NSFW Author

One night, Jill confided that when she was with her ex-boyfriend, they were roommates with another couple and that frequently they had sex together.That’s when she first had multiple-partners experiences including sex with a woman.  Tears were present in the corner of her eyes. By dumping her boyfriend, she also lost the company of the other couple and the swingers club made her feel closer to that period of her life.

After a few minutes, she reassured me that she loved me and that it was just nostalgia, but I couldn’t shake that little moment of honesty as a potential future problem between us.

Fortunately, if she had doubts about being with me, it didn’t show in our day to day life.  She was just as loving and caring as usual and if her confession changed something, it was for the best. Perhaps she felt closer to me, as if she no longer had to hide her past.

Sadly, a few weeks later I received a letter from my own past. Suzy had sent me our divorce papers. I didn’t realize it,  but those papers made me revisit all the decisions I had made in the last year.

I did love Jill and had been for almost a year, but I had loved Suzy for over a decade and getting those papers reminded me of all of the mistakes I had made.

In our state, there are two possible divorce procedures. With the classic one, each of us get a lawyer and we find for an agreement on as many facets as possible and let a judge decide on the others. But with the new one, we hire a common mediator who serves as a counsellor for the both of us with the hope that it will find a fairer agreement between us.

I have been told that depending on the method chosen, you can either expect a long drawn-out fight or a peaceful settlement so I hesitated for a few hours to look in the papers in case Suzy picked the classic method.

Fortunately, she didn’t.  This often meant that she was open to finding a middle ground instead of trying to just destroy me. But then again, she was the one who kicked me out, wasn’t she ?

We first met the mediator a few weeks later. He explained that the whole process would take a few weeks and that the goal is to find an agreement which is fair for both parties regardless of who is at fault.

Our first meeting was just to make an inventory of our situations: what are our assets and debts, how many kids do we have, etc…

It was rather bland and formal. At no point was the subject of who would keep what on table. It was just a discovery meeting.

It felt weird. I had lived more than 14 years with Suzy and almost everything we owned was acquired while living together. The last time I had gone thru a break-up with some I had lived it, we simply retrieved whatever we had brought into the apartment and split our own ways.

This was a lot more painful. We had that house custom built. Most of our furniture had emotional history. The sofa where the family cuddled to watch a movie. The table where our kids ate their first meals.

While making the list, it was clear a few items would cause pain to fight over. A separation while waiting for divorce leaves most of the common items in the old house, but at the same time, I never really anticipated losing custody of everything.

Take the pool table as an example. Suzy doesn’t like pool so she probably wouldn’t fight for it, but it would leave the pool room without a purpose and I wouldn’t have a place for it at my apartment. Same thing for all my tools in the garage.

We each came home with a copy of the list and I reviewed it with Jill to try and see what I should try to salvage and what I should leave to Suzy.

I was personally torn apart. All these things were a part of my life and it hurt to let them go and yet, I had a new life with new things and a new partner.

In the end, only a few things remained in my list of demands but I can’t say I didn’t feel conflicted about it.

Oddly enough, the things I anticipated the most fighting about were the toys for my kids. In some cases, they could just move them with them when they go visit me, but some of them were simply too big like my daugther’s dollhouse.

Was I wrong to ask for it ? Should I simply let my young daughter decide ?

In all cases, I was guessing Suzy would have her own ideas. Meanwhile, Jill and I concentrated on our jobs and on our own relationship. We bought a new wide screen television to eliminate the need to fight for my old one and added a few clothes to complete Jill’s new brighter style.

I saw Suzy twice before the new conciliation meetings but we only spoke about the kids as we exchanged their custody. When Suzy dropped the kids at my place, I was happy to see that she managed to enter into a nice conversation with Jill, notably complimenting her on what she was wearing and thanking her for playing with our kids.

Both Jill and I noticed that Suzy had changed a lot since the first time she had met my new girlfriend. Suzy notably seemed more caring and relaxed. I hadn’t seen her as peaceful since, well, probably since we had the kids.