Married To A Criminal Defense Lawyer

Marriage is hard. It takes work and dedication. And sometimes, it fails no matter how hard you try or how much you’re willing to tolerate to make it work. And then there’s being married to a criminal defense lawyer, which adds an extra layer of difficulty given that the beast is likely to have an inherent conflict; the responsibility to clients isn’t something that takes time off when it’s inconvenient, whether because someone has to cook dinner or clean the bathroom.

So when the criminal defense lawyer isn’t the husband, but the wife, is it even doable anymore? Lara Bazelon found out the hard way.

There was no emotional or physical abuse in our home. There was no absence of love. I was in love with my husband when we got divorced. Part of me is in love with him still. I suspect that will always be the case. Even now, after everything, when he walks into the room my stomach drops the same way it does before the roller coaster comes down. I divorced my husband not because I didn’t love him. I divorced him because I loved myself more.

Much of the time, divorce is surrounded by anger, even hatred, whether because of abuse or neglect. But sometimes, it turns out that things just don’t mesh well enough to make it work.

There are many reasons we did not make it. But the main one is that we had incompatible visions of our roles as partners and parents. Having children did not transform me. In fact, it didn’t change me much at all. I love our children beyond reason. I know I am lucky to have them.

But after I became a mother, I was still the same striving, work-obsessed, domestically challenged person I had always been. I made choice after choice to prioritize my career because I believed fervently in the importance of the work I was doing, providing legal representation to wrongfully convicted men and women. It gave me an identity, a purpose and the comfort of knowing I could support myself.

Buried in there is a detail that might well be missed. Lara wasn’t obsessed with her personal success by breaking some glass ceiling or earning big money. She wasn’t seeking validation or self-actualization. She found herself serving two masters, one her husband and family and the other her clients. Sure, it also provided the security of knowing she didn’t need a man to support her, and yes, there was a piece of self-actualization in there which peeks its head out when someone asks, “what do you do?” and you don’t reply by saying “I’m a mother and wife,” but “I’m a criminal defense lawyer.” But when you’re a criminal defense lawyer, it’s different than when you do real estate closings.

My ex-husband was not unreasonable in wanting me to change — not to give up working, but to stop chasing after bigger, harder projects. He works hard but not when he is at home. He rarely travels and actively engages with nearly every aspect of our children’s lives no matter how mundane. I fell short of his standards. “You are not present” was a phrase I heard a lot. Sometimes it was literal: For years, I traveled frequently for work. Sometimes it was metaphorical: My mind consumed by a case or a piece of writing, I would retreat to an inner world that made it hard to focus on the people right in front of me.

A criminal defense lawyer goes where the case is. A criminal defense lawyer wakes up in the middle of the night when trying to figure out some way to beat a case. A criminal defense lawyer ponders the plight of the client, who won’t be having sex with his spouse that night because he’s sitting in jail while your spouse is making goo-goo eyes at you.

Where the tipping point is can’t be pinpointed. When does a criminal defense lawyer take off her hat and become a wife and mother like a normal person, And when I use the feminine words, it’s not because it’s any different for a man, but that the norms of marriage dynamics where the burdens of a home, family and kids are still “women’s work” can’t be ignored no matter how hard you try to be a good guy and do the wash and show up for little league.

Years ago, the fantasy was having it all, that there was no reason why a woman couldn’t be CEO and mom of the year. Except the laws of physics wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard you wished they would. And if that wasn’t hard enough, add to it a person who understands that the duty of a criminal defense lawyer doesn’t go away when your spouse wants you to, you know, and you realize that it takes a very understanding spouse, enormous tolerance and the realization that it’s not something that goes away at 5 pm.

This isn’t to say that other occupations or professions don’t carry similar burdens, or that others don’t feel a comparable duty to their clients that makes it hard, if not impossible, to forget that you hold other people’s lives in your hands when you are washing the dishes. But because I’m a criminal defense lawyer, I understand the internal conflict that made Lara’s marriage to a man she loved hard.

Lara chose what she calls “radical self-love.” Whether that’s what it is, or that’s just what it is for her, isn’t clear to me. Some of us just weren’t built to sublimate our sense of responsibility to make shirts whiter. We do what we can to arrange our world to accommodate those we love, but there’s no guarantee that the phone won’t ring and someone having far worse problems than we do needs a champion. So we kiss the kids and jump on a plane because that’s what we do.

The idea of saying we would like to help, but there are floors that need mopping, kids with noses running, a hungry man at the table, isn’t who we are. It’s hard to be married to a criminal defense lawyer, not because our spouses aren’t wonderful, but we’re just not always there. Lara warned you. Me too.