Today I reached a milestone in my divorce (described much later in this entry) which prompts me to finally put electronic pen to electronic paper and save many of the thoughts and feelings I've had over the last year+ for a future self to review.

Of all the things I did not expect it would have to be my family's reaction. Certainly I never expected say positive feedback ("Hey Brendan, good for you, you finally dumped that woman") but likewise I never expected my mom, my brothers and their spouses to take sides (which I never wanted) and for the side to be taken to be C's. What little solace I have comes through my friends who've supported me through the divorce who's response is along the lines of "Dude, you have such a fucked up family, mine would never have done that to me, even if I completely fucked over my spouse." I guess that after a lifetime living the role of Outsider it makes sense that Big I would volunteer me to live that role wrt my family. Gee, thanks Big I!

Looking back my family's reaction makes a certain amount of sense. If I think of the web of relationships C and I had with us at the center it seems that the social web doesn't like it when someone like me comes along and tears a hole in it and will do everything in it's power to exert influence to restore the web to it's former state.

I also had to remind myself that even though I wasn't surprised by my separation, having wrestled with its possibility for some time, from my family's perspective it was a complete shock.

In the end I count myself lucky that C and I didn't follow through on our initial plan to separate in April 2004 - I was so not ready to withstand the reaction that there's a very real possibility that I would have capitulated, even if for a short while, and returned to C, only to eventually leave again. Wouldn't that have left some wonderful Gifts That Keep on Giving for the Little Ones...

Dad's reaction was clear even as it was occurring - he never got over his divorce and mine was reopening wounds that never healed. What I found fascinating was that I heard two stories of who ended my parent's marriage - he thought my mom had ended it, she (and other family members I talked to) thought it was him. In the end I don't think I'll ever know - both stories seem equally possible.

Writing this I remember that a dominate feeling I had in the first several weeks after the separation was feeling reamed, not just because of the family's overt reaction but because initially, in the days that I was telling them of the separation and trying to explain it, I had the distinct feeling that it was as if say one of my children had died, and instead of being comforted by them, I was being called upon to comfort them. Who was there to comfort and support me?

The answer to that question is my friends, who with the exceptions of Peter, Oregon David and his wife Shawne, all of whom I was in close contact with at that time who withheld judgement and gave freely of their time and attention when I needed it were all divorced themselves. Without Peter, Austin David, Mary, Anna, Zy, Oregon David and Shawne I don't know what I would have done last summer. I feel very grateful to them in ways even they can't know.

The other thing which sustained me is that I knew, in a way that I rarely experienced previously in my life, that I had made the right decision and that while the transition might be a difficult journey, in the end I had made a huge step towards authenticity and that in time I, The Children and yes, even C, if she could surrender to it, would experience a better life on the other side.

I may never know about C (despite my divorced friends' assurances that in time C and I will heal enough to be able to be friends of some sort I'm not holding my breath if you know what I mean - given the atypical and unexpected response from my family the most I feel safe hoping for is that we can maintain a relationship which is cordial and free of overt ill-well enough to successfully parent our children through the next 10 years) but when it comes to The Children I have hope - I know I only see them a fraction of each month but with the exception of days when they're tired and Grumpy Bears they're happy when I pick them up and happy when I drop them off. Given some of the horror stories I've heard about others' divorces, and the memories of my parent's divorce, I count that as a Really Good Sign.

In the final analysis despite feeling reamed more than once I actually feel lucky that it wasn't worse - there are some real horror stories out there.

And it could be worse. While there's been definite shift in our relationships my brothers and I still see each other from time to time and there's no overt animosity as far as I can tell i.e. the bridges may be badly damaged but aren't completely burned.

Today I count myself lucky in another way. When I realized that week last year in June that this was not going to be an amicable divorce I was faced with C demanding Sole Conservatorship and the difficulty of financially providing more than the State required in a way which didn't open me up to extreme risk.

The problem with Sole Conservatorship is that this would allow C, if she so chose, to move anywhere she wanted and I wouldn't be able to do squat about it. Even though her original proposal (which I've always thought was the proposal she had drafted last summer when she was filled with rage towards me) specified Sole Conservatorship, she agreed to my proposal of Joint Conservatorship provided that I agreed to also specify Harris and Dallas counties in addition to Williamson as place of residence. Her reasoning was that if she lost her job and couldn't find work in Austin she wanted the ability to look for work in Dallas and Houston without having the burden of having to go back to court to modify the Decree to allow her to move the children. While I'm not a fan of living in either city (which I'd do if it meant staying close to The Children) I felt that if this happened It Was Meant To Be i.e. another lesson in trusting Big I so I agreed to that.

The other problem requires more explanation. Prior to being introduced to family law (at least as it's practiced in Texas) I thought that it was like, you know, rational. Knowing that C had been out of the workforce for 10 years and what the burn rate was to run the household, I had the intent to provide more than the State mandated - I had no desire to inflict the oh so common pattern where a divorce left the father with a higher standard of living while the mother and children experienced a (usually dramatic) drop. As a programmer I came into this process thinking that if I was willing to pay x% of my income in support, that if my income changed, the support would change as well.

It doesn't work that way. What happens is that using a percentage of my income an absolute number is computed and that goes into the Decree. If my income were to drop (as was the case for many programmers post dot-com bust) my support obligation would not drop unless I successfully petitioned the court for a change to the Decree.

Ok, that's not that great a situation (being cash constrained and needing to spend $ for a lawyer) but it's workable, right? Nope, because in the absolutely insane logic employed in family law, if I was making a certain salary at the time of the divorce, then the assumption is that despite anything which might happen wrt to economic changes I should always be able to make at least that much in salary i.e. the odds that I'd be able to petition the court to lower my support obligations if I had to take a lower paying job are considered to be tending toward zero.

For most of the last 15 months I have been struggling with how to resolve this. Most of the time I was of the belief that I needed to surrender, sign a Decree which specified child support of a larger than mandated percentage and trust that Big I would ensure that my future income would not drop.

I still don't know quite how it happened but this summer, when discussing my counter to C's proposal, I managed to articulate something which my lawyer was able to work his head around which C could agree to. What I'm doing is paying the State mandated amount in child support and paying her the difference as spousal support as part of an appendix to the Decree, which has some breakout clauses, one of which is that if my income drops the spousal support drops as well.

This part was the last thing we had to negotiate and was the impasse we found ourselves at today.

Today we went into mediation, which is a required step before going to court if agreement can't be reached.

Her attorney provided us with a copy of the updated proposed Decree which was supposed to reflect the negotiations we'd had this summer but which I quickly found included a couple of (but not all) changes which benefited her and none which benefited me. I figure that either this was a) her attorney's method of getting the best possible deal or b) he was sloppy. Based on a couple of negotiated changes which benefited C which were not in the revised draft and some things which occurred previously, I think the latter is more likely.

Mediation was supposed to be from 8:30am to noon, we didn't conclude until 1pm. A little over half of this time was spent marking up the revised draft to specify what we had negotiated over the summer. This included changes I had proposed to benefit C which I spotted and noted should be included.

The remainder of the time was spent on the spousal support appendix, on one key point in particular. As I mentioned previously one of the 'breakout' clauses specified that spousal support would drop if my salaried income dropped below what it is now. Her attorney wanted this to be gross income i.e. salary and bonus. The thinking was that this would prevent me from screwing C (what, I'm going to start now?) by negotiating a job agreement where my income was in the form of a low salary and large bonuses. The problem I had with that is if that ever were the case I'd have a serious cash flow problem.

I had already discussed this with C when we negotiated this in August and had told my attorney what I wanted to do - if my salary dropped below <x> amount per month, the support would also drop and if at the end of a bonus period salary plus bonus averaged over the bonus period was above <x>, I'd pay her the difference between what I had paid her and what I would have paid her i.e. I'd make her 'whole.' For reasons which I'm not clear (but I suspect to having to with this being the most creative divorce either attorneys have seen) this later clause wasn't in the proposed appendix.

This was the impasse we found ourselves at about 12:30p. When I discussed this with my attorney I asked why he wasn't proposing this later clause at which point he asked if I still had the e-mail I had sent him articulating what I wanted. I go out to my car, get my laptop and thinking like a programmer [1] drafted the text which I proposed. He carries it over to C's attorney and the mediator who review and approve it. Her attorney then writes it down, copies are made and we sign an Agreement which enters the marked up Decree and my changes to the appendix into the legal system i.e. I have literally written a clause which will be part of my Divorce Decree.

Assuming her lawyer accurately updates all documents to reflect these changes I should then be divorced sometime in the next four weeks.

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[1] I've often thought that the practice of law is somewhat akin to being a programmer except that the language being used is an ancient programming language. My experience in this journey is that it tends to support the idea that language shapes how we see the world i.e. because the Law is a language somewhat akin to writing in Assembly there's the corresponding lack of creativity in resolving disputes that you'd expect to see as if higher level languages such as C++, Perl and Python had never come into existence.

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Through this entire journey I have always had the intent that to the extent it was possible for me to do so, to Do The Right Thing, sometimes in opposition to people suggesting that I was being too generous.

Clearly, because my income is not infinite I could not give C all that she wanted but I tried to give her what I thought I could afford and I think I've done that. My standard of living is roughly equivalent to what it was when I graduated from UT and entered the corporate world, and modulo changes in her life (working very long hours for the startup she's employed by) it appears that her and the children's standard of living is similar to what it was before I left. I expect that with the passage of time and assuming no economic meltdown, both our incomes will continue to rise.

I know there's a part of me which seeks external recognition and validation that I did do the best I could but I also recognize that that may not be part of my life script this lifetime. Yes, even if today I was the one spotting the errors her lawyer made which negatively impacted C, to the extent that C (or anyone else) continues to think of me as That Bastard none of it matters, except to me and I guess that's what I need to hold on to.