I loathe the word “alimony.” Today, and for several years to come, my primary income comes from this “arrangement,” which was part of the settlement at the end of my 23-year marriage. Thanks to this payout, I can maintain a relatively comfortable standard of living while raising three nearly grown sons and putting them through college. It also allows me to teach as an adjunct professor at the nearby college and university, which keeps me close to home, something I couldn't “afford” if I didn't already have the money to live on (an adjunct professor makes peanuts – even with a PhD – and offers no benefits), and it also allows me to take time to develop myself as a writer. However, I don't view this primary income as “alimony” or a generous handout from my ex-husband, but as my honest and hard-earned dividends from over two decades of solid investments.
The term alimony comes from the Latin word alimona, meaning “nutrition or livelihood,” and historically its purpose was to continue to support the divorced wife, who was believed to be unable to support herself. Women were, after all, the property of their husbands. Today, alimony is usually awarded to the spouse who has the lower income, regardless of gender. Unfortunately, “alimony” has connotations of “charity,” synonyms for which include gift, alms, charity, and generosity. When you hear the word, it suggests that the receiving spouse is receiving a kind, generous offering from their ex. I sometimes feel that way when I hear the traditional vocabulary and gender role assumptions surrounding this complex issue.
But when one of our teenage boys recently said to me, “Dad works hard, he supports all of us,” I felt compelled to make a statement. At least to my boys: the next generation. Yes, their dad owns a business and that is hard work, no question about it. But a comment like that doesn't sit well with the ears or heart of a writer and teacher, as if the work I do now, not to mention the work I did when I was married and also ran the household, was a piece of cake. Ain't hard. A quarter century spent creating and maintaining a home, building a business together, and raising a family was the most challenging work of my life. I invested a lot in this venture, and I enjoyed it. It was fulfilling and exhausting. (I grew up as a latchkey kid with a working mom, so it was a privilege for me to stay home with the kids while they were little.) By the time the kids got to middle school, it was almost self-indulgent to pursue an advanced degree – I “worked” at the library all day – and was able to live in my mind for 8 hours a day, sometimes more, away from the chaos, unpredictability, and physical labor that came with running our family and household. Of course, since Mom was also gone all day, staff had to be hired to fill the gap.
Could we perhaps use the term “severance package”? After all, I was CEO of the Lichtenstein family household, which consisted of a wife (me), a husband, three kids, two dogs, a huge house, two cars, and an above-average yard. The third floor of our house was originally built for “the servants,” back when someone living in a house that big usually had a cook, a nanny, a gardener, a few servants, and a driver. When we rang the outdated bells still attached to the walls of our house, no one showed up. It was me. It was our family joke.
As much as I value my financial freedom as a result of the return on my investment, I look forward to the time when the majority of my livelihood is no longer tied to a word whose stigma may only exist in my head but is most likely the result of the complex history of marriage and divorce law, stubborn (and inert) traditions of residual nomenclature, and revolutionary changes in the role of women in our modern society. While I have begun to forge a career and professional path (writer, teacher, and AirBnB host) that can sustain me even when the dividend payouts stop, I also find that I still have to remind myself that I didn't get where I am because I was lucky or unlucky, but because I worked hard, won some, lost some, and tried to embrace change.
I would say we should come up with a new term for alimony that makes the recipient feel less like a handout and more like a freelancer paying his bills with the proceeds of smart and hard-earned investments. Marriage is the greatest gamble ever made, and the lucky ones can feel the satisfaction of it lasting a lifetime; those of us who have had long marriages and had to “cash in the chips” should be happy that this mission has produced unique results (life experience, your children, wealth – think “dividends” in the broadest sense of the word) that were hard-earned elsewhere.
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