DLE

DLE stands for Divorce Level Event.

A Divorce Level Event is something a spouse does that defies a rational explanation and makes you want to call it quits. I don't mean cheating or things in that category, that's the kind of nonsense that is a deal breaker for me. I had a friend years ago who's wife was discovered to have been a heroin addict. This was something that, at the risk of sounding elitist, was a complete surprise to everyone given that there was nothing in her background or behavior that would lead you to believe she was prone to or involved in such family-destroying and self-destructive behavior. That was something that was happening on an entirely different level all together than a DLE.

What I mean about what constitutes a DLE are the things that seemingly inconsequential or not add up over time and make you crazy. This could be something as small in the scheme of things as a spouse constantly not putting their toothbrush back where it belongs after using it or for instance, when driving home seeing a television in a pawn shop window and thinking to yourself "that television is the same model as mine" and discovering that it indeed used to be your property until that very afternoon when your spouse' mother decided you should upgrade your entertainment center that day and sold it off for you.

How many marriages foundered because a man never picked up their socks or because women chewed noisily with their mouths open at the dinner table at home but never, never, never in a public forum? Not that big a deal over all but the point is that DLE's add up over time and are the foundation that later DLE's are built upon.

DLE's are unique in that they are also retroactive by their very nature. Some would posit that this is inherently unfair but I would put forth that it is not. What constitutes a DLE past and present is fluid because like exposure to deadly radiation, their effect is accumulative. When you wake up during the night because your spouse is relieving a foot itch by rubbing her foot against your ankle, and scratching you raw and bloody with her toenail in the process you start remembering that the sudden inexplicable onset of raucous snoring that sounds like a dull industrial band saw tearing through sheet metal in a cat-torturing factory a few months back is now a DLE and retroactively has always qualified as being one.

Some people are more prone to creating DLE's than others. Thoughtlessness is a major factor in creating the situation and it can often be found with finances being the origin. DLE's are not relegated more to one class of society than the other. The person who buys fancy tire rims for his Chevy while he feeds his family rice and ketchup for dinner is just as guilty of a DLE as the person who buys a Rolex and a Lambhorguini in the same week that their assets has been seized by the Government under the RICO Act.

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