Divorce, nobody wants to think it could happen to them. Then again if you do have to go through a divorce you hope that both parties will act like grown-ups and that this sad part of marriage will be over quickly. Yet as you can see from your own experiences that rarely happens. You might just be starting the divorce process. Then again you may have just finished with your divorce and your ex-wife left you thinking that you will never trust another woman ever again.
Women are now starting 70% of all divorces. the reason why can vary, and many are close to the truth but tinged with a victim mindset. However, too many ignore that they are facing the same struggles that men struggled with when they were in corporate.
There are simple divorces yet those are so rare that they are almost a fluke. Many couples sadly break down into primal beings. They are fighting over every little scrap and bit. Even if they claim they don’t like something it suddenly becomes a point of contention.
When the dust settles down the only people who come out of a divorce better are the lawyers. The kids are emotionally damaged from the emotional manipulations one or both sides are doing.
Are the problems with the divorce system? Yeah but I am not here to talk about that. Because you see you can only control certain things in your circumstance. So can you have a good divorce? Well yeah, that depends on what you believe is a good divorce.
If you have a good definition, you can have a good and easy divorce. Yet many people look at divorce as war and they treat it as such. So by the end of the scorched earth campaign, nobody is better off.
So why can’t divorces be easy? Why can’t we just agree to go our separate ways? What is actually the root of a difficult divorce? Two words, Your Thoughts.
Emotions kinda cause divorce
You see your thoughts about what is happening is the root of all the problems. They are the reason that divorce is happening in the first place. They may not be your thoughts per se but thoughts are the root of divorcing people’s problems and the root of easy divorce.
This is because your thoughts create your emotions. Those emotions create the actions the divorcing person does. So with those actions, you get a result of what you want or don’t want.
The thoughts you have will lead you to your results. If you want to be able to walk away from a marriage and still be friends, you have to have the thoughts that support that. The problem is that many people won’t have those thoughts. They will fall into a particular set of mindsets and act upon the fears they have.
You see many people believe that the opposite of love is hate, and that’s not correct. The True opposite of love is actually Fear. You won’t hate a person unless you fear them. If you acted out of love for your wife would you hold back from her? If she acted out of love for you would she act as she does toward you? No.
Why do emotions cause such a problem?
If you loved your wife in her most horrendous moment what would you do? Would you give her want she wants? Would you allow her to go follow her heart? It would hurt but I believe most people would say yes. If they looked at the scenario of divorce through the lens of love.
However, you don’t see that often in a divorce. You see two people locked in a mortal battle for resources. They are afraid they are going to lose everything. They are afraid they are going to have to sleep on the streets. There is fear that their families will turn from them.
There is fear that they will never be allowed to see their children again. So they do whatever they possibly can to see their kids even going behind their mom’s back and creating distrust. Which in turn causes distrust of the father and shines a bad light on him. So eventually the dad loses the kids. That is a very example of how your thought leads to your result. You don’t want to lose your kids so you act in ways that cause you to lose your kids.
Emotions cause problems because we don’t pay attention to the thoughts that create them. We act on our emotions and wonder where we went wrong. The answer is you were not paying attention to your thoughts. These unintentional thoughts lead you to have emotions that sent you spiraling down a path that is full of pain and suffering.
Now don’t get me wrong, emotions are a wonderful part of being human. They allow the beauty of our soul to shine through. However when they are not intentional they are often messy, again that is part of being human. You will have emotions. Emotions are the color of our memories. Just know that they are part of the human experience and you can have feelings of fear. You can then have a feeling of love. You can have thoughts that cause you to think you are going mad.
The problem with emotions is that they come from us humans and humans and emotions are messy but that is OK if you can see another person’s emotional outbursts as them living their lives and dealing with their emotions to the best of their ability.
The terror of scarcity
There are many different mindsets that come and go when you are getting a divorce. There is the fixed Mindset, growth mindset, abundant mindset, and scarcity mindset.
A fixed Mindset is the thought that a person only has a limited ability. If they are wildly successful that is thanks to their own talent and skill. Nothing more nothing less. This is often taught in school. Because if you fail a test that isn’t celebrated but scorned. So you cant improve once you hit the limit of your talent and skills.
The Growth Mindset is the opposite. Yeah, skill and talent are helpful but you can also get better by failing at a task. You can try again. You can keep at it till you succeed. This is the mindset many entrepreneurs have. They like the awkwardness of learning. Those uncomfortable failures are just them making it a little closer to their goal.
Then there is the abundant mindset. This is the thought that there is plenty to go around. Plenty of what? Anything and everything. The is plenty of time, Plenty of money plenty of food. land and other resources.
Then there is the Scarcity mindset. This is the thought that there is not enough to go around. Enough of what? Typically resources. Money is a huge one. This is one I fight against all the time. The scarcity could be any resource. This is often why countries go to war. One has more resources than another. That is why divorces turn to war.
Many times a wife will decide that she isn’t living her life to the fullest (Scarcity of happiness). So she moves out to find herself. Realizes that her sex life was really bland (Scarcity of emotional connection). So she finds herself in a relationship with a newer model and strikes out on her own. However, she sees that there are some perks to being married to you (Scarcity of Experience). Because you were able to bring in more money (Scarcity of finances). So She goes for a divorce and wants to have her cake and eat it too so the fight is on.
From here you see that she is trying to gather as many resources as she can(you start feeling scarcity in your world). It would appear that she is trying to take everything you hold dear to your heart (scarcity of Home, family, connection, money, shelter, transportation, and more) So you start fighting back.
Even though if you were to stop and step back you would see that the fear of not getting enough is causing you to stop acting out of love for her. You claim you love her still, but you have called her a conniving bitch a few times.
That is all because of the fear that you are going to lose out on something. You aren’t even paying attention to what you do have that she can’t take away. Your thoughts your actions. Your drive. Your own skills at making a living for yourself. But you worked so hard at building your modest gains.
You are right you worked this long on this amount and you can rebuild in half the time or less. What can she do? She has to live her life her way. Is it right? I don’t know neither do you. But you can only control 2 things in any circumstance.
What can you control in a divorce?
There are two things that you are able to control in life. Those two things are your thoughts and your actions. You can’t control your wife. You can’t control your kids. You can’t control anybody in your sphere of influence but yourself and only yourself.
Start with the end in mind.
So knowing that you can’t control anything but yourself you know now that you can’t stop your wife from having a divorce if she wants it. She can change her mind if you give her enough reason but to try to do that to simply manipulate will cause more suffering than accepting that she is divorcing you. So what do you do to prepare for the tempest of emotions she is going to have? What about the emotional whirlwind you are going to have too? This is where you have to have the end in mind. How do you want to be at the end of the process? Do you want to keep your confidence? How about keeping your sense of self? What would it look like if you came out on the other side of this divorce stronger, smarter, and calm? What would that look like?
That is the key to all of this. Know what you want to focus on that. Allow the world to swing as it does. You will have hard days as your ex-wife will struggle with her feelings. She will have her own sets of thoughts you can try to help her but that’s not going to cut it. You have to be able to stand and let her melt down. You have to learn that you can’t control her emotional outbursts. In fact, that is something she was wanting you to do from the start is to allow her to have her emotions. If she was angry, Fine she is angry. And you were allowed to have your own emotions. Now there are some differences true and we will be getting into men and their emotions later but at the moment just know you were allowed to have your emotions too, and she couldn’t control them either.
Don’t worry about what the soon-to-be ex does.
Your wife is going to struggle as she goes on with her life. She is going to hit walls and fail many times. No matter what she does that’s not your responsibility. It will be very tempting to look at her social media feed and make snide comments about what she is doing. Yet, understand why you are making those comments and know that those comments are because of your emotions.
It is better if you just let her live the shit show that you think her life is becoming. Know that all that is just thoughts about what her life is like at this moment. It could be making you feel jealousy or anger or pity or regret or any other emotion that is out there for you to feel. You are going to have those emotions and she is going to have hers. You can’t make her feel anything and she can’t make you feel any emotion you don’t care to feel.
So if she does something that you think is to make you mad. Guess what, no. It is you that is making yourself mad. Ask Yourself, do you like to be angry? Why do you want to be mad? Many guys claim that they still love their wife yet do they show it while going through the worst of it? No, they are just as fearful as their wife. They are just as full of scarcity and fix mindsets without seeing the beauty that is around them. They would rather complain about their pants being muddy than get out of the puddle and move on.
This phase of this blog is all about divorce. It is all about how can you go through a divorce and be a better stronger man once the dust has settled. There are ways. They aren’t easy but they are possible. Imagine, You come through the divorce and your ex-wife remarries. Wait there’s more you might even be invited to her wedding. How would you like to be still able to co-parent your children and have the respect of their mom? That is possible. You can have that life. Where you don’t see women as money grubbers. You don’t enter into a relationship thinking you will never get married again. You will understand how to live a differentiated relationship, not a toxic co-dependent relationship.
If you are going through a divorce and wondering how you can survive this divorce with your mind and humanity intact Set up a Consult and let us talk.
