, you love me, and you also don't want to be in this relationship,
Megan: Despite this chemistry, they decided to break up just a few months into their relationship. Thomas was bringing a lot of baggage to the table, and it was hard for Christina to wrap her young head around.
Christina: He was still married, but separated and like they were in the process of divorcing. He had one kid at the time and I was like, I, I'm not ready. Like I can't have a kid. I don't want this to be something serious. And then it just kind of fizzled out. We like, He, you know, 21, he was 23.
And then in that time he tried to like reconcile things with his wife, so they stopped the divorce. And then she got pregnant and I remember one of the first times I had talked to him in a very long time, he was like telling me that he didn't get divorced and he was like having another kid.
So I was like, okay, great. Like, congratulations, all of that.
I remember even after making that decision, it felt It felt like a difficult decision because I just felt this I'm drawn to you and I want to be with you in whatever way that looks.
And then even throughout moments where we didn't talk, it felt like that perfect love story of this, not unrequited love, but oh there's things in our life that are keeping us apart and it's not working right now, but maybe sometime in the future or in another life it'll work out or something like that.
MUSIC
And it kind of does. In 2013, they reconnect. Thomas has been separated for a year and a half. And the spark between him and Christina is still there.
Christina: It did feel really romantic. Like he would leave post-it notes on my car. We had this like thing where we would fold cranes and put little notes under their wings and like leave each other these like folded cranes.
It felt even more of like, wow, like four years have gone by. So much has happened and we still immediately feel so connected it felt this beautiful love story. And how rare is it that people get to have this like second chance and be in a different space and like feel more grown up and have a chance at it again?
And then things moved quickly, like we started dating and I think like a month and a half, two months later I moved in with him which meant like getting to know his kids very quickly and just an adjustment.
MUSIC
Christina: It did feel rushed, but it also felt right at the time.
I remember having moments of like, okay, like I am not just committing to this person or to living with this person, but I'm also committing to like two kids. And it's not gonna be like a, like, it can't just be like a, oh, this isn't working out. I'm gonna move out in six months type of deal.
Like, it, I think in my mind it felt like, okay, this is like a forever decision that I'm making. But I also don't think I like, sat with that enough. I kind of was just like, okay, well it's happening. And I remember the first night, like, I moved in, I didn't sleep like. He, I was awake all night. Like, I think I, I don't even know, but it, I was just like cleaning everything, like a wild person of like, I, because he had lived in that house with his ex-wife, and I think that felt really weird for me of like, this isn't really feeling like my own space.
Megan: Christina is 25, and is sharing a house with her boyfriend and his two young children, ages 2 and 6.
And despite the seriousness of their relationship, for the first time in her life she isn’t thinking about marriage.
Thomas’s own divorce still wasn’t finalized, and her parents’ seemingly perfect marriage had just ended.
Christina: I wouldn't say that I was outright all of a sudden very cynical about marriage. Like I still felt okay, yeah, sometimes relationships But then other times, they really do. And so it was still something that I wanted, but it definitely wasn't something that was on the forefront of my mind and it was something that I felt like I really wanted to wait for.
Megan: She wants to wait for marriage, but she's playing the part of a wife and a mother already. Regardless of the legal status or label, Christina is doing the default care tasks that have been associated with women since...maybe forever?
And she's happy to do this. She loves these kids. She loves Thomas. But it's hard to figure out if you want something like marriage or biological children...when you're in the middle of a committed relationship, and parenting.
If it sounds confusing...that's how it felt, too.
Christina: I think I held these values that my mom also reinforced of you get married and then you have kids.
And then I like had kids, but wasn't married.
And then I think probably within a year or two of living together, I started to really know that I didn't want to have a child of my with him or just in general which was a weird thought to have having stepkids. It feels, even now it feels weird to be like, I didn't want kids, but I had kids.
And I remember one time I don't remember if it was the youngest or oldest, but they, I think maybe both of them, we were eating dinner and they're like, do you not want kids because of us? And was like, no, not at all. No. I was like, if anything, you've broken the mold and like, why would I want another kid when I have you two thing?
And then I think simultaneously and gradually, I also started to really question marriage and the Institute of that and why would we need that? And then I started just exploring like other ways in which commitment can be expressed and named with. a partner and without needing to be married yeah.
I'd had conversations with him of I don't even know that I want to get married. I don't, I think we can be committed to each other a lot. Like what, why does the government have to be involved in that? And why does there need to be this piece of paper to demonstrate that with each other?
Megan: Thomas and Christina are happy together, but…
Christina: there were these, to me, it felt like at least once, once a month we were having a conversation of like, this isn't feeling good, or, I'm noticing these things. I backpacked and I, I ride horses. I like hiking, paddle boarding, like just being outdoors.
And when we first started dating, like he would go hiking with me and we would do these things together and then it as things like progressed. I found myself doing a lot of the things he enjoyed. And so I like started training jiu-jitsu and he like, I don't think he's a UFC fight in his entire life.
like every Saturday night it was like, I can't, he couldn't do anything because the fight was on. And so I'd watch with him and, and it was something I had to get used to cuz I, they used to really scare me
I never watched them, but I was like, okay, I'll watch them. I remember during Covid when all the gyms closed, we like put mats in like we, our den, we like took all the furniture out and put mats so that we could do jiu-jitsu at home like Yeah. And so and that, like, we did it for a few days and that was it.
And then when I would ask him to do things with me, he wasn't interested or would do it and would be quiet and kind of like mad about it, like not having a good time. And so I think I, like, I had this moment of feeling like, okay, well maybe I'm just like expecting too much or my needs are too much.
I had gotten some comments from some of my closer friends of like, you guys don't really ever do anything together. And I was like, oh, like we just have different interests, but it's like really nice to like have my own thing. And he has his and I, I just kind of ignored it and was like, it's fine. Like when we're at home, it's fine. He makes dinner every night, like, I hate cooking. He like, help. Like it's fine.
And so. I know that I can't get all of my needs fulfilled by just one person, and that's really unfair to do. So then I leaned really hard in the other direction of like, I can meet my own needs.
Megan: So she does. She leans into her interests and her friends. She doesn't rely on Thomas to meet her every need. They might not be perfect, but they're good enough.
MUSIC FADE OUT
MIDROLL 1
QUICK THEME
Megan: Christina and Thomas are together for over 4 years, cohabitating and coparenting. Their lives have a rhythm to them: when they have the boys, it's family dinner every night and board games in the living room. It's shuttling the boys to and from their activities, and all of the million other things that make a family a family.
Christina: We were at home about to go to bed. I was in my pajamas and. I was gonna be starting a new job and it was really exciting for me and he, I'd been talking about wanting an Apple watch and he was like, Oh, look what I got for you.
It was like maybe a week or two before Christmas and I opened it and it was the watch. But when I opened the container, there was like a ring inside and I just started crying and he was crying and. I was like, I don't even think I said yes, like it was one of those things where he was like yes.
And I was like yeah. And it was exciting. I remember like calling friends and it again also just felt okay, yeah, this is like the next natural progression of what we're going to do.
MUSIC - vibe shift
Megan: "Yeah." "Okay." "The next natural progression..."
As exciting and romantic as it is to be proposed to...those don't sound like the words of a woman who is chomping at the bit to walk down the aisle.
Christina: I felt pressure. It felt if I had said no, how would our relationship shift or change drastically? And it felt oh, it's not worth it.
And there were certain moments. When we were planning the wedding and what we wanted to do and when we wanted to do it, that I remember making comments of Like when we went to go get our license.
I was like, Oh, we could also just not do this and still have a wedding. And no one would have to know.
So I think it was, there was no part of me that was like, I don't want to marry this person because I didn't love him or felt that oh, this is doomed. I just think my whole perspective on marriage had shifted, but it felt like something he really wanted and it felt like I was willing and it felt worth it to be like, okay, fine.
If this is something you want, I can do this with you and for.
Megan: The day of their wedding, Christina and Thomas had their friends and family over for what was advertised as Christina's 30th birthday party … and then surprised them with an impromptu ceremony.
Christina: I was excited to get everyone together. I love surprising people, so I felt so excited that everyone was going to be really surprised. It was at home, we got ready together, I we walked down the aisle together and all of that felt really in line with what I wanted and I think, I don't think I thought about what it meant logistically to get married. I was really into This feels good now. And in my mind, I want to be with this person. And I was really present in that.
MUSIC - beautiful, peaceful
Like my best friend married us and wrote out like what she was going to say and it was beautiful. And I remember. Cause then he also wrote vows and I wrote vows and I remember telling them both as we were sitting there figuring out the logistics of this, I was like, I don't want anybody to mention anything about forever because forever ends.
So I don't want anything about how we're going to be together forever. And I was just like, if somebody would have said that to me, I would have been like, wait a second, let's like re evaluate this whole thing.
There wasn't. a part of me that felt doubt or oh, maybe I shouldn't do this in a way that felt enough to be like, oh, we're not going to do this. But I think there was still parts that were like, yeah, who knows?
We might not be together forever. And maybe we'll, who knows, but whatever. This seems right now.
This is, unfortunately, a feeling I've also succumbed to as someone who has been in several unsatisfying relationships. When it's not working, you're tearing your hair out trying to figure out what is missing, what you need to be doing better. When it's functional, and maybe even enjoyable, you wonder why you were ever anxious in the first place. It's good enough. I could stay a while.
Because even outside of getting marriage-pilled from a young age by pop culture, I am also, at my core, a hopeless romantic who was raised in a codependent family. Finding true love felt like the singular quest of my life at one point. I was the kid in high school who walked around silently simmering in agony because I felt so full to bursting with love that I wanted to share. I wanted to pick someone and never stop choosing them. I wanted someone to do the same for me.
This desire to love caused me to be blind to the incompatibility I faced in my relationships. I have been so certain in every relationship I've been in that I would marry the person I was dating, even when there were signs glaring me in the face to turn around.
I think under it all, in my naivete, I've assumed that a marriage can change a relationship. Can save a relationship. Can fill the cracks and buff away the scratches.
But you know, and I know, that a wedding doesn't automatically change a relationship, aside from legally. Christina is now Thomas' wife. She can tick that box on any form, but their relationship has the issues it had even before their wedding ... and the changes Christina has asked for are NOT the changes she's seeing.
Christina: It started to feel like it was taken advantage of in the sense that we're going to be together forever because we got married and it's official. And through thick and thin no matter what you're gonna be around and I it felt like that Just the act of getting married and signing documents and getting a marriage certificate I feel like really just for him made it seem like you're gonna be around and even when we got divorced He was like, I just I figured I didn't need to really try anymore because like you were just we were married We were always gonna be together.
I don't I didn't think you'd ever leave. Which was so shitty and like I think I even laughed when you said that, because I'm like, what else am I supposed to I didn't even know, even now, I'm like, I don't even know how to respond to that. So I think it changed in that it just felt like it was there was no effort or energy that was placed into being together and being a couple, and I just feel like that changed a lot.
I truly felt like I was carrying this like emotional burden of all the pieces of the family. And so it was even like for moments of, Oh, let's all sit and play a board game together. It was you guys play and so it would literally be like me and the kids on the floor playing a board game and him just like playing a video game or watching TV and not engaging with us whatsoever or if he did play it was like and like you could tell there's this annoyance about it and then I think that was really exasperated with COVID and being home and schooling and it was like I felt like I was really I was doing my sessions from home and helping two kids with their schooling.
Like it was just, it was so much that I felt like he was just like, yeah, you got this, you can do this. And this detachment from so many things, not just me, but I think from just his role as like a dad and just being part of the family and he would say things like I just go to school all day and I'm teaching and I come back and I'm exhausted I have nothing left to give and I think I remember multiple times saying like it feels really Sad that the rest of the world gets the best parts of you and then you come home and we don't get there's nothing left for you to give.
Christina is doing what she's done for years in her relationship: finding a way to make it work.
MUSIC
For years Christina has been leaning on her hobbies and friendships to get her needs met outside of her romantic relationship. One of those hobbies was backpacking, and in 2021 she planned her first Big Trip: a 183-mile hike around Lake Tahoe with one of her best friends.
Christina: it was 13 days, it was both of our first long through hike, and I think the thing that I love about backpacking is that it forces me to trust myself and listen to myself and be so extremely present with what is coming up and then it also is just like a microcosm for all the difficult things and emotions that come up like I in a day am like sobbing because the sunset is beautiful and then I'm sobbing because my feet are hurting and I'm scared because there's bear scout all over the it's every emotion that I can like it's just it's It ebbs and flows and you just go through with it and you still walk, take the steps and you walk.
So of course there's just like miles of miles where we're just like silently walking
[AUDIO FROM THE TRAIL]
Christina: and that was like the first time I, I laughed cuz it felt like an eat, pray love moment when she's like, on the bathroom and here's that voice. like, you need to leave. And, but I, I like. I just like, in my head was like, I don't wanna be married anymore. And I was like, what the fuck was that? Like,
was like, I can't think that. And then it just continued to like pop into my head randomly all the time ongoing. And I like, even as I talk about it, it's like, it felt like, like, that's bad. I can't do that. Like, I've made this commitment. This is what it's gonna be like.
It just didn't feel like that was an option, I guess. Especially cuz it was like, well, things aren't bad. Like, we don't really fight.
But as she walked and mulled over her relationship, moments that she had previously brushed off bubbled to the surface of her mind.
Christina: The moments that we did have big issues was like, he, he, he went on a, on a business like tr like a conference for teachers.
While he was there my uncle got really sick and was like in a diabetic coma in the icu. And this was right, right before Covid. Like my uncle was in the ICU for a week, he died and then we had the funeral. They almost didn't let us have it because it was right when things were shutting down.
And during that he was at this conference. I was supposed to take care of the kids, but I was staying in the I C U with my uncle, like staying the night there. His mom was watching the kids. I agreed to go one night to, to get them and his mom had just moved out and moved to a different house and I was asking him for the address and he got really drunk and like, wasn't even coherent when he was on the phone with me and like just was not there for me in any kind of way.
And. There had been moments before of this pattern where I'm like, Hey, like I think there's a problem with the alcohol. And it was just like very much dismissed on my end or on his end. And then that was like a pivotal moment. And I remember we had a conversation then of like, let's, let's circle back in July and see where we're at.
But like, if things don't change, this isn't gonna be sustainable. And I feel like I had a lot of those conversations of like, this is what I'm needing and like, this isn't gonna be sustainable for the rest of my life. Like, this is how things are going to continue. it feels stereotypical, but also I see it so often where I feel like, like as women in relationships, it feels like it, like the responsibility of caring this emotional burden. In all the ways of like, even like the care for the kids and things going on in his family and what was going on in my family.
MUSIC
Christina: And so I didn't know that prior to that trip that like I was going to crack open in that way. But I think it really was like that trip allowed me to really everything I needed to live was on my back and the strength and everything was all within me. And so I think it really just allowed some space for quiet.
And it allowed me to, yeah, just trust myself and be brave in a way that I never had before. I think I had always been, and still I'm somebody who navigates and I think most of us have what's going to keep me comfortable and what's going to be the like path of least resistance. And I was, physically doing something.
That was so much the opposite of all of that. I think it was like halfway through and I just think I was so cracked open physically and pushing my limits in all of these different ways that it really became this idea of what is it that you actually need in your life?
What is that? I don't need to be with somebody who's not listening to me or hearing me or valuing me.
I don't need to be doing this life with somebody who's taking advantage and not fully going to be in this experience with me because here I am in like one of the most beautiful places I've ever been doing it by myself and I don't I don't need somebody here to be able to do this and take care of myself.
MUSIC -- SOMETHING EMOTIONAL
Christina: So my friend's husband and Thomas came to pick us up at the end of the trail. And there's a picture that I, that was taken of me at the end of the trail that I think just, it felt like it wasn't, it was, when I look at that it makes me feel emotional.
Cause it's more than just yay, I completed this trail. I just truly felt like there was this whole, like I was this like new person. And I remember that night. We were all going to have dinner together and just hang out and we did, we had dinner, we were having some drinks and there was a casino across the way and he was like, I'm going to go gamble, do you mind if I go play poker?
And I was just like, sure, go ahead. I just finished one of the most challenging things that I've set out to do. you in two weeks. It was like, Emotionally difficult, physically difficult, like I just want to spend time with my person and he was like, I'm gonna go drink and play poker.
Christina finished her hike in July 2021.
She sits with her emotions, wanting to give them breathing room before she acts on them.
Because divorce doesn't just mean the undoing of a marriage. It's the undoing of her life. Of her family as she knows it. Leaving Thomas would mean leaving the boys they've been raising together. It's not a small decision, and she explores all of it in therapy: her people-pleasing, the codependence…and all of it validates that realization she had on the trail.
Christina: So in like November of 2021, I started having conversations with him of like, these are, these are the things that I need.
And like, I need you to be more present. And like, I'm not saying you have to love the things that I do, but I also find myself. Like, I'm always showing up for you and things are just feeling really disconnected. And he was shocked and was like, I don't know how you could feel so disconnected. I feel so connected to you.
And like, and I was like, yeah, cuz I like, I, I show up and do all the things you wanna do. And we saw a couple's therapist once and he hated it, but he did start seeing his own therapist. But it just, it got to a point where he was like, you're just trying to get me to change. I'm not ever gonna be able to change.
There was a mix of that time of figuring out myself and what I was wanting or feeling or needing and then being able to communicate that to him and then for us. as a couple to try to make that work. But I think even just preemptively, I was like, what if I'm making a huge mistake? What if?
He was like, it's a good thing you have a lot of friends and I know you have some guy friends and I know this is horrible for me to say, but I'm really glad that you have them because maybe they'll be able to meet your needs in ways that I can't. And it was just like, why? Like why am I in this relationship if like, you're completely absolving yourself from like, being in it at all in any kind of way.
Christina had a hard time conceptualizing her own parents' divorce when she was a young adult. The love story she had known better than any other was over. But now that she faced her own separation, Christina saw her parents' divorce as a balm, more than a source of pain.
Christina: I have so much gratitude, and I think it was really important for me to see my mom make that choice for herself.
I had this feeling of I don't want to be with somebody for 28 years and then be like, I was unhappy for most of it, or however much of it, and it was just a facade. But I think the biggest piece that kind of influenced the decision was. They had tried to make things better and had really worked for this relationship to work and then realizing like it's, it's run its course and it's, it's the end of it.
I think it's always felt that like divorce was the failure and that's the thing you don't wanna go into. And a lot gets forgotten about the beauty of the relationship and that like, yeah, we were together for nine years, you know, my parents were together for 28 years.
Like there is so much not failure in that.
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Christina realizes that she and Thomas are having the same conversations. And they’re producing the same outcomes.
So in March of 2022, 8 months after her eat, pray, love breakthrough...Christina officially asks for a divorce.
She and Thomas are sitting on opposite ends of the couch in their living room, in the home they've shared together for almost 9 years. The fireplace is on, some candles were lit. The house is silent. Their conversation is brief, because it feels like everything has already been said.
Christina: Like I felt sick and the moment I did it, I just, it was relief. Yeah, it just felt like I was doing, like I was doing the right thing. I think in my head, I knew it in my heart. I knew it in my bones. I knew it.
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Despite this relief Christina feels in making the right decision for herself, she and Thomas have two children they need to talk to about the divorce. And kids, in case you forgot, are eerily perceptive.
Christina: We had to go pick up our oldest from a movie because I think he was watching one of the Batman movies or something, and he started crying in the movie theater and called his dad to pick him up and was like, I feel like something's wrong at home. What's going on? And so we had the conversation with them that night and he, the oldest was just silently crying. Um, and I think kind of to me felt had like an air of like, I've, I've been through this before, um, really wanted to know what was going on.
And for me it was really important that I be honest with him about where I was at. Um, and so that was more of just kind of conversation of, you know, this just isn't feeling good, which is also, how do you explain that? It was, it was so complicated. And so he, that was his reaction. And then the youngest, who is always the comedic relief, first Heartbreakingly asked, is this my fault?
And that was also something that was so striking to me. 'cause I was like, I always hear about like kids thinking that like it's their fault. And I was like, but this has really, truly had nothing to do with you. And then after that conversation he gasped and was like, wait, the most important question. And we looked at him and we were like, what?
And he was like, who's gonna take the coffee maker? And I was just like, oh my goodness. Like, it was such a whirlwind of a conversation that I couldn't have been prepared for it. There was so much sadness, but then sweetness and understanding. Um, and they stayed home from school the next day. Um, and we, like, we had breakfast and it was, it was, it felt, it was loving, it was a loving conversation. An honest conversation.
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My own parents' separation and divorce was brutal. There was nothing subtle about it, because there's nothing subtle about a lack of communication so bad it sends both parties to the depths of addiction and infidelity.
What made their undoing truly horrendous was the fact that my siblings and I had to watch it happen over the course of more than 5 years. We knew they needed to leave each other long before they did — and instead they chose to sit at opposite ends of the house and scream and thrash until they ultimately grew tired of the act, and of us.
Seeing their marriage transform from something seemingly healthy and beautiful to something violent and dangerous was like being strapped to a chair and forced to watch a slow motion car crash. There were ways to prevent it from getting this bad. There were exit points, there were ways to cut the losses. But both of my parents were too stubborn, and too sick, to do that.
I feel immense compassion for children who are in the crosshairs of the people who raise them. Even when adults try their best, their best often isn't good enough. Parents are flawed and blind and capable of more hurt than they give themselves credit for. It's almost impossible to leave childhood without some battle scars.
The kids were 11 and 15 when Christina and Thomas announced their divorce. She had been in their lives for almost a decade. The youngest couldn't remember his life without her. Christina can still remember their last night together living in the same house.
Christina: It just felt so normal and like it had always been and then it wasn't. Um, and which is weird 'cause I, I have this like, desire now of like, ugh, it should have been something monumental and there should have been some kind of like, this is gonna be our last time.
There wasn't anything strikingly monumentous about it other than it just felt how it always kind of normally felt.
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This divorce was sad. This divorce was painful. But this divorce was not a failure. Because this divorce was everything Christina needed.
Christina: I felt like I could breathe in a way that I hadn't breathed in a long time.
The first night I slept in a bed alone after being divorced, I had the best sleep of my entire life. I was like dead to the world. I drooled. I like, I slept in, I like, It was wild. And then I remember maybe a couple months later was the first time I woke up in the middle of the bed, stretched out. Cause every morning I'd wake up and I'd only still be on my side.
And so that was monumental when I could stretch in. But I think relief was really shocking. I was so scared of the pain that I was going to feel after deciding I wanted to be divorced and all of the heartache that was going to bring. And. I realized is the pain and the heartache was the biggest when I was like, knew I needed to make this decision and knew I needed to do this, but wasn't doing it.
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Christina: I think that being where I'm at now and looking back at it, there's so many moments and threads of my needs were not met.
But not even just that, like they weren't listened to, they weren't honored or like really cared about or talked about in a way that felt it was like, yeah, you really got me, or really are listening to me.
As we were divorcing and like I was leaving the house and stuff, he had said something to me that was like, I think he's like, I think I'm realizing at the core of this issue is the fact that I never actually listened to you and I never actually like, acknowledged what you needed. And like you told me multiple times that you never wanted to get married and I still asked you.
I was so committed to this love story and I like, didn't want to ruin that.
And I think I really got in the way of the love story by trying to write the love story and I still very much love. But I think my idea of what it means to be in partnership with someone, that's what shifted. Is that it's not about having this perfect story and it's not even about preemptively knowing what that's gonna look like, but it also isn't just trusting a feeling and going with this I don't know, this woo idea of what like romanticism and love is that there's difficulty and there's hard conversation and true, just honesty about where you're at and who you are.
And Thomas and I never fought. And I that was something that I was proud of. Because I was like, oh, we never fight. And I think it's because there was just so much that was being avoided.
The true failure would've been just to stick it out versus being like, you know, this, this relationship has run its course and. It's over now. And I don't think that that has to be a failure. Um, and I think that's kind of the way in which I've shifted thinking about my relationship with the kids also is that it's from the very beginning, I had no prediction of what it was gonna be like even when I really tried to.
And so it has from the very be beginning, been a continuous, just kind of riding the wave and moving through and kind of going with the flow of it all. And it still is that, and it doesn't mean it's a failure if it's not what I expected it to be.
I see a lot of myself in Christina. My parents' divorce has led me to question my belief in the institution, or at the very least, my interest in it. The feelings I once held around marriage are now stale and brittle. I'm searching for fresh feelings, but I'm not rushing them.
And I'm always finding that the more I learn, the less I know. It's a bit of a cliche, but cliches grow from a kernel of truth. I'm currently single for the longest stretch time ever since I was 19. It's good for me, and truthfully, I'm now loving it. It's making me question myself and the world around me even more deeply. How could I possibly know that I want a marriage if I haven't yet found someone to share one with?
You’re never a day older than you are. You have all the knowledge in the world that you have at that moment. You feel like you’re grown up, despite the fact that you will, until the day you die, continue to grow up.
Our perspectives change as we age. And if we choose to get married, we’re agreeing to go through those changes with someone else. But we never really know HOW people will grow and change in the course of a marriage.
You have to have the courage to re-examine your relationships and your life when they no longer suit you. And only you can determine what those changes look like.
You’re the one in the driver's seat.
So don’t fall asleep at the wheel.
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