Home/Work

Lately I've been thinking a lot about being a bad parent.  Specifically, I've been thinking about ways in which I have been a bad parent. H turned 18 a few weeks ago, so I have now had ample opportunity to screw up. And I have screwed up, in big ways and small, and in important ways and in ways my kids will never remember.

 

These days, mothers are continually encouarged to ditch the guilt and to avoid blaming themselves for anything that happens with their kids. This is obviously a big switch from decades past when mothers were assumed to have complete and total responsibility for every aspect of a child's emotional, physical and intellectual well-being.  We were blamed for everything from autism to sexual orientation to whether our kids went to Harvard or prison. Basically, it was all our fault.

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 Last night C and I were driving home from the grandparents' house - just the two of us - and for whatever reason, I decided to drive around the block before pulling into our driveway. As we drove past our house, where 28 month old C had clearly been expecting me to stop, she suddenly began crying, "No, No mama! Go back to C's house! That's not C's house!"  She was really upset until we finally did arrive at C's house, less than 30 seconds later. This was the first time I realized that she now has an awareness of which house on our block is HER house, or that it matters to her.

 

C has been a creature of routine and habit (much like her father) since birth. She likes a regular schedule, with naps and bedtime handled in much the same fashion every time. She loves her white noise machine, and she howls in real grief if we ever (God forbid) forget it when we spend the night as a family away from home. She actually begs for the "noise maffine" by name. She likes me to read books in a certain way, and she notices if her toys or doll furniture change places. While C is more aware of and attached to certain elements of her physical environment and routine than many other children her age, she's no different than any other older baby or toddler in being completely enamored of the few people who care for her the most: mama, daddy and in her case, grandparents and older siblings. All of these things - her family, her house, her white noise machine - already matter to her - a lot. And she's still just a baby, really.

 

 

 

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So lately, C has been an absolute joy to me. She's 27 months old, talking in complete sentences - which are generally hilarious - and she's increasingly engaging in real play with her toys. I love watching her "cook cook" at her play kitchen, or pretend that it's time for the Breyer horses (passed down from me and her previously horse-crazy older sister's collection are ready to go to sleep in their big wooden barn. She has this fantastically entertaining and ongoing conversation happening with her hands where she says things like, "It's okay hands! Pretty soon we'll be out of this carseat and we can play!" 

 

Here is a video of C playing with her toy kitchen. Please ignore frightening animatronic monkey heads on the dining room table, next to Jon. Suffice it to say that E went through a phase about four years ago where he was obsessed with monkeys, and we now have all these wildly expensive yet creepy, lifelike elecronic monkeys that we are trying to figure out what to do with.

 

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Seventeen  days ago, I got sick with a virus. The sudden intensity of how hard and fast the virus hit me apparently gave some kind of nasty wallop to my autoimmune system and thyroid. In these past 17 days, I have been hospitalized for nearly a week, readmitted to the hospital for another 24 hours, and have spent the rest of the time in my pajamas, trying to both get my job done (my boss has been AMAZINGLY WONDERFUL about letting me work from home) and mother my children, plus be some kind of wife/friend to poor Jon, who has been stuck doing everything I cannot do (which is a lot when you are talking about 4 kids, 3 dogs, a giant old house, and - yes, believe it or not - his own paid employment at which he's actually expected to appear on time each day and do good work. 

Even after all the CAT Scans and blood tests and spinal taps and MRIs, the docs still can't tell me exactly what the virus was that did this to me. All I can tell you is that right now, I feel like I was hit by a Mack Truck and I am trying to recover. The last doctor I spoke to (during my hospital readmittance late last week) said he strongly suspects H1N1, but we will simply never know for sure. Whatever it was, it has given me a really excellent reminder of what it means to be humbled in the face of something bigger and more powerful than I am.

You see, I am used to being in control, on top of things, busy and very productive. And ever since this illness hit, I have been unable to be any of those things at even close to the level I am used to. I remain absolutely exhausted - bone tired in a way I cannot even adequately put into words. Getting dressed wears me out. Standing up for periods longer than 10-15 minutes wears me out. I am able to sit in a chair at home and work - phone and computer at hand - but even that still kind of wears me out. At this point, I have not yet returned to my actual office. I had hoped to do that today, really hoped to, but there is simply no way I was up to it today.

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(NOTE: H, J & E all gave me specific permission - yes, I asked -  to blog about this particular topic before I put my typing fingers to laptop ;-) )

 

 Before H became a teenager, I always kind of imagined that he would be willing to talk openly with me about his dating life. I am not sure what made me imagine such a thing about a teenage boy (maybe I watched one too many episodes of "The Brady Bunch," where Greg talks girl trouble with his parents...)  but I just sort of thought that if I were a good enough mother, with a good enough relationship with my adolescent son, he would want to share these important things with me. But Greg Brady he's not; there have been no late night chats about the state of his love life over milk and cookies in our kitchen. In fact, he just turned 18 (!!!), and in the past 6 or 7 years, he's only deigned to actually introduce two girlfriends to me (or to anyone else in our family). Any attempt on my part to proactively elicit specific info on any particular girl only encouraged him to become MORE clammed up.

 

So I kind of gave up, assuming that some day, should he ever decide to - let's say -  become engaged to be married or something, he will at at least send me an invitation to the wedding. (I hope.)

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In late 2002, my three eldest kids' father and I separated, followed by a legal end to our marriage about 18 months or so later.  Our kids were 10, 6.5 and almost 5 years old at the time. So for the past eight years or so, their father and I have shared legal custody 50/50 - and for the past two years or so, we've also shared physical custody 50-50. In a practical sense, this means that every Sunday night, our kids switch houses for the week.  They spend one full week at their father's house, and then they spend one full week at my house. Their two homes are only a few miles away from each othe, and to the extent we are able, their father and I attempt to keep all other elements of their lives (aside from the actual switching of houses) the same whether they are at Dad's house or Mom's house: sports, friends, time with extended family on both sides of the aisle, etc. We do attend two different churches, but we really do try to maintain consistency across the two houses ("try" being the operative word here; we do not always succeed).

 

I have a number of friends who are divorced from their kids' fathers, and each of them handles this custody sharing thing a little differently.  I have one friend who has 100% custody, and her kids rarely ever see their father (his choice). I have other friends where the kids live primarily with one parent, and the other parent is more like an "extra" than an actual parent. That doesn't mean that the kids love that other parent any less, but their relationship with him (and yes, it's usually a him) just isn't the same as the one they have with the parent who actually cares for them on a day in and day out basis. I also have one friend who essentially has a commuter relationship with her kids. She has a very high-powered job, primarily located in another city from her kids, so she flies in to see them once or twice a month. They chat and email and text and Skype every day, and she takes them on fabulous vacations in the summer. She decided that her children's need for the stability of a single home (and her ability to earn the money it takes for their father to mostly be a stay at home father and to allow all of them to remain in that stable, comfortable, single home) was more important than what she believes to be an artificial 50-50 time split.

 

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 In my family, when I was growing up, my parents were - how to frame this as positively as possible - completely and utterly intolerant of physical illness in their children. Injuries - particularly the more dramatic ones my siblings and I acquired over the years, like the time I tore my knee all to heck skiiing, or the night I literally had the back of my skull partially caved in when my horse kicked me in the head - were more acceptable, because they were evidence of interesting activity and willingness to take risks. A nasty injury also became material for storyspinning for the whole family, which gave it added value in our excessively verbose clan. But my mother in particular - and my father to a lesser degree  -appeared to see any physical illness as a sign of flawed character and poorly developed work ethic.

 

My mother came by her anti-illness tendencies honestly. Once, when I told my maternal grandmother that I thought I "might have allergies" (having heard about "allergies" for the first time when I was in 7th grade from a child who got to miss school one afternoon each week to go see her special allergy doctor, which sounded appealing), she responded with, "we don't believe in allergies in our family." She went on to explain that women who suffered with "allergies" were the same kind of lollygagging, uninteresting sorts who had those fictitious "migraines." 

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In yesterday's New York Times is a story about highly educated women who have been stay-at-home mothers, but who are now being forced by the recession - and specifically by their previously well-compensated husbands' downsizings and layoffs - to seek full time employment for the first time in many years. The story features several women who were able to find jobs in their fields (law, banking) relatively easily, even after as much as a decade away from their careers. It also features an interview with one longtime homemaker - a woman who previously had a successful legal career - who has been forced to start her climb back into the workforce with an unpaid internship at a law firm.

 

Ouch.

 

The story's tone is generally positive, tacitly assuming that most women who want to get a paying job can do so without too much trouble. The piece focuses more on the hardship of having to get a job at all, rather than on the more realistic hardship of being unable to get a job when one is needed, much less a well-compensated job in a super competitive field like law or finance. The story also references a much-discussed 2003 New York Times Magazine, Lisa Belkin-penned piece titled "The Opt-Out Revolution," which profiled a group of women in this exact same, rarified demographic who were "opting out" of the careers for which they had trained in order to be at-home wives and mothers.

 

When the "Opt-Out Revolution" piece came out, I was newly divorced after almost a decade of being a mostly at-home wife and mother myself. I was 34 years old, unemployed, a mother of three, and for all intents and purposes, I was completely penniless. The divorce ate up my share of whatever modest property and savings my ex and I had managed to  accumulate by that point in our lives, and I found myself starting over with literally nothing. I didn't even have a real bed - I slept on a futon on the floor for the next three three years. Family help sustained me until I was able to find a real job with benefits, which took several months, even in that very good economy.  Thank God, I had done quite a bit of home-office-based, high-profile freelance and contract work over the years, which made it possible for me to land that first job, because if my resume had been blank for the past almost-decade, I would have been in a world of hurt. 

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 I'm an opinionated person, a political person. As someone who blogs, and who writes personal essays and op-eds for various publications - online and off - I express my opinions often, and in a very public way. This may lead to the impression that I don't ascribe any more importance to one issue than another. I just opine, opine and opine, and for those who bother to read what I have to say, perhaps all of these opinions become one big mish-mash of bloviation on behalf of one point of view or another. Which is why today, with this blog post, I want to say right up front that I am more disturbed by the issue I'm about to address than anything I've blogged or written about in a very long time.

 

I absolutely cannot believe that public school districts all over the country caved in to explicitly political pressure, and declined to  participate in what amounted to a 15 minute shared civics lesson for all of our children, delivered live by our President. I am appalled that so many parents took the position that this was a political event, and a political issue, and were willing to deny their kids the fantastic opportunity to hear directly from the President of the United States, in their own classrooms, on the topic of how important it is to set goals, aim high and stay in school. A few years ago, I might have expected a few "fringe" parents - on the right or the left - to take this stance in opposition to a schoolday speech by the President, if that President happened to be of the opposite political persuasion  from those parents. But I never could have predicted that I would soon see a day when so many mainstream American parents would take this radical and dangerous position, and when so many public school administrators would so quickly and easily be bullied into submission.

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 Last week, on J's first day of her freshman year of high school, we had one of our lately-not-uncommon clothing "discussions." Her new public high school has a standardized, rather modest dress code, but because this was a special orientation day, the kids could wear whatever they wanted, and what she wanted to wear was shorts. Now, I'm not sure whether those of you who do not have tweens or teens yet, or who do not yourselves shop at Abercrombie, Hollister or American Eagle know this, but shorts for teenage girls in recent seasons have staged a 70s hotpants revival - only shorter. (Think of those shorts Jodie Foster wore as the 13-year-old hooker in "Taxi Driver," and then mentally lop off an inch or two from their length. You get the idea.) At the moment, the shorts teenage girls favor are little more than bikini bottoms made of demim, khaki and madras. My mother was lucky, I guess, because during my own teenage years, the 80s preppy thang was in full flower, so when I wore shorts, they were almost knee length, covered in whales or ducks, and looked more like something Thurston Howell, III would have worn, rather than the Mary Anne-esque, barely-there shorts favored today. 

 

 

 

 

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 Having grown up in a big, old house full of people and activity, I seem to have inherited the extreme party-throwing gene from my mother. My brother got it, too. My idea of a quiet evening at home optimally includes extra people eating, drinking or just hanging out with us. (Jon and I have that in common, thank goodness) I like to have folks just drop by, and have a glass of wine or a meal with us, and while I am not at all domestically inclined (terrible cook, not crafty, etc), I do take a lot of pleasure in composing a home that is the kind of place where people feel welcome and want to come hang out. All kinds of people.I think my kids learn as much from lively debate from smart people around our dining room table or fireplace than they do just about anywhere else.

 

 This summer, we've had a lovely run of impromptu house parties in the evenings. We turn on the twinkly lights strung up on our big front porch and VOILA! Instant party. Various neighbors and friends and family and extra children seem to appear, as if we had turned on a neon "OPEN" sign. It's been fantastic. Low fuss and planning, great fun.  These events have lately included guitar or mandolin playing, political debate (health care reform in particular), bowls of fresh figs from our tree, and produce from other people's yards.

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As I've mentioned in other blog posts, I grew up with a working mother. She was a journalist, with a very demanding series of progressively more responsible, high pressure jobs, and she also had a lengthy commute. Her mother was also a working journalist, so she knew the drill. While there were a lot more employed mothers when I was growing up than there were when my mother was growing up (when she was a kid, her mother was pretty much the only mom-with-a-job she knew), I was still unique among my friends in the demands of my mother's job. I know that there were lots of American moms in the 70s and 80s who were grappling with the mother-employee balance in the way my mother did, none of them seemed to have children who attended my school, church or 4-H Club meetings.

 

In my juvenile milieu, my mother's work made her an anomaly. None of the kids I knew personally had mothers with the kind of high-octane, super competitive, no-summers-off, always-on-call career like my own mom's, where breaking news sometimes meant a 15 hour day, or where "election night" was actually "election week," and where we might not see her for 48 hours straight. If an interview she had been trying to land for months suddenly became available at 9pm on Sunday night, she went out to do the interview at 9pm on a Sunday night. (My father was also a working journalist, and between my 7th and 10th grade years of high school, he attended law school at night, after work, eventually graduating with honors. So both of my parents worked at a supercharged pace throughout much of my childhood.)

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 Today is my daughter Jane's 14th birthday. She and I spent the day together, shopping, eating Krispy Kreme donuts and hitting the salon so she could have her nails done. We had a great time. On Monday, she starts high school, which for some reason feels like a much bigger milestone with her than it did with her older brother, who started high school three years ago. She's a lovely, confident, thoughtful, kind, funny, amazing girl, and I feel so privileged to have had the chance to mother her this far, and I can't wait toi see what the next 14 years bring.

 

Every year on Jane's birthday, I republish this essay, below, which I wrote when she was a toddler (and which was published in this anthology in 2007). Every year, when I read it again, I am reminded of what might have been, and of how much I struggled with my decision. I feel profoundly grateful that I made the choice I did, and also prfoundly grateful that I am raising Jane, and now her baby sister, in a country where the choice was MINE to make.

 

I love you, Jane - Mama

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 I also shared this on my personal blog, but I just had to post it here, too because it's just so damn adorable. It's a video of C, who turned 2 years old this week, singing her ABCs. The video clearly proves two things about my child:

Thing #1 – She is unlikely to ever win American Idol, or land a starring role in a Broadway musical.

Thing #2 – She’s a TOTAL GENIUS!

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Lately, I've noticed what can only be described as something of a "breastfeeding backlash" in the media, and among some mothers. The message of this backlash can best be summed up as something like this, "the health benefits of breastfeeding have been wildly exaggerated by a bunch of weird and nasty breastfeeding zealots who get their kicks from harassing bottle-feeding mothers in an attempt to make them feel guilty."

 

There are variations and nuances on this theme, depending on the medium and message-bearer, but that pretty much covers all the bases. The most prominent recent example of the breastfeeding backlash was Hanna Rosin's much-discussed piece in The Atlantic, provocatively titled, "The Case Against Breastfeeding." Jennifer Block already wrote the definitive and specific rebuttal to Rosin's piece, so that's not my intent with this particular blog post. Instead, I want to explore the current reaction to perceived breastfeeding "zealotry," and offer some context that I think might be helpful when considering how and why we are seeing this bubble of contrarian commentary at the moment.

 

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 Two years ago tonight, I threw in the towel. After three full days and nights of active labor - some at home and some at the birth center and some in the hospital- I was exhausted and demoralized. Pregnant with my 4th baby, I'd begun having contractions while at work one afternoon. A coworker drove me to the freestanding birth center where I planned to have the baby. When I arrived, the midwife hooked me up to the machine that confirmed to her what I already knew, that I really WAS having contractions, despite being only 36 weeks and 4 days pregnant. My husband arrived. I fretted. The midwife examined my cervix,and told me it was closed up, tight as a drum. By this time I was having to breathe through the contractions and rock back and forth to deal with them.

 

The midwife administered a shot of brethine, and then another, sure that the drug would stop the contractions. It didn't. I was then given an IV of fluids to see whether dehydration was the culprit. By now I was hurting, for real. The midwife assured me that even though she saw no actual progress from the contractions, I would likely be "having a baby later that night." But since I wasn't yet at the magic 37 week mark, she would have to send me over to the hospital, where she would meet me later. That was because the birth center isn't allowed to deliver babies earlier than 37 weeks. Honestly, I didn't really care that much, as I'd given birth twice at that hospital previously, and had been with my sister as she gave birth there twice (both without drugs, and once in a birthing tub which she brought in herself), and I liked everyone there and pretty much everything about it very well. The main reason I was attempting to give birth at the freestanding birth center was to try to avoid an epidural (more on that in a minute).As long as I didn't have an epidural, the rest was sort of gravy, as far as I was concerned.

 

So off Jon and I went to the hospital, which was less than five miles away. On the way there, the contractions slowed, but we did hit a big bump that jostled me really hard. I felt a bizarre and huge FLIP in my belly, like my innards were being turned inside out. I thought nothing of it, assuming it was just a weird contraction. When we got to the hospital, they were expecting us, and the maternity floor triage nurse immediately suggested a quick ultrasound, to see how things were looking in there. That was fine with me, so she began running the ultrasound wand over my belly.

 

"They didn't tell me that your baby was breech," she said matter of factly.

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I've been giving a lot of thought in the past week or so about how to do a better job balancing my family life with my job, because lately, I haven't felt like I've been getting the balance quite right.  In fact, I feel like my family has kind of been getting the short end of the stick.

 

With my still relatively new job - where I've been now since April - my time and attention are consumed to a degree I've never before experienced as a working mother. Essentially, I am responsible for growing a rapidly developing area of business for our company, which is both incredibly exhilarating and fun, but also a tremendous amount of work and responsibility. Because I take this responsibility so seriously, and because I am so energized by the challenge, I find that I am always, always thinking about my work, including in the middle of the night, when I have been known to suddenly hop out of bed and go find my laptop to jot down some ideas that inexplicably popped into my head mid-snooze.

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Since so many people are going to disagree with the opinions I am about to express, let me preface my remarks by offering up my official dog-lover credentials. You see, I  am a huge fan of dogs. Adore them. For several years I did a lot of dog rescue, and we often had 4 dogs at a time staying with us, as I attempted to teach them manners and help the rescue groups place them in good homes. I have a soft spot for all stray dogs. and  I love watching the Westminster Dog Show on TV. I've even been known to watch multiple episodes of "Breed All About It," back to back, as one of my own three beloved canine family members is nestled at my feet. In fact, I am such a bonafide dog geek that I have even attended weekend dog obedience competitions, just for the fun of watching the action. And to top it off, just last week I was invited to an actual pug wedding! Would someone who doesn't love dogs ever get invited to a pug wedding? I think not. So you see, I very clearly love dogs. I really do.

 

No, really.

 

But you know what? As much as I love dogs, I love baby humans a lot more, which is why I am utterly astounded that anyone believes that the family pet who this week snatched a  Kentucky newborn from his crib, dragged him out of the house and into the woods, and fractured the baby's tiny skull as he literally gnawed on his head, should be allowed to live.

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For a variety of reasons, my three older children (now ages 17, 13 and 11) spent their early years in a household with a fairly traditional gender division of parenting labor. I was a work-at-home mom during most of those years, meaning I spent most of my time with the kids, day and night. I rarely left them for more than short periods until they went to school, and they liked it that way. I was the primary parent. As a result, if a very young H, J or E were sleepy or tired or sick or had a scraped knee, they wanted Mama first and foremost. Now, of course, they are just as close to their Dad as to me, but when they were little, they were - as we call it in my family - pretty "mamafied."

Although I had grown up with a very hands-on Dad myself, I still assumed, based on my experience with my older children, that there was something almost magical about the mother-child bond in those first few years that was somehow rooted in gender. My observations had been that babies and young children generally always prefer mothers to others, even when fathers were actively fathering. Was this sexist of me? Perhaps. On the other hand, my anecdotal survey of the parenting landscape leads me to believe that fathers-as-primary-parents during the early years are still a pretty rare breed, despite the fact that they are certainly far more involved with their young children than they were even a generation ago. But is it all window dressing? Are moms still doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to parenting babies/toddlers/preschoolers, while Dads get pats on the back for donning a Baby Bjorn and attending the occasional Mommy and Me class?

 

Fathers who actually "mother" their little kids may be rare, but I happen to live with one,

 

C, last week, hanging out with her Daddy at his office.

 

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I've always found it sort of annoying how adults generally seem to believe that the childhoods they enjoyed were safer, cleaner, and more wholesome than the ones their kids are having. But there are some very specific elements of childhood from even 25 years ago that have changed a great deal.

 

This is the photo I ran across in an old photo album that got me thinking about this stuff this week.

 

 

This is a photo of my little brother, Robert, when he was about 15, so that would have made it 1987 or so. The photo was taken in his bedroom, in our house. In the photo, you see the usual (and still pretty much standard) accoutrements of a teenage boy's bedroom: books, globe, band posters, electronics (I'm digging the funky little black and white TV on the bookcase)...and guns.

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  Apparently one momblogger  aggregation site is challenging the rest of us to a "PR Blackout Week."

From August 10-16, the PR Blackout campaign will encourage mom bloggers to go back to basics.

"We want to see your blog naked, raw," wrote MomDot. "Talk about your kids, your marriage, your college, your hopes, your dreams, your house and whatever you can come up with for one week."

No mention of PR or products will be permitted during the blackout. The rationale for this stance was described thus:

    With the allure of giveaways, reviews, and blog trips, Mom Bloggers have turned from what they love the most, their family, into working directly as public relations for their captive audience. It boils down to knowing your worth and then standing up for it.

The movement comes amidst growing concerns that prominent bloggers in general have become vessels for advertisers eager to appear on their sites — sending them free products, gifts, coupons or financial compensation in tacit expectation of a write-up.

 

My position on this issue is mixed, and I come at it as both an old-school blogger (I've been doing the personal mommyblog thing since 2002), as well as a working mother. On the one hand, I do think that a lot of momblogs have become nothing more than an exploding collection of sponsored product reviews, making the blogs dull and less-than-credible. This has nothing to do with the whole FTC-disclosure thing. Even if a blogger clearly discloses her sponsorships, if she's overloaded with content about products for which she's receiving compensation (almost always meaning that 98% of what she says about the products is positive), the whole power-of-word-of-mouth factor goes out the window for me as a mother and a consumer. I don't end up putting much stock in anything she says.

 

Me, blogging from Bonnaroo. Now THAT was a great, paid blogging gig!

 

 

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 I've deleted this post after comments became highly (and inappropriately) personal in nature. My children read what I write, as well as the comments.

I look forward to the day when I can openly and safely write about this important and sensitive issue in the same way I have always written about other parenting and family life topics. It's clear that that day is not here yet.

 

-kag

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 Reading about the arrest of this woman, on charges that she was "drinking while breastfeeding" really got my hackles up.

Police responding to a domestic disturbance arrived at Stacey Anvarinia's home to find the mother breast-feeding her 6-week-old baby in front of them. And she was drunk, they said. Officers arrested the woman, who later pleaded guilty to child neglect and faces up to five years in prison.

Let me be clear that I do not think being "drunk" while caring for a baby is a good idea, ever, whether you are breastfeeding or bottlefeeding, or you are the babysitter or the father or whomever. Tiny babies are rather fragile creatures, and drunk people are rather clumsy and lack good judgment. So if this woman was really "drunk" while caring for her newborn, perhaps there was cause for alarm on the part of the officers. She could have dropped the baby, for example. But arresting her, and pinning it on drinking whilst nursing has all kinds of problems.

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Warning: I'm about to gush. And it may will be sappy, so if that's gonna bother you, turn away now.No, really. It's going to be pretty extreme. 

 

Okay...well...if you hang around for this, you can't say I didn't warn you.

 

So I'm married, since 2006 now. It was a whirlwind romance (that's the polite way to explain dating for a socially unaccaptable period of time before tying the knot.) He was barely divorced and significantly younger than I am. I was still reeling from the world's most painful and logistically difficult marital breakup a few years earlier, and I had three children. I wasn't looking to get married again, and he definitely wasn't. I had a history with more than a few -how to put this delicately? - dysfunctional relationships behind me, while he had dated or been married to his ex-wife (who left him less than two years after their wedding) for his entire adult life.

 

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