by Renee leNobel | May 20, 2015 | Divorce
When my ex and I first separated, I spent a long time trying to craft my emails to my ex so that there was nothing offensive in them. I did not want him to attack back as reading those attacks was pretty painful. How could this person that I had been a partner to for 20 years, whom I’d had children with, whom I’d put first in life, write these things about me?
So I spent hours crafting my emails to try to be clear and concise, without blame and without judgement.
I would still get attack emails back. There was always something that got misinterpreted by him.
I would try to defend myself and would again, take the time to carefully write my email and I would still get upsetting emails back.
This was brutal. He found ways to tear down all my defenses and invade my boundaries.
One day, something happened that put me over the edge. I was exhausted by this back and forth conflict. I needed to move on with my life and get out of this viscous cycle.
I started following the rules I created for myself:
- Keep emails short – five sentences maximum
- Wait a day or two after getting an icky reply before replying back.
- Do not defend myself, especially if he asks me to. I’m just giving him more opportunities to attack my values and beliefs
- Do not discuss my email communication between myself and my ex with others
These rules are very hard to stick to but I’m getting lots of practice and if you are recently separated, I bet you are too.
by Renee leNobel | May 19, 2015 | Divorce
Divorce is horrible. That is an understatement. I had no idea how horrible until I went through the divorce process myself.
Ok, it may not be horrible for everyone, like those couples that have mutually agreed that it is for the best if they go their separate ways and can amicably agree on how that should be done. Wouldn’t it would be great if divorce truly was an amicable process and both parties thought it was for the best? Life coaches could be doing more work helping people live their dreams as opposed to helping people simply get through another meeting or conversation with their ex. Based on my observations of the world though, most people don’t divorce amicably.
This post is for those non-amicable couples. It is for people who suddenly find themselves in the middle of a divorce and aren’t quite sure how they got there.
This post is also designed to get you through the acute stage of divorce (the one to two years surrounding your separation date). It is for those people who are so emotional that they cannot read one of the 200 – 400 page books on how to divorce and who do not have the money to pay for a life coach or psychologist on top of the legal fees.
The first thing to understand is that divorce is conflict based. It involves two people who want to go their separate ways and each of them has a different idea of how to do that. If they were in agreement on how to separate, they’d belong in the amicable divorcing couple category and would not need to read this post.
The second thing to understand is that improperly dealing with conflict (either by avoiding it, succumbing to it, or by getting off on it) is what makes divorce horrible and it hurts your kids if they are watching. This is not an oversimplification.
So how does one properly deal with conflict? That is what a considerable number of professionals spend a good chunk of time researching and figuring out. I have honed it down to what works for me:
- You agree to not go to court to settle your differences. Court is designed to increase conflict. While you are in the court process you are gathering evidence to use against your ex instead of figuring out what it is you both need to move on. There are other ways to get a divorce including mediation and the Collaborative Legal approach.
- You pro-actively agree on a communication plan and you stick to the rules of that plan. Here are some basics:
- Only contact your ex (email, texting and phone) between the hours of 9:00 am and 5:00 pm unless it is an emergency (and it would be a good idea to outline what constitutes an emergency and you may need someone to help you with this if you disagree, see below).
- Keep all emails brief. I recommend no more than five (5) sentences. For example: “I bought shoes for the children, would you please consider paying for half?”
- When your ex replies to your initial email in a way you do not like, do not respond for a least a day. Maybe two. THIS IS VERY HARD TO DO. Eventually you will start to see a pattern of what happens when you get in an email war with your ex and that will be enough to stop you from doing it in the future (again, spoken from experience).
- Let your ex know you received the email and you will be responding in a day (or two if that is what you decided).
- Do not argue your case or defend yourself in an email or even in person without a neutral third party present. Why? It is very hard to make an argument without your ex perceiving it as an attack. This gives your ex the go ahead and motivation to attack back. When you defend yourself, it it like an invitation to your ex to find holes in your defense.
- Decide what is important to you that you cannot let go of. Arrange a meeting with your ex to discuss this important issue. If the meeting starts to go south, simply stop talking. Adjourn the meeting and take some time (at least a day) to think about it and reassess how important your issue is to you. If it is still important, arrange to meet with your ex again with a neutral (preferably professional mediator or lawyer) present.
- Don’t discuss the communication between you and your ex with anyone else.
- Do not communicate with your ex about serious issues in a public place unless you both have agreed to do so beforehand.
- Do not criticize, gossip or talk about your ex. I know this hard not to do and I still do it, but complaining about my ex to others keeps me in a negative frame of mind. I do not want my main memories of my life to be riddled with all the bad thoughts I was having about my ex. I want room for joy in my life.
- Forgive yourself when you succumb to the lure of conflict. It takes time and practice.
by Renee leNobel | Apr 23, 2015 | Divorce
“they say that time heals all things,
they say you can always forget;
but the smiles and the tears across the years
they twist my heart strings yet!”
– George Orwell
I’ve been getting a lot of lessons lately about how time heals all wounds. People tell me it takes time, things will get better in time and I will look back on this and laugh in the future.
That said, according to other people (and the quote above), the hurt never really goes away.
I know my hurt and pain from my divorce has not gone away yet but I do feel back to normal on most days. But that is not what I wanted to write about.
I want to write about short term time because I’ve come to realize that even just ten minutes can be enough to make me feel better and it is knowing that fact that gets me through some fairly emotionally painful situations.
The first person to introduce this concept to me was my divorce coach. I had just found out that my soon-to-be ex husband had filed for divorce without telling me and then he refused to find somewhere else to stay. I’m not saying I didn’t play a part in this but at that time I was in shock. Almost anything could trigger me and put me into a state of anxiety or depression in those early days of divorce. Every other day, I was packing an overnight bag so I could go and stay with a friend so I didn’t have to be in the same space as my soon-to-be ex. As I walked away from my life and my kids (whom I’d never been away from before), I would get very emotional and I basically stayed in that state full time with reoccurring spikes on an hourly basis.
Anytime I started to explain my situation to anyone, like my divorce coach, I would relive the pain and start crying so my coach taught me a trick so I could calm myself in order to function. This trick was called tapping or EFT and there is a lot of theory behind it and how it works, but all I know is that it stopped me from thinking the thought that was making me cry and injected five to ten minutes of time into my life. After tapping for as little as five minutes I was always more calm. In a lot of situations I was laughing at myself as people wondered what the heck I was doing.
As time went along, I started learning new techniques and strategies, such as meditation (which I still struggle with), stopping what I’m doing and starting something else, writing and just being in the moment and letting the emotion flow through me. All four of these techniques involve time and I’ve noticed over the past two years that I always feel better after having taken some form of time.
What I’ve also noticed is that it is this recognition of how time saves me that makes my days easier to get through. This has been a hard lesson for me to learn as I’m a type A personality and I’ve always tried to use my time efficiently and in the past, sitting on the coach and staring at the wall was not what I considered efficient.
Now, instead of getting bogged down in emotional pain and fighting my way through it so I can be efficient, I let time do the work. If I’m having a bad moment, I use one of my strategies to inject time.
If I’m in conflict with someone, such as sitting through a mediation session with my ex-husband, and we are stuck, I will get up and take a five to ten minute break.
If I’m in conflict with someone and it is turning into a back and forth argument over email. I stop myself from replying for a day.
If I’m just generally sad, I will cry for twenty minutes or for however long it takes until I feel like doing something else. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly actually), after twenty minutes of crying, I always feel like doing something else.
If I’m angry, I sit down and write an email to the person I’m angry with, and then I send it to MYSELF.
I tell myself what I now know to be true. I may be sad, angry and feeling like things are hopeless, but I know in two days and maybe even just one, I will not even be able to remember that emotion because I will be feeling good again.
by Renee leNobel | Apr 15, 2015 | Divorce
In the years leading up to my divorce I used to get together with my friends and we would (ahem – occasionally) sit around and discuss how irritating our partners were being at the moment.
As things got more dire between myself and my ex-husband this became the only thing I ever really talked about. I kept a mental list of how I had been wronged by my ex and I would go around and get everyone’s opinion on whether I was being reasonable or not. I got very good at explaining everything that had happened to lead up to the latest incident and I prided myself on how I was interpreting the situation in a fair and objective manner. When I got the support I was looking for, I felt even more justified in feeling (just a tad) sorry for myself.
I used to think this strategy of talking out my grievances was an effective self-care strategy until I realized one day that while my friends and family love me and support me, they could do nothing to stop my ex from doing the things that upset me. In fact, no one could. One day a huge wave of hopelessness overtook me as I realized that I would have to deal with this unreasonable person for a very long time (my children are young). I like to think of this list of grievances as complaints I had taken to the court of my brain. They had been filed with the court, argued and decided with the help of a jury of my friends and family. I was waiting for my ex-spouse to be sentenced.
On this day when the wave of hopelessness overtook me, I had projected this catalogued list of grievances into my future. I would have to deal with this unreasonable person who would continue to do things that upset me for the rest of my life and I realized he would never be sentenced for his wrongs in a way that would satisfy me.
That day I knew I couldn’t continue as I had been.
I started to keep track of what made me feel the worst.
I noticed that when I immediately surrounded myself by people after an upsetting incident and ranted and complained it took a lot longer for me to get over the incident. In fact, people would ask me how I was doing a few days later and that would trigger me to relive the incident and I would get upset at the injustice of it again.
I also noticed that when I ranted and raved about the incident in an email that I sent to myself, it slightly helped take away my urge to rant to others.
I noticed that if I tried to pick out positive results of this latest incident, I also got over it faster. For example, I really have to thank my ex-spouse for helping me learn how to deal with difficult people. This may sound cheeky and like I’m being factitious, but no one can get along with everyone and prior to my divorce I would either get along with everyone or avoid them. I cannot avoid my ex-spouse and so I am learning how to deal with him so I don’t feel upset. This skill has changed my life.
I noticed that if I spent my time gathering evidence for the court of opinion, I had no time to focus on my personal growth and happiness and entire days of my life would be lost to feelings of anger.
And I noticed that when I stopped talking to my friends about incidents they went away from my brain.
So the next time you find yourself gossiping or complaining about someone, ask yourself, who are you serving?
by Renee leNobel | Apr 14, 2015 | Divorce
Last night I went to a workshop on personal boundaries: identifying them, maintaining them, and communicating them to others. I went out of interest’s sake as I’ve always thought I had fairly good personal boundaries and I see myself as a strong independent confident type of person. Plus the workshop was free and the accountant in me loves getting free training and ideas (more on that below).
I got a bit of a twinge when the facilitator read off some of the signs of unhealthy personal boundaries such as:
- going against personal values in order to please others
- giving as much as you can for the sake of giving
- taking as much as you can for the sake of taking (um… see above)
- feeling bad or guilty when you say no,
as I had just spent the day having a back and forth email “conversation” with my Co-parent (I will call him that as opposed to my Ex to maintain positive thoughts when I think of him). My Co-parent and I were in disagreement over something he thought I should do and which I thought I shouldn’t.
My Co-parent sent the first request at 8:30 am and proceeded to send four follow up emails throughout the day to try to convince me do something he clearly thought was my duty to do.
Oh – I should mention that another sign of unhealthy personal boundaries is:
- expecting others to fill your needs automatically
Now that I’m writing this I can see that both my Ex and I have some work to do on our personal boundaries. I actually started my work about a year ago and my Ex (oh wait, I mean Co-parent, I’m getting a little caught up as I write this) has been helping to train me ever since.
The main principal behind the personal training I started a year ago is…………..DO NOT DEFEND MYSELF!
This is hard hard work for a self-proclaimed people pleaser who wants everyone to just get along and be happy.
Every email my Co-parent sent yesterday was like a little prod for me to send off a defensive and justifying response. I literally had to get up and remove myself from my work-space so I didn’t accidentally send an email back.
I also got my friend to remind me not to send a response.
I also knew that I had to send a response so I sent it to myself (this surprisingly helps). Just the action of writing all my anger out in a blaming, attacking, defending email and then actually sending it to someone, even it is just my dummy email account, makes me feel better. Tip – make sure you remove the email address on the email that you are replying to before you start replying or you might be tempted to “accidentally” hit send when you read your well justified and incredibly well written response).
Why don’t I defend myself when I know I’m right and I also know I’m being reasonable?
Because I’m being reasonable based on my own personal boundaries and they are clearly different from my Co-parent’s.
I have learned that my Co-parent and actually any person with personal boundaries that are unique from mine, can pick holes in my defense. You put a wall up and someone who is motivated to do so will find ways in.
Then what happens is you spend time plugging the holes with more defensive material and the next thing you know you just lost a day where you could have spent doing something you wanted to do as opposed to manning the battlements.
I still have work to do on this, as in a way this blog post is a defense of my strategy. Time is helping, but I will leave the topic of time for another day.
