There are a lot of sports I cannot wrap my head around, like – golf and bowling.  What are they really?  Sport?  Game?  Depends on who you ask.  For the most part, people who love a sport – whether spectator or participant – are passionate about the activity and take it very seriously.  I’m okay with that.  The increased respirations and heart rate that comes from their enthusiasm could almost count as a sport, in and of itself.  So, I can be friends with them.  Even if I don’t understand them.  Or their sport.

In fact, I don’t even mind being a cheerleader for the sports I don’t understand (and the people who love them). But there is one athletic endeavor I cannot support: Ex-Bashing.  Over the years, I have been an innocent bystander and watched many wives and husbands tee up the heads of their exes, just so they could swing away wildly at their reputation, character, intelligence and sometimes (swinging at the very low fruit) even hygiene.  What I find hardest to watch is when they do so in the company of their shared offspring.

Professional athletes often do a lot of stupid things off the field, but so do private parties who think bashing their ex is a perfectly acceptable public pursuit.

Pardon my downward glance and public “tsk-tsking” but I’ve had just about enough of it.

Human beings are very complicated little pink planets with difficult inner-workings that are alien to outsiders (and face it, we’re all outsiders to one another).  You can study and contemplate all you want from the cheap seats, but you cannot truly comprehend what is happening within.  It is almost silly for you to even try without a formal education or extensive study.  It is even more ridiculous to take a whack at what you don’t fully understand or cannot bring yourself to forgive.

Please understand, that I know from first-hand experience what it is to be hurt and angry at someone who disappointed, angered or even betrayed you.  But, it is a whole other hideous ballgame to be the person who takes up an emotional bat and makes it a lifetime hobby to decimate a one time team member.  And, if you both took the time to raise and nurture another player (or a whole squad), how do you then decide to train them to enlist and attack, too?

Not long ago, I sat in my own living room and listened as an invited guest turned the evening into a public fencing match against her ex-husband – who was approximately 50 miles away and incapable of dodging her every lunge and parry as she moved throughout the house.  To say it was distasteful, is putting it mildly.  It crossed over into repugnant territory when the daughter echoed the sharp, wounding words of her mother.

It is said that there comes a time “when we should cast aside all childish games that fetter and exhaust body, speech and mind.”  There comes a time, too when mature individuals should stop playing games, chuck the Ex-Bashing jersey and move on.

Recently, there was a very public event in my town for an upcoming election and one of the candidates (a very lucky man) had his ex in the audience supporting his campaign.  I know this man and he is a strong, intelligent man with a decent heart.  Unfortunately, there were chinks in his armor that weakened a very small part of his character that ultimately affected his personal relationship.  That past weakness doesn’t affect this man’s ability to be an effective leader in his community and it comes as no surprise that his ex is someone who knows that.  I admire her.  She is a woman of character and made of much stronger stuff than many might realize.  In fact, I consider her to be the epitome of an MPV of extraordinary value and I’m proud to call her my friend.

The one proudly wearing the Ex-Bashing jersey?  Without a change in game plan, not so much.

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“When our hatred is too bitter it places us below those whom we hate.” – Francois de la Rochefoucauld

“You must make a decision that you are going to move on.  It’s won’t happen automatically.  You will have to rise up and say, ‘I don’t care how hard this is, I don’t care how disappointed I am, I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m moving on with my life.” – Joel Osteen

“Yes, honey…just squeeze your rage up into a bitter little ball and release it at an appropriate time, like that day I hit the referee with the whiskey bottle.” – Homer Simpson

“The trust is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything,” – Anatole France