Skip to main content

Clean Break

As much as we might like it, some things from the past refuse to cleave neatly from our lives. My friend L came out of a difficult and loveless marriage with two young children a few years ago.Her ex decided to move back to India leaving L and the kids to fend for themselves here in America. L believes the decision was motivated mainly by the fact he did not want to take responsibility for any of them. They had been married for five years at before the end came and had known each for a couple of years before their marriage.

Her ex has recently remarried and L has a steady boyfriend. It would seem dispersed fragments of everyone's lives have come together after a fashion and there might be peace and renewal yet. There is only one small snag. L has found out from a friend who knows both her and her ex, that he has not told his new wife about the kids he had with L. He has created an alternate reality of his past life with L. According to that narrative, those children don't exist. L's friend wants to know if she should speak up or let sleeping dogs lie. "What do you think I should do ?" L asked me as she struggled between outrage and resignation.

Her kids are too young to have an opinion in the matter and her boyfriend is comfortable with whatever her decision might be. Her family would prefer she moved on with her life and not confront her ex over the issue. They reason, it is only by random chance that she found out about this lie being perpetuated by her ex, so she has no obligation to do anything about it.

Both L and I have experienced the crumbling of marriage and have a keen sense of solidarity with women whose marriages are built on shaky foundations. I fully appreciate her quandary but am hard pressed to recommend a course of action. We both realize that finding out the truth now would be far less damaging for this woman than discovering twenty years later. Does L owe this woman the truth or does she hold her peace and allow her suffer the consequences in due season. She will probably have to end up making peace with her instinct for self preservation being stronger than that of sisterhood with another woman.
Labels:

Comments

kd said…
In most cases, like this one, the 'right' choice is clear the moment you are true to yourself. The question here is whether we have the courage and dispassion to choose the 'right' course.
3:10 PM
A G said…
Unless L is afraid of some direct or indirect negative consequences (e.g. if her ex may be abusive or vengeful, etc.), I'd recommend telling her.

Maybe L should make sure that she has plausible deniability, Dick-Cheney-style.

What goes around, comes around, right? And I'm pretty sure most of us in the new wife's position would rather know than not.
7:40 PM
Heartcrossings said…
silcador - So true about needing courage and dispassion to do right.

Chevalier - Unfortunately, L's ex is certain to cause trouble if she intervened directly or indirectly in this case. Her desire to do right by a stranger will need to prove much stronger than her desire to have peace in her own life. It's a tough call.
8:08 PM
Anonymous said…
If I were wife of L' ex, I would prefer not to know about the kids. The presence of kids does not impacts her life and would probably not impact in future. So why take away the peace of mind she has.
3:40 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
111 comments
Read more

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha
5 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques
6 comments
Read more