SOMETHING FAMILIAR by F. Marcya Edison

In my six decades of life, I’ve been married once. Only once. Seems like less than the average these days. But, that’s not really my point.

I’ve now been divorced for far longer than I was married. My legal union with Michael lasted 10 years. We were together for 12 (on and off). Been divorced now for 20.

Michael – he’s the marrying kind. Me, not so much. You can tell that about Michael because he’s currently married to his fourth wife, and he was married five times, if you count me twice.
We legally separated after two years of marriage, then ran into each other on the street one day after not communicating for 18 months. I guess we weren’t quite finished with one another: I started dating my husband, and we soon started living together, resuming our marriage for 7 more years.

But me – I’m not the marrying kind. After my divorce from Michael – when his beloved and pricey toy soldier collection (called Britons) was finally gone from the top of my dining room breakfront, after I had held it hostage there for 14 months or so to get more leverage in our divorce proceedings (which I at first thought would be amicable, but turned out to be anything but) – I never remarried. Didn’t even come close.

Before the divorce papers were signed, when I was 41, I found myself – or propelled myself – into a near-decade-long, clearly unhealthy, mostly one-sided, severely obsessive (on my side), easily arguably psychically sado-masochistic romantic (on my side) entanglement with David, the dashing, but oh-so-elusive Englishman. I spent the bulk of my 40s creating and chasing the fantasy that was David.

Fast forward to my 50s. I became the queen of first dates. Internet dates mostly. I started supporting Match.com’s investors when I was still a New York City gal. Continued my membership on that website when I relocated two hours north of the big city. Found other online dating sites, too, i.e., starting swimming around in the stale, murky waters of Plenty of Fish. It became a lifestyle. Met mostly good, decent men (with just a couple of memorable exceptions), or so it seemed. The issues were usually mine.

But, getting back to Michael, my ex-husband – and, something familiar, which is really what I wanted to tell you about. He’s married to Carol now. I’ve met her; nice woman. And, after many years -- almost 2 decades, really -- of mutual contempt, animosity, and the nastiest of name calling, Michael and I have morphed into friends. E-mail buddies at the very least. When he heard recently that I was planning a trip to Thailand, he sent me a U.S. government report for Americans traveling abroad, about the state of the state of Thailand, as my Jewish mother may have done years ago.