There I was at my computer, feeling a little queasy and about to go for a run to rid myself of nervous energy and quiet my rambling and inquisitive mind. The google prompt on my computer read, “my ex just remarried.” I don’t know this for a fact, but it’s what I’ve been assuming ever since learning that an ex was selling her house (see my earlier very long post about that). I was looking for reassurances that the complicated mix of emotions I was feeling were “normal.”
A 2020 web page from Smedley Law Group says, “The truth is, you’ll find what and who you need, in due time. Just because your ex remarried first (or at all), doesn’t reflect on your worth.” Thank god for that, I was starting to worry about my worth (this is sarcasm by the way).
A medium article by Ashley Shannon begins, “My Ex-Wife got Remarried and I don’t know how I feel about it. Checking up on people I use to date is something I try to avoid.” Well, at least I know everyone searches on their exes.
A divorce and separation support group on Facebook says, “Been divorced 4 years now and I recently found out my ex got remarried.. I haven’t even been in a serious relationship since my divorce so I’m feeling kind of hopeless a little why is it so easy for men to move on and I still feel like I just got divorced hoping I find my someone special one day.” I hear you anonymous Facebook poster with poor grammar and punctuation – it’s been (face in palm) seven years since we broke up and I still haven’t had a serious relationship. I should probably do something about that.
And a ridiculously long-titled web site, lessonsfromtheendofamarriage dot com, has an article titled, “Here are 7 reasons that the news of your ex’s nuptials are hitting you hard. And 7 reasons that it’s not so bad.” Cool, not going to read it though.
Backing up.
The other day I was googling people. One of them was an ex – a woman to whom I was once engaged and who ended things between us abruptly: quit her job, moved in with me, ended things and moved out a week later, moved out of state a month after that (or something like that). If you want a sense of the whiplash impact of that abrupt ending, read anything on this blog from 2019 through 2021 or 2022 (and probably well beyond that). I took it embarrassingly hard. I begged, I pleaded, I sent numerous emails: breezy ones, loving ones, brash and accusatory ones – the whole gamut. Finding the slammed door forever shut on my tear-stained face, I tried to to work through it on this blog (I know, cringe).
We weren’t together terribly long – though as I once read, love is about transformation, not length of time. Despite our brief time together, I found the relationship to be incredibly transformative. The better aspects of her personality and our relationship (and there were plenty of flaws, too) came to define what it was (and still is) I wanted from a long-term partner. Every self-help article, every definition of unconditional love pointed back to us having the goods to make it work (for those early musings, see my post Doing Justice to Our Complexity). In my mind, there were unlimited “visions of our future” together, and everything felt possible. That, to me, is one of the better feelings of being in love – not that you have rose-colored glasses, but that the whole world seems possible… the idea that you could live out multiple lives with someone, and they’d all be pretty great.
In the intervening years, the memory of her and our relationship was never far from many of my day-to-day experiences. When I’d read a poem that aptly described the good life as a couple (vacationing, having simple dinners with friends, waking up and lazing through the day, working through the difficult moments), she came to mind. When I visited places like Santa Fe or Charleston and thought, “it’d be nice to retire in a quirky artistic town, or a seaside town” she came to mind.
I wasn’t doing this intentionally, it’s just that I hadn’t met anyone since then who seemed to fit so well in to the life I had aspired to. Moreover, in the spirit of “be the person you want to find,” I had committed myself to living the life (without her) that I thought she and I would have lived. I had always thought that the problem wasn’t with the “vision,” but that our execution was faulty. So in a weird way, by pursuing the life I thought we would have, she’s been oddly present and absent at the same time.
Back to that Google search.
What I learned from looking her up was that her LinkedIn profile had disappeared, the web page that was her professional portfolio had also disappeared, her Instagram had disappeared, and her house was up for sale. That’s a lot of disappearing. From this, I concluded there were three plausible scenarios (though there are undoubtedly many more). One: she got married, changed her name, and is in the process of erasing her past. Two: she retired and is reinventing herself as an artist somewhere (also with a new name and not online). Three: she had yet another serious relationship blow up and she’s gone into hiding.
Occam’s razor suggests that when presented with competing explanations, choose the simpler one.
Getting married and changing her name seemed to be the simplest answer – hence my queasy stomach, pre-run search for validation that mixed emotions are normal when an ex gets married (thank you internet, I feel validated and seen). She’s a lovely woman, attractive, kind (usually), warm, and all of the things one would want in a partner. Or at least she was when I knew her. My family and friends all loved her and had the same impression of her. A colleague once advised “don’t let this one go.” That’s why I had asked her to marry me (the personality thing, not the colleague thing).
This mystery seemed like it would be easy enough to figure out. Google my first name + one of the places I worked + the word LinkedIn (using quotes around each search term), and one of the links (if not the top link) will be to my LinkedIn page (and I have a very common first name). I know enough about her work history and I assume she still has the same first name (less common than mine) for this to work – nope, no LinkedIn results. This doesn’t prove that she didn’t get married and is scrubbing the internet of her presence – but it just seems weird. Unless, of course, she no longer needs a professional presence in the world.
I know she’s fiercely independent, has an artistic soul, and enjoys her alone time (or at least she did). This makes the retired artist a reasonable possibility. Retiree’s don’t need a LinkedIn presence. This scenario gives me the most joy, but also a bit of sadness. When I’ve googled her in the past, it’s usually been to see if she has pursued (publicly) any artistic endeavors. I always thought she was talented and I’ve always hoped she would find some success or fulfillment through those talents. One of the biggest arguments we had as a couple was an overblown misunderstanding of whether or not I would support her artistic endeavors. Admittedly, I was worried about losing her to her passions, though would have been supportive of those pursuits. Some of my favorite poems are the ones in which two writers or artistically minded people find ways to get along. I love Stephen Dunn’s poem “Bad” which begins, “My wife has been working in her room, / writing, and I’ve come in three times / with idle chatter, some not-new news.” Give it a listen:
I can’t rule out that she’s dropped out of society. On more than one occasion, she shared her desire to form an off-the-grid commune with her friends. She thought it’d be cool if we could do that. Maybe she got that wish. If so, I’m happy for her – it sounds nice. And given my uncomfortable relationship with tech and surveillance society, I would have accepted an invite. I’ve written numerous times about wanting off the ride, and I admire anyone who can actually pull it off.
All of those things said, I also know that she has blown up a few relationships. The pattern seemed to be: get serious with someone, envision a future together, talk about moving in together (and maybe even follow through on that), end the relationship, accuse former partner of a host of things from abuse to harassment to stalking, move away, and start again. I know how ours ended and the things she accused me of / blamed me for. That quitting her job thing – she said I made her do it. The guy she dated after me once reached out to me through this blog and in an email. He shared a similar story. She talked about their future, broke it off several times, and said if he ever contacted her again, she’d get a restraining order. I know she had moved to Seattle for a guy and when that suddenly blew up, her brother had to drive up and help her move. She also told me that the guy she dated before me (they only went on one or two dates) was a stalker. She was afraid to go to the pub that eventually became our neighborhood pub because she was afraid he would be there. While perhaps unlikely, this pattern makes scenario three plausible.
Were it not for some genuine concern for her safety, scenario three conveniently validates my experience, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself, I can crave validation. We had several deep conversations during our push-pull engagement. At one time, she suggested I get out while I can because there was a history of mental illness in her family, and she was sure she’d fall victim to it. Moreover, in scenario three, I would worry that in continuing with that “pattern,” she might cross the wrong person and really have to disappear. I’ve known women who have been in abusive relationships. I’ve funded domestic violence shelters and have heard stories of what it takes to escape – the life that has to be abandoned, sometimes very quickly, and started over in anonymity.
I’ve considered a whole host of other possibilities from death, to becoming a less lethal “black widow,” to becoming ensnared in a stolen identity scheme, to the ego-centric one of still running away from me (yes, face in palm emoji, I’ve been looking for patterns on what pages of this site have been visited and when).
I don’t want to be right about any of these possibilities (especially the bad ones), and I’m mildly embarrassed by the totally, completely normal mixed feelings I have, as well as the amount of time I’ve spent analyzing and speculating. Even more embarrassed in thinking of ways to “flush her out” like some quail from brush. I really do need to get a girlfriend, hobby, job, or all three. A kind, interesting, and funny sugar spouse with soul. Shamelessly, I’ve already started the poem “Disappearing Act” and think maybe there’s enough intrigue for a screenplay (serious about the poem, kidding about the screen play).
Ultimately, where I think I land is that she’s broken the pattern. When we were together and doing couples therapy she would often say she was broken, and I always believed that she would one day heal. My guess is that she found someone, maybe gotten married, and together they have enough money to disappear from the outside/online world while keeping ties to their inside world of friends and family. That they’re having a lovely time and can travel and do all of the things most of us working slobs dream of doing. Which, if I’m being honest, sounds kinda nice and isn’t all that far off from what I wanted for us… or what I want for myself. Oh to marry into money, be someone’s boy toy, lose the LinkedIn profile, have a house in the country and one in the city, and focus on being an artist or writer or man about town. If that’s what’s happened, I’m happy for her (and insanely jealous)… which brings me full-circle to feeling a little sick in my stomach and googling if it’s ok to have mixed feelings about your ex getting married and living the dream that you’re still pursuing: retirement, art, beauty, and being disconnected from the increasingly shitty online world.