My friend Felicity's marriage was on the rocks. Over the years she and her husband had been to three separate marriage counselors, but their problems were only getting worse. Still, she wasn't sure if divorce was the answer for her.
"If I get a divorce, will I still be able to afford to buy organic produce for my kids?" she asked me one day when we were sitting on my front porch after a run.
"Probably," I answered. "But if you're worried about that, you're not ready to get a divorce," I added. "When you're to the point where you feel like it would be healthier to take a job at 7-11, live under a bridge and feed your kids a steady diet of Slim Jims and Mountain Dew rather th
an stay another day, that's when you know you're ready."
Because of my line of work - I am a behavior coach for people going through divorce - I get that question a lot. Well, not the question about organic produce exactly, but the bigger question behind that one: "Should I get a divorce?"
The short answer is this: If you have to ask someone else, you are not to the point where you are ready.
That's not to say that there are not marriages that are so unhealthy and dysfunctional that they are objectively unsalvageable. (And yes, Felicity, I'm looking really hard in your direction.) But divorce is not for the faint of heart. It is a grueling experience that takes guts, strength, patience, endurance and tenacity. To be able to weather the ordeal, you have to be one hundred percent sure that it's the right choice. And even then you'll still have days when you'll wrestle with doubts. That's why you can't take someone else's word for it.
Sometimes it's hard to assess a situation when you're smack dab in the middle of it.
We've all heard about the phenomenon with frogs: A frog that jumps into a pot of boiling water knows to jump back out; but a frog in a pot of water that heats up gradually doesn't have the good sense to jump out when the temperature reaches a life-threatening level. And that unlucky frog ends up on a plate for dinner.
Because divorce is a major life decision with a huge ripple effect, it's critical to determine whether your marriage is temporarily in hot water or if you and your kids are really at risk of getting served up for supper at a hillbilly hoe down.
There are two questions that go a long way to helping you figure out this answer. Both are equally important; but one of them is obvious, and the other is less so. Many people base their decision on the answer to the first question only and never get to the second question at all. A decision based on an incomplete analysis has a good chance of either being wrong or at least leaving you with a lifetime of lingering doubts. And patching things up once you've started the divorce process is easier said than done. After all, whatever bad feelings existed before you filed for divorce, you are guaranteed to have more after you've filed. So working through the entire analysis is essential.
The first question to ask yourself is why you want a divorce. The second question to answer - the one that often gets skipped - is how being divorced will remedy that problem. The reason the second question is important is that once the process of getting divorced is over, you graduate to the state of being divorced. And unless you're Frank and Jamie McCourt or Elizabeth Taylor, the time you spend being divorced will last a lot longer than the time it takes you to get a divorce. So it makes sense to think about what will happen to your problems in this second and longer phase.
The reasons why marriages fail are as numerous as they are personal. But for the sake of illustrating how this analysis works, below is a work-up of some garden-variety problems that lead people to get divorced. Read the rest of her article by clicking the link below.
I want a divorce because...
 |
| Visit Christina's Website |
his separate property is what remains. She doesn't even have enough money to hire a decent attorney. What if a Husband finds out that the Wife has been daytrading with his 401(k) and now Husband owes money on margin loans? What about the Husband who has borrowed money against the Wife's separate property home? How about finding out that Wife hasn't filed a tax return in years, and even the withholding that should have covered the tax liability is no longer available due to tax rules. Or being liable for a tax return filed on either's behalf with e-filing, that the other spouse has never seen? 
