So, as most everyone knows by now, I recently got divorced because my husband left me for his ex-wife. Now, what I haven’t shared globally is that my husband actually left her about a month after he left me. (No, he did not move back in with me, nor did I stop the divorce proceedings–sorry, folks, but one must draw the line somewhere*, eh?) I did give him a hand in moving out, though, for the simple reasons that I was both (a) free and (b) had an SUV in which he could transport his belongings. Now, this moveout took place on a Monday afternoon, when his ex-wife/soon-to-be-ex-roommate was still at work–perhaps not too suspicious in of itself, but when he asked me to park out of sight behind the building and then proceeded to start shifting items at a pace that could only be termed frantic, I did feel I had to ask, “Uh, D?”
“Yeah?” he puffed, wrestling a hamper of haphazardly piled clothes into the back of my Jeep.
“…she doesn’t know you’re moving out, does she?”
No, she didn’t. As we were driving away with his stuff, I asked him why he hadn’t told her. “Because she’d go crazy,” he said. “She’d try to destroy my stuff and then if I tried to stop her, she’d call the cops and say I was attacking her.”
“You didn’t leave me without telling me. And you left your stuff with me for two days after you left me,” I pointed out.
“That was different,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t do anything to it.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Yeah, because I’m such a wimp–pushover–”
“No,” he said. “Because you–you’re so strict with yourself–you’d never do anything like that. You know what I mean?”
Later that day–evening, really–while he was moving his things out of my Jeep, his ex-wife called, presumably because she’d gotten home from work and noticed that not only was he not there, neither was any of his stuff. I couldn’t hear too much of her side of the conversation, but I couldn’t help overhearing his–among other things, he promised to give her half the rent on her apartment for the month he’d been there, plus several hundred dollars more for various expenditures she’d made on him. “I think that’s fair,” I remarked to him, after he got off the phone.
“It is fair,” he said–and whatever other problems he has, he is very reliable about money–he’d given me the mortgage money he’d promised me already, that he’d said he’d give me when he left me.
However, about a week after he left, he got an email–his ex-wife had filed criminal charges against him, for theft of money or items worth more than $500. Now, I was present when he moved out–everything he took out of their apartment was his own belongings–I’d just packed them all up myself a month or so prior, I recognized the pile. And again, whatever his other issues, he’s very honest about money and things relating to money. I actually got the email too–apparently she refuses to believe he didn’t move back in with me and cc’ed me on it, though I did email her back and inform her that my address was not his home address (she said in the email that she was mailing hard copies “to his home address,” which she listed as my address). Out of nosiness, I opened up the attachments and briefly looked over them. She listed things like groceries, and a hotel room, and other similar items–I’m no legal expert, but I’m not sure that you can actually accuse someone of stealing money from you if you choose to pay for things like that when you are spending time with them eating said groceries, in said hotel room, etc.
I called him about it. “Yeah, I got that,” he said, sounding resigned. “I knew she’d do something like this.”
“Hmm,” I said. “…did you give her any money yet?”
“I got paid today,” he said. “Which is when I was going to. Now? Oh hell no–”
“You gave me money,” I said–something was nagging at me about that, related to our conversation the day he moved out of their apartment–
“Well, yeah,” he said. “I owed it to you. But you also didn’t file criminal charges against me for total bullshit–which I knew you wouldn’t do anyway–”
After we hung up, I thought to myself—I had been feeling really bad about the way things turned out with him and me partly because I felt like such an idiot. Such a patsy. Such a gullible fool. Because I am nearly always honest with everyone, and straightforward, and believe that my word means something, and etc. etc. and I then automatically tend to assume that I am going to be treated the same way. I had been thinking that being like that was really turning out to be nothing more than a really good way to set yourself up to be fucked over royally—
But that isn’t really true, is it? Does being a conniving, self-centered liar save you from getting used and dumped, for instance..? It didn’t save my ex-husband’s ex-wife, that’s for sure. He did the same thing to both of us. But not being a conniving, self-centered liar did save me from getting sneaked out on and subsequently stiffed for hundreds, even thousands of dollars, didn’t it?
I went to see District 9 this week, and about halfway through the movie I found myself musing on that–on how your own behavior, what principles you live your life by, affects what happens to you. The movie’s main character, Wikus van de Merwe, employed by a company that helps oversee the aliens named MNU, is serving eviction notices (illegal ones, with a lot of attitude, lying and casual cruelty) to the aliens living in District 9 when he gets sprayed in the face by a canister of fluid that he steals from an alien’s shack and starts messing around with. The company he works for discovers that he’s turning into an alien and abducts him, abusing him in the name of science and commercial applications thereof for several hours before ultimately deciding to vivisect him.
And I thought to myself, None of that would ever have happened to me. (Aside from the fact that we don’t have huge camps of aliens living on Earth at present–bear with me, please!) I would never be employed with a company whose business was to abuse and exploit sentient beings. I would certainly never agree to help illegally evict them from their homes and send them to concentration camps. I would never steal their things. Now, my behavior or lack thereof does not prevent the existence of companies like MNU nor the soulless sociopathic types that direct their actions. So, those things are not prevented by how I behave, just like the existence of a pathological liar and user of women like my ex-husband was not prevented by how I behave. However, me reaping suffering a thousandfold worse (like turning into an alien and running from vivisection, like in the movie, or getting sneaked out on and then given no recompense whatsoever, like in real life) is prevented by my behavior. By being virtuous, by doing what is right to the best of the ability, as much of the time as possible. And what is right is easy to define:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Simple stuff. To understand, anyway–hard to practice sometimes. For instance, part of me would absolutely have loved to trash all my ex-husband’s belongings, or at the very least have put them all out on the curb. It seemed violently nauseating that after all he’d done to me, absolutely nothing bad was going to happen to him–he was going to have everything he wanted–I was the only one who was going to suffer! There were times I would have been utterly delighted to see a whole crapload of really nasty shit fall on his head, and even cause it to do so myself.
But no, I didn’t. And you never should. You can’t prevent everything bad from ever happening to you–but you can do a lot to mitigate it, just by living your life on a day-to-day basis following the above principle.
So I feel better now.
*That’s what really inspired this post more than anything.
Updated to add: It would be a huge mistake for an individual with a fair amount of illegal activity in her not-too-distant past, which is all over the internet not to mention saved on various computers, with the email exchange between her and her ex-husband linking her name to, er, “that” name attached, to try to drag my blog into her legal shenanigans. I’m just sayin. 
A lot of it is that people are well-inclined to “feel” a debt to another person—which is why no matter how much a politician swears they’re taking lobbyist money without trading favors, we shouldn’t believe them—and also that people tend to rise to expectations set by others. So yes, act well and you’ll get more back.
I always feel weird accepting compliments of “You’re not like that”. Not like what? Not like normal women?
I don’t know your situation very well- it could be that she really is an insane, vindictive person. But, if that’s the case, why did he go back to her (twice) and why is he doing things to antagonize her (like not giving the money he owes?)
It just seems like this guy has way too many gender issues.
Antigone, you have a genius for making unpleasant and inaccurate interpretations of any blog post I write regarding my ex-husband. Maybe you should just skip over these guys in future.
Alright, if you’d feel better about me doing that.
I can understand not wanting to speak bad about the guy, but he really does come off as an unpleasant person.
Sigh…I do not speak “bad” or “good” about him, only dispassionately. For instance, in this very blog post where I both mention that he is reliable about money and that he is a pathological liar and user of women. It is quite the strain for me to be dispassionate, too. I think I deserve a cookie! Failing that, some encouragement would be nice. Failing THAT, yes, I would feel better about complete silence.
Lisa’s ex doesn’t quite come off as unpleasant, to me, but he does come off as a total dope. A lovable dope, to be sure, but a dope.
http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/2009/06/chocolate_chip_cookie.jpg
Well, except for your ex-husband. For him, the most apropos ethical guideline is more along the lines of, “Do whatever, it’ll probably work out fine for you anyway.”
Which is the long-way-round of saying that “virtue is its own reward” is used to justify reward at least as often as it’s used to compel virtue. That’s not exactly new: Aristotle’s notion of “virtue”—ἀρετή—was directly tied to nobility and excellence, and considered coextensive with character. In short, if you are exalted by your society, you are a good person; to be socially exalted and do great things is what it means to be a good person.
Aristotle was rather more popular than his teacher’s teacher, Socrates. His most famous student was Alexander the, uh, Great.
That wouldn’t be notable here we didn’t still believe it. But, to a significant degree, we do. And we reinforce that belief with, amongst other things, fiction.
It’s not vestigial belief, either. Every time someone says, “personal responsibility,” particularly in a political context, there’s a better-than-even chance that what they’re actually saying is, “if poor people worked harder, saved better, and were all-around more virtuous, they wouldn’t be poor (ergo, fuck ‘em).”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but didn’t you work for the army?
Now, now, violet…our stated mission was to defend sentient beings.
At 18, you believe that absolutely, you know.
By being virtuous, by doing what is right to the best of the ability, as much of the time as possible. And what is right is easy to define:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
In addition to Violet’s excellent observation about Aristotle, I’d point out that the Golden Rule, and the similar “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” doesn’t yield much of a social benefit when people don’t love themselves or otherwise believe themselves deserving of punishment. For being human, for example, and therefore sinners in the eyes of an angry god.
I’m reminded of Spike Lee’s great film, “Do the Right Thing.” It’s really not such an easy thing to define at all. Perhaps it’s easier to avoid doing the wrong thing (i.e., to sin) than to decide what is the right thing.
I have no judgement to cast on Lisa’s ex other than on his intelligence.
I always heard the rule was best said as “I do unto others as best as you know they’d like to be done unto”. But, that gets into it’s own problems- because we’re not psychic and sometimes what people want is horrible for them.
Of course. And I’m not saying that being in the army reveals a character flaw, or anything of the sort. But that’s kindof the point. People can get caught up in institutions that are, have been, or will be harmful, and it shouldn’t be read as a flaw in their character, but rather symptomatic of problems with that institution.
Reaching a high level in that institution can’t be done without knowledgeable and willing collusion with the harmfulness, though, don’t you think? And getting in way over your head can’t be, either–at some fairly early point, unless the individual’s mentally deficient, the harmfulness of the situation becomes obvious. It’s then a flaw in their character to stay in it if he or she has any other option.
YES. I never took advantage of any of the ways that living with my ex, for that brief time, gave me a leg up in doing something horrible to her, although she was an absolute shit to me until the very last second, and I’ve now had to write her off completely. I would have felt worse about myself, not better, if I had tried to get revenge. In a way, it’s like being shitty back to her would have made me deserve that awful treatment. The only behaviour I control is my own, and I’m not comfortable blaming anyone else for it. Being a bad person is its own punishment; I’m sure she is doing a fine job ruining her own life and doesn’t need my help.