How to Improve Your Decision-Making During Divorce

You will be faced with many critical decisions during your divorce. You will be asked to make life-changing choices for yourself, your children, and your future.

No small task.

Coupled with the heightened stress and emotional turmoil that usually accompanies a divorce or separation, making sound decisions can seem like an impossibility.

The best way to combat this is to have plenty of systems around you that will help guide your decisions regardless of what state you are currently in.

I’ll tell you what I mean by this.

KEEPING YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE

You might consider each decision that arises during this process to be one of a thousand things you will need to deal with and figure out an answer for, that’s one way to look at it.

I find a much simpler way to look at decision-making is to think about the single goal you have…what you want your life to look like as you get to the other side of divorce and basing your decisions from that.

At each junction, when you are faced with a few choices…which one leads you closer toward your ideal outcome?

Some might assume I mean money, a certain split of money, as the ultimate prize. And while this might be important I also want you to consider important lifestyle factors like:

-          What your relationship looks like with your co-parent at the end

-          The wellbeing of the children

-          How you feel about your conduct during the process

-          The kind of person you want to be as you evolve from this chapter of your life

You hear stories about people who are willing to forgo the above list for the singular purpose of obtaining the most money. This is such a short-sided view.

In my mind, ‘winning’ is not about who ends up with the most at the end. It’s about how fulfilled and satisfied you are with the life you have created for yourself (or at least are on track to create for yourself) once this part of your relationship is complete.

MY OWN DECISION PROCESS

I might be a little too philosophical for some people, but I looked at my decisions as much more than the choices I was making to shape a new life.

I saw each choice I made as a way to assert who I really was.

It’s cheesy, I know. But stay with me….

I got married when I was very young. Although the circumstances are more complex and personal than I can fully describe here, when it came down to it I looked back at the choices that led me to where I was and saw that most of my decisions were made from a place of fear.

Security has always been important to me, and I was willing to sacrifice my own sense of identity, my own ability to grow and become independent to get what I thought was security.

This is an incredibly defensive position to play. I was playing NOT to lose that security. Again, fear.

It became my singular focus and soon maintaining the security I had meant keeping the peace in the home by looking the other way, quieting my own sense of how I would do things to defer to someone else, biting my tongue at things I felt were unfair.

I had to twist and contort myself to preserve what I had.

So, when I was coming out of marriage and embarking on the process of divorce I decided that I was going to act in an entirely different way, one that was truthful to me.

MY FIRST BIG DECISION

I remember early on when my decision to divorce was decided but I wasn’t quite ready to say it.

I spent a lot of time getting my ducks in a row. This included consultations with a handful of lawyers. The ones that I saw were all extremely qualified and had very sound suggestions about what to do and what my chances were for relocation. Finding a lawyer to work with was the first solo grown-up decision that I had to make.

My biggest regret during the time that I was married was that I routinely discounted and ignored my gut instincts and deferred to someone else as the expert. Unsurprisingly, this person was often my husband.

In this new part of my life, I was determined to play my own game.

I wasn’t exactly sure how this strategy would work in practice or what it even looked like, but I knew it would be based on personal integrity. I would not be forced into decisions based on a reaction to what was happening. Rather, I would do things on my own terms with a big picture view.

A Note About Personal Integrity

Personal integrity was my safeguard against making poor decisions. Even if I didn’t get the exact outcome I wanted, I never had to second-guess myself that I sold my soul for something. I think there is nothing worse that acting out of character AND still failing to get the outcome you wanted…double loss for you. The chipping away of your own character is one of the most damaging things you can do to yourself. At least in my opinion.

So now that I had a new orientation toward how I would conduct my life, it was time to walk the walk. I was determined to make it a practice to get more in tune with how I would do things rather than over relying on others. I knew I needed to give myself some credit for my decision-making abilities. There was one moment where I really remember this coming into play.

Really Smart Advice Sometimes Doesn’t Pass the Gut Check

Early on I was in my first consultation with a family lawyer. She was highly recommended and after meeting her I could understand why. She was impressive, smart, and personable. I explained to her my desire to relocate with the children. I understood that it would be a difficult road and she echoed the same.

After asking me several questions about the state of my current relationship she suggested that if I was really set on relocating my best chance would be to:

1.       Play ‘happy families” and for the next six months try to move ahead and bring up the idea of possibly moving back to the U.S. (we had been considering moving back as we’d already been in Australia for a decade.)

2.       Then I could suggest to him that I wanted to bring the kids back and set up some options there and visit my family in the states to begin to set up a life there. The critical part was to make sure that we had an email correspondence about what we were doing so that I had a paper trail to fall back on in court.

3.       When I arrived in California and physically had the kids in the other country I could then ask for the split, and with the paper evidence that we had intention to move back it would be more likely that Australia would recognize that as being ‘mutually agreed upon.’

It was a clever plan. This is perhaps the move for someone who is trying to flee a dangerous situation. But it wasn’t right for me and my circumstances.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to pretend that long, and I felt that the plan could go wrong in a lot of ways and if it did at any stage I’d be in a lot of trouble and totally ruin my credibility.

Also, it wasn’t the type of solution that I was looking for.

The fact that she even brought up that solution already told me we weren’t on the same page about the situation. I never once told her about any theoretical violence or danger, and she came up with this completely elaborate plan that frankly did not account for the fallout of relationships that would inevitably occur. She told me the advice I needed for the single request I made, without making me consider the welfare of the children and their relationship with their father.

I wasn’t interested in gaming the system or strategies, which this professional was very adept in, I needed to work with someone who, as an advocate could understand me and what I was about.

Ultimately I met with another lawyer (whom I write about in a separate blog post) who really was a great fit. From the first meeting I could see that she led with care and concern for the parties involved. I was also told that relocation was not something I could count on, but she took the time to understand the nuance of the case.

Knowing that she could see the full picture and how everyone would be affected, rather than finding some grand scheme to promote my singular desire to relocate at the possible expense of everything else, was a big difference to me. Her style was more aligned with who I was as a person.

A day later I signed with her.

I routinely tell anyone who will listen that this was the one of the most important choices I’ve made in my life.

This single decision allowed me to become more confident in my own abilities.

As an aside, the lawyer I chose was involved from beginning to end, meanwhile my ex had a revolving door of about 4 different lawyers representing him, costing him significantly more. I felt a lot of satisfaction and vindicated in my understanding that YES, I am the better decision maker after all, and I should have never deferred to him.

DEVELOPING YOUR DECISION-MAKING SKILLS AND GAINING CONFIDENCE

Keys to Making Good Decisions During Your Divorce

• People always say don’t make decisions when you are highly emotional. I actually think that depends because some people have excellent emotional instincts and then use logic to talk themselves down. Knowing how your emotions normally present themselves is an important factor in determining how sound your ideas are during this time.

• Know yourself and your patterns, again, related to the above about emotions.

• Always keep a wide lens of how this will affect EVERYTHING. I know this is annoying but if you are looking after children, their father is going to possibly get some undeserved goodwill from you. The fact is that if both parents are well then the children have a better chance of being well. So you can’t wish your ex harm and expect that it won’t touch the kids.

• Get advice from a trusted source and think about what you are trying to accomplish with any act.

• Gather as much information as practical before making a decision.

• Don’t worry about the past or whether things are fair, I like to think karmic retribution will take care of the other person. In my view, the desire to hurt or punish the other person will only lead to your misery. The best revenge is living your own life well.

• Make choices based on who you want to be, not necessarily who you are in this moment, you may not even know who you are right now.

• If you are going to ask others for advice, you need to know what their patterns and biases are as well so that you can see where the ideas are coming from; you might have one friend who is very fear-based, one who is aggressive, a couple who tend to see the world with the same balance as you do. You would give different weight to their responses based on how aligned they normally are with you on such things.

• Don’t be so hard on yourself. You will inevitably develop decision fatigue, and this is the time you’ll be happy that you’re represented by someone who fully understands you. Your lawyer can break down the meaning of what certain outcomes might be. I relied on my lawyer’s expertise to help me when I was completely exhausted.

• At the same time, don’t make decisions for the sake of getting them out of the way and having certainty, especially regarding property settlement. Maybe you’re going through a rough time, and you just want it to be over. The temporary relief of giving in to unreasonable negotiations can cost you a lot. You do not want to shortchange your long-term future if you can stick out the process. Take fewer responsibilities, rest more, don’t worry about the mess in your house, do whatever it takes to keep yourself well so you can make sound choices.

With each decision you make, you’re given a chance to step up and prove that you can do hard things. It is a huge confidence builder. So, do not shy away from the opportunity.

It’s tempting to simply follow what others tell you. I encourage you, before you ask anyone else what they think, to work out the problem yourself first and then compare your ideas to what others are saying. There are people who may have gone through divorce, people who have litigated them, but no one has your life experience and knows the pieces you’re working with as well as you do. So do not take advice from others as gospel …. not even mine on this blog!

Please take what you learn and run it through your own system of questioning whether it is right for you and your situation because that is all that matters.