Mortgages, marriage, and making time

By Matt Elerding
The Portland Upside
April 2010

Photo by Briena Sash, sashphotography.com

“Hello Matt, it’s Jack.”

“Jack! Good to hear your voice. How are you?”

“Um, not so good. Diane and I are getting a divorce. I need to do a refinance in order to buy-out her half of the equity.”

“Oh man, I am so sorry to hear that, Jack. What happened?”

“You know, Matt. I’m not entirely sure…”

And so it begins. A failed marriage results in a new mortgage loan.

I write about fifty of these ‘divorce loans’ a year, about one per week on average. It is a sad and humbling process fraught with emotion, anger and fear. I have handled countless numbers of these loans and I suspect I will handle countless more.

But no matter how many times my phone rings or my email chimes as the result of a divorce, it is a part of my job that saddens me to the bone. It is something I will never get used to.

So I started asking why. I really wanted to know. Why does this happen on such a consistent basis? I would ask this question of the poor soul on the other end of the phone line. I would ask them what went wrong.

It’s not my business, of course. It’s certainly not part of the loan process, but if I felt I had enough of a connection and rapport with the client, I would begin to peel back the layers of onion, tears and all, to find out just what, exactly, went wrong.

Surprisingly, it’s not the biggies we have come to expect. People Magazine and Inside Edition would have us believe that “irreconcilable differences” involve infidelity, drug and alcohol addiction, verbal and physical abuse, or the intoxicating allure of too many trips to the blackjack tables. But after 12 years of writing these painful loans I have found the real culprit, the surreptitious killer of marital bliss, is the lack of communication.

While this seemingly simple explanation may elicit a “Well, duh!” from the peanut gallery, I have found that it is the most common reason I receive when I ask the question. More often than not it is the growing apart of two people that eventually has them calling a cavalcade of characters to help them divvy up the fine china and the Visa card balance—the lawyer to file the divorce, the realtor to sell the family home, and the loan officer to write the mortgage.

It seems comically ironic that at a time when communication whistles around the globe in a nanosecond and we are all armed with Batman utility belts dangling BlackBerrys and iPhones, Facebook and Twitter, half of all marriages fizzle due to a lack of communication.

It is only now that I have file cabinets filled with the loans of irreconcilable differences, that I have begun to appreciate the depth of what it means to communicate with one’s spouse.

About six years ago own marriage began to veer off the smooth ride of the paved interstate and on to a bumpy and unfamiliar road of frustration and sadness. I was working too much, grumpy all the time, and before long I came home to a wife who was fed up with the path we were on.

Desperate to find a solution to the unraveling of my own home-life, I hired a personal coach. I dove headlong into a series of conference calls, challenging assignments, and browbeating accountability. I was absolutely determined to get my life, and my wife, back.

One of my assignments was to schedule Date Night into my calendar. I was given explicit directions that I was NOT to simply ‘try and schedule a date night every now and then’ but rather, I was to schedule this into my life as a non-negotiable activity. I was to treat this calendared event like a meeting with the ever-important client. I was NOT to miss or reschedule it.

Everything changed.

Marriage is an extraordinarily difficult dance, a do-se-do of patience, humility and forgiveness. Ah, but when we learn the moves and manage to boogie our way into a groove of understanding, selflessness and, above all, communication, we discover the critical secret of marriages that last a lifetime. I don’t care if it sounds corny, but Date Night is one of the best things I have done for my marriage in a very, very long time.

Now do me just one favor. Reach down and unclip that cell phone from your Batman utility belt and call the one you love. With all the hopeless romanticism my aching heart can muster, I promise you that good things will happen.

_____

Matt Elerding grew up in Sitka, Alaska, and attended the University of Portland and Notre Dame. He lives in Battle Ground, Washington, with his wife, Heather and his two children, Gage and Abi. He can be reached at Info@ElerdingTeam.com