Middle Fingers Up

2026 August 26

Tim and I have been married nearly 25 years. I lose track of that number easily because we’ve been together four years longer than that, and I gauge our time together based on when we got together as adults, not when we stood in front of a few people and said we were honestly, truly, okay-for-reals-this-time, no-backsies together.

We’ve also known each other since we were 13. Since the first hour of the first day of freshman year of high school in French class. We were close together in the alphabet (B and C) and sat close together in the rows. I clocked him instantly as a massive dork. Tall skinny guy who wore v-neck velour shirts with a chain. A CHAIN. And he walked funny. Like a duck.

Apparently, he found me much more appealing than I found him. Later, that would even out.

I’ve toyed with the idea of sending a card to people who attended our wedding. Seems strange when I type it out. It would have a “nahner-nahner” tone to it. There was a lot of side-eye at that wedding. A heaping helping of “this will never last” rippling silently through the small crowd. It wasn’t exactly a rip-roaring celebration, as we were actively parenting in some very difficult circumstances. Extreme parenting. While building a relationship with each other. Like going through whitewater rapids while trying to set a table with crystal and fine china.

I see our wedding ceremony now as a miniature summit event after four Sisyphean years where the boulder we pushed up that hill every day consisted of managing all the stuff that comes along with parenting in your early 30s; money, discipline issues, money, childcare, money, big life decisions, money; dealing with my family; managing the tinderbox that was Tim’s ex; both learning how to be good step-parents; battling his parents for my right to even be in his life, money, childcare. You know. Life.

The card I want to send would have a pop-up middle finger and would play a song when it’s opened. I like the lyrics to Beyonce’s “Sorry,” although that’s specifically a really really good breakup song. Just the lines

Middle fingers up
Sorry/I ain’t sorry
Middle fingers up

But the rest of the lyrics pull me up short. “I ain’t thinking bout you.” Well, turns out I am. Just on this occasion. There’s some bitterness left over, some “fuck you, you just couldn’t keep your opinion about my life to yourself. You had to try to stop us from being together. Fuck you.”

Because just like being tailgated on the highway makes me go *precisely* the speed limit, someone telling me they don’t think I should do X with my life or I ought to really conduct myself in Y fashion makes me even more determined to machete my way through the path I’ve chosen for myself.

Tim and I made this decision. And people interjecting their opinions about whether we should or shouldn’t be together is such fucking bullshit. We were over 30 years old when we chose each other, both already parents, both already finished with horrible marriages. In a time when we desperately needed support and community, what we got instead was criticism and doubt, a shifting floor where neither of us could get a solid footing. And goddamn, do people that age need some solid footing.

I’m seeing it with my kids now, who are the age Tim and I were when we got married. What they need from us is strength and love and support, to be here if they fall, to be able to catch what we can from the little explosions that happen in their lives because explosions happen in everybody’s lives. This isn’t complicated. It isn’t new. It’s how life is. And how selfish of people — you, the ones who know I’m talking about them right now — to ignore the reality of life and inject yourself into someone else’s fragile creation of themselves. How awful. How arrogant and rude. How crushing.

And I suppose that’s what the card would be: proof that we were not crushed. No matter how hard you tried, no matter how insidious your efforts to separate us, no matter the lies you told our children and brothers/sisters-in-law about us, we remained united. It took a lot of work to sort through the rubble your attempts left behind, but once we finally removed your access, we could see what was ours to deal with and what was dumped upon us by people outside our relationship.

I don’t buy the “they’re from a different time” or “they didn’t know better.” It’s always possible to know better and do better and be better. I’ve learned recently how hard my dad worked to overcome the influence of his truly horrible mother, horrible by every known metric. He may not have become the perfect parent, but he recognized the failings he had inherited and strove to avoid falling into those traps. And now I work almost exclusively with older adults who, in their 70s and 80s and 90s are seeking new and better ways to be human. The knowledge is out there, you just have to want to find it. You have to want to change.

And it wasn’t just the parent figures in our lives objecting to our union. Siblings, friends, long-distant acquaintances. You know who you are. But largely, yes, our parents intruded in every imaginable way. This isn’t AI — use your brains, you’ll figure it out.

We had a great therapist help us sort through this mess. We did the work required to organize our emotional life into his/mine/ours, separating the wheat from the chaff. And you, my dears, are the chaff. Once you revealed your intention to undermine another couple’s relationship, you became chaff. Unnecessary weight. A burden we were never meant to carry.

What a lesson you were for us as we ventured into territory you once occupied; parents of adult children. You truly shaped how we approached this work; by your example, we knew which direction to avoid and which way to go to do better, to be more meaningful parts of our children’s lives, to maintain healthy relationships with these people. You know that saying about everyone being good for something, even if that’s being a bad example? We have used your behavior as a signpost: DO NOT GO THIS WAY.

And it’s worked pretty well, keeping our opinions out of our kids’ lives but staying close for all the hard times. We still have a lot to learn, but that’s the beauty of life, the ability to keep learning and growing and evolving. And if you do it right, you can maintain healthy, sustaining relationships with your children well into their adulthood.

Sure, we all want “what’s best” for our children, but the question must always be “who decides what is best?” At a certain point, you must trust your adult children to make decisions for their own lives. Trust that you raised good humans. And really, just worry about yourself.

We fought hard for this relationship at every step along the way. When we first got together and people were warning us that this was a terrible idea, around our wedding when we have people actively lying to us about each other, and when we finally broke free of those influences and started building our own life together. Sometimes, we’re sad we can’t have a loving family around us and big, happy, extended family gatherings, but without massive structural changes in both of our families, that’s just not healthy. And we won’t go back to an environment where we are actively being undermined.

So here it is, the card I won’t bother to send, the reminder that despite your influence, we have been together nearly 30 years, and we’re finally — blessedly — pretty fucking happy. Calm. Peaceful. Productive and supportive of each other. In a place we didn’t even dare to dream of.

And we are going to celebrate and have the time of our lives — in our way, on our timeline, and far, far away from you.