My muse (Patreon)

Esmeralda

I’ve never really gone deep into this topic - because it never touched me personally. But over the last 1-2 years, it started affecting people around me - family, friends, people I’m close to.

And the topic is relationships during and after divorce.

Yes, my circle already managed to get married, have kids, and even get divorced… and I’m just a little behind everyone else. But hopefully I won’t complete the full circle )

So here’s what I don’t understand.

How is it even possible to destroy a relationship between two people who were once in love to the point where they end up hating each other?....Saying disgusting things....Sabotaging each other....Pressing on each other’s wounds with every word and action.

How do you go from being in love to becoming enemies?

And what I understand even less - how is that possible when those two people created a child together. A human who is literally a part of both of them. The idea of hating a woman who carried your child feels absurd to me. Just like hating a man you created that child with. You can grow apart. You can fall out of love. You can fall in love with someone else. There can be cheating, betrayal, whatever.

But how does any of that erase respect for the mother or father of your child?

That’s the part I can’t process.

What confuses me even more is when ex-partners don’t just hate each other, but start saying awful things about one another to their child. I understand pain. I understand anger. I understand the desire for justice. But using a child as a tool for revenge… that’s honestly fucked up. I can’t rationalize that.

When I talk about this with people who’ve been through it, almost everyone says the same thing: “People reveal who they really are during divorce. You might see a completely different person than the one you fell in love with.”

And honestly…

I don’t fully believe that.

Even in my past relationships that didn’t lead to marriage - no matter how they ended, I never had the urge to trash that person. Maybe I felt sadness....sometimes disappointment. Later - even a bit of compassion. And of course, a slight feeling that they simply lost an amazing woman. No arguments there))

But hate? No.

The desire to destroy them? Also no.

So I guess my real question is:

Where does respect go? Or maybe divorce doesnt destroy it - it just reveals whether it ever existed.