Enlisting friends in your battles? Stop it.

I was forty years old when I divorced my ex. Old enough to behave. When it came to our friends and family, I lost all signs of maturity and began something I knew better than doing. My mother intervened in the early stages, before my plan ever got under way, with a lecture I will never forget, and will always and forever live by. She called my behavior a tactic of enlistment. She pointed out what I was doing was horrible. I was appealing to my family and to my friends (most of who had also been friends with my ex) to enlist in my army. The purpose of my army was to destroy him. Like chalk on the blackboard, I wanted this “army” to help me erase him from my life and their life by ignoring him, excluding him, berating him, finding endless fault with him. Why? None of these people were married to him. Not one of them had a bad history with him. Not one had reason to dislike him, much less, destroy him.

“If you were six years old I might be understanding,” my mother said. “You are forty; and, you are a therapist. If you don’t have the maturity to understand what you are engaging in is wrong, then your education and professional skills should be flashing red lights in your path. Stop it. Stop it right now.”

I was embarrassed and humiliated by my mother’s harsh words. I was also grateful that she loved me, and she loved my ex, enough to step into the line of fire and put a stop to my efforts. I was dressed in full armor, sword in hand, and had already begun efforts to fill my army with everyone I could enlist, expecting them to fight my battle, expecting them to understand. Trouble is, they didn’t want to take sides. They did not want to go to battle. They did not understand. They certainly did not want to be ammunition from my war chest, and they did not want to find themselves in a fight that had nothing to do with them.

Thank all the Great Spirits for mothers who have the sense of right and wrong, fairness and futility, and seem to see our future before we live it.

As a result of my mother’s intervention, I never went to battle with my ex. We simply divorced and put our feet on paths leading us in opposite directions. He is a good man. He is a kind person. My mother never stopped loving him, because he was part of her family. She mentioned him a few days before she died. She said she wished he’d come to visit her. I assured her that he would if he could.

I’ve been expected, by some, to allow myself to be enlisted in their army. I fall back on my mother’s words, and I tell them, “Your battles are not mine, and your enemy isn’t my enemy.” I won’t be enlisted in those wars.