(Note: I decided to write this post after coming across Sweetney’s version. In some ways, I am over this whole divorce thing and ready to blog about something else. But I feel as if divorce as I am experiencing it does not have much of a voice online, and I also feel as though divorce is far too prevalent in our culture not to be discussed optimistically, so here I am, still going.)

My family is quite large, so we rent out a hall every Christmas in which to get our party on. This year will be much like the last one: I, my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, and myriad other relatives will all stuff ourselves until we feel sick, a suspiciously skinny and rather poorly dressed “Santa” (who happens to resemble one of my uncles) will pop in to give gifts to the little ones, and then we will all engage in a merry round of “Screw Your Neighbor,” that gift game in which we all fight over which one of us will be stuck with a light-up snowman throw pillow.

This year, however, will be the first one in a long time that I don’t have a proper husband.

Oh, don’t worry … he’s coming to Christmas anyway.

But wait! I can explain! Also, if you’re ever looking for a surefire way to alienate almost everyone you know, including any potential love interests, might I recommend staying friends with your ex?

When Jeff and I said that we were going to be friends, I’m not sure anyone really believed us. I’m not sure we even believed ourselves, or at least trusted ourselves to have any idea what the hell we were really saying. I had never lost a spouse before, so I wasn’t entirely sure how the whole thing would proceed, and he was no more experienced in this arena. Thus far, however, we have been true to our word. Not only do we trade occasional texts, but we also go to dinner when he’s in town (after he has stopped by to fuss over Hugh, of course, whom he misses terribly, and even Nito, who makes him wheeze like a dying man even as he gasps to Nito that he is a very good cat, oh yes, a good cat). Hell, Jeff and my FATHER go to dinner when he’s in town.

My father and Jeff had always enjoyed a father-pseudoson relationship, and when the marital poo hit the proverbial spinning blade, I took care to inform them both that I saw no reason for either of them to end that association. They had always gone to dinner without me just fine before; I didn’t see what difference my absence from Jeff’s overall picture would make now. It would be an exaggeration to say that upon hearing that I had no objections, they skipped out the door toward their favorite seafood restaurant, holding hands and giggling like schoolgirls, but … not … much of an exaggeration. I can’t complain, as one of them will still usually bring me dessert.

Some habits die hard, I guess, though I have no doubt that as the years pass, my friendship with Jeff will evolve—likely toward the mellower end of the spectrum. For now, he still pesters me about whether I paid the car insurance bill that only has my name on it, with money he didn’t make, for a car he no longer owns. He can be a little overbearing in a dad-type way (I have no doubt that the dinners he shares with my father involve a hearty amount of discussion regarding exactly what is best for me and how to get me to do it for once), and I roll my eyes at him once in a while, but his heart is in the right place. And you can bet that those rolling eyes start batting their lashes with gratitude when he puts air in the tires in order to fix an almost-flat that I never would have noticed, at least not until it exploded on the highway and killed me and a van full of church kids on their way to some kind of church-kid camp that teaches them to help old ladies across the street safely.

If this eyelash-batting seems anti-feminist, it isn’t. It’s about survival. Wait, is it anti-feminist to survive by being pretty? Ha, ha, okay, wow, don’t punch me, at least not before I get the chance to tell you that I made my dad teach me about air and tires the next time I saw him, crouching down next to him in his freezing-ass garage next to the air compressor so that he could show me the proper way to inflate my tires. Listen, I’m sorry that I got married so young that I have to get all remedial on my own ass like this, but here we are, and I’m doing the best I can. When you consider that at this time last year, I was the kept woman of a commercial airline pilot who paid all my bills and invisibly kept me in an abundant supply of wiper fluid, fresh motor oil, and dish soap like some sort of benevolent household maintenance elf, I’d say I’m doing all right on account of I haven’t even killed anyone in an electrical fire yet.

But until I know that I have the hang of everything, including those license-plate tags that I don’t entirely understand yet, it comforts me to have Jeff on my side, annoying me to death over fan-belt maintenance. And he is on my side, as weird as it is to say in this situation. He’s in my corner; he wants me to do well. And I think that’s really nice. In order to display my gratitude while also making our friendship even more inappropriate and uncomfortable for outside parties, I have offered him many pointers on his game, like “Pay for dinner, so she doesn’t think you’re cheap.” (Him: “But I am cheap!” Me: “… I don’t think you’re getting how this works.”)

Oh, I know, I know. Now we’re just showing off. What can I say? It’s been damn near a year, and we’re getting pretty good at this. If it makes you feel better, it really wasn’t easy in the beginning. At all. I would tell you about that first dinner after I moved out, a very terse and nasty one conducted over a large vat of mashed potatoes, but I won’t. It doesn’t make either of us look very good. I much prefer us as superheroes, so I’ll just go ahead and keep selling you our finest moments, if you don’t mind.

My parents are okay with our friendship. Anyone who made sure to tell me all about how they had never liked Jeff are less okay with it, and by “less okay” I mean “visibly sweating.” (Etiquette tip: Do not bash someone’s ex unless it is made abundantly clear that such bashing is welcome. I cannot stress this enough.) Some people seem almost angry or impatient with us for reasons I do not entirely understand, as if we should stop irritating them with our hippy-dippy shit and start litigating at one another like real grownups. Some people are convinced that we’re getting back together. Some people will indicate to me that if Jeff and I can still be friends, whatever happened between us wasn’t that bad, and we shouldn’t have split up in the first place. (I find that last notion hilarious. Have these people ever BEEN married? Because it’s exactly like swapping texts once a week and going out to dinner once a month, except, you know, more … intense.) Some divorced people think that Jeff and I are remaining friends for the sole purpose of silently pointing out just how woefully petty and inferior we find their bitter divorce to be. Some people seem eager to deflate our friendly little balloon by pointing out that our friendship is so over once one of us begins to date. (When I respond that, actually, we BOTH are dating other people steadily and have been for some time, they skip all the small talk and just kick me in the shins directly, which they find more efficient but somehow less satisfying, you can tell.)

People will be people, and frankly, I’ve given up on pleasing most of them. The only person I really worry about is the Next Guy I wind up with. Poor Next Guy. I can’t say I’m not sympathetic on this issue, or even deeply and stutteringly neurotic and apologetic on this issue. But in the end, Jeff is family now; I have the last name to prove it. If that’s inconvenient or even terribly off-putting, no one is sorrier than I am, but the right thing is never particularly easy, and to me, the right thing is to avoid completely torching a valuable relationship that I spent over a decade building. Life is messy sometimes, and not every relationship or situation fits into a neat little box. Anyone I’m with in the future needs to understand that, especially since my plans only get weirder from here on out. (One possible scenario involves shaving my head. You really don’t want to know.)

While I admit that Jeff and I are partly driven toward amiability by our conspiratorial tendency toward mischief and all the delicious goat-getting potential this whole “let’s be friends” thing involves (and your grandma is going to gape at us so hard that her dentures fall out onto the table in 3 … 2 … 1 …), and while I admit that we sometimes indulge in unflattering feelings of pride about our ability to avoid throwing the love-baby out with the marriage-water, what it comes down to is that he was once a pretty big deal to me, and I still respect that bond, even if it no longer exists as it once did.

The Catch-22 of dating me now is that I’m a really, really (really) loving person. When I care about someone, I care about them for-evvv-errrr, as that kid in The Sandlot would say. In theory, this is an admirable quality, but you can’t find that in someone and then expect to keep it all to yourself. That’s just not how it works.

(Fortunately, there are SOME things you do get to keep to yourself. Here, let me distract you with some of them!)

(Wait, is that anti-feminist too? GODDAMMIT. Are you people allergic to strategy, or do you just hate to win?)

The Christmas thing, though. Even I admit that this is a little much, but here’s how it happened: Jeff’s mother has always been invited to Christmas, because all of her family goes to Indiana for the holiday to be with relatives who are not hers. Seeing as I apparently already had a divorce policy of grandfathering people in, I saw no reason to uninvite her this year. She is, in fact, a sweet lady, and I feel a little awkward about that one time I couldn’t make things work with her son, so it seemed like a nice gesture. As it turned out, however, Jeff (who is usually working) will be in town for the first Christmas Eve in, oh, ever. Now, how awkward is it to invite your ex’s mother to Christmas, but not your ex, who will be dining alone that evening because you totally stole his mother away with your fun party games? Miss Manners would not approve. Thus, after I quickly checked with my mother to make sure the subsequent frenzy of family gossip would not make her head explode (My mom, brightly: “Oh, so Jeff’s mom is just going to hang out with him this year instead?” My sister, dryly: “Mom, I don’t think that’s what she’s saying …”), Jeff was added to the list as well.

It’s not traditional, exactly, but what can you do? If this year has taught me anything, it’s that life becomes pretty interesting and rewarding when I stop listening to everyone else and just follow my heart. I know one thing: this year’s Christmas picture is going to be amazing. I’m thinking of holding the cat in front of the tree while staring off into the distance while Jeff sits dejected and unshaven in the corner, flipping through a porn magazine and swigging from a flask.

You can disagree with my life choices all you want, but don’t act like that wouldn’t be funny. Rumor has it that even the shoddy Uncle Bob version of Santa does not put liars on his Nice list.