Divorce Balance

Negotiation > Recovery > Enhancement

Saturday, April 2, 2005
What to Call Your Former Spouse

• Dear Dell: What do you call your ex-wife?

• Dear Caller: It depends on what we're doing.

For starters, I generally don't think of my former wife as an "ex" anything. So I don't feel a temptation to indulge myself in using the label.

I know — people argue all the time that it's not pejorative.

In fact, it's benign. Sorta like I was walking through my son's classroom and had labeled each child I passed as "not my kid" until I came to the one that was. Or: "That's my ex-saber-saw," you told a friend the other day at Stadium Hardware, pointing to a power tool you'd returned because you couldn't figure out how to use it.

Have you ever noticed that most folks who refer to their ex-wife or ex-husband do so with an emphasis on the "ex"?

If this prefix ever was white bread, it isn't now. The this-explains-it-all brand-name users have made certain of that.

You've seen it yourself. Say you're buying something at the Cingular Wireless store. In front of you, a man is trying to return a cell phone. The clerk asks what's wrong with it.

"I dunno, my ex-wife bought it," grumbles the man.

"Say no more," the clerk thinks, "that explains everything."

Several years ago, I was walking a client out to her car when I noticed that her driver's front tire was almost bald. Not sure if she was aware of this or what it might mean in terms of safety, I gently brought it to her attention.

"Yeah, I know!" she snapped. "My ex-husband hasn't paid support in six months."

When I hear the word "ex" generously sprinkled about by a divorced person in conversation, it's invariably done to reinforce some larger message to me. It's like they've found something horribly defective about the person they'd married, and — thank goodness — they still had the receipt and were able to return them to the original place of purchase.

As if marriages were covered by some sort of lemon law.

There's also what we might think of as the Invisible Fence application. Like the Invisible Fence that Mrs. Poyndexter once tried to install to keep her Samoyed from bolting out of her yard. But the "ex-visible fence" works in reverse. It's like an anti-spouse device to keep them outside of whatever emotional perimeter you'd like to set.

The fear here seems to be that if we don't use the word "ex" frequently enough, we may risk invalidating our Judgment of Divorce. Much like the concept of adverse possession in real estate property boundaries: If we fail to aggressively re-mark the line, someone may, when we least expect it, come up and say we're not really divorced anymore.

Yikes!

To me it's always seemed unnatural (if not disrespectful) to speak about relationships in terms of what they are not. I recommend speaking about your former spouse in terms of whatever positive relationship you currently enjoy with them, if that's the case.

If there is no relationship, what's compelling you to continue talking about them? If someone asks you? "We were married until April of 2001."

That said, divorce is a process replete with extremes. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised last December when I saw even objectivity itself cross the line.

This was in a post-divorce issue related to the former Mr. and Mrs. Florentine, ink barely six months dry on their Judgment of Divorce. Although this wasn't one of my cases, I was at the courthouse on other matters and found myself with an uncommitted half hour.

Every divorce is unique in its own way, so I'm always moved to listen in when I can — and I genuinely care.

Things were already steaming down the track when I entered the courtroom. I was the only person in the gallery, and, interestingly, there was a total of just three of us on this side of the bench.

It had more of the feel I associate with my work before the Court of Appeals than any circuit court. Factual recitations, just the lawyers' arguments, little evidenced emotion.

A conservatively dressed, professional woman was speaking in measured diction. Intense. Scholarly glasses. Maybe like the way you figure they tell divorce lawyers to comport themselves in some class at law school.

For the better part of ten minutes, she detailed the failures of "Mr. Florentine" in his obligations to "Plaintiff." She alleged numerous instances where "Mr. Florentine" had exceeded his parental authority in actions regarding "parties' minor children."

I was impressed by her discipline. Not once in nearly fifty references over that time did she ever refer to the defendant as anything other than "Mr. Florentine." His counterpart was always "Plaintiff."

Talk about focus.

But that wasn't the half of it. This woman was no hardened barrister. She was, in fact, herself, the former Mrs. Florentine.

My goodness. If "ex" is an Invisible Fence, this unwavering commitment to Emily Post-inspired formality is a wide mote with alligators! No offense, but if you weren't even this proper with 'em when you first met, isn't it possible that you're trying to prove something far more than respect in this divorce court when you use such glaringly uncommon nomenclature?

Moreover, you can't exactly call him "Mr. Florentine" to your kids. So, what then?

I have a psychologist friend who actually used this test as part of her parental evaluations: How does one parent refer to the other when speaking with their children?

When interacting with my son, do I say, "Mom" or "your mom"?

Well, I already have a mom; I call her "Mom." She's my son's grandmother. He calls her, "Grammie." Mostly I refer to my mother as "your grammie" when speaking with my son, but when I do call her "Mom," in whatever context, he knows that I am talking about my mother, not his.

My psychologist friend says that "your mom" is an indicator of a healthier parent-to-child dialogue. It goes to appropriate separation.

As it happens, this subject also came up in my weekly walk-in divorce support group this past Wednesday. Anecdotally, those parents unanimously felt that former spouses who referred to them directly (e.g., "Mom," as opposed to "your Mom") were operating toward some ulterior agenda. Seeking to manipulate the child in some way? Still enmeshed with their former spouse?

The list could get pretty long—.

Several months ago, one of my Divorce Recovery Workshop attendees, Kurt, noted after our session for the day that I had referred to my son's mother as, well, "my son's mother."

"I think you're having a setback, Dell," he said to me good-naturedly in his deep, commanding voice.

"And why would that be?" I'm always open to criticism.

"Because you referred to her as your 'son's mother.' You didn't use her name. I don't think you've ever told us her name."

"Well, Kurt," I began, "she is my son's mother. And that's the only relationship I have with her. Beyond that, I make a conscious effort not to refer to her by name here."

"Why?"

Most of my program attendees and life coaching clients do at some point reference their soon-to-be-former and former spouses in the course of our work. It's a common — I might even say helpful — part of the process.

If my son's mother were to participate in a divorce support group and felt she could benefit by referring to me by name, I'd have no problem with that.

As a divorce mediation expert and recovery advocate, how could I?

The Divorce Recovery Workshop that Kurt attended was fairly representative of what I do (as are my Divorce Balance columns). An important part of that is to share the fact that I have experienced divorce myself.

I have actually struggled with real marital and divorce issues. I can thus lay out vignettes, then use them to coach my clients toward a view that is ultimately exclusive to what we can do with ourselves as a result of what we've done.

Yet — unlike the people I serve — I am out there with my divorce story year round, in perpetuity. That's my choice. But that shouldn't gratuitously introduce someone I once married to become a part of my clients' hand's on, day-to-day recoveries.

Divorce Balance has developed Privacy Statements out of respect for everyone else we mention herein. Shouldn't I give the same respect to someone who thought enough of me at one time to become my wife?

So when it seems necessary to refer to her by name in my work, I will typically use a nickname a dear friend of hers provided before she and I met.

I never used it when we were married, so it carries no intimacy connotations. But neither is it inconsequential: Her friend supposedly used it when he introduced her to Bob Dylan, socially.

So, Caller, while I can't speak for Mr. Dylan, I refer to my former spouse by that same nickname:

"Scout."

—posted by Dell Deaton @9:00 PM EST 4/2/2005 [1500]

Link to complete articles index