What I Learned After My Second Divorce

“Do you think you’d still be married if all the bad stuff hadn’t happened?” a friend asked me recently.

“Uh, I don’t know,” I answered after a few minutes.

It’s true, I don’t really know. I’d like to believe that in what would be 24 years into our marriage, we still would be. I certainly thought we’d be married forever when we wed (even if I didn’t say “till death do us part” but then again I didn’t say I’d obey, either).

Nine-plus years into my second divorce, I have been thinking about marriage — a lot. I wish I had thought about it this much before I got married, clarifying just why I wanted to get married, but it’s best not to live in regrets. If nothing else, all this focus on marriage lately — from Kim Kardashian’s 72-day marriage to all the articles predicting the death of the institution of marriage and the political emphasis on “traditional marriage” — might make more people really, really think about why they want to get married. That’s exactly what Susan Pease Gadoua and I hope to do with our book, The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Cynics, Commitaphobes and Connubial DIYers.

Although I didn’t expect to be divorced, a lot of really good things have happened because of it; I learned a lot. Please don’t take that to mean that I am cheering couples on into divorcing; I’m not. No one should rush into divorce — except those whose lives are at risk — especially if you have kids. Couples should try to salvage their marriage — in healthy ways — if they can.

But divorce isn’t all gloom and doom, as many want to portray it. Nor is it a “failed marriage” — the 14 years my former husband and I were together had many happy moments and created two amazing sons, now young men, whom we were able to co-parent well because we were kind to and respectful of each other (well, most of the time).

So, what did I learn after my divorce?

Divorce doesn’t necessarily make you smarter about relationships: I got married way too early the first time — a few months shy of my 21st birthday — for all the wrong reasons, or actually just one not-good-enough reason: I loved him and he loved me. So when I met the man who was to be my second husband, I thought I “got” what marriage was about. I’d been there and done that, and since he had been married before, too, and we both experienced infidelity, he felt the same way. Well, wrong. Divorce doesn’t automatically make you wiser about relationships and marriage. Unless you delve deep into the behaviors and patterns you learned from your family of origin so you can understand the bad stuff you brought into your first marriage, you’ll just bring it into the next one. Sure, your new spouse may react differently to it, but you still need to own it. Thankfully, I did a lot of intensive work to understand what I did to contribute to the demise of my second marriage, and I learned how to act differently although it’s a work in progress. I don’t know if I would have done that if I’d stayed married; I think I just might have had to hit bottom first.

There may not be someone “better out there” for you: When it was finally clear that I was going to be divorced, I’m embarrassed to admit that among the many complicated thoughts going through my head was an incredibly silly one, What a cliche to be a 40-something divorcee! Why couldn’t this have happened earlier, when I was younger and maybe somewhat cuter and possibly more desirable? I was perimenopausal with wrinkles and sags, a few gray hairs, reliant on glasses so I could read and drive — for a lot of men I was past my “prime,” although in many ways I felt as if I’d just entered it; I was so much more comfortable in my own skin, no matter how less firm. But it isn’t always any easier for 20- and 30-something divorcees. There really isn’t a good or bad age to be divorced, but it doesn’t matter — you divorce because the marriage you’re in doesn’t work any more and you can’t make it work, not because you believe there’s someone “better out there for you.” Divorce means you have to accept that you may be alone — and you’ll be OK with that.

Relationships don’t have to look a certain way, Part I: I grew up buying into a familiar relationship scenario — you meet someone special, date, fall in love, marry, and then one day have a few kids, a mortgage, a dog and a minivan. And, of course, you live happily-ever-after. But when I found myself divorced at midlife with two kids — and wanting to have love in my life at some point — I began to wonder why I’d want to hold on to that same trajectory. It worked fine when I was in my 20s; was it going to work at midlife? I certainly wasn’t going to have any more kids, I owned my own house, I had my own career and dog and car (I ditched the minivan) — I didn’t “need” to be in a relationship in the same way as I believed I needed to be when I wanted to have a family with a partner. Now I had other questions to ask myself, and so for the first time in my life I started thinking intensely about what I wanted, not what I thought was expected of me (and wondered why I didn’t do that before). Did I want to marry again? Why? Why not? What would I do different and what would be the same?

Relationships don’t have to look a certain way, Part II: My extended circle of divorced friends are all over the map when it comes to romance — most have found love again but only a handful have gotten married and a teeny-tiny percentage are living together. A few are in committed relationships and want to marry at some point, a few aren’t sure. I am among the latter; well, actually I know I don’t want to marry again. What I don’t know is if I want to live with someone again although, yes, sometimes I miss having someone around; between my two marriages, I spent about 20 years living with a husband. My partner of almost eight years and I are as committed to each other as any couple I know, but he has his place and I have mine. We don’t have any plans to change that. Both of us appreciate having space in the relationship, and time to ourselves or to be with friends — something I didn’t give myself when I was married. And our time together feels much more special; it’s harder to take each other for granted. I know this arrangement won’t work for everyone, but it’s working for us.

Divorce offers us many chances to do something different, hopefully better. We still have to make the conscious decision to act on them.

What have you learned post-divorce?

This article is by Vicki Larson on OMG Chronicles and can be seen here:-

http://omgchronicles.vickilarson.com/2012/10/23/what-i-learned-after-my-second-divorce/

The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels

YOU CAN’T ERASE AN EX FROM YOUR MIND

YOU CAN’T ERASE AN EX FROM YOUR MIND…BUT YOU CAN REDUCE THEIR POWER AND KEEP PUSHING FORWARD

Recently I was talking with someone who was like a broken woman consumed with thoughts of her ex morning, noon, and night. “How am I supposed to stay NC if I can’t stop thinking about him all the time? I’m never going to be able to move on!” That’s when I thought “Woah! Hold up a second here – who said anything about NC being about forcing yourself to never have a thought about the person ever again?”

No Contact is initially about not making or accepting contact, but it also provides the space to not only grieve the loss of the relationship, but to focus your energy elsewhere and begin rebuilding your life. What it isn’t, is cutting contact and then sitting around trying to not have anymore thoughts about them.

Experience has taught me that the more you try not to think about something, is the more likely you are to, and then you’ll stress yourself further about the fact that you are in fact thinking about it and what you think thinking about it means, and then often react off the back of it. Exhausting!

Back in October 2010, when I was told to cut out wheat in an effort to reduce tinnitus and vertigo, after initially thinking it was going to be fine and then discovering that wheat is in many things, I went on a serious moan-a-thon. In an effort to remain focused on what I thought was the task at hand – not eating wheat – I attempted to put wheat out of my mind, only for it to turn up in my dreams dressed as the likes of eclairs, hot buttery toast, and my puff pastry covered beef pies. I seemed consumed by thoughts of wheat and what I was feeling were the inconveniences.

After a while, mostly because I was wearing down my own last nerve and probably those of the boyf, I began putting effort into finding alternatives, discovering places to eat with varied menus, and making myself food that I enjoy. As I’d felt the health benefits after a week (seriously), tempting as it was to, for example, snaffle down a mince pie, I accepted that uncomfortable as it had been, overall I felt happier and better.

I’ve seen this replicated in so many aspects of life – change doesn’t come without change which means discomfort, but the change feels positive when you don’t just sit around complaining about the inconveniences of the change or trying to force yourself never to think about whatever it is that you’re changing from and/or having to leave behind or put on hold.

If you’ve had hopes, dreams, aspirations, and experiences good and bad with someone, it’s a bit tricky just to cut them out of your thoughts. It’s also part of the grieving and healing process to feel your feelings and process your thoughts so that you can draw conclusions, accept and move on.

Yes I had to avoid wheat, but I was making my life about avoiding wheat instead of focusing on improving my health. Equally, I found that I made great strides in being happy when I stopped making my life about maintaining NC and instead made it about having a better life…while keeping my ex at bay.

To go to the trouble of devoting your energies and attention to not thinking about someone and then obsessing about the fact that you’re thinking about them, is actually just another convoluted way of giving them more attention and remaining invested.

If you think about not thinking about them, you’ll think about them and if you persist at it, you’ll eventually ‘break’ and make contact. Same goes for anything else – you’ll either slow your progress by being resistant to it, or you’ll backtrack/fall off the wagon.

This doesn’t mean you should go “OK I’ll think about them all the time” but it is about helping yourself by doing 3 things that will make your life a hell of a lot easier and over time reduce the amount of time spent thinking about them (or something) and eventually replace these thoughts:

1) Accept that you will think about them but don’t make a mountain out of molehill. For many people, thinking about someone equals ‘I love them’; ‘We should get back together’;’It was a bad decision’. Initially, you’re bound to think about them a lot – it’s like ripping off a plaster (Band Aid) – but it’s important to remember that you’re processing a situation. There are many things that you think about – you don’t attach a call to action on all of them. As time passes, the thoughts will pop in but it doesn’t even have to mean that you’re not over them – they’re just thoughts and just memories and as your life builds up and moves away from them, these thoughts shrink and don’t carry the same weight.

2) But do have some self-control. If a thought pops into your head, for all you know, it’s just your unconscious processing away and throwing something out. What it doesn’t mean is that you should ‘make that call’ or ‘send that text’ or load another gazillion thoughts on top. If you spend hours or all day thinking about someone, that’s not one thought – it’s a sequence of thoughts. Unless you’re living in on another planet, even after a few minutes, you should become aware of the passage of time. Whether you recognise that you’re going off on a thinking track after one or twenty thoughts, pull yourself back to reality instead of saying “Ah shag it! I’ve had a thought or few about them – let me just write off today!”

Refocus your thoughts in reality – What can you do? Who can you talk to? What positives can you say to yourself to affirm the decisions and actions you’re undertaking? Isn’t there some work you should be doing? Things to be enjoying? I know quite a few readers who set a time limit when the thought pops in and then it’s ‘ding ding ding’, back to life. Initially you’ll use up all the time – 10 minutes is good – but the habit will actually have you reluctant to be a slave to your thoughts. It’s about being conscious.

3) If you have thoughts but you’re still active in the conscious, life will happen to gradually replace them.The more you ‘occupy’ your own life, as in living it, the more things that your mind has to spread itself across.

If you have a suddenly flurry of thoughts after feeling that you’re doing better, don’t panic – on a subconscious level, you’re actually moving towards acceptance. Maybe you’re enjoying yourself or have realised that a week or so has gone by without really thinking of them – it’s panic about rolling with it and letting go, so as if to make up for it, you go on thinking overload. It would be better to focus on returning to what you were being and doing before the panic arrived.

You don’t have to erase your ex from your mind but you also don’t have to give those thoughts so much power or airtime. You can think about them, you just don’t need to spend all day, all week, or all month on it – break things up a little…or a lot. These thoughts don’t own you – you own you – and you will find when you put plenty of positive action into your life, that the thoughts begin to follow that path instead.

Your thoughts? (hehe)

Image source SXC

This article is by Natalie Lue and can be read here:- 

http://www.baggagereclaim.co.uk/you-cant-erase-an-ex-from-your-mind-but-you-can-reduce-their-power-and-keep-pushing-forward/

Check out Natalie's book Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl on amazon.

Mr. Unavailable and the Fallback Girl: The Definitive Guide to Understanding Emotionally Unavailable Men and the Women that Love Them

The Walk-away Wife Syndrome

Did you know that of the over one million marriages that will end in divorce this year, two thirds to three quarters of those divorces will be filed for by women? What is this so-called, "Walk-away Wife" syndrome all about?

In the early years of marriage, women are the relationship caretakers. They carefully monitor their relationships to make sure there is enough closeness and connection. If not, women will do what they can to try to fix things. If their husbands aren't responsive, women become extremely unhappy and start complaining about everything under the sun... things that need to get done around the house, responsibilities pertaining to the children, how free time is spent and so on. Unfortunately, when women complain, men generally retreat and the marriage deteriorates even more.

After years of trying unsuccessfully to improve things, a woman eventually surrenders and convinces herself that change isn't possible. She ends up believing there's absolutely nothing she can do because everything she's tried hasn't worked. That's when she begins to carefully map out the logistics of what she considers to be the inevitable, getting a divorce.

While she's planning her escape, she no longer tries to improve her relationship or modify her partner's behavior in any way. She resigns herself to living in silent desperation until "D Day." Unfortunately, her husband views his wife's silence as an indication that "everything is fine." After all, the "nagging" has ceased. That's why, when she finally breaks the news of the impending divorce, her shell-shocked partner replies, "I had no idea you were unhappy."

Then, even when her husband undergoes real and lasting changes, it's often too late. The same impenetrable wall that for years shielded her from pain, now prevents her from truly recognizing his genuine willingness to change. The relationship is in the danger zone.

If you are a woman who fits this description, please don't give up. I have seen so many men make amazing changes once they truly understand how unhappy their wives have been. Sometimes men are slow to catch on, but when they do, their determination to turn things around can be astounding. I have seen many couples strengthen their marriages successfully even though it seemed an impossible feat. Give your husband another chance. Let him prove to you that things can be different. Keep your family together. Divorce is not a simple answer. It causes unimaginable pain and suffering. It takes an enormous amount of energy to face each day. Why not take this energy and learn some new skills and make your marriage what you've wanted it to be for so long?

If you're a man reading this and your wife has been complaining or nagging, thank her. It means she still cares about you and your marriage. She's working hard to make your love stronger. Spend time with her. Talk to her. Compliment her. Pay attention. Take her seriously. Show her that she's the most important thing in the world to you.

Perhaps your wife is no longer open to your advances because she's a soon-to-be walkaway wife. If so, read the posts on the divorcebusting.com messageboard. Don't crowd her. Don't push. Be patient. If you demonstrate you can change and she still has eyes... and a heart, you might just convince her to give your marriage another try.

This article is by Michele Weiner-Davis and you can read it here:-

http://www.divorcebusting.com/a_walkaway_wife.htm

Her book, The Divorce Remedy is available here:-

The Divorce Remedy: The Proven 7-Step Program for Saving Your Marriage

Divorce and Separation

This is on the Wikivorce site.  I had never heard of it but it has so much useful information and so many tools for you to use.  What jumped out at me is how much it can cost and how long it can take where the two parties don't come to a financial agreement.  It can take years and can cost thousands.  Don't go there!

Divorce

 and Separation - Free support, information and advice

Wikivorce is a fast growing and active web community, dedicated to delivering FREE access to the 
information, support and advice people need following the breakdown of a serious relationship. 

We provide, in once place, all the resources you need to get through divorce or separation.

DIY Divorce Guide		Buyer's Guide		Free advice		Free Resources
Find your way with our free DIY divorce guide		Read our Divorce Buyer's Guide for recommendations		For free divorce advice visit our busy Q&A forum		A huge collection of free resources in the wikivorce library

Calculator		Find a solicitor		Free Forms		Live Chat
Calculate your asset split and maintenance		Find a local family lawyer or divorce solictor		The new 2011 versiondivorce court forms		Get instant support when you need it most in live chat

Do I need a solicitor or can I use a cheap online divorce service?

Online services, such as our own fixed price divorce service, are a cost effective option so long as you and your spouse have both decided to end the marriage. You also need to be able to agree on what'grounds for divorce' (reasons) to state in the divorce petition.

The most costly aspect of divorce are disputes over money and, less commonly, disagreements overchild contact and residency. A fully contested battle over the financial settlement (known as Ancillary Relief) can take several years and incur legal costs of tens of thousands of pounds. Typically each side retains the services of a solicitor (or family lawyer) and in addition they may hire a barrister to represent them at the family court hearings.

If at all possible you and your spouse should put aside your differences and try to agree a negotiated settlement, sometimes a mediation service can help. If you are able to agree on the finances, then it is possible to get this drafted into a legally binding document called a Consent Order.

How do I find a good divorce solicitor?

The most reliable way to find an effective and efficient solicitor is through personal recommendation.

You can find local family lawyers using our services directory. You can set the search criteria to find:
- family law solicitors who accept legal aid clients, which is a lower cost option for those on low incomes. 
- collaborative lawyers who aim to negotiate a settlement without going to court.
- those solicitors who offer a free 30 minute first appontment.
The directory also lists Mediation services and Independent Financial Advisors.

What is the process for getting a divorce?

The complete process consists of three main elements:

1) Dissolving the Marriage - the formal legal process by which the marriage is ended.

This is the part of the process that is covered by most low cost online divorce packages. They usually include the completion and filing of the necessary divorce court forms, including the Form A - Divorce Petition.

2) Financial Arrangements - the process of dividing up the marital assets and agreeing on maintenance/child support. 

The main assets to be divided typically include the house (former matrimonial home), savings andpensions. Periodical payments from one spouse to the other are a common feature and include child support payments and spousal maintenance. The size of the 'marital pot' to be divided is known once each party has provided full financial disclosure on a key court document known as Form E.

3) Childcare Arrangements - the process of deciding who the children of the marriage will live with (residency) and how much contact the non-resident parent will have.

Further detail on the whole process is available in our Divorce Guide.