Hugo Schwyzer

Another email, from Mallory. She writes:

I was married at 27 to my college sweetheart. This man checked all of the boxes dreamed of on the surface - doctor, boy scout-esque from a nice family - all of the family, etc. were thrilled when we were married. However, quite quickly after the wedding things fell apart and he told me essentially that he was not ready to grow-up and had to go find himself. I picked up the pieces, moved to another country with a business opportunity, and started over.

When does it become counter productive to engage in flippant relationships? Am I listening to society too much, or not enough to my gut?

Though I am fond of marriage (I’ve done it four times), I don’t think lifelong monogamous commitments are the only sort of relationships worth pursuing. I’ve come to believe, instead, that at different seasons of our life we may need different sorts of relationships to help us grow. And one of the most important kinds of relationships we can have after a divorce is with a “transition figure” who can help us process the lingering wounds and doubts that almost always remain in the aftermath of the end of a marriage.

I’m not talking about using people. I’m not talking about relying on one’s own pain as an excuse to deal cavalierly and recklessly with another human being. One basic dating maxim for grown-ups: our past history of suffering doesn’t vitiate our responsibility to avoid hurting others. It’s not enough to simply say “I’m on the rebound, watch out!” and then, having broken the heart of the person with whom we rebounded, to exclaim “What did you expect? I was on the rebound!” Nothing we’ve endured gives us the right to disregard our responsibility to consider how a sexual relationship we’re having may affect the other person emotionally. Misleading another person into believing that what is temporary might turn out to be permanent is bad form indeed, particularly for those old enough to know better.

That said, I think there’s a distinction between a “rebound” and a “transition relationship”. The difference lies in three things: our willingness to assume complete responsibility for our own actions, our honesty — in both word and deed — with the other person about what we can and can’t offer, and our own internal clarity about what purpose this relationship plays in our life. If we’re scrupulous about these things, “transitional relationships” which are time-limited but intense can be enormously healing for those who have them.

I’ve been divorced three times. After the first divorce, in 1992, I segued instantly into a very brief and torrid relationship with a woman I’d been flirting with whilst I was still living with my wife. It was dishonest; I used this woman largely to soothe my tremendous fear of being alone. Sexual chemistry has a powerful analgesic effect, and this particular rebound was solely for the purpose of dulling the pain of the process. I wasn’t honest with Jill, the woman with whom I rebounded. She did hope for something lasting, and I did nothing to disabuse her of that notion until I felt stable enough to move forward on my own. It was selfish and thoughtless. Despite some effort, I’ve never been able to track her down to make amends. Perhaps those amends themselves would be more about me than her anyway.

When my second marriage ended in 1996, I transitioned immediately into what proved to be a far longer-lasting relationship with a woman named Ethel. For a variety of reasons (chiefly revolving around mutual addictions), I sensed that Ethel and I couldn’t possibly “work” out long term. But it was an emotionally and sexually intense connection she and I had. Coming out of a marriage in which I had been a passive-aggressive sulker married to a verbally and occasionally physically abusive spouse, my self-esteem was shot. Even as we drank and used together, even as we in many ways treated each other very poorly, Ethel and I worked to heal each other of our wounds from previous relationships. As awful as things got between us, I know we both got something we desperately needed. My sense of myself as worthy and desirable came back.

After my third marriage ended in 2002, I nearly relapsed into old behavior. Instead, after a few weeks of hard spiritual work and self-restraint, I started dating Eira, who is now my wife. We both expected ours to be a transition relationship. She had just ended an eight-year relationship; I had just ended my third marriage. I was determined not to make the sort of mistakes I’d made with Jill and Ethel. I didn’t expect things with Eira to last forever, but I wanted to do things with clarity, honesty, and mutual respect. We kept things light as long as we could. But eventually that which was supposed to be transitory made its own transition into permanence.

Seven and a half years later, I’m grateful that we approached our relationship as if it were temporary. It gave me room to breathe. And doing something temporary with clarity and honesty and a keen commitment to the other person’s well-being ended up creating the foundation for another sort of relationship altogether. Both Eira and I thought we were helping each other get ready — in the most loving way possible — for our next long-term relationships with other people. But the courage and the candor with which we were able (thanks in my case to therapy, 12 Step programs, God and my friends) to do our “transition thing” ended up helping us to fall in love with each other.

I don’t know if that’s going to happen for Mallory. But I know that a transition relationship can be healthy, can be loving, can be characterized by mutual concern. There’s a world of difference between using another person’s body in order to heal oneself, and walking the healing journey with another person. Three times, I went with relative quickness from a painful divorce into another woman’s arms. But I did so differently each time. The third time, I learned what it was to heal with rather than to use. I’m grateful I got to the place where I could live out that distinction. And I’m convinced that whether they end up enduring or not, transition relationships can lay the groundwork for something far better.