The Erotix of the Future Ex-Husband

~ come on baby, light my fire ~

I have a film director friend who told me stories about his dynamic and ongoing friendship with his “double ex-wife” and these made me laugh and inspired me to one day have my own “double ex-husband” — a husband I would marry and divorce twice. This is possibly fun for cocktail banter, but in real life it sounds like a nightmare.

I did not get married with divorce in mind, who would?

Except that one friend who invited me and my husband to his wedding and as we were departing from the Sunday post-wedding brunch, I told him our kids were sad, almost indignant, that they had not been invited to the grand affair. He didn’t miss a beat and said, “that’s okay, they can come to the next one!” Surely he has a tightly crafted prenup.

This reminds me to recommend the interview in The New Yorker with Laura Wasser, divorce lawyer to the starry stars.

My husband and I did not sign a prenuptial agreement, which Laura Wasser recommends everyone do. She says: “I think prenups are really important. Even if you don’t have a prenup, have the conversations that you would have if you were having the prenup, because communication is the reason that most marriages break down, more than anything else.”

What about a “divorce-process agreement”? What I mean is a contract for how we will conduct ourselves as we get divorced: communicate, be respectful, let go of the little things, keep the children’s best interests in mind. I think my husband and I are doing our best to follow these kinds of stipulations even though we haven’t spelled it all out in a contract of sorts.

Once I am divorced, even now as we do the process itself, I want my relationship with my future ex-husband to be good, even fun. I want us to enjoy family gatherings and take at least some pleasure in each other’s company.

I married him in the first place because he was my favorite person: to talk to, to fight with, to rope in as my accomplice for schemes various, for romantic machinations, and so on.

I feel lucky that I have people in my life who are encouraging me to be a good future ex-wife who enjoys her future ex-husband and cultivates, with him, an ongoing solid and fun family spirit for the kids and each other.

This brings me to what I call “the erotix of the future ex-husband”— which may sound strange or even inappropriate, but I do not mean it in any kind of shady way.

What I mean by “the erotix of the future ex-husband” is the light and energy of this man, the only man who has turned me on enough that I chose to build a life and have three children with him.

How do I continue to witness and receive and encourage his light and his energy now that we’re breaking up? How do I keep the creative and joyful flame aglow in our new relationship?