When California became the first state in the nation to legally adopt "no-fault" divorce in 1969, it accomplished by legislative fiat what no unhappy couple ever had -- making divorce completely blameless.
Few of life's contractual arrangements seem better suited to the assignment of fault than divorce -- the dissolution of a legal contract to which both parties pledged to remain faithful unto death. About that: As the divorce rate in the United States soared past 50 percent in the 1970s, it created the largest generation of children in human history who watched their parents' marriages hiss, smoke and finally detonate.
"Nobody really wants to get divorced," says San Jose divorce coach Lana Foladare, whose service -- Divorce Without Drama -- seeks to reduce the pettiness, rage and treachery inherent in the process to merely operatic levels. "There's still some stigma. Every person who goes through it has to reconcile themselves to feeling like, 'I'm a failure because my marriage ended.' "
And yet divorce is not all bad. Many are preferable to the dysfunctional marriages they replace. A divorce decree can mark the beginning of a season of renewal, a chance to start fresh -- eyes wide open to every possibility and pitfall. According to the Web site DivorceWizards.com, 80 percent of men and 75 percent of women remarry within three years.
But no-fault divorce? Tell that to Leslee and David Lageschulte, whose 13-year marriage, and painful yearlong divorce, are the subject of this ninth installment of the Mercury News' 12-part series "Life in a Year."
Not an obvious match
"She was a nice person who seemed pretty confident in herself," says David, who met Leslee in a singles group at their Los Altos church. "I was kind of nervous, and hadn't had much experience with women."
Friends first, they began to fill up the hollow places in each other's lives, then turned into a couple. Leslee was "desperate to have children," David says. "I was desperate for love, desperate to be accepted."
During their two-year courtship, Leslee insisted on premarital counseling because of a previous five-year marriage that ended in divorce. "I wanted to make sure it was going to last," she says. They had never gone all the way sexually. "I think both of us had Christian beliefs that it was the right thing to do," David says.
Despite their caution, they seemed to arrive at the decision to get married from a very different set of needs. Leslee wanted companionship and a family; Lageschulte says he liked the attention and affection he was getting for the first time in his life from a woman. "Being looked upon with such respect was new to me," he says. "It was something I didn't want to lose."
But he also felt pressured to make a decision about marriage. "She's a very strong personality," he says. "I felt controlled in many ways." He proposed on her 30th birthday, after a limousine whisked them to a romantic dinner. "It just seemed like a good thing to do."
The autopsy of any failed marriage inevitably produces conflicting narratives. The first to leave often demonizes the other person -- sometimes retroactively to the beginning of the relationship -- to justify the outcome. People who feel abandoned tend to romanticize the marriage, beating themselves up over what they could have done to hold it together.
In some of the conventional ways that people pick partners -- from life experiences to similar educational backgrounds -- Leslee and David were not an obvious match. Leslee has a master's degree in economics and is an accountant at a venture capital firm. David went to work for the Valley Transportation Authority after high school, and during 25 years there worked his way up from bus driver to a supervisory position.
Husband or baby-maker?
David was unsure he would make a good father and was in no rush to find out. But for Leslee, that was nonnegotiable.
"I had dated someone for a couple of years who I really cared for," she says, but his inability to provide her with children led to a breakup. "David knew going into the marriage that this was very important."
Then they found out that Leslee had fertility problems of her own, and they began going to a clinic for treatment. "Obviously, I wasn't a virgin when I got married, but David was," she says. "I think he was threatened by my experience. During infertility treatments, we had to have sex at certain times, and that was very hard on him."
David already suspected that the success of their marriage had little to do with how much they loved each other. "I feel she was desperate to have children, and she overlooked some things in order to get that," he says. "A part of me feels used, like I was just a baby-maker."
Their first daughter, Hannah, was born seven weeks prematurely, but the experience brought Leslee and David closer, so they quickly tried again. After undergoing more fertility treatments, she conceived, but then suffered a miscarriage. The more depressed she became, the more they argued. She says David finally asked her pointedly, "Why don't you just get over it?"
Leslee went back to work soon after Hannah was born, but she was upset when David accepted a new shift that required him to be gone at night.
"I started enjoying that because it meant I didn't have to be with this angry, unpredictable person," he says.
But for Leslee, being married to a man she rarely saw was no marriage at all. "To me, it's a partnership," she says, "and love is companionship. It's the intimacy that comes from talking and sharing. We had that until his shift changed."
Another woman
An even deeper fissure in their marriage was caused by David's close friendship with another woman. Leslee refers to this as "the affair," but he insists there was no sex and resists the word "affair." Either way, it unleashed a devastating emotional earthquake.
"I had never thought he would ever cheat on me," Leslee says. "To be frank, I don't know if he even had sex with her. But the point was that he had some sort of emotional involvement with this woman."
She says he boasted of the relationship to her, but he says he saw no reason to keep it a secret because it was innocent. Leslee demanded he never see the woman again. David agreed. "I said OK to her face," he recalls, "but in my heart there was a rebel that said, 'You're not going to tell me what to do.' "
That friendship started a year after the arrival of the couple's second child, Elianna, now 6. David agreed to re-enter counseling with a therapist who posed such provocative questions as "When are you going to let yourself be loved?" David says.
"I felt trapped, paralyzed," he says. "I was so scared. I couldn't talk to Leslee about moving out. The counselor's advice was to go ahead and take action, then tell Leslee about it. She said, 'You can't negotiate with Leslee. You don't have the strength to do it.' "
There is no easy way to end a marriage. You move too fast, or move too slow -- there is no velocity at which the human heart will not shatter.
David Lageschulte secretly rented an apartment, then moved out on June 20, 2008. When they explained the move to their two children, David began by saying, "Your mom and I have decided "... " Leslee stopped him cold. "There's no 'we' in this decision," she said. "You have decided."
"I felt betrayed," Leslee says. "In retrospect, I probably should have kicked him out. But I had a 1-year-old and a 5 1/2-year-old. I would have sucked it up and stayed together until my girls were 18. I think children do better with two parents."
Continue reading "Anatomy of a Breakup" »
