The Cost of Divorce

I was talking to a Family Lawyer earlier today and she told me that when it comes to finances, the most stupid thing a person can do is get divorced.

This is pretty obvious when you look at the enormous divorce settlements of celebrities like Tiger Woods, Greg Norman and Mel Gibson. However, although the rest of us don't have those $figures to contend with, divorce is still a very expensive and painful process to go through.

This lawyer told me that even the so-called winners end up financially struggling for at least a few years after and that selling the family home to pay for the divorce, with nothing left over at the end, is very common.

Of course there is a much better option to divorce; one that leaves the family's wealth intact. The problem is that this gets lost in the emotion of divorce and when people finally do see it, it is too late.

I always used to think that relationships were a bit of a mystery.  Not any more though.  Relationships don't make sense all the time because they are emotional experiences, and when the pressure is on, people make emotional decisions.

Don't know if you've noticed but, if your like the rest of us, when you're at your most emotional, the decisions you make tend to be pretty crappy.  They are not logical and too often, downright destructive.  If you want to be in a relationship that really works, one that makes your life better, then be emotional by all means ... but don't make decisions until your intelligence is in control

Get your emotional act together.  Emotions have their place that's for sure, but they do make lousy decision makers so you have to keep them in check.

Being in the Right

On the weekend I was talking to a friend and his wife who left me with a number of real-life realizations.  Sure they both told me the same story with the same facts but their stories were still totally different.

This is a couple who are heading towards divorce, even though neither of them wants to be divorced. They're both excellent parents and underneath they really do love each other. They just can't see this because they have become obsessively negative.

If they don't change their ways then divorce is a certainty. They have become so negative to each other that everything said was construed as an attack by the other persons.

The offending issue was extremely trivial, as these things normally are. In this particular case the husband needed new batteries for his torch, and the wife purchased new batteries but they were the wrong size. That seemingly innocent little mistake became a catalyst that turned into a major confrontation. The husband accused the wife of deliberately purchasing the wrong size batteries just to cause an upset, while the wife accused the husband of once again not appreciating her efforts to please him.

The realization is that past a certain point, divorce becomes like a runaway train; almost impossible to stop until it crashes and destroys something valuable. My friend of his wife are locked into a position whereby each is totally committed to finding faults in the other, and to protecting themselves from being found out by the other person. The result was a totally toxic confrontation, with no possibility of a positive outcome, and another certain step along the road to total marriage breakdown.

It really was a living example of that proverbial question, "Do you want to be right OR Do you want to be happy?"

Relationship Challenges, they can all be fixed!

If you are in a relationship that has no problems then you are either in total denial of how things really are, or your relationship is so poor that it’s not worth working on.  Problems, difficulties and challenges are in every relationship, the good, the bad and the ugly.  That’s the deal and it goes like this.

Have you noticed that both your best and worst behaviours are saved up for the ‘love of your life’, and that you will do things and say things to your life partner that you would never say to anyone else. Have you also noticed that you are willing to accept more toxic behaviours and more toxic communications from your intimate partner than from anyone else. 

You probably answered yes to both of those questions, especially if you are in a high functioning relationship.

You see, great relationships are about personal growth and development and this means dealing with your most personal issues.  The more intimate you and your partner become the more you each become the trigger for the other that brings up the secrets, the denials, the irrational behaviours and in fact both the best and the worst you’ve both got to offer.  This is both awful and wonderful. 

It’s awful because who wants to feel that way.  Let’s face it, most of us spend a lifetime trying to avoid having to deal with these issues.  It’s wonderful because once you know the issues that you’ve been carrying around, you can get rid of them, once and for all. 

Invariably the issues date back to your childhood, so they’ve been there for a long time.  There’s nothing like an intimate loving relationship to stir them all up and of course the experience can become very emotional.  But once you deal with these things, they are gone forever.  And that’s not only a huge relief but it leaves you with so much more energy.  You may even start to clearly see how, without realising it, you’ve been putting lots of your precious energy into keeping these things hidden for years.  When they are no longer there, all that energy becomes available for you to do other things.

So the next time you are thinking that perhaps this life-partner is not the right person and that maybe you’d better bail out before it get too much, just keep in mind that getting rid of the one person in your life that triggers your issues is most likely to land you right back to square one; sacrificing all of your energy and success potential to spend your life pretending that everything’s just all OK.  Once you really know how, you’ll find that you can live much better than that.