Marriage Is a Credit Card

by | Dec 21, 2015 | Money

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Marriage Is a Credit Card

I’ve been getting some strong reminders lately about the importance of planning. Very strong.

The core lesson keeps repeating itself: skip the upfront planning on something important, and things can go badly wrong. Do a little work ahead of time instead, and life tends to go a lot more smoothly.

One place I don’t think enough planning happens is marriage. Plenty of wedding planning, sure, but not nearly enough marriage planning.

Here’s my evidence: ask anyone who’s been through a divorce, and they’ll likely agree that getting married is a walk in the park compared to getting divorced. Divorce is hard enough that some people just stay in unhappy marriages rather than face it. No escape plan, so they simply don’t leave.

A good comparison is credit cards and credit card debt.

Credit cards are easy to get, and a lot of fun if you haven’t thought much about what happens once the statement shows up. You get the card, you go shopping, and the first couple of months feel great. Then reality lands: wait, I have to pay this back? Plus interest? And if I don’t, I’ll be paying it off for decades?

At that point, getting out of the hole takes real, sustained effort. Getting into it was effortless.

Marriage works the same way. It was easy to get married when I was practicing, roughly a hundred dollars for the license, a few hundred more for someone to say the actual words that make it official. And then you’re married.

I hope you did some planning together about what the marriage would actually look like, and even more planning around what happens if it goes wrong. Because getting out is nowhere near as simple as getting in. You can’t just tear up the license.

You need a separation agreement, and those are hard to get precisely when you need them most. Once you and your spouse have reached the point of divorcing, you’re usually not getting along especially well, which makes agreeing on anything harder. So you hire help: a lawyer, a mediator, a counsellor, a financial planner, an accountant. Those professionals charge considerably more than the marriage commissioner did- several hundred dollars an hour, in my experience- and reaching an agreement could take a long time.

Or you skip all that and let the courts decide, representing yourself and leaving your future in the hands of a judge who’s never met you. Most people don’t take that gamble and hire a lawyer instead. A court divorce generally costs thousands more than a mediated or collaborative one.

The way around all of it is planning. Build a marriage agreement with a qualified professional before the wedding, not after things fall apart.

Yes, it costs money, and no, planning for a hypothetical future divorce isn’t remotely romantic.

But look at it this way: reaching a marriage agreement takes far fewer billable hours, because at that point you and your soon-to-be spouse are still on the same page. You’re about to get married, after all.

Not on the same page? Struggling to reach that agreement?

Then I have to ask: why are you getting married?

Step 9

by | Oct 10, 2015 | Divorce and Separation

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Step 9

Divorce is usually the end result of a fairly typical progression:

  1. You get married.
  2. You begin navigating married life together.
  3. You and your partner start facing real challenges.
  4. You realize you approach those challenges differently.
  5. You try to negotiate a way through it together.
  6. That negotiation fails, sometimes slowly, over a long stretch of time.
  7. One or both of you decide the marriage is over. By now you’re both emotionally exhausted.

Then comes the hard part. People often get stuck right at step 7. They know the marriage is done but have no idea what to actually do next. It can feel so daunting that some people just stay married anyway. Others hand it entirely to lawyers. Some try mediation or the Collaborative Approach. Others simply live apart while staying legally married.

At step 7, my ex and I tried a bit of everything. Lawyers, mediators, and eventually we landed on the Collaborative Approach, because we figured the obvious next step, step 8, had to be getting a separation agreement. You need one to get divorced, after all. We wanted to stay out of court, and Collaborative seemed like the best route there.

By this point in the process, both partners are usually running on empty, and neither one particularly wants to sit down and hash things out with the person they can barely stand at that moment. It’s a fair bet that if you’ve reached this stage, you dislike your spouse enough that working with them on anything feels unbearable. You couldn’t agree inside the marriage. Why would drafting its ending go any better?

Still, the separation agreement had lodged itself in both our heads as the obvious next milestone. We worked hard at it, nine months with our Collaborative team. I wanted that agreement at almost any cost, because once I knew we were done, I needed the whole thing sewn up and settled. My ex wanted the same. We both wanted a rulebook that would define how our new lives would work.

We got our agreement. Done, right?

Not even close. We had a document, but two very different understandings of what it actually said. We spent another three months arguing over its meaning and made almost no progress actually implementing any of it.

Every time we tried to work through a section, I’d get angry, and I know he did too. We kept hitting deadlock, and the conflict never really eased. Eventually we ended up in court over a single disputed section. We were supposed to be finished. Instead, here we were.

Turns out having the agreement didn’t mean we were done. We were far from done with each other.

I wasn’t done with my own anger, and I still couldn’t have a level conversation with him. Judging by his emails, he wasn’t done with his either.

Which brought me to a step nobody had listed: step 9, heal and let go.

That step took a long time, and it had plenty of sub-steps of its own. But now that I’m actually through it, our divorce finally feels done. Truly done.

Plenty of people had told me to do step 9 first, and at the time, I simply wasn’t able to. Looking back, I wonder if that order would have served us better. If we’d both been in a steadier emotional place, we might have actually heard each other, and the agreement we built together might have reflected something we both genuinely understood the same way.

I’m not sure it’s realistic for most people to fully heal before starting the separation agreement process. With hindsight, I’d probably choose a different order if I could do it again. But at the time, I wanted that agreement, whatever it cost me.

Where are you in the process? And what steps are you choosing to take next?

Know Yourself First

by | Sep 30, 2015 | Divorce and Separation

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Know Yourself First

When I realized my marriage was over, one of the first things I started thinking about was how much harder my life was about to get. Everything was going to be harder. I was becoming a single parent for half my waking hours, starting that new chapter with drastically reduced finances. Those thoughts were part of why I’d tried to hold the marriage together for as long as I did; it genuinely seemed easier than starting over with a whole new set of harder circumstances.

I went into my divorce carrying a huge amount of fear and uncertainty. I also felt like everyone else- my ex, my lawyer, the broader machinery of how divorce is “supposed” to happen- was the one actually controlling my life. I didn’t feel like I had any say in what came next.

So I switched to autopilot and tried to get through the entire process as fast as possible.

I drove myself through the divorce without ever pausing to actually figure out what I wanted. We used the Collaborative Approach, and after five months of meetings, we had a draft agreement and were essentially done. It took five months mostly because we could only manage one four-way legal meeting per month; coordinating three- to four-hour sessions across four busy schedules wasn’t fast. Our lawyers kept trying to get us talking about what actually mattered to each of us. Mostly I just thought, can we skip the needs and values part and get on with it?

Then I went through a six-week back-to-work program for women. The same thing happened during the early self-analysis portion: can we get on with it? I need to write my resume.

Eventually I was done. Divorce finalized, resume in hand.

But I was no closer to actually knowing what I wanted. Still running on fear. Still convinced the best part of my life was already behind me.

And nothing was working. No job offers. Resumes disappearing into total silence. I was stuck, scared, and unhappy.

Things only started moving once I actually took the time to figure out what mattered to me. Yes, I went on the full mid-life soul-searching bender, because I finally hit the point where fear stopped pushing me forward and started freezing me in place entirely.

Figuring out what actually drives you is an ongoing thing; it never really stops, but about six months into that search, I had a list of my seven core values, because I’m a type-A accountant and I like my lists, and I put it up on my wall.

That list turned out to be genuinely useful for decision-making, especially around money. It helped me figure out both how I wanted to earn it and how I wanted to spend it.

If you’re finding money decisions hard, the way through is some good old-fashioned self-reflection. Once you actually know yourself, it stops being hard to tell when a spending choice is wrong for you, and it becomes obvious when one is right.

Working from home with kids

by | Sep 10, 2015 | Parenting & Co-Parenting

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Working From Home With Kids

I keep a file of half-started blog posts, and today, searching for something to finish, I opened one called “Working From Home With Kids.” Surprise, surprise: it was blank.

That probably says everything already.

It’s hard to work from home when your kids are also home. I keep expecting to be more productive these days, since they mostly do their own thing now and don’t need me for much. So why don’t I have long, productive stretches of work to show for it?

Turns out I’m on constant low-level alert whenever I’m the only one home with them. Something about becoming a mother flipped a switch, and danger started feeling like it was everywhere. As my kids have gotten older, some of those dangers have faded, and new ones have taken their place. These days it’s mostly the fear that they’ll actually kill each other mid-argument. Logically, I know that’s not going to happen. My mom-brain doesn’t seem to care what logic says.

So even with them upstairs in their room, my attention splits in half, part on whatever I’m doing, part permanently on guard. Eyes in the back of my head, switched on. There’s a low hum of anxiety sitting in my stomach that makes me even less productive than I’d otherwise be.

What I’ve noticed is that I can still manage low-acuity work in that state. Bookkeeping, reconciliations, data entry, things I’ve done so many times I could do them half-asleep. Fine.

Talking to a new client about what they need? I tried. It felt like texting while driving.

Writing a new blog post from scratch? Apparently my brain needs actual space for that.

Except, wait. I just did it.

Where are the kids? It’s suspiciously quiet in here.

Better go check.

—

They were fine. I’m finally finishing this post two weeks later, with the kids back in school and some real uninterrupted time in front of me. Turns out I really do need that kind of stretch to do anything new or genuinely challenging, which became obvious the hard way over the past few weeks of summer break.

So how do I actually get that uninterrupted time? I could park them in front of a screen, or send them off to their rooms, but neither solution felt great, and both seemed to feed that same anxious feeling rather than solve it. They ended up getting plenty of screen time anyway, and I still only managed the low-level stuff.

What I actually need is better planning and more realistic expectations. Going into summer, I was anxious about only having half the summer with them, since the other half was with their dad, and I thought I’d have all this time to catch up without them around. So I hoarded the time I did have, avoided signing them up for day camps that would’ve taken them away from me even more. What I need to actually accept is that I can’t do real, effective work while they’re home with me, and trying anyway just generates anxiety for all of us.

The unexpected upside of finally understanding this: it’s going to be a lot easier now to feel genuinely grateful for the time they’re with their dad. I never thought I’d get there; I assumed I’d just be sad about it indefinitely, but I’m slowly adjusting to sharing half their lives instead of resenting it.

The Rules We Make up and then live by

by | Jul 31, 2015 | Divorce and Separation

The Rules We Make Up and Then Live By

I think about a certain kind of conversation I’ve had more than once over the years, always some version of the same shape. Someone in the middle of a hard divorce, scared of what a judge might decide, has quietly built a set of rules for herself that make her fear feel like fact rather than fear.

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The shape usually goes something like this. She’s the higher earner in the marriage. Her ex works in a less lucrative field, sometimes by circumstance, sometimes by choice. Everyone else assumes she loves her work: successful, outgoing, good at it. Then it comes out that she doesn’t, not really. She stayed because someone had to earn enough to support the family, and she’s quietly dreamed for years of doing something else entirely. But she believes she can’t act on that now, because a court might read a career change as a deliberate attempt to dodge support obligations.

Then the resentment starts flowing toward the ex: if he’d just go back to a higher-paying job he’s clearly capable of, this whole calculation would look different. Why should she be the one stuck carrying an obligation that traces back to a choice he made.

The underlying belief, stated plainly, usually sounds something like: everyone has to work; that’s just how it is. Which really means: everyone has to take the highest-paying job available, whether they’re happy in it or not, and choosing otherwise is either selfish or naive.

I’ve pushed back on this kind of thinking before, and it tends to get a little heated, because underneath it are a few unspoken rules that feel like settled fact to the person holding them. Something like: you have to take the best-paying job you’re capable of if you have kids and responsibilities; otherwise, you’re flaky. Work generally sucks, and if you actually like what you do, it doesn’t really count as work. And life is inherently unfair, so whatever position you happened to hold at the moment of separation, you’re now locked into for good.

What strikes me every time is how quickly these get treated as facts about the world rather than one person’s fear-based read on their own situation. They’re not the only possible outcome. They’re just the outcome that becomes far more likely once someone decides the rule is true and stops looking for any other path.

That’s the real trap. Not the divorce, not the finances, but the rules someone builds for themselves along the way and then quietly agrees to be governed by, permanently.

If I could say one thing to anyone caught in that pattern, it would be this: hold your own rules up to the light before you decide to live inside them forever. Ask what you actually want, separate from the fear driving the rule. There’s usually more room to move than the rule wants you to believe.