Divorce is Easy: Only people who have never been divorced say this

In the thousands of times that I have sat across the desk from an individual contemplating ending their marriage, I have on only two occasions, had a person acknowledge that they fully expected the relationship to end this way. The point being, everyone is surprised when they end up in a divorce lawyers office. Everyone is surprised when their relationship is the one that ends in some fashion other than “death do us part”. No one expects it, because everyone believes it when they say, “In sickness and in health”, “For richer for poorer”. We humans are imminently hopeful beings. We want it to work. We know the statistics, yet we march down the aisle and say those words. Each one of us who has done so, did it and said it, and believed it, and had total confidence that WE were the couple that would beat the odds. We heard what the personal skeptics said, the ones who told us we were too different, it would never work, we were too young, too old, too naïve, and did it anyways. Because we believed it. We would be different.

The shock of ending up in my office is overwhelming. I get it. I did it. I was a disaster when I unexpectedly ended up in the office of one of my colleagues as a client, after 19 years of marriage. I was the same as any of my clients. Shocked, ashamed, bewildered, disoriented and numb.

Every study on the subject tells us that half or more of marriages end in divorce. Everyone knows it. It doesn’t help to ease the pain of that moment.

Pundits and many religious teachers say that there are so many divorces because it has become too easy. That myth likely began when states like California began “No Fault” Divorce. Which just means, if you ask for a divorce, you get a divorce. Period. Who did what to who, is not a consideration in the granting of a divorce. “Dissolution of Marriage” is the legal term. Changing the verbiage has not made it easier. Changing the burden of proof, to “Irreconcilable Differences” (That’s the fancy term for No Fault) has perhaps in some ways shortcut the litigation, but the pain is the same.

The grieving process is what it is. There is no court order or legal process to change the way people do it, and everyone grieves the end of the marriage that they expected to last until death. Even if they are relieved to be away from a person who was a danger, aggravation or nuisance, the grieving still must happen. The bargaining, the anger, the sadness, it all happens. Everytime.

It is not ever “easy”. Some cases move faster and with less drama and legal activity than others, but I have yet to see one in which it was “easy” for the parties.

The purpose here, it to help people appreciate this. I am occasionally frustrated, when I have this conversation, one on one, for the umpteen thousandth time. I keep thinking, if only people knew. It takes a great deal of courage to make an appointment with a lawyer and actually show up to talk about this. I am certain that there are many people who are having this emotional process going on and think they are the only one. The only one plagued by the failure, the shame, the disarray that occurs in the life of one grieving the loss of relationship, and I want to help them know that it is a process, with stages, and there is something better on the other side.

It is notoriously, one of those awful times in life, that the only way out is through. If I could speak to those people, I would tell them to talk to someone, a lawyer, a therapist, and explore the options, take a step, start the process, of whatever it is you need to do. It can’t get better through inaction.

I believe that any marriage can be saved, but we all know that many just are not. It is not the end of the world, it just feels like it. Divorces happen because people are human and flawed. When two flawed humans come together, not only do they not fix each other, sometimes they make each other worse. In and through it all, humans keep signing up and walking down that aisle. The death of that expectation and hope of “forever”, is anything but “easy”.

Relationship Reset

For over 17 years now, I have worked hard to help people keep it together while their lives are falling apart. I have experienced fatalities within the context of a half dozen of my cases, due to heart failure, overdose, suicide and substance abuse. I have sat with a client at counsel table while they are told that they will no longer have their children in their residence. I have asked questions in a courtroom, on hundreds of occasions, about the final and complete breakdown of a marriage and have on a few occasions donned a black robe to make a judicial finding and affix my signature to a Judgment stating that a marriage is irretrievably broken and therefore dissolved. I have received phone calls from a client on their way to jail, on their way out of jail, or telling me their spouse is in or going to jail. I have met with clients in rehabilitation and mental health locked facilities. I have met with clients in the presence of their mental health professionals. I have seen and heard about the stitches, bruises and mental scars of physical, verbal and sexual abuse. I have conversed with clients about what it is like to find your child dead, to find your spouse with another lover, to want to end your own life.

I have done these things at times, while my own life felt like, or actually was falling apart. I continued to practice, show up to court and hit my mark, through a variety health crises
(a miscarriage on the eve of my 40th birthday); injuries (a fractured vertebrae); and personal losses (my Grandmother, my Grandfather, my beloved Mother-in-law); through the emotional ends of close professional alliances (The best paralegal I ever knew, wisely chose motherhood over the practice of law, several associates left me for greener pastures, and a dear friend and colleague recently abused and betrayed my trust); divorce, recession, several office and home relocation and two too many visits to the ICU with my son. I learned a few things in this battle field of humanity about myself and others, and I‘m compelled to share what I have learned.

What I have learned is, you don’t have to stay in that place, the excruciating location in your life, where things are unmanageable and hope is gone. Humans possess an immense and amazing power, that is, to accept our human condition, to recognize and acknowledge God, and to surrender our will and our ego.

If and when we truly put those simple concepts to work, we then become able to transcend the greatest tragedies and challenges that life can hand us. Our ego, our mind, as it struggles against circumstances that we judge as “wrong” or unfair, unjust, exacerbates our condition, and complicates our difficulties. When we come to a place that we can surrender to what is, focus on what we can control, ourselves. Release the past and embrace the uncertainty of the future, everything changes. We change.

Any relationship can be saved. That doesn’t mean that every relationship will be saved, but, if both parties, to any relationship are willing to truly get over themselves, get right with God, release their ego attachments to “what is” and accept the uncertainty of life, that dramatic change would heal any rift.

This is biblical, this is spiritual, and what I have seen in the myriad tragedies that I describe above. A spiritual awakening precedes any real life change. I am hoping to help people discover and find this in their own lives. I have worked and coached and supported people through tragedies and break ups for so many years. I am eager to work with people who wish to avoid the devastation, head off a divorce before it happens, roll up their emotional work sleeves and do the personal work of transformation that can keep things together, before it all falls completely apart.

I used to always marvel at the amazing transformation my clients go through in the course of their divorce. Abusers must gain insight, victims must learn self respect, addicts must become clean and sober, and liars must tell the truth. Whether by virtue of the court’s requirements upon them, or the transitions of life in the process or the desire to maintain a relationship with one’s children. I have always marveled about how different it would be if the transformation was sought and achieved before the dismantling of the marriage and the family. I am working on that now. Attempting to help people with these lessons, these realizations and practices that can reset a relationship.