And probably heartbreaking for Kris, though it depends on how mutual the decision to divorce was.

J.D., you should’ve bowed out of this trip and bought a ticket for a friend to go with Kris instead.

Oh wait, I’m sure it’ll be fine if you’re “testing your friendship”. LOL. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Best of luck to you and Kris on this new path that your lives are taking you. I applaud your honesty and transparency especially considering none of this is remotely your readers’ business. Marriage is not the end-all and be-all of life; love can manifest in many different ways and we should celebrate all of them even–or perhaps, especially–when they do not fit with our own deeply held notions.

We get it. You disapprove. Let it go.

But all these posts – whether supportive, empathic, hostile, preachy – they all form this fascinating kind of treatise on marriage. Should people stay in a marriage when they feel love, but are no longer “in love?” Does the institution of marriage hold the same kind of import when there are no children involved? Can there be friendship after marriage, even when one party does not wish the marriage to end? Is there value in sticking with a marriage through ups and downs, or when the relationship feels more platonic than passionate? And if we stick it out, are we settling, or choosing the peace and contentment that only a long relationship can ultimately bring?

I guess we can only answer these questions for ourselves. Still, I keep fighting this urge to somehow send Kris an email in which I encourage her to bring some cute clothes with her on the trip and to flirt a lot with men who are not her soon-to-be-ex-husband. Sorry, I just can’t help myself.

Everybody seemed so shocked by the divorce. Frankly I’m more surprised that it took this long in coming.

Regards!

Ps: Some days are extremely hot, further more than the temp you can see on the web.

I am happy to take criticism. That should be abundantly clear. But it’s possible to level criticism without resorting to unfounded supposition and remarks about putting my balls in a blender. If you want to discuss this by email, then email me, okay? But don’t turn every one of my posts into a forum to rant. I already got your point, and so did everyone else.

What has affected people I love is the idea that people should just move on from marriage and patch things up and become friends as if they were never married and no one ever got hurt. And boy did the women in my life have to do it fast. Apparently no one had time or care for their grief. So when you accept a post that praises you and your wife as some model, that touches a nerve with me. Not everyone can go on and just turn a marriage into a close friendship on a dime.

That does NOT mean the divorce was bitter. Most were not. It means the people in it are human. It’s natural that when grieving a lost relationship and life that some people will be angry and struggle. None of the women I know who have been doubly mistreated by husbands and then by family and friends had particularly bitter divorces.

What happened was that they had to hide and struggle alone with that greif and anger or risk losing everyone in their life. That broke my heart.

IMO these women should be given the time and support to heal on their own schedule. There’s no need for anyone to be friends with an ex. That is not the new normal in human relationships, no matter how many people can do it.

So,it matters to me when people say you are some kind of model of how it SHOULD be done.
You have a choice. You can stop talking about your marriage other than in ways that reflect your personal finances. Or you can lock the comments making it clear that comments will not be accepted either way

But only deleting the ones that don’t praise your choices is wrong. It skews the perception of how society can and should see relationships. It breaks my heart when I think about my friends and relatives who have been doubly hurt by divorce.

You should both remain thoughtful and introspective and if you decide time apart, be quick to admit it and head out to Peru.

Have a great trip!

If you don’t want comments you need to stop posting about it beyond the personal finance issues. You could have simply said you were going on a trip and would be away.

Save it for your personal blog if you dislike comments. But it isn’t right to only keep the comments that praise you and call you a model of divorcing virtue.

My comment was deleted for no reason. All I said was that traveling with your ex is not the new standard for amicable divorces.