Magda Pecsenye Zarin: I'm still in my pajamas.
Doug French: Well, that's a nice detail to share.
Magda: Well, you, I mean, you're looking at me, you can tell I don't usually wear t-shirts that have avocados on them that say, “I avo crush on you.”
Doug: Well, I can't see that part. All I can see is your neckline. Oh, there you go. Well, thank you for showing me your avocados. And I guess in full disclosure, I'm wearing a wool cap with a pom-pom on it in April, because we're in Michigan and there's a frost warning tonight.
Magda: I know, I know. So that tree I had sent to your house, I put it in the front yard in my house, and let's hope it's doing okay. Because I watered it in and then left and it was supposed to rain the next two days. And that was a couple of weeks ago and I hope it makes it through this frost warning and I hope it grows. It's a red Osier dogwood, which is a native plant. So we'll hope that it's doing okay.
Doug: Well, if we're going to share tree news, there's a tree that's down in my backyard, the evergreen, that was surrounded by all those weed trees I got rid of. This is its first spring without those around.
Magda: Oh wow. So it just fell over because of all the rain? Oh wow.
Doug: It fell over and it's lying against the house now and we're going to get it looked at, you know, by arborists. This is Tree Town. So there are probably, you know, there's, there's more arborists per capita in this town than most I would imagine.
Magda: Probably, probably.
Doug: But, um, yeah, well now all of a sudden the neighbors who had several trees blocking their view of my house now have none. And that's no fun. Although I'm too old to care about throwing my blinds. So.
Magda: Oh wow, interesting.
Doug: If you're going to stare in, then you're going to get what you deserve, lady.
Theme music fades in and out
Doug: I got a letter from my mom, you know, Mom still sends things.
Magda: Mm-hmm. Was it in newspaper clipping?
Doug: Yes, it was. I got four newspaper clippings.
Magda: Oh my gosh, I haven't gotten a newspaper clipping from anyone since my grandmother died.
Doug: Well, the best part is they're all three-panel cartoons from this cartoon. It's a comic called Baby Blues. Which is about a young couple with a kid. And it's all about how this little kid is doing his own pretend podcast. By sticking his mom's hairbrush in a potted plant. And I'm not quite sure what to infer from this.
Magda: I think what you should infer from this is that your mom doesn't have a whole lot of podcast-related references in her life. So when she saw a podcast-related reference in her newspaper, she thought of you and she wanted to send it to you.
Doug: And she thinks of me as a six year old person with a hairbrush stuck on a potted plant.
Magda: Occasionally you sort of are, spiritually. Yeah. Just so you know, Doug, when I came onto this call and you have that wool cap on and it's got that logo in the front, it kind of looks like some kind of animal head with an eye, like a cyclops muppet.
Doug: Well, I choose to think that it is a third eye of wisdom, even though it's just the B2B bike trail, but, you know, I make no apologies for being tragically bald, I got to stay warm. This is how I do it. I wear beanies eight months a year.
Magda: Hey, 80% of your body heat.
Doug: Right. And I used to generate warmth that could power small communities and that's starting to change.
Magda: I think it's hormonal. I think men go through hormonal changes just like women do and because they do not grind your lives to a halt like they do for women, it has not been studied yet.
Doug: Well, yeah, people don't care much about 60 year old men. It's just, you know, if something hurts, then they say, yeah, that hurts now.
Magda: Right.
Doug: Do what you can. You can stretch out. You can take these 48 pills every day for the rest of your life. But yeah, there's not much left to do there. That's your, your back is crap now. Unless you get a hip replaced or something. We know that once, as Bill Braine said, once your wife decides you're having a tough time getting in and out of a car, then your wife gets you a hip replacement. And then you get, he got his hip in the mail back. Did I tell you that?
Magda: No, what? He got his hip in the mail back? He got his old joint?
Doug: Well, he said, it's commonplace. Yeah. He said, “I really would like to have the hip. I want to use the hip, the actual organic hip as like the knob on a cane or something.” And the doctor who performs nine hip replacements a day, he said, sure, you can have it, but I'm going to warn you it's gross. And. And when a doctor says that, yeah. A layman would say like, Oh my God, that's revolting. But if the doctor who's seen everything, who is trained to understand and dismiss revolting as part of his daily regimen, if he says it's revolting or she, then he's onto something. And sure enough, he got it back in the mail and it was revolting.
Magda: Well, because it's not just like the bone, right? It's like the bone in context, they have to kind of French the bone like Frenching a lamb chop, right? Like they have to scrape all the tendons and all that stuff off it to get it out.
Doug: Exactly. Or Easter dinner.
Magda: But it's not like they put it in a rock tumbler and polish it. Like, ugh. Oh my God. Yeah.
Doug: Yeah, and that's not mint jelly either. So he actually boiled it. He put it in a big pot of water on the barbecue and boiled it. And I guess that's what made it more palatable for his wife to agree to let him have it in the house.
Magda: He boiled, oh my God, what did he do with the stock he made? His own hip stock.
Doug: Um, I imagine it makes a nice, uh, you know, you could use it to for stews or–
Magda: God, the only thing I would be able to do with it is like, water a tree.
Doug: Or maybe he just made a nice, uh, gelee, you know, a kind of aspic.
Magda: Do you think previous generations were as macabre as we are? Like, do you think the people who are like 80, when they had their first hip replacement, culturally would have been able to talk about like boiling your hip joint in water? And like, what would you do with the stock?
Doug: Absolutely, they fought in world wars. I mean, older people have seen a lot worse shit than we have. We just read a lot of worse shit, but they've actually experienced worse shit.
Magda: I know, but war is one thing and boiling making stock out of your own hip bone is kind of twisted.
Doug: We should probably just cut this off now. If we are going to talk about macabre, macabre is a nice lead into our topic today.
Magda: Yes it is.
Doug: Now we have to set some ground rules, I think, or we can try to live up to them. I don't know. It's been long enough where, I think we'll be fine, but, you know, we're sitting here today remembering this day that happened 25 years ago. And again, we're not calling it our 25th wedding anniversary. We're calling it a thing that we did. We got together and said a few things and our family and friends watched it and then we had a party and that was it.
Magda: Well, it's the 25th year since the day that you and I got married.
Doug: Right, April 24th, 1999. Party over, oops, out of time.
Magda: Mm-hmm. And you and I have been legally divorced. Legally divorced for 15 and a half years.
Doug: Something like that, yeah. Right. And it's a murky thing to recall in terms of the whole divorce process, because we announced our intentions and then 18 months later I moved out and then, you know, it was a two-year process to extricate ourselves because the kids were young and yeah.
Magda: Yeah. Yeah, from the time we decided to the time that it was actually finalized was a two year process.
Doug: I mean, if anything, we should spend this podcast talking about the 18 months we lived together estranged at opposite ends of this tiny two bedroom apartment.
Magda: It was 17 months, I thought, but yeah, that was really something.
Doug: And people, and I will say it here, too, it's like people were horrified at that prospect, but as long as you work out a rhythm and you have an understanding, like no one's out to throw the other under a taxi cab or anything, as long as there's a bit of stasis there, then you can be civil in front of young children. And like I've said many times, it's like having a live in nanny. ‘Cause each of us gets to go out. We'd break up the week.
Magda: Well, if you really, if you were really angry all the time at your nanny, maybe. Yeah. But, I don't know for me, I think it felt unbearable at the time, but in hindsight, I think the thing that it did for me, and I don't know if it did this for you, but I saw a lot of people who had gotten divorced, and they were in physically different locations. And so there was kind of like some unfinished business, not in their relationship as a married couple, but like stuff that they had never said to each other as they were splitting up because they just went into their own space right away. And you and I never had that. Like we said everything that we really wanted to say to each other, like ad nauseum, I think. And I think by the end of it, like I was just so completely over this experience of being around you. And I think you were so completely over the experience of being around me, but there weren't any regrets. There weren't any thoughts of like, oh, if only we had talked about this. There wasn't anything left unresolved. And I don't mean that we got closure, right? I think closure is kind of bullshit. I don't believe in closure, but I do think that when you're stuck in the same space with somebody that you really don't want to be stuck in the same space with for 17 or 18 months and you have to make it work, by the time you're done with it, you're just really ready to move on. You and I were like finished and then some. And that, I think, for the divorce part of our relationship was a big gift, even though it was kind of not that much fun while it was happening.
Doug: Right, but I think you just contradicted yourself because you don't believe in closure, but you're talking about closure. I think in terms of ending one phase of our relationship and then recognizing we had to build a new phase of the relationship for the sake of the two young boys we had.
Magda: Well, okay, but I think the way closure, the word closure is used by people is, “I just wanna get closure.” “I never had closure.” Closure seems almost like it's a magical talisman, right? It's like if you say and do the correct combination of words and things, you'll be able to heal whatever it was that was bad in the relationship and you'll be able to move on without any hurt feelings. I think that's bullshit, right?
Doug: There's no universal understanding of what closure is. Like in the nature of subjective reality, closure is in your own mind, I'm in this place now to recognize my marriage is over and the new phase is ahead. Because there is that point that you're still emotionally snagged.
Magda: Okay, but people almost always think they need closure with the other person and that's not what you're talking about at all.
Doug: No, because you can't control what the other person's thinking. I mean, you have to...
Magda: No, but people think they can. And people think that if they can just get in a room with the other person, if they can just get the other person to actually talk to them, if they can just, if they can just, if they can just, then there's gonna be some magical conversation, it's all gonna be okay. Like, no, it's not gonna be okay. You know what the conversation is that you need to have with yourself? “It's over. Do you choose yourself or do you choose some other idea? If you choose the idea of the relationship, you're never gonna be fine with it. If you choose yourself, then you can have a future.”
Doug: I agree with that. Yeah, especially since it's like that line from When Harry Met Sally, do you love Helen or do you love the idea of Helen? And he's like, I kind of miss the whole Helen.
Magda: But then you meet Helen and you're like, wait a minute, Harley Jane Kozak was Helen. What? OK, because I mean, I don't know why Harley Jane Kozak would have married Billy Crystal in the first place anyway.
Doug: But then why did she go with Ira? I mean, is Ira anything, any great knobs? No, he's just.
Magda: I don't know.
Doug: So, but I'm right there with you. Even with any ex, you can still be in love with how you felt at a certain time with that person when you felt more hopeful and that's a big separation to make, I think.
Magda: Right. I think we all like to believe in this, like, arc bending toward justice. And we all like to believe that we're all becoming more and more emotionally healthy progressively as we embark on every kind of thing we can to try to help soothe and release trauma and fix ourselves, but I don't always think that's the case. I think some of us are getting progressively less healthy. I think some of us are yo-yoing around. I think some of us are having big progressions in mental health and then something happens that sets you back or sets you in a different direction of dis-health again, you know what I mean? And so I think the idea of romanticizing what somebody did for you then emotionally, like you don't have the same needs now. So even if they could do that same thing for you emotionally, would it be enough? Would it be too much? Would it be just a little bit wrong?
Doug: Well this is what I wanted to ask my friend, on the Louisville trip, to talk about what his relationships were like 20 years apart. When they got back together after 20 years, I'm sure there must have been some differentness in terms of what each could do for each other, how the last 20 years had shaped them. Um, I mean, some chemistry is undeniable and you, if you're lucky enough to find that chemistry, it kind of will accommodate whatever changes your, your mind and body has gone through, have gone through.
Magda: Well, I think there are plenty of couples who had the same kind of thing. You know, I mean, my brother and my sister-in-law, they dated for four years when they were in high school, which is pretty serious for a high school relationship. You know, at that point, it was like a quarter of their lives. And then they were broken up for 10 years and then they got back together. And they were very different people when they got back together, but yet they were the same, essentially, and that's why they were able to get back together.
Doug: That would be an interesting point to kind of recognize how you repair, how do you revisit what was in place many years ago, acknowledge what's still there and acknowledge what has changed and yet still fits in the puzzle. Did he even analyze it that much or was he just always enamored with her and...
Magda: I know they both analyzed a lot about why they had broken up. And they got back together, interestingly enough, right when you and I were getting a divorce.
Doug: It's almost like we were the antithesis of them. Yeah. I think they were apart the entire time we were together. The universe said, no, I'm sorry. Magda and her brother can't be with people at the same time. So but, as is always the case, we are off on a different tributary here, which is interesting. But yeah, the main thought was what we remember about April 24, 1999.
Magda: Oh, I had a very bad day that day.
Doug: Well, how much of it do you want to relive?
Magda: I mean, I can relive it. Like, I just think like a lot of my reliving it is going to hurt your feelings. And I don't really want to hurt your feelings. There's no reason to hurt your feelings.
Doug: Well, but that's the thing though. I don't take it personally. I think it would have before, but the bottom line is, I know I did nothing, I did not premeditate anything against you to hurt you. You know, this is not something that I've done nefariously. I mean, there was some, not deceit, that's not a good word, but I'm saying, there were feelings that you had that you never shared with me, that you shared with me afterwards.
Magda: Right.
Doug: That helped me untie the Gordian knot of why this happened. You talk about closure moments, we've had several in my view. And that's, that might be the mathematical way that I look at the world, but the bottom line is those 18 months when we were in the same apartment, that was a closure moment or at least a closure phase. Starting the blog was a closure phase. Moving here was a closure phase. And when we would have conversations about what we'd done on our own, the work we'd done on our own to analyze why that initial attraction happened and why that wasn't enough to build a marriage on. So, you're not going to hurt my feelings. I mean, I'm going to feel like you are at some point, but I'll know the
Magda: Mm-hmm.
Doug: You know, the more intellectual side of me will be able to distance myself from that because all I was doing was playing a role. You know, I was like, well, I guess this is what you do when you get married. I want to be married and I want to have a family.
Magda: That's what I was doing, too. I was playing a role and it kind of, I mean, I had so many problems planning that wedding. And, you know, in hindsight, it was because I was afraid to do it because I didn't really want to do it. But I mean, delayed and delayed and delayed on ordering the rings, all this kind of stuff. And I did have a beautiful vision for the ceremony and the reception. And you and I were back in Toledo where the wedding was happening a few days before. And I just had this realization crystal clear that I wasn't supposed to be marrying you. And I had no idea what to do.
Doug: And did you share that with anybody?
Magda: No, I had nobody I could share with because anybody I would have shared it with would have said to me, “oh you shouldn't feel that way. Everybody feels that way before they get married.” Or they would have said, “oh my god we have to cancel the wedding.” And I was utterly terrified of canceling the wedding. So...Little side note, you know when people are trying to prevent suicide and they're like, hey you should check in with your people.
Doug: Hey, you know, I'm alarmed that you're equating this with suicide, but go on.
Magda: Well, but I mean, I haven't been actively suicidal, but I have been passively suicidal many times. And the idea that somebody would check in with me and I would tell them the truth about how I was feeling is utterly ludicrous. Because there's almost no one who will check in with somebody, find out that the person's feeling passively suicidal and just be like, “hey, I'm here for you, let's just hang out,” right? Everybody's either gonna be like, “oh, you don't need to feel like that!” and talk you into what they think is you feeling better, or they're gonna like come over and pink slip you into the hospital, right? There's like sort of no in-between, being with you exactly where you needed to be. That's how I felt about this realization that I shouldn't be marrying you.
I did not think that there was a single human being in the world who would be able to hear what I was saying, accept it, and then not immediately take some form of action, whether it was pulling the plug on the entire thing, which I couldn't imagine. How could I stop this train that was going, you know, everybody was so happy for us, everybody had these dresses and suits and there was a cake and like, you know, all this kind of stuff that now in hindsight, like, oh, who cares? But at the time it felt completely overwhelming. I don't know what I would have needed at the time, but it wasn't anything that I thought that I could get from anyone I knew. And that's not an aspersion on anyone that I knew at the time. They loved me so much that they wanted me to be happy. So they would either have attempted to talk me into being happy because they were not necessarily happy in their marriages and they didn't think it was unusual that somebody would have quote unquote “cold feet,” or they just wanted to call off the whole thing, right? So I didn't tell anyone. I just pondered it in my heart. And I remember the morning of, I’d gone to get my hair done, had this big updo. I had a Norwegian wedding crown put in my hair and that I had borrowed from my mom's cousin and I was wearing jeans and a button down shirt and I was going to do my makeup at my mom's house and drive myself to the church and then put on the dress and everything at the church. And I was putting on this makeup and just like despairing. And then I got in the car and I was driving to the church and there was a turnoff toward the church. And I really just thought, what if I didn't turn? What if I kept on driving? And well, yeah.
Doug: That would have been a much better movie.
Magda: Right? Drive off the cliff. Have a friend in the car with me.
Doug: No, not go off a cliff. I'm just saying, you know, take a left turn, go to Dairy Queen and just show up with your makeup and your hair all up, dude, with this amazing crown in it.
Magda: And then what? What happens the next day?
Doug: Well, I agree. We can talk about this now because I think our sensibilities have evolved enough to know that, the feeling of wanting to marry someone is a very specific thing. And I have felt that since we split up and you still feel it, since you're remarried, we have that context now. And we can also see.
Magda: Right. Well, but it wasn't that I wanted to marry you. I wanted to be settled and I wanted to be married. You know, I didn't have those separated out in my head. I thought I wanted to marry you. And then when I figured out, yeah, then when I figured out that I didn't want to marry you, it was really too late. So. I drove to the church and everybody else was really happy and I put on as much of a happy face as I could and we went through with the ceremony and I remember that the pastor said we were now husband and wife and I just got the worst feeling I have ever felt. I just felt like “I have just made the worst decision” and I don't think I've ever had a feeling that bad in my waking life ever since. I occasionally will have nightmares in which I've killed someone and then I realize that I've killed someone and there's no taking it back. That's sort of what the feeling was like. It was like just wow. And then we went through the reception and all of that and I cried three or four times in the middle of the reception and I think everybody thought I was like crying happy tears or something. I was just overwhelmed and I was overwhelmed and I was in despair.
Doug: See, this is the point, there was a time when all of this would have hurt my feelings, but you're not hurting my feelings now, you're breaking my heart. Just because of all that you had to go through that you had no outlet for.
Magda: Well, you know, it wasn't really about you. It was that I didn't trust myself to not just jump at this chance to be married and settled, you know?
Doug: Well, you even used a different word, too. Often you said, not so much “settled” as “safe.”
Magda: Yeah, yeah, that was really it. I mean, I felt like I was too wild and too scattered to be in charge of my own safety, really. And, huh, spoiler alert, that's ADHD. But I had no idea at the time, you know, I just knew that for years, my dad had been joking around that I was Kali, goddess of destruction. Well, I didn't know that Kali is the goddess of destruction and re-creation, right? I had just sort of been told either I was the good girl, or I was this wild, flighty, destructive... you know, whatever, somebody who runs off and lives in Mexico without a care and like, you know, so.
Doug: And I remember when I was at my angriest at you, I would throw that back in your face. “Even your own dad thinks you just destroy everything you touch.” And that was a mean thing to say, but that's lashing out.
Magda: Yeah. I know. I know. I think the reason my dad said that to me was because he wished he could have torn things down a little bit more. He wished he had ever felt like he was able to say no. And so the fact that I was able to say no, even when he perceived that I was able to say no, but I didn't feel like I was able to say no, I think that was–
Doug: Wait, say no to what?
Magda: Everything. Expectations that other people put on me.
Doug: Oh, he felt imprisoned by the expectations that people put on him and he just kind of paddled his canoe down the current.
Magda: He has been absolutely crushed his entire life by expectations.
Doug: But these are the things we never talked about. This is why, this was what feels like progress to me. Just the idea that I can look back at those photos, like our engagement photos, right? Or the old photos of us when we vacationed, we went to Paris together, and you had this bright orange hair, and we'd walk around Paris and get croissants, and I know what you were doing now, because you had told me, and again, you told me this, but I believe it, too. This is the whole idea of like, “Marrying this guy is the thing I need to do. So I'm going to turn myself into something I know he'll stay with and be attracted to.” And you know, you're a smart person because you knew exactly what I liked and you recreated it.
Magda: Yeah. And I mean, we looked so good on paper together. We looked so good on paper together. And yeah, I mean, yeah.
Doug: Oh yeah. Especially during the whole blogger thing. Yeah, my God. How we've played off each other as the parent bloggers. As LOD and Moxie, yeah.
Magda: Yeah, it was just, it was just such a sad day for me. And, um… Yeah, it just was a really sad day. And then, you know, the problem with The Graduate, when Benjamin rescues Elaine from her wedding at the end, and then they run away and then they get back on the bus. And they're just sort of ecstatic. But then there's that shot of them at the very end where both of them are sort of like, they don't know what next. Like they don't show you in that movie what next. And so I didn't, there was no model for what next. So I just went through with the wedding.
Doug: Well, there was no model to, there was no model for you to step up and follow your emotions as opposed to the expectations. Oh my God, I have known people since who have been hamstrung by that something fierce. I recognize it right away. If you're all about keeping up appearances, that's a recipe for disaster in the end because if you deny what you really want or what you know is not right, then you start to compromise and then you start to seethe and then your mental health deteriorates.
Magda: Well, and that's why it has always been really important to me for our kids to let them know that their feelings are true. And they need to dig a little bit deeper into their feelings. And if they follow their feelings, even if they make a mistake, it's better to make a mistake by following your feelings than to make a mistake by denying your feelings. No matter what, things won't work out all the time. So you better have things not work out because you followed your own feelings and your instincts about what's good for you than to deny those instincts and still have things not work out. And that was a thing that I didn't know. You know, I had always been rewarded for doing what I was supposed to do, for having things look good on paper. And the things that I wanted to do or the things that were my instincts were not really encouraged.
Doug: Well, have you seen that speech that goes around? It's on social media all over the place. It's Jim Carrey talking about his father. He was concerned about whether he could make enough money to raise his family as a jazz musician. So he gave it up and went into some desk job, a bureaucratic job, and he lost that job and very famously the entire family lived someplace where they worked as janitors for a while. And so his message was, if you're worried about failing at the thing you love, just recognize that if you abandon the thing you love and pursue the thing you don't, you could still fail at that too. So why not at least fail at something you're much more likely to get up after and pursue again?
Magda: That's just, that's exactly what I just said, but you needed to hear it from a famous person.
Doug: No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying I understand that because I took that on. That's a very common message. You're telling me that, and I'm saying that's just like this other scenario.
Magda: Well, I think it's just like many other scenarios. I mean, I know so many people, especially people our age and especially people who are women who just bought what we were told because we didn't have any other choice, you know?
Doug: Right.
Magda: You don't get rewarded for breaking out unless you break out in a big way, right? And even people who break out in a big way, like when's the last time you heard of Courtney Love? People still hate Courtney Love.
Doug: It was when it was the so and so anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death.
Magda: Right, she's only ever attributed in relationship to him, you know? We had no models for anyone who broke out and wasn't immediately famous and revered for having broken out. Right. And so we were getting all these messages that, “oh, it's inevitable that you fail. Your entire generation can only fail.” And yet at the same time, we weren't doing enough to break through boundaries, right? Like we were the generation where women were really gonna be equal. It was a trap. It was all a trap. Like it was, you know, our defeat was pre-written. And I think for a lot of us now who are my age, the fact that we're still here is kind of a miracle because there wasn't anyone predicting that we were gonna make it past age 30.
Doug: Wait, what are you talking about now?
Magda: I think girls my age were given the message that we were never gonna succeed, there was never any idea of who you're gonna be once you're over the age of 30. It was thought that we were gonna be miserable at raising children. And you look at this rhetoric of like the, you know, “helicopter parents” and the, you know, participation awards and all this kind of bullshit, like we're still being told we're shit by the older generations. And...How do we live up to that? How do we get past that if everyone is predicting that we're going to fail?
Doug: Well, by doing the same thing, by saying no. And by getting off the canoe, if you're in the river, like, no, I'm going down this road, this river.
Magda: Yeah, so I said no and we got a divorce. But it took a long time, right? It took a really, really long time. And for a long time, I was trying to fix the problem of having married the wrong person. And I probably shouldn't have gotten married before I was 30 anyway. I tried to fix the problem of having married the wrong person by becoming this perfect stay-at-home mom, right? Like we lived in New York City, so I didn't have to have the perfect house. That part was good because I can't have a perfect house. But, like it didn't work that well because it wasn't really what I wanted to be doing. And I felt like a failure the whole time.
For a long time of my early parenting days, the only time I felt any self-worth was when I was answering people's questions on Ask Moxie, because I knew that I was giving people answers that they couldn't get anywhere else that was helping them and making them feel better about themselves.
Doug: And thank you for underscoring the theory I've mentioned many times here that anybody who was that devoted to posting to a blog that often was having communication problems at home or some kind of internal strife that needed an outlet.
Magda: It wasn't a communication problem. Doug, it wasn't a communication problem. It was a problem that you and I shouldn't have been together. I mean I don't want to go over this again, but you clearly don't remember all the times I asked you to go into therapy with me, into couples counseling with me. Because I was asking you fairly regularly to go into couples counseling with me and you always were like, “oh no, we don't need that.”
Doug: No, I remember that.
Magda: And so then finally when I said I wanted a divorce, you were like, “you didn't even want to give it any more?” And I was like, I have been asking you for years to go into couples counseling with me. Like this is not, it shouldn't have had to get to the point that I couldn't imagine how I was gonna wake up every morning for the next however many years. And I was really just trying to hold on till the kids turned 18 and
Doug: No, I understand that, I do, because at the time, I had no experience with couples counseling, nor did I wanna believe that we needed it. Because again, I relate to keeping up appearances. The reason I'm saying all these things is because I know how sadly ignorant I was of so much at that time, because I was keeping up appearances as well. You and I are seven years apart, I was 33 years old. I should have been married by now. My parents told me that more than once.
Magda: Mm-hmm.
Doug: Um, and so, you know, when you're talking about the trepidation, you have like a couple of days before the wedding, I was walking home through midtown with an engagement ring and there was a part of me that's like, you know, it's not too late to just turn around and sell it back to this guy, you know, I mean, that was, that was in my mind.
Magda: So that's why, that's why like the presentation of the ring and us getting engaged was so…
Doug: Underwhelming.
Magda: Yeah, absolutely underwhelming.
Doug: Cause your heart wasn't in it and neither was mine.
Magda: Yeah, exactly. Do you remember when we went to Norway and we went to the Munch Museum?
Doug: Yes.
Magda: We were both walking around in the Munch Museum like, [grimaces] because I mean for people Munch is the one who made who did The Scream, right? And he also did this one that I have always thought was kind of cool and creepy called The Kiss and it's this couple and they're kissing but they're merging and it's like they're sucking each other's energy somehow. But everything in that museum, like Munch was clearly mentally ill and not in the dreamy arty kind of way, like mentally ill and there was something very dark inside him.
And everything on the walls at that Munch Museum is like twisted and weird and dark. It's like 45 different versions of The Scream, all this kind of stuff and we're walking around and I am like, “oh my God” and finally I don't know what inspired it. You were like “Well, whenever you're ready to leave, we can leave.” And I was like, “I hate it here. I only came here because you wanted to.” And you were like, “I only came here because you wanted to.”
Doug: Because we were told we had to go to the Munch Museum while we were in Oslo.
Magda: But I think that was our entire marriage. I think I only came there because you wanted to, and you only came there because you thought I wanted to.
Doug: Well, that's what I just said, but you had to hear it from a museum.
Magda: Oh my God, what's the moral of the story here? The moral of the story is just because you like being somebody's friend, don't marry them.
Doug: Well, but the timing played a part in that. This is the whole idea of like, we wanted to be married and like, she seems perfectly fine.
Magda: Do you remember? People would ask us, oh, why are you getting married? And I would say, and I thought this was a reasonable answer. I would say, “oh, well, we're both just the marrying kind and we thought it was time.” What the fuck, right?
Doug: What, you said that?
Magda: I said that to people all the time! That was like my line, right? But now in hindsight, also thinking about that, why would people ask me, “so why are you two getting married?” Right.
Doug: Other people's doubts, that's their problem. That's the bottom line is this is something that Magda and I decided to do and we're gonna live or die with it.
Magda: Little did we know. Yeah.
Doug: Right, well, that's the nature of our existence, right? Little did we know, right?You've seen that movie, Stranger Than Fiction?
Magda: No. Now, see, here's another thing. If we could have had a flash forward to now, back then, and I still hadn't seen any of the movies that you wanted to talk about, I think we would have known.
Doug: I think you would have seen the first third of all the movies that I wanted to talk about because then you would have just... hahahaha
Magda: And they would have been DNFs.
Doug: Right, exactly. I would have said like, we should watch this because I do like re-watching my favorite films through the eyes of people I care for, which is why I love watching films with the boys and seeing them over again through their eyes so we can talk about them.
Magda: Well, here's a tip for you. Don't ever rewatch your favorite movies with Mike Zarin because Mike Zarin does not like the same movies that you like because if there's anything wrong about the physics of the movie, that'll just bother him too much.
Doug: Oh, we've talked about this. Yeah, that's what I think is hilarious. So what's his favorite movie?
Magda: What? What's his favorite movie? I don't know. We haven't talked about it. He likes movies where people punch each other.
Doug: Well, I mean that happens pretty often. I mean, he's got a lot to choose from.
Magda: I know. He really likes movies where people punch each other, like there was, I don't know, there's some. He likes things that are kind of sci-fi-ish but with a lot of punching. I don't think he wants to be going out punching people. I think it's just, like, vicarious fun.
Doug: No, nobody does. I mean, I would hope that you would not marry someone who's like, “okay, honey, I have to go out and punch a few people. I'll be back before 11.” I'm going to go pick a fight in Boston, for heaven's sake.
Magda: I know. But no, I mean, I just think it's like vicarious fun, right?
Doug: I’ve always loved movies, and I will watch a movie start to finish. I finished the mini series of Ripley on Netflix with Andrew Scott, who does a great job.
Magda: It's about the guy who started the Believe It or Not Museum, isn't it?
Doug: It’s not that.
Magda: I'm teasing you, even I know.
Doug: I know, I know you are, but that's, that's the Magdanian humor that I liked from the start.
Magda: And also making a joke about it, to me, gives me license to not even pay attention to the actual movie. Like I've noted that it exists. I've made a joke about it. Now I get to move on.
Doug: Right. Well, the novels originate from the fifties.
Magda: The novels? Wait, Alien was based on a novel?
Doug: Patricia Highsmith, a novel from 1955. Yeah. The Talented Mr. Ripley, which was remade most famously by–
Magda: Wait, this isn't really, this isn't about, this isn't about Ellen Ripley from Alien?
Doug: No?
Magda: Okay, so there are three Ripleys in existence and I thought it was one of them, made a joke about the other one…
Doug: There's too many Ripleys, exactly. This is the crux of our communication logjam sometimes. You just come in with the wrong Ripley.
Magda: Okay, so the only thing I know about The Talented Mr. Ripley is in the movie version –
Doug: He looks just like your brother.
Magda: Matt Damon looks just like my brother and so I couldn't watch the movie because it was really horrible to think of my brother as the killer. Sorry, spoiler alert! Anybody who's gonna watch that movie, Matt Damon's the killer.
Doug: We're getting down another rabbit hole here, but movies in general, I love watching them. In fact, I'm rewatching The Holdovers, which I love Alexander Payne movies, not just because they're all about male menopause, essentially.
Magda: I think The Holdovers might have been the last movie I voluntarily watched with Mike.
Doug: And what did you think?
Magda: And I think that the amount I cried so much during that movie, I thought Da’Vine Joy Randolph was absolutely transcendent in that movie. I thought she was amazing.
Doug: Unbelievable.
Magda: The kid who played the kid reminded me way too much of our older kid for me to not just be, and like, you know, when his mom betrays him, I was just like, “oh my God, I moved to Massachusetts.“
Doug: This is what he does exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Magda: And yeah. And so I think that's part of why I'm not in a hurry to watch any other movie. I mean, we did watch The Fifth Element, but that doesn't count because, you know, Mike didn't like it because of the 3D printing.
Doug: Well, I mean, of course it does. Of course that counts. That doesn't count. It doesn't count because he didn't like it and criticized the physics of it.
Magda: But I've already seen it, right? Like, it's not an investment for me to watch a movie I've already seen.
Doug: Right, but it's an investment in watching how he reacts to something you like. You know something more about him now.
Magda: It's true, but I think I kind of could have predicted it. Like, there's nothing that's essentially him, like no characteristics of him that are surprising to me. Like he doesn't have skeletons in his behavioral closet.
Doug: As far as you know.
Magda: I've never been to the basement in this house. Let's just say that.
Doug: Right, as we've established, no one really ever knows anybody.
Magda:I know, it's true, and you don't really know yourself.
Doug: Is there anything else about the day? Apart from the overwhelming existential dread. Okay. We've established that. Are there any details of the day that were informed by that at all? ‘Cause I have a couple in specifically. First, yes, that cake was off the charts good. It was like, that was like the focal point of the whole reception, which I remember bits and pieces of. But I remember at some point, one of the caterers or one of the contractors who helped put the whole reception together in that old house came at you and said, okay, please sign this bill, lady. I mean, here you are at your own wedding.
Magda: I don't remember that at all.
Doug: And I remember being so pissed that here you were at your wedding and someone was like, Hey, will you sign here? Please. You got to sign the bill for this, we gotta go.
Magda: I don't remember that at all, at all, at all. Well.
Doug: And I can imagine not because you had an over, you know, you had something else on your mind at the moment.
Magda: I didn't repeat that mistake. The second time I got married, I had somebody managing my whole wedding who was absolutely in charge of everything and would never have allowed anybody to come to me with something as trivial as signing a bill. Yeah. She's fantastic. And she...
Doug: Oh my god, you talk about a hand in glove. God, she fit that role perfectly, yeah.
Magda: You know, she offered to be in charge of the day and I was like, “oh my God, yes.” And I said to Mike, Mike also knows her and they sang together in college. And he was like, “what, really? Oh yeah!” So, and it worked out amazingly well. It was absolutely delightful. So, yeah.
Doug: And every wedding should have someone like that, who's just going to deflect all life-related, non-wedding-related stuff away from the people who are getting married. Because for one set of a couple hours during the day, they should forget that the outer world exists and just the two of them have joined in a way. That, and that's why, I mean, I still think about this, having been at that wedding and seeing how happy the two of you were, yours.
Magda: Which wedding? Oh, my wedding to Mike. Yeah.
Doug: The second one. Yes. Right. Having been at your wedding and seeing how much joy you and I should have been feeling for each other at the time. It really helps put it into focus and.
Magda: It helps put it into perspective, doesn't it? Because for a long time I thought I was just bad at love and bad at relationships and that I would be bad at getting married. And so when Mike and I had been talking for, I don't know, two weeks, he said to me, well, would you ever get married again? And I had sort of come through it by that point and I said, yeah, if it was to the right person. And he said, “What would I have to do or be to be the one who married you?” And that was really a big moment for me.
Doug: Well, you felt that in your spine, right?
Magda: Yeah, I really did.
Doug: And I never felt that for you in my spine. You know what I mean? Like that's never settle for fine, says Roy Kent.
Magda: No. Yeah, like that's the thing. I had never been that connected to somebody before you and I met. And so I just sort of thought people who married each other had these sort of, you know, like you get along and you have a lot of the same references and you sort of minimally want the same things and it's fine. I just didn't realize that people got married because they really, really wanted to be with the other person. Until I got married because I really really really wanted to be with the other person. I'm principally sort of against the institution of marriage and yet I got married again.
Doug: Yeah, well that was more about power of attorney, you know.
Magda: Well, he's still not my medical power of attorney. My brother is still my medical power of attorney, because I just don't want Mike to have to make any hard decisions. And, you know, my brother and I pulled our uncle off a vent together. Like once you've done that, you know, that that's the person you want to be your medical power of attorney, because you know, they're able to make those difficult decisions and look at them clearly instead of over-romanticizing and hoping.
Doug: You know what else I keep thinking of, too, because you know I do speak in movies a lot of the time.
Magda: “A lot” is doing a lot of work there, Doug.
Doug: Well, I'm here to admit that I've referenced like seven or eight since we started talking together. But, but this goes back to my, what my train of thought was on the day, 25 years ago, or the lead-up to that. Because in Four Weddings And A Funeral, you know, when that nebbishy cousin Tom is like, “I never thought I'd fall in love with anybody. I just thought I'd find someone that we got along with and I never expected the thunderbolt.” And then toward the end of that movie, he meets someone who ends up being like his third cousin or something, but he looks at her and turns around to the camera and says, “wow, Thunderbolt City.” You know, and I never had Thunderbolt City. And I remember thinking that.
Magda: I certainly thought I wasn't destined to get that and I really essentially thought I didn't deserve it. Although that's another thing I don't believe in. I don't believe in the institution of marriage and I also don't believe in the concept of deserving anything. And I wouldn't describe it as a thunderbolt with Mike. It's just like everything feels magical. It feels like being in a movie musical. That's why I had the wedding I did. I wanted it to all feel kind of like a weird ‘50s movie musical. It's a little bit madcap, a little oversaturated, a little bit magical.
Doug: Well, an extension of your feelings for each other, exactly, and that totally came through. Well, the great thing is, once you reach a certain age, you never judge someone for the wedding they plan. It's like, you know what? Joy is joy. Union is union. Fuck it all else. I mean, if this is how they want to do it, then God bless them.
Magda: We all sang Never Gonna Give You Up at my wedding.
Doug: I'm aware.
Magda: Everybody sang Never Gonna Give You Up and I walked into music from The Price Is Right. That was exactly the wedding I wanted. And that was something that I couldn't imagine. You know, like, I mean, we were talking about the totality of the eclipse the other day. Like when you have seen an eclipse at 97%, you're like, wow, that's amazing. But then when you've seen it in totality, you're like, “amazing” doesn't really cut it. Astounding?
Doug: Yeah.
Magda: With Mike, it's like being in Totality.
Doug: And that's the theme for our discussion. We wish everyone out there, find the magic, find the totality, find that point when the temperature drops suddenly 35 degrees and it's dark out and eerily silent and all the animals are freaked out. And you're sitting in a cemetery in Ohio. I wasn't sure how this was going to go, but I feel great. I don't know about you.
Magda: I feel great, too, because you and I are not married to each other anymore but we're friends again.
Doug: And that's the gift part. People tell me, they're like, how did you do it? As if there is a stencil for this, as if there is a linear progression for how life works out. And the answer is there isn't one. You just gotta put out your best effort and hope you get what's back in return.
Magda: Well, you know, I think the first step, honestly, is getting the divorce. Everybody wants to have a great relationship with their ex, but they're afraid to actually get the divorce. Like you can't have a great relationship with your ex until they are your ex. I remember at one point in the process of the divorce, you said to me, “you think divorcing me is going to fix all your problems.” And I really thought about it, because I had a lot of problems. And what I realized was no, getting divorced from you was going to fix the fundamental problem of being married to the wrong person. But until I fixed that problem, I couldn't work on any of the rest of my problems. And I think that's the essence of it. Like if you're married to the wrong person, you can't even get a start on any of the other stuff that's happening. But once I was myself again and only myself again, then I could start just picking off these other issues I had.
Doug: Well, that was also the start of feeling safe without the need of feeling safe in someone else's presence. That was the start of your decision or your ability to feel safe on your own. And that's, you talk about a fundamental shift in how you see the world. That's the recipe for growth, knowing that you could survive that.
Magda: I realized that I wasn't fundamentally a fuckup. And part of that was like I had failed big in this area that a lot of people are still terrified of failure in. And hey, if I was going to fail in one thing, suddenly I was allowed to fail in everything else. It was like that concept, you know, the concept of being ruined? And those people who like regency romances and stuff like that, it was like, you know, whatever, Edwardian, Victorian England. And if you were in the upper classes, if a man and woman who weren't related to each other were in the same room with each other, her reputation would be ruined and she wouldn't be eligible for the marriage market. And once you were ruined, like you were ruined forever, but before you were ruined you had to act properly in every situation that existed. Like divorcing you basically ruined me and so then I could do whatever I wanted to do. Boy, the year that we were separated, I bought like 12 pairs of four-inch stilettos and just ran around New York City in those stupid shoes, probably could have broken my ankle 45 times, but I wanted to do that and I had never been allowed to do anything like that before. I did burlesque. I had never thought that I would be allowed to do burlesque, right? You know, like all kinds of stuff that I never thought I was allowed to do or to want, suddenly I could. And that was magical. More so than having kids, you know?
Doug: I think what relates to that is the fear of failure, but more importantly, the forgiveness for failure. I was never, I never felt as though I could forgive myself for failing anything, much less a big decision like this. And so if, when you talk about feeling broken, feeling ruined, the big fulcrum for me was the forgiveness aspect of it and just feeling human now, not feeling beholden to expectations that I could finally recognize that I'm not meant to fulfill these expectations. I'm just me, human being, I'm going to fuck up and sometimes I'm going to fuck up terribly. And that was the liberation for me. And I used to look at tragedies and be like, “why did that happen? That didn't have to happen. If only they'd done this instead.” And all I was sitting there is trying to fix it the whole time. Which as you know, it was kind of like always been my kneejerk thing to, and just to fix problems and not acknowledge that they happen and live in them.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: For that reason alone, I think I feel so much healthier as far as just, you know, understanding the world as it is and recognizing it's not mine to fix, including our shitty marriage.
And there's the book title, “Our Shitty Marriage.” Ha ha ha!
Magda: Right. Our shitty marriage!
Doug: Hey, before we go, I also want to do a quick shout out to Jill Smokler. I, if you haven't heard, you know, periodically we share alum news, and out of nowhere I was scrolling Instagram and I see Jill Smokler with this seam of a scar stitched through the top of her head because she just had a brain tumor removed. Which she did not see it coming when she was talking with us. She said she started having seizures and then went to a doctor and said, yeah, we're gonna get you on a slab right away. And not the kind that goes behind a drawer.
Magda: Yikes.
Doug: So life turns on a dime, find the magic, and we're thinking of you, Jill. I'm glad you're in good hands and resting, and they found this when they did. And we'll be back with a guest next week. And I'm almost certain that being on our show will not give that person a brain tumor.
Magda: Oh, God.
Doug: I'm going to try and debunk any causality. But anyway, thank you very much everybody for listening to us gaze at our own belly buttons in episode 43 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been a quarter century of an adventure that's kind of come to a close. I got to say, this is a nice closure moment, speaking of closure moments, or a series of them. It's one thing to talk them out with each other and another thing to air them in this way. And if anybody out there relates to even one tenth of what we've talked about, I hope it was helpful. When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles, LLC, and is available on all the usual platforms and at whentheflamesgoup.substack.com. Please subscribe to our weekly episode every Wednesday and for our Friday newsletter, Friday Flames, every Friday. I just said Friday three times in one sentence. Apple podcasts, if you do listen to us on Apple podcasts, please give us a review. So we'll see you next week for episode 44, again, with a guest, we promise. Have a great week, we'll see you next week, bye-bye.