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170954936Not all divorces are related to alcohol abuse, but the percentage is fairly high.  I don’t have any scientific study, but my own experience of observing thousands of divorces over three decades, I have found that nearly half of all divorces involve, at minimum, allegations of some type of alcohol abuse.  From observing the interactions in these cases, as well as working with professionals in these areas, here are the most important observations I have made: If you think there is a problem, you are probably right. If one party truly believes there is alcohol abuse in the marriage, there is a very high probability that they are right. Yes, it is true that divorce can lead to many false allegations, particularly if you are in an adversarial divorce.  However, while divorcing couples often exaggerate most flaws of the other spouse, I have found that, largely because of co-dependency dynamics, many spouses actually under report alcohol abuse. If your spouse thinks you have a problem, you certainly have a problem. How can I be certain?  Easy.  First, as indicated above, if your spouse truly thinks you have a problem, there is a high probably they are right.  Moreover, even if they are wrong, their belief that you have a problem is, by itself, a major problem.  In either case, the solution often points to undergoing a thorough and honest alcohol assessment. If you can get at the truth, everyone wins. A spouse stopping or cutting back alcohol use during the divorce proves little.  Often the spouse believed to have an alcohol problem will either stop using alcohol or cut back on alcohol use as the threat of divorce draws near.  While this may (or may not) be a welcome reprieve for the family, it generally means very little in terms of determining the existence of a problem.  Indeed, most chemical dependency counselors see frequent failed attempts to stop or cut back as being one of the indicators of alcoholism.  Moreover, for most alcoholics, stopping drinking does not necessarily end the alcoholic behavior. Sometimes alcohol use during divorce can be “situational”. Divorce usually does not come up suddenly, but rather creeps into homes over months or years.  As it creeps closer, the sadness or fear can sometimes cause non-alcoholics to temporarily abuse alcohol during this difficult time. While temporary abuse of alcohol still has serious consequences the long-term impact can be quite different than addressing alcoholism. If alcohol is an issue, you need a process in which honesty can be rewarded.  Divorce processes differ.  Traditional divorces that operate in the shadow of the courthouse can sometimes seem to punish honesty in the sense that the person suspected of alcohol abuse feels compelled to either deny or minimize the allegations for fear of losing time with their children.  On the other hand, processes such as Collaborative Law or mediation, by operating outside of court, can provide a safe place where alcohol use can be addressed as a health issue and not as a piece of evidence.  To learn more about these options go to www.Collaborativelaw.org or www.divorcechoice.com.
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173298779When you are ready to start a divorce, nothing creates more frustration than the reluctant spouse.  How are you supposed to move forward with your life when your husband or wife doesn’t want a divorce?  Here is my advice for dealing with the spouse who is dragging their feet. 1.  Keep your long-term goals in the forefront, rather than taking short-term aggressive action. A friend of mine from another state called me recently to tell me about her meeting with a divorce lawyer. My friend wants a divorce; her husband doesn’t. The lawyer said she ought to serve and file divorce papers on her husband and tell her three children about the divorce by herself so she controlled the story to the kids. This kind of advice is what gives lawyers a bad name. Like most people with kids, my friend wants to protect them from conflict and have a good co-parenting relationship after the divorce. That means she has to work with her husband, not set up a firestorm of conflict by launching an aggressive attack.  2. Get the right support to help your spouse. A spouse who is not emotionally ready to handle a divorce can make the process difficult. It’s much more effective to connect with resources to help your spouse accept the divorce. If you have been in marriage counseling, you could enlist the counselor to facilitate conversations about your desire for a divorce and options for proceeding. Discernment counseling, which is a limited scope form of therapy, is another approach. Or you could work with a collaborative divorce coach, who is skilled at working with couples who are have a gap in their respective readiness to proceed with divorce.  3.  Use the time to gather necessary financial documents.  While you are letting your spouse play “catch up” emotionally, it helps to feel like you are taking steps to move forward. One task that has to happen is gathering financial information. You can contact a collaborative financial neutral to find out about their services and the information that will be needed. You can gather records, such as tax returns, mortgage documents, bank statements, and credit card statements. You can look into insurance costs as an individual and look into housing options. Gathering all the financial information usually takes some time, and there is no reason why you can’t get a start on that important step. It will make things go more quickly once you are ready to start the process. It is rare for both spouses to be in the same place emotionally when deciding to end a marriage. If you can give your spouse some time and support to accept that the marriage is over, you gain a less frustrating divorce process and a foundation for a good working relationship as co-parents.
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135385349Sometimes what comes after the “C-word” can unfortunately be the “D-word” – divorce. The incidence of divorce/separation is unfortunately quite high after one partner has been diagnosed or is in some stage of battling cancer. If you are a woman, the odds are even less in your favor – according to a study, by the Max Planck Institute, on the effect cancer has on the divorce rate, “21 percent of female cancer patients end up divorced or separated after a cancer diagnosis.” Both a cancer diagnosis and a divorce cause such emotional devastation. You rarely think that either of these things will ever happen to you; these are things that “happen to other people.” Nancy Cox, a healing coach with the Virginia Piper Cancer Institute, sees the parallels between sitting, angst-ridden, in a doctor’s office and sitting, angst-ridden, in a lawyer’s office. “They both trigger every difficulty you’ve ever faced in your life,” Cox said. The question then becomes why? Why are so many marriages destroyed by cancer? Maybe the marriage was struggling in the first place, but often times simply the stress of cancer itself can divide a perfectly good marriage. Reassessment goes both ways in a relationship and some marriages can’t handle all the stresses and strains that cancer can bring. Dealing with a diagnosis of cancer can certainly magnify certain feelings already present, as well as create new feelings of uncertainty due to dealing with cancer itself. Big challenges like cancer, a life changing accident, other major illness, infertility, or a child with disabilities, can either bring you closer together or tear you apart. Cancer changes a person and emotionally you are in a different place after having the cancer. Sometimes fighting a battle like cancer proves to a person just how strong they are and perhaps now have the strength to leave a marriage that wasn’t quite right to begin with. Whether it’s cancer or divorce, a good starting point is to begin rallying your troops around you. Call your closest family and friends and break the news to them. Then seek out the best professionals to guide you through, whether it’s the top divorce lawyer in town, or the best oncologist. Seeking therapy is a good idea both during and after. Both cancer and divorce also offer the potential for healing. “Any crisis creates opportunity, if one can re-frame it and get the level of support needed to have that happen,” Cox said. Once you battle cancer, divorce, or both, you are forever a survivor.
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144313218It was actually my wife’s idea. Lose the clunky stand-alone bookshelf on the second floor landing and build in a bookcase that wraps around the stairwell. Four years ago, her father called a buddy with a sawmill up north. The buddy sold us an oak tree. Then he quarter-sawed it into planks, delivered it to my father-in-law’s shop, and in a matter of months, we had a stack of lumber that was milled to provide tops, bottoms, sides, and shelves of a bookcase. Some assembly required. “I’ll do the finishing,” I said. “I don’t want this to be a slap-dash job.” It wasn’t. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into years. The rift and quarter-sawn white oak was sanded. It was filled and sanded again. It was stained. It was varnished.  Multiple times. The varnish was sanded down to even it and provide a smooth base for the next coat.  And the next. And the next. “Are you ever going to finish those bookshelves?” my wife asked. “No sense paying someone to do something I can do myself,” I responded. This week, as her uncle and I measured, re-measured, plumbed and leveled and trimmed out and touched up the enormous room elephant that this project had become, I shared my frustration with a colleague. “I swear that’s the last time I volunteer on a home project!” I told him. “It’s not like I couldn’t do it. The finish work is gorgeous, if I do say so myself. But the time! I swear I would have been way ahead of the game if we had just hired someone to begin with.” “Kind of like a pro se divorce, isn’t it?” he quipped, referring to the 80% of divorces where the couples don’t use any lawyers to assist them. “As I recall, you don’t do a lot of wood finishing, do ya?” “Some” “Ya learned a lot ya didn’t know before, sounds like.” “The understatement of the year!” “Like I said, sounds like a pro se divorce!  Hey, I know ya got “skills,” but how much time did ya give up, and how much of it did ya have to do over ’cause ya didn’t get it right the first time?” “Don’t ask!” It’s not that I don’t know why those 80% try to do it themselves.  I get that!  Last week I helped a woman who did it herself.  She also transferred part of her retirement to her Ex.  But she made a mistake and had to do it over.  This time, the Ex had a lawyer handle the transfer order.  And she had me look it over to be sure it was all in order, which it was. I probably should have hired you in the first place,” she said when we were done.  “Thanks so much!” It had a familiar ring.
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482285789I recently attended a symposium about divorce entitled, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” At first glance you might wonder whether we had anything to talk about. What do love and divorce have in common? Isn’t divorce the result of the loss of love? Sharing ideas with others interested in improving the divorce process reinforced my belief that love, forgiveness and compassion are the keys to divorcing well, and that divorce can indeed be a healing process. Divorce is an all-too-common event these days. We all have friends, family members, neighbors and co-workers who have experienced becoming unmarried. Some just barely survive and are stuck looking back at their divorce with regret and resentment. Years later they continue to bad-mouth their ex and blame their divorce for their ongoing unhappiness. Their inability to be present and available has long-term consequences for their children as well. Most of us also know people who not only survive, but thrive in their post-divorce lives. They are somehow able to accept the major changes in their day-to-day lives and move forward. By doing so, they are healthy role models for their children and fun to be around.  What accounts for these vastly different outcomes? Personality certainly has something to do with it. Some humans are blessed with more optimistic outlooks than others. Seeing the glass half full reduces anxiety about the future. Life circumstances also play a role. Good health, steady employment, and a healthy balance sheet contribute to feeling better about what lies ahead. However, several decades of experience tells me that one factor trumps everything else in terms of one’s ability to recover from divorce … the ability to forgive. Anger, bitterness, blame and resentment are feelings associated with the loss of a loving relationship. Grieving the loss is necessary in order to get on with life. Tara Brach, a leading western teacher of Buddhist meditation, emotional healing and spiritual awakening, who was a symposium presenter, says, “Vengeance is a lazy form of grief.” Rather than being lazy and stuck, working through one’s grief with a therapist, clergy person, or trusted friend can lead to understanding and forgiveness. Acknowledgment and forgiveness of one’s own contributions to the divorce are essential, as is forgiveness of the other person. In the Collaborative divorce process, our professional team includes a neutral coach and a child specialist, both of whom assist the parties in reaching closure with regard to their marriage and defining their future co-parenting relationship. “When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you’re spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride. For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their own skins and to be glad in each others’ presence.” -Fredrick Buechner
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500048813Becoming friends with your ex? Or even friends with your ex’s new boyfriend/girlfriend? Do these friendships sound impossible to attain? Perhaps there is something to be learned from the infamous Tiger and Elin Woods’ divorce. Elin recently went on vacation with Tiger, their two kids and Tiger’s current girlfriend, Olympic skier, Lindsey Vonn. The modern blended family – where friendships, and even vacationing together can happen successfully. If befriending seems like a long-shot for you, try to put bitterness and grudges aside when you consider that new boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses will be around your children, whether you like it or not. Co-parenting is not easy, and it will take time and effort to find the right grove in your new lives. Daisy Camp recently hosted a co-parenting workshop at the Collaborative Alliance, titled “One Bridge to Peace,” where co-parenting tools were provided that allow even one willing, caring parent, to relate peacefully with even the most bitter and contentious co-parent. Depending on how newly divorced you are, joining each other on vacations may seem like a long-shot, but remember, even introducing yourself and keeping the lines of communication open with you ex’s new companion can go a long way. Who knows, maybe someday you’ll find yourself vacationing in the Bahamas or at Disney with your ex!
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465782093Dogs have long been known for their ability to have healing effects on the sick, but did you know that adopting a dog while going through the divorce process can provide another wonderful form of therapy? Whether getting a new puppy or adopting a dog, there is value in adding a furry companion to your life. Man’s (or woman’s) best friend alleviates that empty feeling you may now be experiencing when you walk in the door at night. Divorce often time leaves you feeling unwanted, just like many of those dogs at the shelter, which makes that canine even more relatable. Perhaps that dog came to the shelter from a divorced family herself. It has been proven that people benefit from interacting with canines. Simply petting a dog can decrease levels of stress hormones, regulate breathing, and lower blood pressure. Research also has shown that petting releases oxytocin, a hormone associated with bonding and affection, in both the dog and the human. Dogs respond to human emotions, and seem to know just when their companion needs a little extra loving. A dog, or other animal, can also be helpful for children coping with a divorce. Research shows that a dog can be therapeutic for a child experiencing a divorce crisis. A pet teaches a lot about coping skills, at a time when their parents may not coping very well. Cuddling up to a dog or other critter can be calming, and teaching a dog a new trick can be rewarding. If you are looking for a constant companion, who will help reduce your stress levels (and won’t talk back!), adding a new furry friend to your home may be a good divorce healing solution for you.
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With so much at stake in a divorce, it is tempting to think about how to “win”.  Yet, the grim irony of divorce is that “winning” often leads to poor results.   I know that seems like a contradiction, but most divorce lawyers who, like me, have spoken with “winning” clients after a divorce, know that it is true.  Almost every “winning” client I have known during the past 30 years of divorce practice has expressed severe disappointment with their “winning” outcome.   The real “cost” of a litigated divorce (or even a divorce that settles on the courthouse steps) is so great financially, emotionally and, particularly for children, psychologically, that there truly are no winners. Does that mean that, when facing divorce, you should simply “give up” and let your spouse have whatever he or she wants?  Of course not.  Because there is so much that matters, you need to get the best possible outcome for you and your family.  So, how can you achieve that, without trying to “win” in the traditional sense?  By finding a smarter way to get your spouse “to yes”. Getting To Yes is the whole essence of divorce.  More than 95% of all divorces end in an agreement (and not a trial), so your divorce is likely to end in an agreement of some kind.  Therefore, the entire divorce process is one of seeking ways to get your spouse to say “yes” to the things that really matter. So, how do you get your spouse to eventually “say yes” to the things that are important to you?   It is tempting to think that you will get your spouse to “say yes” by hiring an aggressive lawyer to make bold arguments in your favor.  Tempting, maybe, but does that really work?  Is your spouse the kind of person who will respond to arguments by giving in?  Probably not.  On the other hand, if you are like the rest of the world, you will need to be much more strategic. The chances are quite good that the best way to get your spouse to say yes is to help them see that saying yes meets their interests.   This notion of ”interest based bargaining” is a way to truly “win” without having to make anyone lose.   This method of truly “winning” without creating losers is rapidly growing in popularity and is commonly used by Collaborative Divorce lawyers.  To find a Collaborative Divorce Lawyer in Minnesota who can explain this to you go to www.collabortivelaw.org.
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Divorce is one of life’s most stressful events. In fact, research shows that ending a marriage is second only to the death of a spouse as a predictor of illness. So in order to stay healthy, it makes sense to incorporate stress-reduction techniques early and often throughout the process. Here are three suggestions:
  1. Find an emotional outlet. It is common to focus on the loss you feel at the end of a relationship. While you may be tempted to suppress these unpleasant feelings, doing so will prevent you from moving past them. Make an effort to confront your negative emotions by talking them out with supportive friends or a therapist. It is normal to want to isolate yourself, but relationships are important. The end of your marriage does not mean that you must go through life alone. Putting your thoughts and fears on paper can also help you articulate your feelings and gain some clarity about your past, present and future.
  2. Practice self-care. Stressful times require that you become more intentional about taking care of yourself. Eating nourishing, nutrient-rich foods will give your body the fuel it needs to maintain your energy levels. Regular exercise can lower your stress levels and provide a healthy distraction from your worries. Treating yourself to something you love, such as a round of golf or massage, can alleviate stress.  Creating space for relaxation is essential also, whether it’s reading a good book, doing yoga or mediation, or taking a nap. Self-care is essential to the healing process.
  3. Feel gratitude. A breakup is painful and can make it difficult to look past your immediate feelings of pain and loss. Taking the time at the beginning and end of each day to recognize the many gifts you have been given can increase your sense of well-being. Try pausing at various times during the day to remind yourself, “I am grateful.” Some people find it helpful to keep a gratitude journal. Consciously choosing to be grateful on a regular basis can brighten your outlook on life.
Establishing these three healthy habits can help anyone reduce stress. They can be particularly helpful if you are experiencing the disruption of divorce.
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Divorce is a challenging and life-changing experience for all family members, and most divorcing parents worry about how their children will be affected in the short and long term. Because divorce is such a significant event for children, these concerns are understandable. As a neutral child specialist, when helping parents address their concerns, I encourage them to consider three guiding principles.

Guiding Principle #1: The crisis of divorce should never become a trauma for children. 

Although divorce will almost always be painful and difficult for children, it is entirely possible for parents to keep it from becoming traumatic. Children can be traumatized when trapped in an environment of high conflict, danger, abandonment or abuse. None of these words should describe a child’s experience of divorce.

Guiding Principle #2: Children must be kept in the center and out of the middle of their parents’ conflict.

It is understandable that divorcing parents will experience conflict with each other. It takes mindfulness and empathy for parents to set the kind of clear boundaries that keep their children from being drawn into the conflict. Being in the middle always impacts children negatively. It is toxic to use children as confidantes, ask them to take sides against the other parent or disparage the other parent in their presence. The decision to take the high road and not put children in the middle is one that parents will never regret.

Guiding Principle #3: There is such a thing as a good divorce for families.

Judith Wallerstein’s longitudinal research on the impact of divorce on children painted a bleak picture of negative, long term developmental, social, academic, emotional and behavioral effects. Wallerstein studied families who divorced in 1971, a time when family law was typically adversarial and divorce was socially stigmatized.  In 1994, Constance Ahrens wrote The Good Divorce: Keeping your Family Together when your Marriage is Falling Apart based on her own longitudinal study. Ahrens found that when divorced parents could reduce conflict, communicate effectively, and co-parent cooperatively, their children did not experience long term adverse effects.

These children continued to feel a reassuring sense of family, transformed from under one roof to under two. With the right kind of personal and professional support, parents can make a healthy transition from a divorced couple to effective co-parents. Making this transition successfully makes a huge difference in the quality of life for children.

Non-adversarial methods of divorce undoubtedly enhance parents’ ability to create child-centered outcomes. Since 1990, there has been a sea change in family law, including models of collaborative practice, mediation and cooperative divorce. When divorce must happen, choosing a child-centered divorce process is another decision that most parents will never regret. For more information on Collaborative Team Practice, please visit the website of the Collaborative Divorce Institute of Minnesota.