Getting Through the Acute Stage of Divorce

Divorce is horrible. That’s an understatement. I had no real idea how horrible until I went through it myself.

Okay, maybe not for everyone. Some couples mutually agree it’s for the best and manage to work out the details amicably. Wouldn’t it be great if divorce were reliably that simple, if life coaches spent more time helping people build their dreams than helping them survive another conversation with an ex? Based on what I’ve actually seen, though, most people don’t get the amicable version.

This post is for those who don’t have the amicable version. For people who suddenly find themselves in the middle of a divorce and aren’t entirely sure how they got there.

This is meant to get you through the acute stage specifically, roughly the year or two surrounding your separation date. It’s for people too emotionally overwhelmed to sit down with a three-hundred-page book on how to divorce well, and who can’t stack a coach or psychologist’s fees on top of everything else they’re already paying for.

First thing to understand: divorce is conflict-based by definition. Two people trying to go their separate ways, each with a different idea of how to actually do it. If you agreed on the how, you’d be in the amicable category, and you wouldn’t need this post.

Second thing to understand: it’s not the divorce itself that makes things unbearable. It’s mishandling the conflict, avoiding it, caving to it, or getting some perverse charge out of it that does the real damage, especially to any kids watching. That’s not an oversimplification.

So what does handling conflict properly actually look like? Plenty of professionals have built careers researching exactly that. Here’s what I’ve found actually works:

Agree not to settle things in court. Court is built to escalate conflict, not resolve it. While you’re in it, you’re gathering ammunition against your ex instead of figuring out what you both actually need to move forward. Mediation and the Collaborative Legal approach exist as real alternatives.

Build a communication plan together, in advance, and hold yourself to it. Some basics that work:

  • Only contact your ex by email, text, or phone between 9 am and 5 pm, unless it’s a genuine emergency. Define what counts as an emergency together ahead of time, ideally with help if you can’t agree on it alone.
  • Keep every email short. Five sentences, maximum. Something like: “I bought the kids’ shoes. Would you cover half?”
  • When a reply comes back in a way you don’t like, don’t respond for at least a day, maybe two. This is genuinely hard to do. Eventually you’ll start recognizing the pattern of what happens when you engage in an email war, and that recognition alone becomes enough to stop you from starting the next one.
  • Acknowledge you received the email and let them know when you’ll respond.
  • Don’t defend yourself or argue your case in an email, or even in person, without a neutral third party present. It’s almost impossible to make your case without your ex reading it as an attack, which just gives them the opening and motivation to attack back. Defending yourself tends to read as an invitation for someone to go find the holes in it.
  • Decide what actually matters enough to you that you can’t let it go. Set up a meeting specifically to discuss that one thing. If it starts going sideways, stop talking. Adjourn, take at least a day, and reassess how important the issue really is. If it still matters, meet again, this time with a neutral third party present, ideally a mediator or lawyer.
  • Don’t discuss the details of your communication with your ex with other people.
  • Don’t try to work through serious issues in public unless you’ve both agreed to do that beforehand.
  • Don’t criticize, gossip about, or badmouth your ex. I know this is hard. I still slip. But complaining about my ex to other people keeps me stuck in a negative headspace, and I don’t want the main memories of this stretch of my life to be built entirely out of resentment. I want room left over for joy too.
  • Forgive yourself when conflict pulls you back in anyway. It takes real time and real practice to get better at this.
Renée

Renée

My days these days are mostly advocacy, with my kids always first, and hiking, biking, and cold plunging worked in whenever I can. Winter cold plunges aren’t for everyone, but there’s a strange kind of beauty and calm in it that I’ve come to need.

Separation was a journey. It took time, and it taught me most of what I know now.

I write about what I learned along the way, and about the family justice system I ended up spending years inside of.