On our overseas trip earlier this year, the Lovely Man and I met up with some friends, a couple who’ve been together about the same length of time as us, F & G.
Like us, they are a few years apart in age.
The guy, F, works in the same industry as the Lovely Man, so they have a lot in common there.
We all share some interests, but although we’ve been on holiday with them before, I’ve never felt that I knew them very well – they were really nice acquaintances rather than close friends.
When we met up with them this time, I went to give G a hug hello and immediately noticed a stonking great rock on her engagement finger. This thing was MASSIVE – when it glittered in the light I felt like I had been beamed, in a kind of “roo in the headlights” way. But it was very beautiful and tasteful. Exquisite, in fact.
I immediately thought:
Aha! Got an announcement to make then, guys?
And, sure enough, a few minutes of my valiantly trying to avert my gaze into the conversation, they kind of wriggled a bit bashfully and went pink and said:
Oh, and we’ve got some news, by the way. We got engaged!
No shit, Sherlock.
G was obviously a bit self-conscious about her new bling but very happy to relate the story of how F had smuggled the ring into his holiday backpack by completely wrapping it in gaffer tape and telling her it was a piece of work equipment he needed to claim a duty refund on while they were out of the country.
They are lovely people, and I really enjoyed spending time with them. But I couldn’t help thinking, looking at G’s husband-to-be and her happiness, that I wished things could have been so straightforward for me and the Lovely Man.
I never imagined, for instance, that well over two years into our relationship, he would still legally be married to somebody else.
As pleased as I was for my friends, it was all too easy to feel a bit wistful by comparison.
One day, though, the Great Blokey Men went off to do Death-Defying Man Stuff together and so G and I headed out to get lost on the mountain have some adventures ourselves.
We were talking about her relationship with F, as you do, and how happy she was, and how great he was, and how they were thinking of having kids soon, and where they were going to go for their honeymoon… when she totally dropped a bomb.
Haltingly, she told me a story that made me quadruple-take and completely cash in my assumptions about their so-called easy road.
While F may not have kids from a previous relationship, perhaps even more bogglingly, he “co-parents” three dogs with his ex-partner of ten years.
Whoa!
As it all came out – the crazy ex, the way she wanders into their house uninvited, the unscheduled late-night handovers, how she uses the dogs to stay connected to his life, F’s inability to set firm boundaries, the huge amounts of money she guilts out of F for “the dogs”, the way she phones constantly and manufactures dog drama to get attention, the threats to take the dogs away and never let F see them again that paralyse him with fear – all I could think was:
G went on to say how the situation had driven her to the edge of her mind, the constant encroachments and feeling second in her relationship to a trio of spoilt dogs and a vindictive, crazy-making ex eventually landing her in counselling.
She said that her friends and family couldn’t really understand, that they tended to minimise the difficulties of the situation and say totally unhelpful things like:
Can’t you just ignore it?
G even said that she felt terribly guilty at not being able to love these dogs that were so important to F.
Yep, sounds about right.
I guess co-parenting drama is co-parenting drama whether the young ‘uns involved have feathers, fur, fins or feet.
And as much as I love dogs, I can understand G feeling ripped off that despite F not even having kids she is still experiencing the joys of stepfamily life, navigating unbreakable ties formed before she was around and dealing with a trouble-making, boundary-free ex with a penchant for encroachment and manipulation.
At least the Lovely Man’s Boys are worth the dramas. I’d have a VERY hard time if we were going through all that for a trio of naughty, floor-weeing canines.
G was clearly relieved to share her situation with someone who all-too-easily understood the emotional toll it was taking, while I got a timely lesson in the grass not always being quite as green as it looks.
And, incidentally, for the first time I felt like we made an emotional connection that went beyond just doing stuff together.
We’ll be going to their wedding sometime next year. I’ll be looking out for something like this:
I’m totally unsympathetic to this concept of ‘parenting’ or ‘coparenting’ animals. I mean, seriously? You train dogs, you do not parent them. Yes, owners do care for them and look after their needs, but you’re not a parent.
They do NOT require the same sort of energy and focus as children do and to even call it parenting’ is a freakin insult to parents with human dependants. It’s nice that your friend has been able to connect with you emotionally over what has turned out to be a very similar situation to a stepfamily with human children, but I personally find the concept of applying the same to dogs, as ridiculous. Does the ex partner pay maintenance? or pay to keep them in doggy day care during work hours?
I strongly dislike this process of anthropomorphising everything….What next? OMG I’m coparenting a laptop with my ex! Or a tree in our former front yard?
And I’m sorry your Lovely Man partner is still married. I don’t know the details, but I hope his impending divorce is swift.
Yep, I’m unsympathetic too, although I didn’t want to make G feel more weird than she already did by saying so…
In cases of separation with pets, I really think the fairest thing on the animals (and the people!) is just to decide who gets them and make a clean break.
As you say, it’s not really co-parenting, and my friend didn’t call it that – I just applied the term as the best analogy of the angst caused by F’s arrangement with his ex.
Love your tree/laptop examples!
Really, I think this story is actually about people who can’t draw strong boundaries around past relationships, and the harm and stress that can cause.
Ahha! I thought *she* called it co-parenting….whew!
And if she did, I think it’d be healthy for you to react how you would (with a WTF? are you serious?), and so be it if she felt weird about it all. Sometimes it takes a stranger’s perspective to shake up your world.
I agree – set boundaries and maintain them in order to move on.
Yeah, that was the thing – she totally doesn’t believe it’s fair or appropriate to be treating the dogs like children and thinks it would be better if the dogs just went to one or other of the original owners, but she doesn’t feel she has much say in the arrangements.
Ultimately it seems like she had to handle a lot of the stress of a dysfunctional “co-parenting” *style* relationship with her partner’s ex but without having any kind of support network to access like real stepparents often do.
So it’s very much like a lot of stepparents who see their partner putting up with a totally unreasonable regime but don’t have the insider influence to change longstanding agreements.
That’s whacked.
Holy crap *realizes how easy she has it*
Thank you for being so honest. I look to newly engaged couples who are starting their families and wondering why I didn’t have it so easy. You are right though – everyone has a fire, just not everyone is as open and forthright as other people.
I’m glad she had you to talk to, although, I’m pretty sure “he’s effing nuts” would’ve come out of my mouth.
That is crazy. It is one thing to deal with the crap we go through because they are CHILDREN! I would not be put second to a bunch of dogs! That woman needs to put her foot down and ask who is more important, me or the dogs? I mean seriously, let the ex have the dogs, get married and get some new dogs together.
I work in the pet industry and have seen crazy news about celebrity couples fighting over custody of their pets. And the way that some childless couples treat their pets it actually makes a lot of sense that it would mirror what it might be like to have children when going through a divorce. I’m glad that they’re able to find happiness through all of that though.
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