4 Ways to Have a Horrible Divorce

4 Ways to Have a Horrible Divorce.

If you want to make sure your divorce is a painful, long running disaster, just follow my divorce advice.

You are guaranteed to have a divorce that will cost you lots of money and leave you emotionally bankrupt too.

1. Ask everyone their opinion.

When I first separated I was so unsure of how to get a divorce and so afraid of the entire process.

I asked everyone who had remotely been touched by divorce what they did and ultimately what I should do.

I got stories and opinions from everyone. My father, stepmother, sister, friends, woman buying tampons at Target.

I doubted my own judgement so much that I asked everyone for theirs. I should have just phone poll and called everyone in my zip code and asked what they thought I should do next. All this asking and searching did was muddy my brain.

Everyone meant well, but their situations were so different than mine. I ended up not only feeling more confused, but also feeling like I had disappointed so many people by not taking their advice.

2. Be tentative.

If you really want to have a divorce that goes on for nearly half a decade, be tentative. I stopped and started divorce paperwork, not because I didn’t want to proceed with the divorce but because I was scared out of my mind.

I was so afraid of conflict that I’d back off or change course when things got contentious.

That did nothing but ensure that my marriage didn’t legally end and that I wasn’t ever able to really end the emotional pain due to that fact.

When you are on the freeway, you don’t suddenly stop or you’ll get run over.

Exactly the same in a divorce.

3. Try to be your former spouse’s friends.

You can’t be friends with someone when you are filing divorce paperwork.

It simply can’t be done. L

awyers, courts, mediation, and counseling don’t add up to happy and friendly. No matter how much you want it to be that way. I truly didn’t want my husband to be “mad at me”.

I thought that if was standing up for myself, I was being a bad person.

I’ve found that the less verbal contact you can have the easier it is to maintain distance. Text and email contact only whenever possible. And that distance allows me to not worry about being his friend.

I had these crazy ideas of us all going to movies and dinners together.

Hey, maybe we can all go on a vacation together with our new spouses and our daughter!

I know that’s just insane! 

4. Let your emotions lead you.

I am a very emotional person.

That is the core that leads me each day. For better or for worse. I won’t ask you what you “think”, I’ll ask you how you “feel”.

The whole idea of being led by your emotions spell’s disaster in a divorce. Try to back off and let your rational mind at least be a part of the decision making process.

I think of myself as a semi-intelligent person so why did I screw this whole thing up so badly?

Maybe I was supposed to finally learn these lessons. So please DON’T take my advice. Don’t follow these steps.

I hope that your divorce gets resolved a lot sooner than mine.

How did you keep from having a crappy divorce?

xoxo-Rosie