s born out of that.<\/span><\/p>\nI see people of all ages, and a mix of men and women. A lot of the time, their heads are spinning with worries. It tends to be stuff about children, the house, school holidays and money. Overall, it\u2019s uncertainty that\u2019s keeping them awake at night, and the overwhelming question: what will my life be like after all this?
The effect on people\u2019s mental health can be huge and it\u2019s common for people to have really tough weeks. Maybe you planned to be on holiday and you\u2019re having to deal with emails from your lawyer, or you\u2019re trying to negotiate a financial settlement so you can stay out of court. There\u2019s also more stigma around getting divorced than people think. Clients have told me that they stopped getting invited to things, or people don\u2019t know what to say to them anymore. That can be incredibly lonely. It\u2019s helpful to have someone to talk to who is compassionate and knows this process inside out, but also a step removed from your lives.<\/p>\n
When it comes to the reasons why people divorce, every couple is different, but there are common threads. The first one is simply that people grow apart rather than together. We tend to imagine that divorce comes from something big and dramatic, like an affair or one person being dreadful, but mostly it comes from little things that build up over time. You can be in a couple, but you can be living parallel lives, especially if you\u2019re both busy. Then something happens that makes you stand back and take stock \u2013 maybe it\u2019s the pandemic, retirement, or a health scare \u2013 and you realise you are lonely in your marriage, and that you don\u2019t really know each other anymore. If you can find ways to keep communication open then maybe you can bridge that gap, but it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n
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‘Divorce can be hard, painful, and complicated, but seeing clients come through it is such a privilege.’<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]
<\/span><\/p>\nThe second reason is a bit of a clich\u00e9: it\u2019s not you, it\u2019s me. Lots of us associate affairs with divorce, but infidelity can \u00a0be a symptom, rather than the cause, of the marital breakdown. There\u2019s an interesting therapist called Esther Perel, who writes about how affairs can often be about an identity crisis. It\u2019s not necessarily the result of an unhappy marriage but it can come from one person feeling like they\u2019ve lost themselves somehow. The affair gives them a chance to reconnect with that lost part or escape from turning into someone they didn\u2019t want to be. But one person\u2019s search can have a devastating impact on a marriage and can be the catalyst for separation.<\/p>\n
The third reason is maybe you were never getting quite what you thought you were. People are so different \u2013 some of us are careful, some of us fall in love because we need something at a particular time and some of us enjoy the intoxicating feelings that come with being in love. Whatever it is, it can be easy to commit without knowing exactly what you\u2019re committing to. A question I\u2019ve thought about a lot is: how long does it really take to get to know someone? Is it months? Is it years? Can we marry someone without really knowing who they are at the beginning? Or maybe we\u2019re hoping they\u2019re someone we need them to be. In these cases, sometimes it works out and couples grow together, and in other cases it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Divorce can be hard, painful, and complicated, but seeing clients come through it is such a privilege. I\u2019ve had so many people say, \u2018I need this to end\u2019 and \u2018I\u2019m never going to get through this\u2019 and then I\u2019ll see them years later and it\u2019s almost always turned out better than they anticipated. I wish that I could show the people that are in the middle of it what the end of it could look like.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My top tip for couples navigating a divorce would be just to take a minute. When we\u2019re stressed, we get stuck in survival responses of fight, flight, freeze. Whatever your default response is, it\u2019s not usually the time to either do everything or nothing. Try and find a way to take a breath and think about what you want, and get an outline of a plan without feeling like you need to take any steps.<\/p>\n
Another top tip is to get the right people around you. Choose the right advisers \u2013 do you need a lawyer, a therapist, a financial advisor, a divorce consultant? There are lots of resources that can give you information about the divorce process. Find friends and family members you feel safe enough to talk to. A kind, listening ear can go a long way.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s so important to take care of yourself. Divorce can be much more consuming than people think and there are practical ways you can deal with it. You might have protected time where you don\u2019t do anything related to the divorce, such as a certain time in the evening, or set up a separate email account for matters related to the divorce so reminders aren\u2019t constantly popping up on your phone.<\/p>\n
And finally, just know that it will end. At some point, you will be free of it, and there\u2019s light at the other end of the tunnel.
<\/span><\/p>\nAs told to Alice Hall<\/p>\n
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IMAGE: Cady Pearce<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most of the time, people get divorced not because of one really big thing but because of lots of little things that end up being too big to overcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4539,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"guestgrazia","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4515"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4549,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4515\/revisions\/4549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}