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When Friends Take Sides After a Divorce
It’s a blessing in disguise
My daughter is on a Zoom bat mitzvah right now. The girl stepping into Jewish womanhood is the daughter of my ex-husband’s best friend, “Max.” Max and his wife “Sophie” used to be close friends. Max was the best man at our wedding. I’d known his wife before he did. In fact, he’d met Sophie indirectly through me.
My husband and I traveled to Tuscany with Max and Sophie, we had babies together. Underneath my seemingly ideal marriage, though, was a lot of heartache and unhappiness. Eventually, I decided to leave.
During the year of separation before my divorce, I made it clear to my soon-to-be-ex that I would be dating other people. It was all on the up-and-up. Sophie and I met for lunch with the babies, and I disclosed my dating misadventures to her.
“I won’t tell Max,” she would say. “He wouldn’t understand.” She was my co-conspirator and confidant.
When my ex and I finally filed for divorce, we struggled over where our daughter would live. He wanted her in Minnesota, I was living in Florida at the time. He asked me to bring her to Minneapolis for the weekend. It felt like a trap, and my lawyer warned me against it. My ex had tricked me once before by luring me up to Minneapolis under false pretenses and then serving me with…
