Some Promises Are Meant To Be Broken

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September 22, 2016

When you divorce, you’ll make promises to yourself that don’t make sense to keep for the long haul.

Last May my husband (he’s my second) and I (I’m his third wife) celebrated our anniversary. But it was an event that almost didn’t happen because of a promise I made to myself after I divorced.

When I got divorced in 2002, I hurt. The pain was so intense that I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.

I kept having fleeting thoughts of suicide, but I was assured that those thoughts were pretty normal. I was still worried though. What if those thoughts started to stay around longer? What would I do then? How would I stop them? I was terrified by the unfamiliarity of these self-destructive thoughts that kept popping up. Was I losing my mind?

I also wasn’t taking very good care of myself. I mean we all have trouble sleeping when we’re going through divorce, and I was doing my best to try to get better sleep. But that wasn’t eating either. Food had mostly lost its appeal.

But I was also withholding food from myself for two other reasons. First, I didn’t want to get fat. In my mind I associated being fat with…

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11 Tips To Feel Confident Dating After Divorce

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August 26, 2016

Yes, feeling confident is possible as you embark on your adventures dating post-divorce.

Dating after divorce is both exhilarating and frightening!

One the one hand, the thought of having someone find you attractive and interesting again can make you positively giddy.

On the other hand, the thought of putting yourself out there and kissing a lot of toads along the way is enough to make anyone think more than once about dating after divorce.

What if you could position your foray back into the dating world as something you were doing with confidence? What if you could look at whomever you go out with from the standpoint of whether you liked them without worrying about what they think of you?

I know I would have been pretty excited to have started dating post-divorce from that point of view instead of as the unconfident person that I was. My initial focus on dating after divorce was all about pleasing the people who asked me out instead of just being me and evaluating whether I liked them. (And, yes, that did get me into some trouble.)

Choosing to begin dating after divorce is a big step.

It’s natural to feel at least a bit tentative about…

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What Makes Gray Divorce Especially Difficult

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September 12, 2016

Unlike divorces that happen earlier in life, it’s not the kids.

Every divorce is full of challenges, frustrations and problems. But gray divorces (those that occur when people divorce in their 50s and beyond) has a unique set of issues.

Most couples who divorce later in life are empty nesters. Their kids are out of the house and living their own lives.

You could say this simplifies a gray divorce because you don’t have to worry about child custody or child support or visitation. (But just because the kids are out of the house that doesn’t mean they won’t have difficulty with their parents’ divorce.)

But this seeming simplification for gray divorce is offset by a major complication – retirement.

When you’re over 50 and divorcing you’re at most 15-20 years from retirement. And all those retirement plans you’ve been making for the decades you’ve already been working? They dissolved along with your marriage.

It’s this decreased time to recover financially from divorce that makes gray divorces so challenging.

So what do you do? You think carefully about every decision you make.

After years of marriage, a couple’s shared assets are much greater and probably more complicated than those of couples who have shorter marriages.…

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How To Stop Settling And Have A Great Life After Divorce

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July 25, 2016

In order to surround yourself with what you love you have to stop settling for what you don’t.

One of the realizations you’ve probably had as you’ve been healing from your divorce is that you learned to accept less than you wanted during your marriage.

Obviously, you accepted less honest communication, less meaningful connection and less unconditional love than you wanted and deserved or else you’d still be married. But in the name of compromise (or keeping the peace) you also accepted other things that you didn’t really want or like: the nagging, the yelling, the strained relationship with your in-laws, or even the color of your bedroom.

So here’s the great news. Now you can stop settling! But not just on the things that you settled for for the sake of your marriage. Now you can stop settling for everything. You can create your life after divorce full of things, relationships, behaviors and experiences that you love.

However, before you can fully create a life you love you need to learn how to stop settling.

Whenever you ignore your preferences and choose something just because it’s what’s available now and not because you love it, you’re settling. Whenever you do something because it’s easy and…

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