The Office Spouse

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying good-bye so hard.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               I first heard the phrase “office spouse” when it was used in relation to me.  Up until that point, I did not know that such a thing even existed, let alone that I was/had one.  The circumstances in which this information was revealed to me were less than ideal – at a work function, to a senior lawyer within my ministry, who I was attempting to impress with my vast legal knowledge in the hopes that he would hire me to work in his office.  This apparently caused concern to my (as of then unknown to me) office spouse who felt the need to announce to everyone within earshot that *I* was *his* office spouse.

The all-knowing Wikipedia defines “office spouse” as follows:  ″Work spouse″ is a phrase referring to a co-worker, usually of the opposite sex,  with whom one shares a special relationship, having bonds similar to those of a marriage.  A ″work spouse″ is also referred to as ″workplace spouse″ or ″office wife″.  This would be an accurate description of our relationship at that time.

I first met this office spouse in the summer of 2007 when I was eight months pregnant with Baby Chicken.  Not the ideal circumstance in which to meet someone you are attracted to, particularly when you are already involved in another significant, complicated romantic attachment with the father of your unborn child.  Boy Toy, as he came to be known amongst my friends, was smart,  cute, funny, keen, and - hey! - what was up with that tongue piercing?!?!?  Aside from the pierced tongue, in my mind he represented all the potential I had seen in my ex-husband in our younger years together.  But Boy Toy was the real deal. 

I remember he added me on Facebook while I was away on mat leave with Baby Chicken but, as with all of my best relationships, I am unable to recall how exactly our friendship evolved from there.  Lunches, emails and, with the advent of the Apple iPhone, incessant iMessage conversations…..  My attraction to him blossomed and our interactions developed a flirtatious tenor.  *BUT* he was eight years younger than me (cougar much?!?) and I was in a position of authority towards him during his articling year.  I was walking a fine line in some of my communications with him, often joking that some of our interactions were ample grounds for a future harassment claim on his part.  But I trusted him implicitly, often confiding in him things that I told no other person.    

When I was on mat leave with BoBo, Boy Toy began to date the woman who I sensed he would marry.  At a Xmas party I attended for the sole purpose of seeing him, I asked him about this, suggesting to him that he had met the woman he was going to marry.  He acknowledged that this could be true.  A year and a half later I was hit out of the blue with a text message announcing their engagement.   

And so our office marriage ended as his real life nuptials began.  I cut off all contact with him.  I removed his phone number from my cell phone so that I could never be tempted to text him, deleted him from Facebook so I couldn't see what was going on in his life, and ceased all social and office contact with him.  It was very immature of me but my emotional attachment to him was strong.  I don’t know what I expected was realistically going to come out of our flirtation – I was at this point rather happily married to the Dragon, now with two babies – but I could not handle the fact of his impending marriage.  Looking back, I don’t know how I managed to exorcise him from my life or to continue the disconnection for so long.  But I did.  Our office decree nisi was granted and remained intact.     

The lines of communication reopened only very recently when I was assigned my first homicide file.  Faced with the choice of which lawyer I would chose as my junior, I cornered him in the hallway of the courthouse and asked him to work with me, telling him that he was the only person in the office who would not annoy the living daylights out of me.  It was an offer he could not refuse.

A few weeks ago, Boy Toy came into my office, closed the door and sat down.  I hope that my face did not belie the extent of my shock and my sadness when he announced that he would not be able to work with me on the homicide as he would be leaving the office in the fall, transferring to another office in a city far away, closer to his wife’s family, so they can find more affordable housing and start a family.  While the timing of the announcement came as a surprise, I can’t say that it was unexpected as he had long since stated that it was not in his plans to stay at this office forever.

His impending move ends an eight year chapter of my life, one which has run almost as long as some of my “real” marriages.  Yes it was premised in fantasy, yes it was fraught with drama and tension and frustration (the majority of which was my own creation) but he has been my close friend and my confidante.  His presence in my life offered me stability when I could otherwise not find it.  He helped fill the void which resulted from the end of my first marriage,  and represented what I missed most about my former spouse in the early days of my divorce while I struggled to navigate my relationship with the Dragon.  Oddly, I do not regret the years that I did not speak to him.  While I had no problem skirting the bounds of propriety in relation to my own marriage, I never, ever wanted to do anything to compromise his.  And the only way for me to ensure that was to cut off all contact with him.  I am well aware that it is no coincidence that my relationship with the Dragon has solidified considerably in the time that I did not have contact with Boy Toy.  Our marriage thrived without the distraction.    

I have just come from what is going to be one of my last lunch dates with the Boy Toy.  During lunch he told me a long story the moral of which was as follows – sometimes there are people in life who we like (or even love) but the timing is not right to be with them.  (Did he see or understand the parallel to our relationship?)  His story made me want to cry for I have often thought that had I met him at a different time and under different circumstances, our friendship might well have blossomed into all that I once wished it could have been.

  

On yoga.....

I come from a background of trauma.  Violence, addiction and dysfunction dominated my life throughout my childhood and adolescence.  Although I eventually gained physical independence from my family of origin, the events of my childhood haunted me for years.

Growing up, I always knew that the environment in which I was raised was not normal.  And I also knew that higher education would be my only way out.  I put my nose to the proverbial grindstone and worked for years to put myself through two university degrees, eventually attaining my goal of becoming a criminal lawyer.  It was a lot of work and a lot of stress with my familial dysfunction continuing in the background.   

They say that the law is a jealous mistress.  That most certainly is true.  I am convinced that my passion for criminal law is born of my dysfunctional upbringing.  Hell, my paternal grandfather was a bookie in the 1940s!  I am well aware that but for the grace of g-d there go I.  I could easily have found myself occupying a different role in the criminal justice system than I do today, be it as a victim or even as an accused person.

My work is stressful, demanding, challenging, engaging and, at times, rewarding.  It exacts a personal and an emotional toll. 

In the spring of 2014 my personal trauma and professional stresses collided with near disastrous results.  I was prosecuting a very serious domestic violence case, one in which the victim (herself a victim of years and years of trauma and abuse at the hands of various partners) was brutally assaulted.  While I lead her through her evidence, she described events which hit too close to home,  Her evidence mirrored something I witnessed as a child.  As she described having her nose viscously broken, the blood flowing down her face as though a bag of milk had broken, I experienced a flashback followed by a complete meltdown.  I asked the judge for a break and fled to the bathroom, locked myself into a stall and sobbed uncontrollably.  

This breakdown was the culmination of a myriad events which had unfolded over many years, perhaps over the course of my entire life.  It turned out to me the wake-up call I desperately needed - to address the events of my past, to fine tune the balance of my personal and professional lives and to set a strong, healthy foundation for my future.  In one of my all-time favourite quotes, Ernest Hemmingway once said, "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places".  It was time to restore and rebuild.

I truly believe that life sends us the people we need when we need them.  I was at a continuing education event last summer where one of the speakers was renowned trauma specialist Deborah Sinclair.  This woman literally wrote the book on domestic violence and, over time, has developed a counseling practice which addresses personal trauma as well as "vicarious trauma" in the professional realm.  Deborah was there that day to speak to us - a group of Crow Attorneys - about vicarious trauma, the impact that constantly having to deal with other people's trauma has on our own lives.  It was as though she was describing my life in her lecture - stress, depression, apathy, disconnection.  Affecting all areas of my life.

I approached Deborah at the break and told her that she was describing my life to a "T".  I knew that she had her counseling practice in Toronto and I asked her to meet with me.  Our respective summer vacations intervened and we did not end up meeting until well into September.  Working with Deborah saved my life.  Not only did she help me put the traumatic events of my childhood into perspective, she taught me to LET IT GO.  She helped me face the shame about my family which I had carried with me all my life.  She supported me when I cut the toxic ties that perpetually held me captive in my family's clutches.  And she introduced me to powerful, life changing concepts such as breath and meditation and the parasympathetic nervous system.  Deborah's library of books is outstanding and she introduced me to Meghan Telpner and the importance of diet and nutrition in managing health and stress.  The transformation had begun.....

At the sane time that I was working with Deborah, a girlfriend who lived in Keswick told me about a yoga studio near her home called Simplicity.  She had completed her 30 day trial, had really enjoyed it and wanted to do more.  I had practiced yoga on and off for about 14 years, all different types - Kundalini, Hatha, Ashtanga, yoga for runners - but had always eschewed yoga in favour of more intense, high impact aerobic activity and heavy weights.  That was the way to lose weight and be thin, right?

I started attended classes at Simplicity in October, 2014.  The more I attended, the more I wanted to attend.  At first, the pull was the Guru, Jenn Pike, with her wealth of knowledge and her killer, super challenging, "am I going to make it off the mat?" yoga classes.  Then I branched out and met the beautiful souls known as Sonia and Sandie whose bodies I could easily relate to and whose classes brought me to such a place of safety and comfort.  

In February of this year I suddenly and unexpectedly lost a treasured soulmate.  I spiraled once again into the depths of depression.  Sonia's restorative yoga classes provided me with such a safe, comfortable, nurturing environment to complete fall apart and experience my grief.  In so doing in the safety of her class, coping with the grief off the mat in the outside world became much more manageable.

In the past nine months I have amassed such a wealth of knowledge regarding my physical, mental and spiritual health and well-being.  I am in awe of how much I have grown and at the relative balance I have achieved.  (I am after all still a lawyer and a mother to two young children!)  My diet, while still a work in progress, has been revolutionized.  I delight in the physical poses my body can now attain, in the evolving changes to my body and in the differences between what I could do days or weeks or months ago and what I can do now.  I am more closely attuned to my mind, body and spirit and what they NEED.  I am more compassionate and understanding and less judgmental, particularly in relation to myself.  I am healthier and more balance in every way.

You ask what yoga means to me...  It means life.  It means joy.  It means health.  It means balance.  It means transformation.

Namaste.