My Divorce Mistakes
During my divorce, I made many, many mistakes. I hope, if anything, the information that I provide will help you avoid these same mistakes. You might make other ones, but at least you won’t make these ones.
The biggest mistake that I made, and one that is so difficult to avoid, is becoming contentious. With my x-wife, I harbored so many ill-feelings about finances that I wanted to explode. As I have mentioned, my x-wife liked to spend A LOT of money. I wanted her to be able to be financially secure since she was the mother of my children, but I felt she wanted to lead a life of excess on my dime.
I’ll admit. I was bitter. Should she be able to lead a life better than me when I am earning all the money? What happened to the girl I once knew who could be happy without all this excess material stuff? She was gone and in her place was Leona Helmsley.
So, I became contentious when she told the lawyers that she needed all of these things in order to go on with her life. I fought, and fought, and fought and realized that I was losing.
So many great ideas have to come to me from experts after starting this divorce website. Often, I wish they had come before.
One such item that came my way ex-post-facto, which would have saved me a lot of grief, was Dr. Reena Sommer’s How to Avoid the Ten Biggest Divorce Mistakes. I have written about Dr. Sommer before as her book helped my friend Eric through his wife’s affair.
In dealing with finances, there are two facets: the numbers and the emotions. I was having to deal with both. I am good with numbers as they are very logical. Even though it was depressing seeing what I would have to pay, I could at least get my head around the numbers. But, I was having difficulty dealing with it emotionally.
In the Ten Biggest Divorce Mistakes, Dr. Sommer teaches how to deal with a lot of the emotional volatility of divorce. She shares with you when to be friendly with your spouse and (what I liked!) when it might be ok to be contentious.
The reality for me, and for most people, when they are going through a divorce is this: You are not thinking clearly. During my divorce, I realized that as I became contentious, I became less rationale and was not thinking clearly. This is normally a strong suit for me.
The Ten Biggest Divorce Mistakes helps you think clearly when you are in the midst of this emotional chaos.

October 2nd, 2008 at 7:19 pm
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