Watch Your Back...

For those of you who have just been served with divorce papers or thinking about filing...you need to know something very important: Divorce is an emotional gulag. Short of cancer or some God awful disease, you will never face a more painful time in your life. And oh goody, it's a long, slow pain, too.

For months and months you'll be going through mediation or dealing with attorney's fees, custody battles if you have kids, and acrimony so acidic it could strip paint off a car. Protecting yourself and your assets is the biggest chess game of your life, baby and you've got to watch your back constantly.

You think your friends and family will always be there for you, but the reality is you're on your own. All the people who love you can only take so much grief. It literally kills them to see you in pain and sometimes they can't bear to watch. No one can make it go away or make it better. And your best friend - your spouse - is now your adversary.

Divorce is a horrible right of passage. You're something of a social pariah now as well. Like a character out of a goddamn Edith Wharton novel or a lone animal the herd shuns. My next door neighbor who at first acted like my protector and whose shoulder I had cried on, told me one day, "You know your husband left you because you couldn't satisfy him." Never mind that he'd had 3 failed businesses, and his last one nearly cost us our house right after I'd just given birth to our daughter. I had to bail him out to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

Or that he left me holding the bag on a massive remodel which was his idea to begin with. And let's just ignore that I did without three summer vacations because I had to work, but he went ahead and took our daughter on trips anyway. Or that he was emotionally bankrupt. That's the guy I couldn't satisfy...I couldn't believe she could be that rude. But during this time, people will surprise you both in their generosity of love and kindness as well as their capacity for cruelty.