Five months ago, my wife and I began the divorce process.
Sharing a daughter means that our divorce will last a lifetime, and we are still in the very early innings. But it doesn't feel new. Initial stages of divorce, and arriving there, are long, joyless, and indistinct — you can live many years in the same year.
I have been working on this post for nearly four months. Every time I think it's ready for you, I read it again and it sounds stale, and outdated from where I am in this experience.
These words have seen many iterations simply because I have, too.
Surprise, sadness, embarrassment, depression, failure, and the recovery process — all in a relatively short time. To calibrate, I often quantify this "period" in my head (1% of my life; 19% of my daughter, Olive's, life). She's a two-year-old, and will only remember being the child of divorced parents, but I will remember being single, then happily married, then a Dad, then divorced — and whatever happens next, walking alongside her through childhood.
As a divorcee, I think a lot about time. Our time as spouses, and the future time that will not be shared as such. As Olive's Dad, I also think a lot about memory, and creating fantastic ones for her. And like anyone, I think about happiness (for all three of us).
River Lethe
Thoreau described the Atlantic Ocean as "a Lethean stream" (the Greek underworld's "river of forgetting"). It provided the opportunity in the New World (America) to forget about the Old World (Europe). But is that what we want from life's transitions?
Yes, new beginnings are an important part of the human experience.
But divorce (and grief broadly, and life generally) is not about forgetting.
It is about building a new foundation on top of an old foundation.
And that labor is exhausting because it involves life's hardest inputs: memory, pain, the pursuit of happiness, time (and its layers, constructs, and nuances), grief, and loss.
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The 19 things I've learned about sad, hard things.
Benchmarking helps.
When this process started, I joined a grief therapy/divorce group, and met a woman whose ex-husband burned her house down while she was in it. Even in the depths of the seemingly unbearable, there are people with whom we wouldn't switch places.
Real time vs. psychological time.
There is real time ("I grew up in Ohio") versus psychological time — "I went back to my childhood home, sat in my childhood room, on my childhood bed (which looks so small now), stared at the landline phone where I used to stay up too late talking to my first girlfriend in sixth grade, and connected threads and years and relationships to how I then eventually got married, and then divorced."
One is removed and factual, and one is intense and connective, offers itself to storytelling and potentially imagining things incorrectly. Buddhism offers that psychological time happens when past and future take over the present, with all the accompanying pleasures and pains.
We are more comfortable when things connect and we feel good about ourselves. Talking to investors, I am intimately aware of the biases people have to thread stories about why things did or did not happen, typically to feed an ego or avoid embarrassment.
Someday, with more psychological time, divorce will probably feel more recognizable and decent to me, whether I tell myself that through facts, my future life itself feeling right/making sense, or just to satisfy an ego and accept this outcome.
Larry Rosenberg, a dharma professor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says that, "the continuation of psychological time and the survival of the ego are really the same thing."
We all experience both times. I grew up in Ohio, and also have stared at landline phones in my childhood bedroom. The former is important when you go to a party and make small talk (everyone knows someone from Ohio!), but the latter is important to experience psychological time and actually age in a manner that doesn't reference years.
Two types of people to lean on during grief.
Close friends and family (obvious).
Not close friends — strangers, even — who have experience with similar grief (not obvious).
The "time value of money" equation transcends finance.
If you plug a lower "present value" into the TVOM equation, the only way to get the same future value as before is to either have (1) more time, or (2) a higher rate of return. No one gets more time on earth for going through grief. So hit rock-bottom with your present value as quickly as possible, and find a way to pursue higher returns on life than you had before. It's the only mathematical way to recover your previous trajectory.
Time doesn't heal people. New experiences heal people.
You need a positive rate of return for compounding to work. More time helps, but only if during that time you have a positive rate of return. I was completely fucking miserable for three months. My life partnership dissolved. I had to move. Sell a house I loved. Accept seeing my daughter a crippling amount less. There were days and weeks that I wish would end before they started.
The math doesn't work if time doesn't have value. You have to start making new, positive memories. You must have things you look forward to doing in the future.
Welcome people that come late.
Sometimes when you are going through sad, hard things — like divorce, or the death of a loved one — people are confused about how to engage with you. It will be painful that some people don't reach out right away. Recently, people have said to me, "I had been meaning to reach out, but didn't want to bother you."
I am not convinced that's it. I think it might just feel weird for them, and they don't/didn't know what to say...so they didn't say anything. Divorce is an inconvenient bastard for many friendships. Sad, hard things are sad and hard. And thorny. No one is perfect and people are busy and sometimes unsure. Welcome people that eventually come to help or support you, even if it feels late.
Live steeped in history but not in the past.
Build the new foundation on top of the old foundation. Not next to it, and not without it.
It can be awkward.
Don't make people that are trying to talk to you feel embarrassed to do so. They took the action to reach out, welcome them in. Every word doesn't need to be perfect or analyzed (this isn't politics), actions just need to be directionally correct.
Ritual Grief vs. Non-Ritual Grief.
I have a close friend, Royal Rhodes, who writes and translates poetry:
A poem by Gaius Valerius Catullus upon visiting the distant grave of his dead brother.
Carmen 101
Brother, I've come so far, after so much time,
across the sea, traveling to cities full of strangers,
passing unknown men on the roads, so far
for your death rituals, to fulfill the duty
I have to you and to address your silent ashes,
your familiar body burned up in fire,
sad brother, grabbed from me, lost to me.
I give you these honors, in the ways of our kin,
offering wine, honeycomb, lentils, and blossoms,
in the terrible rites now entrusted to me
as my tears sweeten the offerings, take them.
It is finished, my brother. Hail and farewell.
Ritual griefs have a playbook for what we typically do at a time when we are emotionally distressed and not necessarily making the highest-quality decisions. Often they are cultural or religious rites, and it can be extremely helpful to simply have an agenda and formalities. It's nice not to think. Go to a burial. Sit shiva. Burn the bodies and bury the ashes.
Divorce is a non-ritual grief. Losing a lot of money while investing or gambling is also a non-ritual grief. Non-ritual griefs can entice you to make even more irrational decisions because no one tells you what you're supposed to do next. I think, broadly speaking, ritual griefs are sadder (which is why cultures build rituals around them).
But non-ritual griefs can be harder to navigate.
Critical, but unknowable.
My ex and I went through extreme career changes, the loss of a parent, the cancer diagnosis of another, Covid-19, and the birth of our daughter. We learned a lot about ourselves and each other, and did not nurture the best in each other. Unfortunately, you can't stress test some things ahead of time. Just like investing, accepting that some future factors in life are critical, but unknowable is a great way to harbor less regret over hard decisions and painful outcomes.
Reflective vs. Restorative Nostalgia, or Being Nabokovian The more aware we are how our brains function (threading stories, filling in missing pieces with what we think happened, glorifying the past out of loneliness), the more we will embrace reflective nostalgia rather than restorative nostalgia. Scholars often refer to Nabokov's work as reflective, having never returned to Russia except through his characters. Svetlana Boyn wrote that Nabokov's "narrative allowed him to play out the journey through fictional characters, to explore different forks of fate and different [reflective] nostalgic intonations."
Restorative nostalgia glorifies history. "It power-washes the moss from the brickwork and scrubs the marble white. The stuff of religious revivals and ethnic nationalism...insisting on the impossible task of re-creating past," writes Lewis Hyde.
Reflective nostalgia (or, being Nabokovian), on the other hand, knows that we can't return to the past exactly as it was. Reflective nostalgia is pragmatic. It may want to go back, but knows that what once was can't exist anyway — so the stressful part of reflective nostalgia, as Hyde writes — "falls on the longing [to go back home], not on the home."
Support in large numbers, help in small numbers.
Just as there is no playbook for non-ritual grief, there is no playbook about how people show up for you. And there isn't capacity for everyone to play equal roles. Events like this, especially early on, can require friends and family to intimately see fractured, faint versions of a once different person.
So as people reach out, don't drain yourself thinking everyone can be helpful to unpack and guide through this experience. Let most people just be broadly supportive of your situation.
You may visit a grave, but you do not have to.
Jacques Lacan has a seminar on Antigone where he talks about graves and symbols. The idea is that we need symbols, like a grave, to remember someone's life. Once the trauma is symbolized, it's easier than when it lives only in our head and heart. Once marked, you can visit it, but you don't have to. It's available if you want it.
I keep pictures of the three of us up in my apartment. Not just for Olive to see when she is over, but also because it is easier for me than not having pictures of the three of us up in my apartment.
Philosophers: Exempli Gratia vs. Id Est.
There are two styles of philosophers: e.g. philosophers and i.e. philosophers. "Illustrators and explicators," as Avishai Margalit describes them in "The Ethics of Memory."
E.g. philosophers trust and share stories, while i.e. philosophers trust and share principles.
In my experience, people usually have rehearsed something that they want to say when my divorce comes up as a topic. People closest to me tend to i.e. philosophize (like by sharing something grandma used to always say), and people that I'm less close with tend to e.g. philosophize, and tell stories of themselves or people who have experienced similar things. Both have helped tremendously.
Memory + Oblivion, Working Together.
Daniel Heller-Roazen, in Encholalias, On the Forgetting of Language, retells a story about Abu Nuwas, an 8th century Arabic poet.
Abu approaches a poetic master, Khalaf al-Ahmar, and asks permission to compose poetry.
Khalaf says: I refuse to let you make a poem until you memorize a thousand passages of ancient poetry...so Abu goes away and memorizes a thousand pages of poetry.
Upon return, Khalaf tells Abu to recite them, and he does so. And then again asks for permission to compose poetry.
Khalaf says: I refuse to let you make a poem unless you forget everything you just memorized.
Confused, Abu disappears into solitude and comes back after he's forgotten everything. He tells Khalaf that his memory is wiped clean, and it's as if he never memorized anything at all.
Khalaf says: Now you are ready. Go compose!
Heller-Roazen suggests that the story's meaning is that true poetry only emerges from a region "in which memory and oblivion" cannot function unless they work together.
Two opposite forces that must, somehow, work collaboratively and in unison, or else the system doesn't work well at all. The new foundation on top of the old foundation.
The Ethics of Memory
Avishai Margalit also says this:
I reach the conclusion that while there is an ethics of memory, there is very little morality of memory. In my account, this in turn is based on a distinction between two types of human relations: thick ones and thin ones. Thick relations are grounded in attributes such as parent, friend, lover, fellow-countryman. Thick relations are anchored in a shared past or moored in shared memory.
Thin relations, on the other hand, are backed by the attribute of being human. Thin relations rely also on some aspects of being human, such as being a woman or being sick.
Thick relations are in general our relations to the near and dear. Thin relations are in general our relations to the stranger and the remote.
Because it encompasses all humanity, morality is long on geography and short on memory. Ethics is typically short on geography and long on memory.
Memory is the cement that holds thick relations together, and communities of memory are the obvious habitat for thick relations and thus for ethics.
Essentially, morality is a bigger, all-encompassing, knows-no-boundaries-of-time-nor-place idea. We might get morals from a bible or historical event.
But ethics are what we pick up from our intimate (thick) relationships. Morality is the macro, and is passed across broad civilizations and across expansive, centuries of time.
Ethics are the micro, and we carry them across our own unique relationships, with the chance to refine them through our own human experience, in our own decades of time.
Don't dissolve from speculator to psychopath.
In Frozen Desire, James Buchan talks about the burst of the Mississippi Company stock in 1719 (an early stock mania) — speculators putting too much value in the present: their delusion lies in the conception of time. The great stock-market bull seeks to condense the future into a few days — that dissolves the speculator into the psychopath. It is not coincidence that two of my close industry friends, Matt Hall and Peter Lazaroff, host podcasts called "Take The Long View" and "The Long Term Investor," respectively.
When you are extremely emotional, whether it's because of investing or love, you want to surround yourself with at least some people who are less impacted by the event — they are better equipped to help make short-term decisions that focus on long-term outcomes.
Early on, spend most of your time with the same people.
Mine have been a welcome combination of both older and newer friends. But I am already a very changed person, and have devolved and evolved again quicker than any stage in life. It's helpful to have the same people let me know how they see me doing. I have very little context as I am just in it everyday.
Sometimes clients will ask how their portfolio has done, in a somewhat perfunctory way in that they're just expecting my response to be given as a simple percentage. But what we really want to ask is — how has my portfolio done compared to how we would expect it to have done, or how it could have done?
If a friend that hasn't seen me yet, sees me...and says, shit, Rubin, you look like a 4/10. What happened? That's an unhelpful perspective for progress.
Because imagine this: being completely fucking miserable, and my mom telling me that I look like a 0/10. Then the next week she says I'm doing a better, and look like a 2/10. And then the next week she says, shit, Rube, you look like a 4/10. What happened?
You vs. Trauma...is not a fair fight.
It doesn't need to sleep, or go to work, or stay healthy. You need a strategy.
Sadness is a privilege.
Hyde also tells the story of Nietzsche describing a herd of animals that does nothing different from yesterday to today. Just eating, resting, digesting, walking about. Their likes and dislikes always just in the moment. We are jealous of their contentment (No bills to pay? No secrets to keep? No soccer practice to be late to?).
One day a man asks the beast, "Why do you not talk to me of your happiness, but only graze in silence?" The beast wants to answer and say, "That's because I so quickly forgot what I wanted to say!" But this it also forgets. It does not speak, and so we are left to wonder.
We must accept the tradeoffs that come with the ability to experience pleasure.
Wherever you are, there you are.
In 2015, interest rates were still being kept artificially low across the globe, even 7+ years after the Great Financial Crisis that had required the stimulation of the economy (through lowered rates). This was despite that economies had generally recovered.
But then we had a bond market flash crash of 2014, and an ensuing economic slowdown, and it would have made sense to lower interest rates to stimulate the economy again. Except interest rates were floored already. There was no "lower" to go.
Economist Claudio Borio was asked, how can central banking policy get back on track?
And he responded — well, if you want to get back on track, I wouldn't start from here.
This has been my experience with grief. It's an extremely shitty starting place with often not-obvious solutions for next steps. And you will not get more time in life just because you went through something hard. So at some point, to get back on track, you must improve your expected future experience and make new memories.
End.
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Citations
Like anyone going through grief, you dive into your familiar favorites — beyond people and places, that's been mostly books for me.
There are frequent references and pulls from each of these fantastic works:
The Ethics of Memory, Avishai Margalit
The Price of Time, Edward Chancellor
A Primer for Forgetting, Lewis Hyde