The Other Woman

When my husband and his ex were divorcing, BQ a self-proclaimed atheist suddenly found religion and became an avid Catholic. What was previously scorned and mocked by her became all consuming for her and a requirement that her children take part as well via classes and involvement with the church.

The question I have though is whether her new found religiousness came about as a consequence of a major life change brought on by the prospect of divorce that served to immediately nullify all atheist believes or whether she was merely using religion, in this case Catholicism, as a means to demonstrating her “cause” and to further elucidate the wrongful behavior of her now ex-husband and to have the justification to condemn him to “eternal damnation”. Frankly, having interacted with her over the past few years, I have the sneaking suspicion that it’s the latter.

While it has been suggested that Christianity and God Almighty defines what is rightful and wrongful behavior, and while I myself embrace Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ, the most powerful prophet of all time, I do not condone it when others hide behind the cloak of religion to their own end benefit.

The irony is that with Christianity forgiveness and eternal redemption is the end goal – and is in fact the goal of most major global religions, including Buddhism. And, the important religious and secular concept of forgiveness works for many people injured by others. Holding anger towards others is just not good for any person’s religious, psychological, emotional or even physical health. This applies equally to all Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists.

So with that in mind, years later, what has BQ learned from her religious edification? That vindictiveness and spitefulness reigns the day? That there is no such thing as forgiveness where her ex-husband is concerned, and therefore, forgiveness is not available to all but to a select few only?

It is natural for humanity to pursue the opposite of forgiveness and mercy towards others. Holding grudges, pursuing revenge, retaliating incessantly, and living in the past are universally popular activities. Many religions note that mercy and forgiveness are essentially Divine attributes thus they are not possible between humans.

So to that end, I suppose BQ can never achieve what is humanly impossible, no matter what her religion tries to teach her.

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I realized during this past week that perhaps I have turned into that hard-ass woman that I’ve despised all my life. As I’ve gotten older and more focused on my career, I have lost some of that softer edge that I used to have while growing up. While I profess to want to have children, I don’t want to have them at the expense of my career, nor do I want them to ever intrude on my hard earned independence. And dammit, they had better be perfect in all aspects. The rude awakening I had is that my husband fears that I will not care for our children, should we be lucky enough to have them, in the nurturing motherly way that they deserve. And that is indeed a rude awakening because I certainly don’t want to be thought as non-mother material. I resolve to balance by softer and harder edges, to have more compassion and to let that little tender softy in me emerge this year – I know it’s still in there somewhere. And, I hope that we will be blessed some day soon (this year??) with the pitter patter of little feet (whether of our own making or through adoption). I can’t wait.

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Recently my mother-in-laws sister was in town. As I zoned in and out of listening to conversations, I learned that mum-in-law’s sister had a bitter divorce when she was younger and counsels other woman to handle it maturely as she did. My husband’s ex had in fact called her when they were going through their divorce to admonish him to his relatives and demonstrate how unscrupulous he was. The lesson learned for us all was to ensure that we all have our pride and self-respect at the end of the day. However, this past week, we spent the new year holiday’s with the sister’s now-adult children only to learn that perhaps good old mum-in-law’s sister did not behave as the mature adult as we’d been lead to believe. In fact her children seemed very disenchanted with their mother, going so far as to claim that one or two have become estranged from her and that their relationship is now just a cordial one; that they are now firmly ‘entrenched in their father’s camp’ and had been lead to believe terrible untruths about their father. While my husband hopes that Em will one day learn the truth, he did say that he did not wish for his children to become estranged from their mother. Bravo to him for taking the high road!

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