How did you survive your divorce, what advice would you give to young men about to go through it?

6 comments

1. Most important: you won’t have to live with her any more but you will have to live with yourself.

   Make sure you stay calm and at all times be reasonable, helpful and decent. Never, ever descend to yelling or spiteful behaviour. When you’re done, you need to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and know that you did everything you could. Be the better person.

2. Hide extra money by over paying on a credit card. Ends up like a pre paid card that looks like you’ve used to pay off bills etc. Just sucks you get zero interest but todays rates it really doesn’t matter. I’d of taken steps sooner to protect myself financially and give up on the romantic notion of winning her back. It’s over. Get drunk, cry, get a hooker n get blown. Do what it takes to clear your guilt or fear. Guilt of failure or fear of lonely. Most of all, LEARN from this mistake and don’t repeat.

3. Lessons from my divorce way back when:

   Learn from the experience.

   What did you not see up front? Is your list of the perfect girl wrong (LPT: look for women of character), Did your friends or relatives try to warn you?

   Own your mistakes. Go to counseling to work out your issues or you will only perpetuate the cycle.(LPT people have patterns. If they cant go any longer than 1 month from dating you will just be the guy next line. Or if you are the one going back to back to back, you are the one with issues.

   Moving on.

   It is rare that you can make a real relationship work 2 years after a divorce. You won’t believe this. You will try it anyway, and you will realize that whoever said this in the past was 100% correct.

   Do everything you can when you do start dating to not project your ex onto this person you are dating. If you do, you are not ready and will only hurt that person.

   Put off sex as long as you can. The minute it enters the relationship it changes and if you are immature it becomes the focus of the relationship. I say this hypocritically, but I can tell you from experience, the loneliest time in my life was when I was most sexually actively. I love sex, but without true lasting commitment it is fools gold.

   Quality attracts quality.

   Hurting people hurt people.

   You won’t find a cashmere sweater in KMart – Meaning context matters in where and how you meet.

   Give the relationship time to develop. This helps you get over the infatuation stage to a time where you can truly assess what the relationship is capable of and more time to see how this person reacts in life circumstances.

   I wish you the best and there is hope. After my first marriage, i did the hard work on myself, applied the items above and will be married for 33 years this year and have had a blessed life with the amazing woman I married.

4. The billable hours from your attorney will be a lot higher than you anticipate. Expect $200 an hour attorney to end up costing around $20,000, $400 to be $40,000 and so on.
   Plus any extra fees for time spent in hearings, trials or specialists (financial). Too high of an hourly rate will result in not being able to fight your case as aggressively as you may have hoped.

   Be honest going into the situation – you may think you’re bettering yourself by hiding assets, but any questions of “good faith” will result in a longer legal process, more hearings and possibly a trial. These things will likely cost more than any sneaky actions will have saved. It always feels better to have a clear conscious, especially when with the mediator.

   Unless proven otherwise, all property is community. Proof requirements goes far beyond what most would consider reasonable or logical. If a bank account was ever mixed with joint income (income earned while married) the whole balance of the account will be in question.

5. I was in my early 30s, I did it quickly and it wasn’t well thought out.

   I wish I had more money at the time, and that I had met with an attorney and a mediator earlier.

   also, therapy

6. A) dont try to get married again until you have established a household. Trying to build from scratch together puts too much tension on the relationship.

   B) Learn from it.

   C) You’re going to be sad. It is going to hurt. Unless you are top 5% good looks youre going to be lonely because dating for men is part of your victory lap.

   D) Gym