Ending Your Relationship

Divorce is the death of your relationship. As a result, you will go through the same stages of grief that a person goes through who lost someone to death, so you don’t want any additional drama or conflict. It is important to understand these imprecise stages so you can make sense of your feelings which are perfectly normal. This will help you to feel better.

Realizing that your marriage is over removes the major anchor of love and security in your life. As a result, your usual ways of coping aren’t likely to work, because you will be on emotional overload. For many, the divorce process opens the flood gates to all the pent-up emotions they have been storing up for years. This creates a lot of ambivalence. Often, people are shocked and overwhelmed at just how angry and hurt they really are. The rage you will feel is primal and is deeply rooted in the past. It is important to release all those bottled-up emotions so you can channel them in a constructive way.

 It is not uncommon to feel that you have been abandoned which can put you into the fight, flight, or paralysis response. It is normal to feel you have lost your footing and that you are falling apart. When you are feeling this overwhelmed, you will act in ways that may surprise you. Your behavior won’t make sense to you or anyone else. However, you are not having a break down. You are having a break through to what is truly real and true in your life. As a result, you will need to develop new coping strategies and tools to help you adapt and realign to your changing situation.

Why Divorces Go Bad

Unfortunately, most divorcing couples are hard pressed to make life-altering decisions at a time when they are least prepared to do so. This places them at a huge disadvantage. The emotional divorce is the driver and foundation from which all your decisions will be made. How you handle the emotional divorce will directly affect the results you will get in the financial and legal divorce especially in negotiating your agreement.

Needless to say, it is crucial to get your emotions under control before you move forward. Decisions made from guilt, sadness, anger or fear do not usually turn out well. Therefore, you need to do some deep soul searching and get very clear on what you want and how you are going to get it. Getting intentional and less volatile or reactive will help you control your emotions so they don’t control you.  

Making Choices – Adversarial or Amicable

You will have important choices to make concerning the manner and process in which you will divorce. Will it be angry, bitter and adversarial or civilized, cooperative, and even amicable?  Many people will argue that they do not possess such choices. But, they do. There are no small choices. They all have consequences and build on one another creating a cumulative effect. Continue to ask yourself if each choice you are about to make will help you or hurt you? That is a good indicator if you are on the right path. Your divorce does not have to be a disaster. It requires planning and forethought. Preparation is the first step required in creating a successful outcome. It is not wise to tell your partner that you want a divorce until all your ducks are in a row.

Remember, until you are successfully divorced, you are still a couple and are making these decisions as a couple. You are about to embark on the final requisite task of your marriage: negotiating a decent and conclusive ending of your relationship as husband and wife. How well you perform this task will determine how the divorce turns out. If one spouse wages war, it is difficult for the other not to retaliate. In divorce, few partners turn the other cheek. You are definitely capable of confined cooperation.

Even if your spouse is acting out in a really bad way, you have the choice of taking the high road or the low road. The only way through blame is empathy. We offer a Sample Goodbye Letter (*) template that many of our clients have used successfully. It is designed to help couples say what they needed to say to one another. The best time to say those things are in the beginning. It sets the tone for your divorce. It can be used as a goodbye letter or as a way to present your proposal. It helps to soften your partner’s heart, so he or she will be more amenable in negotiating with you.  It also helps you to get things off your chest and to feel more grounded and confident in asking for what you deserve. When you make each choice your best choice based on wisdom and thought, you have more of a chance of getting the results that you want.

Your Future is Up to You

Difficult as it is, a successful divorce can help the both of you to begin new lives that offer another chance at future successful relationships. You are the architect of your happiness. Will you enhance those possibilities or will you destroy them? You can use your economic and emotional resources for the benefit of yourselves and your children or you can squander them in battles in which you will both ultimately lose. You can help your children come out of this difficult period with two whole and effective parents or you can come out of it shattered with impaired functioning. If you can find the lessons, opportunities, and gifts in your divorce experience, you can use them as a catalyst to create the life you really want.