Forever is a Long Time, Part 4: Uncle Eric

Most divorces in my family bring some sense of relief. It may take three years to get there, or it may take thirty years, but once it’s over, it feels pretty clear that this is for the best. But it’s not so clear for my Uncle Eric’s relationship.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

  This is a CBC Podcast. My name is Ian Coss, and you're listening to Forever Is a Long Time on CBC's Personally. This show is a collection of songs and conversations about every marriage in my family that ended in divorce. Most of those stories end with some sense of relief. It may take three years to get there, or it may take 30 years. But once it's over, it feels pretty clear that this is for the best. This is how it should be. But not every marriage in my family is so clear.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Forever is a Long Time, Part Four, My Uncle Eric.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Hello?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Hey, Eric, it's Ian.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Hey, Ian.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  How you doing?

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, good enough.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Good enough. So is this still a good time to pick your brain a little bit?

• 1:44Speaker 02

  I, um, yeah, no, I was expecting your call. And I really, I don't have a lot of wisdom to offer, but yeah, we can bat it around a little bit if you want.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  My father's brother Eric, as you may recall, is actually the reason my parents met in the first place. And he has always been an important part of our lives. When we left Cape Cod and settled in Western Massachusetts, Eric and his wife Debbie lived just a couple towns over from us. From my perspective, their lives had a kind of logic and stability that stood out in my family. While my parents were moving around from one house or apartment to another, changing jobs, going back to school, dating different people, Eric and Debbie were always there in that same house on a little dead-end street

• 2:38Speaker 01

  where we used to ride over on our bicycles and sit on the front porch. They had adopted two children together, who they were both very committed to. They still found ways to pursue their passions, which for Eric was journalism and for Debbie was music. And on a very basic level, they just seemed to match. They liked hiking and listening to the radio. They both wore Birkenstocks and ate a lot of salad. They just made sense. Like if any marriage was going to buck the trend, this was it.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  And one of the things that attracted me to Debbie was that she came from an intact family.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Really?

• 3:20Speaker 02

  And...

• 3:21Speaker 01

  And what was it that you were drawn to in that? Like it just felt comforting to have that just as a model for your own relationship?

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it made me feel more hopeful that our marriage would last. And I think it lasted as long as it did, in some ways through force of will. But I asked myself, why did I marry Debbie? When in retrospect, it probably wasn't the right match for me.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  I was wondering if we could, could we just sort of start at the beginning? And could you just tell me the story of how you guys, how you guys met and, and wound up in a relationship in the first place?

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Let's see, you know, when, when you asked me to start at the beginning, my mind always keeps going back and back and back.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Starting the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the dawn of the 20th century.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  That's right, the big bang.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  So we were, I was in my late twenties and she was a musician doing children's performances. She did a performance and then there was a party afterwards. This is sort of an odd, weird thing. So, so she was talking to some other musician about, you know, calling her up and leaving a song on her, on her answering machine. And she gave him her phone number and I just memorized the phone number and I decided, what the hell, I'll give her a call. So I called her up and I said, hi, you, you may not remember me, but I was at this party and I was wondering if you'd like to go out sometime.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  And she was kind of weirded out by that, you know, and, and said, no.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Somewhat understandably.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Somewhat understandably. And then like, I don't know, it was a year later or sometime later, I was actually at a concert, at a concert at UMass and Debbie was at the concert and I noticed her in the audience. And then at the end, when we were walking out, I, I went up to her and I said, hi, you probably don't remember me, but I'm the guy who called you last year. And she said, oh yeah. I said, I said, do you mind if I call you again? And she said, no, you can call me. So I called her and we went out and it, it was not, and this is why I say maybe, you know, it wasn't the match made in heaven. It wasn't a passionate love. It was more like, we're both in our early thirties, we both want to have kids, we're,

• 6:00Speaker 02

  you know, we're not getting any younger, we like each other, you know, but it wasn't like.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  It wasn't like a Hollywood sizzling love story.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Why did it feel important for you and Debbie to get married when you did? Like, what did that, that sort of commitment, what did that mean to you?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, at that point, we were living together, you know, as co-parents and it was okay. I think it was just, I forget what it was. In fact, my father and Janet came to visit.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  This is my grandfather, Robert, the Harvard-educated lawyer he's talking about, and his third wife, Janet.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Eric had a pretty difficult relationship with his father, and for whatever reason, during this visit, things got ugly.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  I forget exactly what the circumstances was, but I, I just remember feeling totally emotionally, like had the cheer kicked out from under me. And it was like, it was like a moment that I kind of felt like I wanted the stability of being married, I guess.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  So it was really a, a kind of, the decision to then make that lifetime commitment

• 7:26Speaker 01

  actually came more out of just a craving of stability, more so than any, any change within the relationship itself?

• 7:36Speaker 02

  I'd say that's fair to say, yeah.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  Can I ask you a question?

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  Is the fact that like my family has a history of strong marriages, something that

• 7:49Speaker 03

  made you feel, like Eric said, that made him feel better about marrying Debbie?

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Is that, do you share that feeling?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yes, I think I do. I remember, you know, the first time I met your family. I went down to Maryland for the Fourth of July.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  And it was really like a family thing. It was like the most like proper introduction you could get to the whole clan. And I do remember feeling like, wow, this is, this is like a real family, you know? And I realized that, you know, the marriages in your family are not easy or perfect, but they do tend to last. And especially your parents. The more I got to know them and see them as like, not just, you know, two compatible people, but really two people who had like, found their partner and, you know, built their lives around that person

• 9:01Speaker 01

  and found like daily joy in that person. And that was, that's not something that was modeled for me at an early age, you know? I didn't see that. That definitely made an impression on me. How important does that feel to you? Like, I'm doing this whole thing, making like a big deal about the fact that everyone in my family gets divorced. Do that, how important does it feel to you to have intact marriages to kind of look up to and learn from? And maybe model your own relationship on?

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Um, I mean, I guess that like the fact that my parents, I feel like do have a good marriage.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  I'm sure that made me more like confident that I could do that.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  Or it just like gives you like a idea of what you want.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  Like, I didn't do a lot of like dating around. Like, it's kind of unlike me to just be so sure in that decision without trying like lots of other things.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  That's true. I mean, you're like the queen of comparison shopping.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Analysis paralysis. Yeah, it is actually, it's funny you mention that. It's very, very unlikely you.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  I think about that a lot. Like, why did I, why did that feel like? I don't know.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  I just wonder, though, if like the confidence to, to trust that instinct.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  To know that like this instinct, this thing I'm feeling, this is a good thing. This is what the people around me showed me to do, and it worked well for them.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  You want to keep listening?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Uh, you're ultimately married for about 20 years. And I guess I'm wondering, when did you first begin to think, nah, maybe this, maybe this is going to end at some point?

• 11:20Speaker 02

  You know, I think I have to answer that question through my own anxiety, just generalized anxieties in life.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  And, um, always kind of, you know, feeling, a lot of times having a feeling like things are not the way I want them to be. But in a year or two or three, things are gonna go in the right direction. And I, and I still feel that way in some ways, you know? And, and now, now that I'm sort of approaching the end of life, it's, uh, thinking, well, maybe it'll never actually, you know, the, you know, this is just the way it's gonna keep going until it doesn't go anymore.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  But for me, um, living with Debbie and having the stability of having a house and a family and a purpose is that I was able to write for the Boston Globe and the New York Times and, you know, for the local papers. And, you know, that was my happy space, was getting my mind to the point that it was calm enough so that I could put together an article and take a little piece of the world and put it into a sensible framework, you know? There was a sense of stability that I felt in those years.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  And, and I do think that we, we functioned well together on, on many levels, but there wasn't like a, um, an intuitive bond between us that, that would keep us together through, through, through added stresses. And eventually it couldn't hold, which I regret, you know, for my children's sake.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  This week on Two Blocks From the White House.

• 13:44Speaker 05

  Canadians have lots of questions about the significance of the US midterms. And we have some answers.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  We've got a special Everything You Wanted to Know episode about the midterms this week.

• 13:55Speaker 05

  Find and follow Two Blocks From the White House wherever you get your podcasts. And what the heck, watch on YouTube. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  So much about a relationship is beyond our control, or only partially in our control. There are challenges with work and money, maybe pressure from children and extended family, not to mention physical health, mental health, trauma, addiction. All of these forces run through my family, like they do through most families, I think. And I don't want to get into the specific stresses that existed in Eric and Debbie's lives, partly because it's personal, but partly because I'm not sure it really matters. Things happened, like they do, and they took a toll.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Eric asked me at one point what I'd do if my career fell apart while Kelsey's took off, or what if she got sick and I had to take care of her? Would we pull together or fall apart? I wanted to answer with confidence that, of course, we'd stick it out. But at the same time, I don't think that you can really know how you'll respond to something until it happens. Was there a moment when it kind of became real in your mind that you're actually going to go through with it and move out and legally dissolve the marriage?

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean Debbie, Debbie announced that she was, that she wanted divorce. See, we were doing couple counseling for quite a while, and she was the one who first articulated it, that she wanted to get divorced. And I, there was a romantic interest that I had at that point, and I decided to go with that instead of my response to Debbie wanting to get a divorce. And I don't know if you remember her, her name was Albin, do you remember Albin?

• 16:15Speaker 02

  So I kind of said, well, okay, if you want to get divorced, I'll go off with Albin. And then Albin and I moved in together, and then I went into severe crisis.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Living with Auburn and it was more about my kids and desperately sort of missing that and not being able to figure out where I wanted to go. And, um, you know, that was a very tough, you know, I, I, I just, I wasn't sleeping and I wasn't, um, I just couldn't do it. And I ended up moving in with Tom and Suzanne for a few months.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  And then I moved in with, with Linda for a couple of months. And then I got in the, I got, I got, then I got a series of apartments until I ended up where I am now. Um, but.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Were you surprised by the impact it had on you?

• 17:14Speaker 02

  I guess so. I mean, you don't, you don't intentionally go to, go to this crisis. But I guess I wasn't, I was sort of expecting it to be more, um, fulfilling or, or something, you know, uh, maybe help me find inner peace more. Um, and, and it did the opposite.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  I just keep thinking about what he said, that he thought the divorce would be fulfilling somehow, that it would kind of open potential. How do you know that life without the relationship will actually be better than life with the relationship, however difficult it is?

• 18:05Speaker 03

  You don't. You can't like weigh your relationship against every other possible future for yourself. I think you just have to take it for what it is and, and consider that rather than consider the what ifs and what could have been.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  I, I just, I relate with Eric a lot. Like where he says, he imagines things being differently. Maybe in a couple of years, things will be a little bit more like this or that. I totally do that. There are all these things about my life that I, I feel like I'm on the cusp of constantly and never quite arriving at. And a certain, I do-

• 18:46Speaker 03

  Like what?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, like professionally in my work, our life, our home, our relationship. Like I'm always like, oh, wouldn't it be great to like, spend some time abroad again? Maybe I'll make that album. I don't know. There, I just, I do this. I know I do this. And I just can't tell when, how much of that is like forward looking and aspirational? And how much of that is just distracting from, uh, from the great things I have right now? Haven't you ever wondered what an alternative could be?

• 19:24Speaker 03

  If I married someone else?

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:26Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I mean, not, not like a specific person.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  But I feel like the thing is, it's like, if, no matter like how like stressed out I am by you or like mad at you I am, like, I know that if, like, you weren't in my life anymore, I would really miss you.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  I know that that, my life would not be better. No matter how mad I am at you. I, I still believe that you make my life better. Like wanting to, you know, ending a marriage is not, in this case, like an aspiration or a goal. It's a what if. It's like, you don't have something that you're trying to achieve by ending the marriage. You're just like wondering what it would be like if you like lived in this alternate reality.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Right? Like, I think that's the difference.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Hmm. And you feel like me in my, in my weaker moments, it's, there's not actually something I want or something else I want. I just like feel the need to squirm within whatever box I'm in just because I'm in it?

• 20:41Speaker 03

  Sometimes. I think that's the what ifs. I think that's what the what ifs are.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Maybe I just need to check that instinct a little bit.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  I try, I do that.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  I know. That's why you're still here.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  That's why I'm still here. But what I try and remind myself of is that it's easy to walk away, but you can't necessarily walk back.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  These days, Eric and Debbie actually see a lot of each other. They both provide childcare for their granddaughter, Kaia, who is a total joy. And for Thanksgiving, we all still go over to that house they used to share on the dead-end street. It's just Debbie's house now, but Eric is always there, helping to set up folding chairs so everyone has a place to sit. It's weirdly normal. And for a few hours, it's like we inhabit an alternate universe, one in which they never divorced at all. I still think that universe could exist.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  You know, there's all sorts of things that, you know, life is full of surprises.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  You know, and I think if you have a basic sense of like communicating, like you hear and are heard and are on the same page with your partner, it maximizes your chances of surviving the surprises.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Anyway, it's 20 of 12, and Debbie's expecting me at 12 to relieve her of Kaia. But if you want to continue this discussion, I'm always happy to talk with you about anything you want to talk about.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  I appreciate that.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Okay. Thank you. Love you.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Love you, too.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Bye-bye.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  I sent Eric a draft of this episode, so he could hear what parts I was using and how they were framed. He sent me back a really nice note. And in there, perhaps sensing my own lingering question, he said unprompted that he was glad that he and Debbie are no longer married. That it is for the best.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  In part five, "The Last of My Aunts and Uncles", the one who left her marriage and never looked back, the one who makes me wonder if I would just be better off alone.

• 23:52Speaker 06

  So many pathways to choose. So many pathways to choose. All of them lead back to you. All of them lead back to you.

• 24:12Speaker 06

  So many lovers to lose. So many lovers to lose. I never thought I'd lose you. I never thought I'd lose you.

• 25:11Speaker 06

  So many moments to choose So many moments to choose All of them point to the truth All of them point to the truth

• 25:30Speaker 06

  So many lovers to lose So many lovers to lose I never thought I'd lose you I never thought I'd lose you I never thought I'd lose you I never thought I'd lose you I never thought I'd lose you I never thought I'd lose you I never thought I'd lose you

• 26:09Speaker 06

  I never thought I'd lose you I never thought I'd lose you I never thought I'd lose you

• 26:25Speaker 07

  Last night I ran into an old friend I took a turn when she said, "Hey, we should have you two over for dinner." That's when I told her that you and I were separating.

• 26:42Speaker 07

  After a pause, she said something polite.

• 26:47Speaker 07

  I apologized for laying it all on her that night.

• 26:52Speaker 07

  Then we agreed to let our conversation drift apart.

• 27:00Speaker 07

  I know it's better this way

• 27:04Speaker 07

  But I really thought that we learned from our parents' mistakes

• 27:09Speaker 07

  We took our time, gave each other space

• 27:17Speaker 07

  I still remember on that final night No one cried, no one put up a fight We just agreed to let our lives drift apart

• 27:35Speaker 07

  How did we let this happen?

• 27:39Speaker 08

  Little by little, little by little

• 27:44Speaker 07

  How did we let this happen?

• 27:47Speaker 08

  Little by little, little by little

• 27:52Speaker 07

  How did we let this happen?

• 27:56Speaker 08

  Little by little, little by little

• 28:01Speaker 07

  How did we let this happen?

• 28:04Speaker 08

  Little by little, little by little

• 28:09Speaker 07

  How did we let this happen?

• 28:12Speaker 08

  Little by little, little by little

• 28:18Speaker 07

  How did we let this happen?

• 28:21Speaker 08

  Little by little, little by little

• 28:26Speaker 07

  Remember when we were happy?

• 28:29Speaker 08

  Little by little, little by little

• 28:34Speaker 07

  How do we take it back there?

• 28:38Speaker 08

  Little by little, little by little

• 28:43Speaker 07

  How did we let this happen?

• 28:46Speaker 08

  Little by little, little by little

• 28:51Speaker 07

  How did we let this happen?

• 28:55Speaker 08

  Little by little, little by little

• 29:00Speaker 08

  Remember when we were happy. Little ba da da, little ba da da. How do we take it back there? Little ba da da, little ba da da. How did we let this happen? Little ba da da, little ba da da. How did we let this happen? Little ba da da, little ba da da. Remember when we were happy. Little ba da da, little ba da da. How do we take it back there?

• 29:45Speaker 08

  Little ba da da, little ba da da. How did we let this happen? Little ba da da, little ba da da. How did we let this happen? Little ba da da, little ba da da. How did we let this happen? Little ba da da, little ba da da. How did we let this happen? Little ba da da, little ba da da. How did we let this happen? Little ba da, little ba da.