Trust your feelings and keep a distance from ex

I am proud to say that I have "risen from the ashes" of a nasty divorce, yet every time my ex throws a curve ball at me, I seem to lose my equilibrium for a couple of days!

We were married for 12 years. Three years ago, his high school sweetheart appeared and said that they have a daughter together. Within five months, he left me and the kids. (He) moved in with her in two weeks after leaving and brought our youngest son to their place that same week for a sleepover.

Since his leaving, he insisted on coming to the house almost every night before he goes "home," to "help" me. I filed for divorce. He fought it for 21/2 years. He still tries and tries to talk to me. I understand that eventually we have to talk because we have a minor. For now, I really have no desire to talk to him. Since I moved here a year ago, I have been so relaxed and peaceful, and pretty much going on with my new life. He, on the other hand, never misses an opportunity to let me know how in love he is and how happy he is right now.

I try to keep my head above the water by not answering. One day, I just held up my hand and said, "Enough! Don't want to know."

I believe I am the best ex-wife in the universe. I don't bother him, don't talk about him, and he does not hear anything from me at all. I am very proud of that.

My question is, why do I get upset like this?

-- A.G.

Las Vegas

The machinations and strivings of the human ego (my own included) never cease to astonish me.

Ego? Yes! That sense of self that fights so hard to protect itself. Fights so hard, in fact, that it regularly deploys irrational thought. Blatantly illogical reasoning. The human ego regularly picks and chooses bits and pieces of reality, leaving other obvious realities ignored or denied.

The ego's goal, frankly, is to do whatever it takes to create for us the felt sense that life is good and right and safe and predictable. Strange goal, yes, when you consider the facts: Life contains a steady stream of that which is risky, dangerous, utterly chaotic, and not even close to good and right.

I'm saying the ego's very goal is illusionary, and illusion is its primary strategy toward that end.

Now, there's nothing wrong with this, per se. People without egos have diagnostic names and live very difficult lives.

On the one hand, a healthy ego is, on some days, literally the guardian of sanity itself. The ego makes a "space" in which we can navigate the mystery and ambiguity of life, especially that part of life that calls us to suffering.

But, on the other hand, receiving the benefits of a healthy ego is invariably a deal with the devil. Once we get back to stable ground, psychologically speaking, the invariable contradictions and specious conclusion contained in the ego's "solution" come to haunt us.

Your question to me -- "Why do I get upset like this?" -- is a case in point, A.G. That you could ask it at all is evidence of what I'm describing.

Good woman, I wonder why medieval prisoners in torture chambers tend to get upset when the guy in the black mask enters the dungeon? I wonder why gasoline station owners get upset when customers light cigarettes while they are pumping gas? I wonder why I get upset when people invite me over and pour me a tall glass of hemlock over ice with a sprig of mint?

A.G., your ex tore your heart out and ate it in front of you. Discarded you. Worse, though, is that he won't actually leave you. He fights the divorce. He comes over to "help." He postures himself as, what, your friend and hero? And the shameless duplicity of that bathes your wounds in slow-acting toxin. Makes you crazy. And the ego machinations you must mobilize to bear it? Well, they sap your psychic strength.

Friend? Friends endure.

Stop being surprised that you get upset. Stop seeing the "upset feeling" as evidence that anything at all is wrong with you. The upset feeling is all about what is right with you. You're smart enough to recognize a semidomesticated tiger when you see one. And smart enough to both keep your distance and never turn your back.

The upset feeling is your self-respect reminding you that you did not deserve to be treated this way.

Originally published in View News, Sept. 22, 2009.