Friday, December 12, 2008

Divorce: Two Lives Under One Roof

There are now a number of divorced couples who are living together, stuck leading totally separate lives under the same greatly depreciated roof. Because real estate sales are at a standstill, these couples can’t split the revenue from the sale of their jointly-owned house, move out, and move on.

Take Pete, aka “the soup guy,” for instance. Bette-Ann met Pete in her divorced singles discussion group. Although, she had pledged to herself not to date anyone in her group, he was nice, funny friendly and persistent, and she gave in. Pete’s idea of a fun date was to take a long walk together, then go grocery shopping and bring all the ingredients back to Bette-Ann’s house and cook up a fabulous pot of soup. Bette-Ann who had never had a man make a meal for her in her life, except that time when she was four and her mom gave birth to her younger sister and her dad made her peanut butter sandwiches, was enthralled. For the first 3 dates. Then it wore a little thin, and she let Pete know she wouldn’t mind going out for dinner and a movie. As a matter of fact, she’d go Dutch. She just wanted to get out of her house for a change. Not to mention that because he was doing the cooking, she always felt obligated to wash the dishes plus his soup pot, which was no break at all from her daily routine. So, Pete agreed to a movie and dinner date. Once. Then he resumed the soup routine.
Bette-Ann began to wonder why Pete never wanted to make soup at his place. So she asked, and here is what she learned: Pete and his ex had been divorced for three years, but they had a huge mortgage on their two bedroom condo and no buyers. Neither could afford to move out without the money from the sale of the condo. A year and a half after the divorce was final, Pete’s ex had finally invited her new boyfriend to move in. With his 160 pound Old English Mastiff. Which Pete was allergic to. Not to mention that the boyfriend has custody of six year old twins with ADD on alternate weekends.
Hearing this harrowing tale, Bette-Ann was terrified that one day Pete would appear at her doorstep with his soup pot and his suitcase and try to move in, so she dumped him. Since then she’s seen about 15 movies and hasn’t had one bowl of soup.

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