OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

I was reading a blog today that made me sad, for the blogger, all those in similar situations, and for our country. It had to do with the horrendous effects upon ourselves, our families, and our culture of the high rate of divorce we're currently experiencing. Maybe the writer didn't look at it that way, since by her own words it was mainly a rant, but that's what it made my mind turn to.

Be aware, this is such a painful subject to me (and to others, I'm sure), that it will have a tendency to be pretty cursory, fairly chaotic, and a lot less philosophical than other things I've written. And I can assure you, the remembrances aren't nearly as smile-provoking as our trip to the lake.

I'm on my third and last marriage. So is my wife. So I've been there, divorced, with children. So has my wife. I've seen it from the man's side, she's seen it from the woman's. Neither is a picnic, different reasons, but some of the same sorrows. When we're in the situation, its hard not to blame our ex's, to realize that it's mostly the circumstances that create our problems. Of couse, this is not always true, but it is a considerable amount of the time.

My first wife, the mother of my children, liked to hang out in bars. For years I tried to keep up with her, but finally I couldn't, or rather I wouldn't. I wanted to be home with my kids (then about five and seven). Fine with her, just gave her more chance to be with some men who were more fun.

Well, eventually she left, taking off with a guy from the bar and her best friend. Must have been an interesting trip from Wisconsin to New Mexico, the three of them. Anyway, knowing her life style, I fought for quite a while for my kids, but in the seventies, the guy had little chance of getting custody.

Less than a year later she was killed by her boy friend who then killed himself. Seems he resented her throwing him away much more than I did her doing the same to me. My oldest son is probably reading some of this information for the first time, but I guess at 37 he's old enough to know the truth. So I ended up with the kids anyway.

I only had to pay child support for less than a year, never objected in any way, I wanted to take care of them. But I can imagine how it is for men when they realize that a significant portion of their income will be taken from them for a long time.

Especially when they have no say-so about how it's spent. You see, the divorce has taken away some of the man's authority and that's hard for a man. It feels like robbery when a man has no choice how money he made is spent. Men don't like losing control of any part of their life.

Anyway, my ex-wife was in New Mexico and my job was first in Wisconsin and then California, so my sorrow was a whole year of my kids' life that I lost. Imagine going to sleep and waking up with your children a year older, think about the loss you feel when you realize it has happened. And it was just a year for me, for many men it's five, ten, twenty.

A lot of guys take that loss. Some can't take it and try to drown the feeling in alcohol or other things. I've even seen guys that I know loved their kids, who found that the only way they could escape the depression was to try and put their children out of their mind, run away, pretend they never existed.

Women may not understand it, but men can do something like that, not perfectly, there are nights of misery, but they can discipline themselves to live such a life, pretending they're childless for most of the time.

My wife's first husband, the father of her children, was abusive. Not physically, but emotionally, to her and the kids. He was constantly telling them all how worthless they were, thinking that somehow if they were nothing it made him bigger.

The youngest won't even talk to him, the middle one decided to emulate him and is estranged from his "worthless" mother, and the oldest lives under the burden of having to be the peacemaker.

It was hard for her to walk away, because they had a comfortable physical life (she was 19, he 40 when they married), but, as she says, she had to in order to maintain her sanity.

Apparently he did pay his child support but, of course, he was no help in any other way (but then again, he never was when they were together). Obviously she had to go to work, which she did, taking care of her kids her number one consideration.

You know, it doesn't take much intelligence to realize that a family occupying two households instead of one is going to have to make some adjustments in their life style. If one worked before, for sure both will have to after the divorce. If both already worked, somebody's going to have to have two jobs, maybe both. Else everyone starts living a whole lot less comfortably.

Regardless of what they do, people suffer. And the kids suffer the most. They may not even complain, but sometimes you can catch the flicker over their face, in their eyes, of pain and sorrow for their lost lives. And what parent can see that without pangs of guilt and sorrow?

I figure that that extra household MUST cost at least an addition 1000 a month, by the time you figure rent, utilities, phone, cable, furniture, etc. And I'm probably low with that figure. How many households could come up with an extra 1000 a month starting RIGHT now? Not many. There would have to be a whole lot of scrambling. And that is exactly what happens.

In most circumstances, everyone moves down in standard of living. Now, I know that the figures say the man moves up with a divorce, but that's usually when there aren't any children, or they don't pay child support, etc. And the figures are sort of slanted toward the financial side.

There's an old Solomon-like solution for dividing something between two children. Have one do the dividing and let the other take first choice of the two "halves". Let's apply that to the financial disparage between men and women after divorce.

How many women would want to trade for their ex's financial condition? What if you had to give up your kids to him in return? The reality of the world has decided what size the two "halves" are, which do you want?

I know that there are men who really don't care about their kids, don't pay their child support, and as far as I'm concerned they should be put in jail and the key thrown away. If they don't care about the conditions in which their kids are raised, I have no use for them whatsoever.

But a lot of fathers are not that way. At least the ones who bother to stick around in the first place aren't. Those who bother to marry the mother. Most of those love their kids, else why are they there in the first place.

And as much as I detest those men who would make a baby with no intention of being its father, I also have little use for those women who will let it happen casually and repeatedly, because they're no better mothers than those men are fathers. They're just the ones trapped into taking care of the "product" of their lust.

Like I say, there are always exceptions but I'm not talking about those. If you're a woman who feels that ALL the dads are exceptions, that all are no-good bums, then you must have been really hurt, because it's not true. And for those fathers who want to be fathers, who like to be fathers, who love their kids, to be separated from them after a divorce is agony.

And heaven forbid if either partner should try to grab some happiness in the form of another person. You know, that perfect one comes along, one who could provide that other half for you and your kids. Except, of course, the ex might not like that, might cause trouble, and the kids don't take to the new man/woman.

And the new partner wants kids of their own, but you've got enough. And, if the MAN remarries, there's another set of needs and desires to be satisfied. Hope the new woman wants to work, because she's going to need to. And if the WOMAN remarries, now she has the problem of the new man's interaction with her kids. It's harder to find a man who wants to take on a family than it is to find a woman who does.

It's so frustrating to write about the effects of divorce. It opens some very old wounds. I can remember sitting in my living room, beating a pillow as hard as I could, the thought circling endlessly though my brain, "Why? Why? Why? How could she do this to me, and to the kids, especially the kids." For months. But she did.

I don't know why so many people get divorced today. I don't know why so few did in my folk's day. Oh, I've heard all the pundits with all their smart answers, but I really don't think it's that simple. I think it has to do with values, how much we value ourselves, our spouses, our marriages, the institution of marriage itself, and our kids. Especially our kids.

Today, all too often, I think people look at their kids like small aliens that we are entrusted with, that we have to maintain, sort of like an exotic animal.

We'll maintain them, but we don't want to invest too much in them, because we've got lots of other stuff to do, because careers and fun calls, because we've seen how "alienated" and hostile they become as they grow up.

Love them, too dangerous, too much hurt, too much time.

So I don't have any answers, once again. Seems like that's the story of my life. But this I know: divorce hurts. In so many ways, they can't be listed. The very concept of "no-fault" divorce, which I once supported, now seems so strange to me. If there's no fault, why get a divorce?

Anyway, once again...my opinion.