The Power to Navigate Your Destiny

After fifteen years of marriage my husband called me at work and told me that he was leaving me. He had started the conversation by asking me questions about the balance on all of our accounts. I had told him the balance on the mortgage and credit cards. He said he was asking me these questions because he was planning to leave me. I responded that he must be talking about leaving me physically because he had left spiritually and emotionally several years ago. Of course, I had been distraught but yet not surprised that my marriage was ending. I had just never thought I would be divorced.

Like most people who get married, my plan was to be married until death. I wanted to grow old with him. My parents served as role models to me in their marriage because they stood the

test of time through good and bad, and ups and downs until my mother’s death. But the handwriting was on the wall for me and my husband. We were like two ships passing in the night, working different schedules, so we barely communicated. I felt his disdain for me every day. I prayed and prayed that things would get better, but they never did. I never understood why he hated me so.

As a PK, I was raised with strong morals and values. I purposefully treat people the way I want to be treated. I was deeply in love with my husband and accepted that, if he became incapacitated due to his illness, I would have no problem taking care of him. But I realized that he would not do the same for me. I recommended counseling, but unfortunately, marriage counseling was not an option. Like many African American men in my culture, my husband did not take well to the concept of marriage counseling and having people involved in our marriage. He was an intelligent man, so perhaps he knew that it would put him in a vulnerable

position, and he would have to confront the demons in his life, primarily his unhealthy relationship with his mother. Also, I think this fear originated from knowing the history of how black men were treated during times of slavery. Black men were bought and sold like pieces of meat. They were told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Today, many of them simply refuse to allow anyone (especially white men) to tell them how to live their lives. Call it fear or disdain, but it takes two people to mess up a marriage; thus, it will take two people to fix a marriage. One person cannot do it alone, so if marriage counseling is out of the question, then it is inevitable that the marriage will end.

When I got home one evening from work, we sat down and discussed how we were going to handle breaking the bad news to our two daughters, ages fourteen and six. Ironically, Max was just six years old when his parents divorced. We decided we would sell the house, split everything fifty-fifty, and go our separate ways. However, the one thing I made clear immediately was that the girls would come with me. I didn’t care about furniture or other

possessions; I could always replace them. But my strong maternal instinct took over to ensure the well-being of my daughters. We told the girls that we were separating, and although they were crying and upset about us splitting up, they were not surprised. It is amazing how kids already know that things are not good. They just didn’t know how to comprehend it or how it would impact their lives, especially our six-year-old.

I know that there are many single and divorced moms who do a brave and heroic job on behalf of their kids. Still, children living with single mothers are five times more likely to be poor than children in two-parent households. Children in single-parent homes are also more likely to drop out of school and become teen parents, even when financial hardship is not an obstacle. Evidence suggests that, on average, children who live with both their biological mother

and father have more stability in their lives than those who live in stepfamilies or with cohabitating partners. Knowing this, I was determined to beat the odds of these statistics. My two daughters became my focus and primary motivation.

Fortunately, I was only a few months from completing my bachelor’s degree and would have greater potential to take care of my girls and myself. I knew that I had to complete my degree so that I could compete in the job market and move up at my place of work. About six months after we separated, Max told me that he wanted to reconcile and that my earning my degree was actually a threat to him. He thought I had been positioning myself to leave him. I guess after fifteen years of marriage Max didn’t know me as well as I thought he should have. I was not positioning myself to leave him. I was positioning myself to become the primary breadwinner in the family due to his declining health issues associated with diabetes. Max had been diagnosed as a diabetic just three short months after we were married. Even though he has a medical background—he served as a corpsman in the US Navy during the Vietnam War (which I found out after his death that he was exposed to agent orange) and worked as a hospital administrator—he literally thought it was a death sentence. I comforted him and reassured him that it was not. At that time, my mother had been living with diabetes for over twenty years. It was important for him to take care of himself—to exercise, watch what he ate, and not smoke or drink alcohol.