History Repeats Itself

Divorce runs in my family.

My parents divorced in 1980, after nearly two decades of rocky and tumultuous marriage. Their relationship was the stuff of afternoon talk shows - numerous affairs on both sides, drinking bouts that sometimes came to blows, and a very laissez faire attitude about raising children. Their marriage ended explosively in an early morning act of violence so horrific that it shaped all of our lives for years to come. I learned a lot from my parents about how not to be married.

My mother's mother divorced her husband in the 1950s because he was 'boring.' My grandfather remarried and spent the rest of his days in the Texas Panhandle town where he was born. My grandmother shlepped her two daughters on a trailerpark tour of Oklahoma and Arkansas, eventually drifting out west and settling in Los Angeles. She never lost her taste for marriage - she wed and divorced again, and had a long string of unsatisfying affairs with married men.

My father's mother divorced her husband in the 1940s after more than a decade of drunken violence. Finding no support from her family or his, she enlisted a man named Slick to drive herself and her two young sons from the Pacific Northwest to Los Angeles to start a new life. I pestered her constantly as a child with questions about Slick and his intriguing nickname. All I ever got for my trouble was a withering stare.

My great-grandmother divorced her husband in 1915. She was no Manhattan socialite, either - she was a Welsh immigrant living a hardscrabble life in a small town in Eastern Idaho. The details of that cursed marriage died with my grandmother in 1992 - she of the withering stare. All I know is that my grandmother's mother abandoned her as a small child after the divorce, leaving her with an uncle.

My mother assures me that divorce isn't genetic. Huh.

Considering my family's history, I was understandably reluctant to marry. I compiled a list of personality traits shared by the divorcees in my family - drunkenness, cruelty, a prediliction for violence - and finally entrusted my heart to Dear Husband, who has one drink every six months and has never deliberately hurt anyone. Too bad I overlooked his other 'qualities' - infidelity, dishonesty, secrecy, an inability to trust.

What are the lessons to be learned here? My first instinct is to shut down my heart and never, ever trust anyone again. But as tempting as this seems, it's not how I want to live my life. I want to embrace all the good things that come my way with an open mind and open heart. I thought my heart was shattered into a thousand pieces, but I see now that it is only bruised and battered. It just needs time to heal.