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I saw a tweet the other day where the author posted a screen grab from a legal message board. Someone had posted that she was getting divorced and both her and her ex-husband decided to represent themselves because they thought the breakup was cordial. And she said it had been that way for awhile.
But in the post, she describes how she bought 12 pairs of very expensive shoes during their marriage, and each time she bought one, he would get mad. Then she would buy another one.
The reason she was bringing it up online is because during the divorce proceedings, the ex-husband had asked for half the shoes. But not six pairs of shoes. He wanted one shoe from each of the 12 pairs. She obviously didn’t want to do that and thought it was petty. She offered to give him six pairs of shoes. But he insisted, and that’s where the divorce proceedings stood—she said it looked like he was going to get 12 shoes and so was she. They’d both end up with zero pairs of shoes.
When I first read that story, I laughed. It struck me as funny how cold that was. I immediately empathized with both parties. I understood why it might be frustrating in a relationship to express being uncomfortable with something, and the person keeps doing it. From her perspective, I understood how silly and petty it was to ruin 12 pairs of shoes just to “win,” whatever that means.
But when I thought about it some more, I felt sad for both people. I hate to hear when things get to that level of anger and hurt. I have no idea who was right or wrong in this situation. Maybe he had a justified resentment. But at the end of the day, I really wished that dude would be able to find some peace and serenity. That’s a miserable way to go through life.
It reminded me of something I cannot be in sobriety: bitter. That’s such a good word, isn’t it? When a food or drink is bitter, it isn’t just bad. It tastes terrible. It smells terrible. It taints everything in your life for a little while. And you don’t forget it—if you tried a food dish and it was disgustingly bitter, it never slips your mind.
Same with feeling bitter about stuff in life. I can get bitter quickly. Job promotions that went to other people… ex-girlfriends who dumped me and found somebody better… friends who screwed me over… anybody who says something I deem insulting. I can hang onto those irritations and turn them into bitterness.
When I think of all the moods and emotions that I feel in life, lots of them are problematic to my sobriety. But bitterness is something I can’t have much of, and I can’t have it for very long. Bitterness scares the s**t out of me, because I think it is a blinking red light that I could reach for some sort of mood-altering substance to calm it down.
I can be sad, and I can be mad, and I can be lazy, and a lot of other things… but bitter has to be off the menu. It really is an existential threat to my emotional sobriety, which makes it a threat to my sobriety overall. A good Fourth Step with a sponsor tends to get me out of bitterness, so I know there is a solution. But with situations where bitterness is possible, it usually means it’s a long-term, complicated relationship, so bitterness tends to rear its ugly head again in my life. I don’t find myself bitter at the guy who cuts me off on the road or steals my spot in line at the store. Mad? Maybe. But not bitter.
So I think for the foreseeable future I am going to pay special attention to anything that might be crossing over from mildly irritating to infuriating, which tends to turn into bitterness. Because I do not want to be breaking up with people and taking half of their shoes out of spite. That seems bad.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
A DRUNK DIES. HE HAD $20,000 in savings. After his wife pays all the costs of burial, she tells her closest friend that there is no money left.
The friend says, "How can that be? You told me he had $20,000 a few days before he died. How could you be broke?"
The widow says, "Well, the funeral cost $6,500. Then, I spent $500 in a donation to the church and to pay the organist. I spent another $500 on the food and drinks for the wake. The rest of the money paid for the memorial stone."
The friend says, "$12,500 for the memorial stone? My goodness, how big is it?"
The widow replies, "Three carats!"
(Credit: Grapevine, November 2004, Richard M. of Golden, Colorado)
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