the infamous in-laws

i'm quickly realizing that divorce is a family affair and when you add a dysfunctional one to the mix it becomes even more delightful.

my first encounter with the other side came in the form of a seemingly civilized lunch with jack's mom a week after jack moved out of my home and into hers.  we awkwardly chatted over salads and i tried hard to make nice~ after all it was quite gracious of her to try to care.  by the time our waiter brought the bill our conversation had erupted into a tear filled recap of her divorce from jack's father 10 years ago and her pleading for me to take jack back, after all he was so much better than his father because he actually admitted that he was sleeping with other people and STILL wanted to be with me.  i stared at her, horrified that she actually believed every word she was saying with a forced smile plastered to my face.  in the back of my mind i thought, my god i'm not THAT desperate... surely someone who isn't sleeping with other people will want to be with me~ a realization i guess she had never considered.  i thanked her for lunch and assured her i was still confident that divorcing jack and retaining some sense of self was the right thing for me to do.  i haven't heard from her since.

since then my contact with jack's family has been an assortment of phone calls threatening to take my kids if i didn't start playing nice, reminders that they have more money and can fight this a lot longer, threats for how i was going to regret messing with their family and other such pleasantries with the occasional incorporation of words such as slut, whore and bitch.  i had wondered where jack learned that it was quite normal to use such words to describe the mother of his children.  the majority of these calls coming with regularity from his brother, who is also living with jack's mom, just finalized his divorce and quit his job so he wouldn't have to pay child support.  he and jack have revived their once strained relationship so that they could keep each other company at various night clubs every weekend.

i guess i should be grateful though that one of jack's sisters finally reached out to me today for the first time since jack and i split.  she sent me an email stating that she was sorry for what has happened and wanted me that know that she wasn't judging me.  whew.  what a relief.