Divorced And Separated
Getting yourself back on track after the failure of your marriage or other long term partnership can be difficult if you follow conventional thinking.
Your family and friends will feel sorry for you, you will feel sorry for yourself and you will suffering from a lack of self-esteem and overwhelm, everyone will be sympathetic but not one of these emotions will move you toward working solution.
Of course, the feeling of overwhelm is to be expected or at least acknowledged as a potential issue, but you will need to avoid getting sucked into the massively negative opinions that will be propagated by everyone you meet. Your parents, friends and family members, neighbours and the ‘fat bloke’ down the pub will be on hand to provide you with advice and guidance, giving you their experiences about the matter.
They will all tell you that if you are not careful you will end up with nothing and outline all of the negative things that happened to them, what an outrage the legal bill was (usually true), how their ex completely ‘shafted them’. On and on the story will go, not one of them will provide you with a positive story. Which is a shame, some of them would have gone on to build new relationships with new partners and they will be blissfully happy, the sad and miserable times will be long forgotten.
Your ego will want your ex partner beaten and thrown in ditch forever which of course may be the best thing to happen, however that does not move you any closer to a resolution for the Civil War that is going on inside your head.
The first thing you need to do is to consider the truths about your marriage, except that it’s over and that you need to move forward. Think carefully about why it ended and what you think the causes were. Often there are several reasons try and work out what these reasons are and then note them down. Soon you are going to be able to analyse them and check if these are are really true.
Now you have the reasons for the breakdown (from your own perspective) you should check to see if these are really true, are these the real reasons for the breakdown, is there anything you could have done to make it different.
You may have to go back several years in order to find out these nuggets, but think of them you must, what are the reasons. The truth.
Write them down in full if you want (use the notepad).
Review these to see if you have really caused the problem, review them to determine that your actions really did cause the issues to arise and if you can work out why.
One of the reasons I recommend you use an A4 pad to create notes on, is this forms a permanent record of your thoughts at any given time. Often you will find that your mind plays tricks on you and will limit your memory in some way, this can have a profound effect on the decision making. Which is going to be more important as you move through this process, examples of this will appear if you don’t make proper notes or keep some form of journal.
As this is an emotional experience often you will find thoughts appearing that should be noted and other aha moments which will add some value to you at some future stage but if you haven’t got a permanent record of them then they will be lost.
Be careful who you take advice from at all stages is often you will find much of the advice you get will be extremely negative and biased in one way or another, importantly much of this advice will be flawed in some way purely because the third-party provider here will not be aware of all the facts and is likely to be emotionally involved albeit with your best interests at heart.
Taking advice “the fat bloke down the pub” is never likely to be of much value to you, free advice never is. Find yourself great counsel and only ever take advice from them, of course, listen to friends and family, making a note but never acting on it.
There is no compensation for the end of a marriage and any settlement would need to be fair and equitable in the eyes of the law, this does not mean you get it all and your partner gets nothing, it means the settlement will be fair. If anyone tells you any different this will prove that they have little or no understanding of divorce and the financial implications.
I’m sure if you ended up here you could do with some help. Get in touch you’ll be pleased you did – use this page. In confidence – your personal information is never shared. Divorce Help