dudesndivorce.com

The next principle to think about as you contemplate the need to separate from your spouse is respect.  Do you respect your wife even when you disagree with things she says and does?  Do you feel like she respects you even though she may not agree with you?  Do you both treat each other with dignity and in a way that is respectful of the other person’s feelings and beliefs?  If after a lot of thought you can answer to the affirmative then there still remains a fundamental element of respect in the relationship and that is a valuable strength that can go a long way towards resolving the problems between you.  Like trust, respect is vital to building a safe environment in which a couple can allow themselves to be vulnerable enough to work towards a stronger relationship. 

Some time ago I wrote a post and an article on E-Zine.com about how relating to an ex was kind of like petting a porcupine . . . you can get close enough to do so without getting hurt but first you have to win their trust; otherwise all you get is quills of defensiveness and loads of pain.  Respect is a crucial piece to building that trust as it let’s the other person know that you take them seriously and will honor what they feel is important. 

Unfortunately respect is easily lost.  Sometimes the loss is the result of something one partner did to the other; an affair, violence, cheating or lying; such acts are demeaning to the other partner, are profoundly painful and demonstrate a lack of concern for their thoughts, feelings and sense of self-worth.  Resolution here can only be found when first the offending partner DEMONSTRATES by both words and actions that they regret their actions and are willing to humble themselves to the other and ask for forgiveness and then, second, the injured partner must genuinely forgive the offender.  Unfortunately many marriages are caught on the rocks of either an insincere apology or an undependable forgiveness.  If you ask for forgiveness and then repeat your offense then obviously you weren’t being sincere and that only compounds, multiplies, the disrespect.  Likewise if you forgive then you must be willing to forget which means you don’t bring up the supposedly forgiven offense each time you get into an argument.  Until both parties are sincere in their regret and their forgiveness the relationship will founder on the rocks of disrespect.

Respect is also sometimes lost by taking your partner for granted in the daily grind of life.  In the hustle and bustle of day to day living this can be incredibly easy to have happen. Because your partner is so much a part of daily life it’s easy to forget how much they contribute to the overall end product of our lives.  Personally I feel that this is one of the leading causes of the infamous “7 year itch” – at that point in time relationships have moved out of the honeymoon period and settled into the monotony of work, sleep, eat.  Lovers start taking each other for granted and start feeling the loss of emotional connection and significance.  This depreciation of the respect you felt in the relationship’s early days leads to dissatisfaction and resentment.  If this is the core issue for your marriage then get back in the habit of letting your spouse know how much you appreciate the things she does . . . and romance her a bit!  You might be surprised by what happens!   On a darker note though this same tendency to take the other for granted is at it’s worst when one partner comes to see the other as merely a means to an end; be it finances, a clean home or regular sex.  This depersonalization of the other is extremely destructive to the healthy respect that a strong marriage is built upon.  If you feel like this is the case in your partnership then you have a tough problem to fix; one that will probably involve some healthy confrontation and counseling to resolve. 

Finally a loss of respect can come in the form of disrespectful and abusive treatment.  Unfortunately, for whatever individual reason, some people grow sour over time.  Maybe they are unhappy with their life in general; maybe it’s something from their childhood, a habit of “stinkin’ thinkin’ or even a personality disorder.  Whatever the reason some people develop a habit of hateful and mean spiritedness in how they relate to others.  This can come in the form of belittling comments, verbal “tongue-lashings”, harshness, criticalness and constant arguing over even the smallest things; in extreme cases it can even lead to physical violence or cruelty.  Often these patterns don’t develop suddenly but slowly over time.  Like the proverbial frog being boiled alive we find ourselves being boiled in the vitriol of our partner’s ill-treatment before we realize there is a problem.  Unfortunately sometimes even after we’ve realized that there is a problem we hesitate to defend ourselves too strongly out of a mistaken idea that it’s better to avoid an argument.  If after some honest self-examination you realize that you are guilty of this kind of mistreatment of your spouse then counseling is probably in order.  Either to gain some better relationship skills or to address whatever is causing the pain inside of you that you are transferring onto others.  If you are the victim of this kind of treatment then to preserve yourself and the marriage both parties are going to need to get into some counseling and you need friends or family who will support you and build you up emotionally where your spouse is tearing you down. 

Respect is a crucial element in any relationship but especially in a marriage.  Nearly every form of the traditional wedding vow includes the injunction to “honor” one another and for good reason.  Without honor or respect the marriage relationship quickly becomes a source of bitterness, regret and anger.  Like everything else there is no perfect marriage and for some that may mean a certain degree of struggle with giving and receiving respect between spouses. Whatever your situation only you can really gauge the degree of the problem and the possibility of a solution.  Hopefully I’ve been able to provide some added grist for the mill as you consider these issues and how to respond.

Be well

Bill

As we continue this series about making the decision to remain in your marriage or leave it; the next factor we need to give some thought revolves around trust.   In my opinion trust is perhaps THE critical foundation upon which all relationships are built.  You can have commitment, you can have communication and you can have love – but if you don’t have a deep and abiding trust in each other the rest really doesn’t matter. 

Distrust in a relationship is kind of like rust on a bridge’s spans.  It is corrosive and weakens the strength of the overall structure.  It’s also hard to repair and is made worse with even the smallest “rain” or trust destroying act.  Also, and most importantly, it reduces the relationship’s ability to deal with the added load of a crisis just like rust destroys the bridges ability to handle a large and heavy truck, so that when put under that stress the bridge (or the marriage) can fail catastrophically. 

For a man debating with himself whether to stay or to go the question of trust becomes vital.  How much trust is left in the relationship?  What destroyed that trust and can it be rebuilt? How long has the lack of trust been growing?  If your marriage still retains a goodly amount of basic trust then no matter what the problems are you have something to work with as you try to resolve them.  I guess Trust equals hope in this regard.  On the other hand without any appreciable trust nearly every problem becomes ten times more difficult to resolve.

As you weigh the question of trying to remain in the relationship and resolve it’s problems or calling it quits and trying to rescue whatever can be saved from the ruins it might be wise to consider first and foremost just how much trust yet remains between you and your spouse.  Unfortunately there is no Trust-O-Meter available at your local department store and I’ve never been able to find a breeder for Trust Dogs that can sniff out trust like some do for narcotics.  Good news is that you really don’t need these . . . just sit yourself down and really think about how much you really trust your spouse; only some serious contemplation and brutal self-honesty can answer that question. 

So how much DO you trust her?  If very little then what has she done that has destroyed your trust?  Was it a one time betrayal (such as an affair) or is it a chronic lack of concern for your needs or feelings?  It might also be a chronic problem with alcohol, substance abuse, gambling, excessive spending or just a plain failure to meet the reasonable expectations of one spouse to another in running a house and building a family.  All of those problems can be resolved – some much more easily than others – but being very aware of the balance in your “trust bank” ahead of time is invaluable in determining if you have “sufficient funds” to see the process through to it’s end.

As with the other posts in this series this isn’t meant to provide answers – only bring your attention to factors to consider as you make this most difficult of decisions

Be Well

Bill

Hello there fellow divorced Dudes!  Hope all is well.

Thought I’d fire off a quick post on a great new site that’s come to my attention – Dinner at Dad’s.  Almost a month ago the blog’s author, David, left a comment on my introduction page asking if I’d have a look at his site.  Well between work, the holidays and a forgetful mind I didn’t manage to do so until this weekend.  Very much my loss. 

As most of our regular readers are aware Russ and I try to provide a recipe now and then on simple to make but good to eat dishes.  Having been divorced for quite some time we’ve both had to learn how to cook or starve (and believe me Russ and I are FAR, FAR, FAR from starvation!!)

Dinner at Dad’s is a great site; the author’s posts are fun to read and give a real personal quality to what could have been a pretty dry topic.  He discusses the typical day to day drama of being a single man raising kiddos (teenage daughters lord bless his soul!).  Along with these David includes some great recipes!

Needless to say I included the site in our links section and heartily suggest taking a look at what he has to offer. 

If anyone else has a site they’d like for Russ or I to review on a topic pertaining to the life and times of divorced “dudes” please let us know and we’d be happy to oblige.

Until next time – Be Well!

Bill

Christmas Eve in Divorced-Land:

Merry Christmas fellow divorced dudes!  Looks like for a lot of us it will be a white one!

Thought I’d post what I hope is an encouraging message as we slide into both Christmas and New Years.  I know that this time of year can be one of the worst for divorced men.  Often we find ourselves alone, missing our kiddos and grieving the loss of the dream of family that we once held so dear.  Quite often we are also the victim of some rather nasty power games by ex-wives who out of sheer hateful vindictiveness are denying us time with our children.  Nothing can be lower than that – or more short sighted.  We are also often faced with the harsh realities of limited finances due to the extra burdens of child support and alimony and thus can’t provide the gifts to our loved ones that we’d like to.  I imagine about now you’re wondering when we get to the encouraging part eh?

So what do we have to be encouraged about?

Well for one – we ARE divorced!  Yeah I know – that may seem a bit counter-intuitive to say the least but really it is a potential positive.  No matter who left who the relationship was dead or dying and in its death it was tearing everyone involved in it apart – even if it didn’t seem to be so at the time.  While a divorce is certainly an ugly ending to many hopes and dreams it can also be a beginning step for the creation of new hopes and new dreams.  I’m not minimizing the pain and loss of a divorce – but suggesting also that you consider the opposite perspective that now – for better of worse – you can begin to move forward in your life.  This is what has helped me survive many dark days as a newly divorced man.  Yes there are hurts and challenges and problems and if you focus only on those you’ll be absolutely miserable.  But you can also choose to look at the freedom you now have to create or pursue new dreams and new directions for your life.  That is, to me, an encouraging thought.

I always like to look back over the last twelve months at this time of year and think about all the things that happened, all the opportunities that developed for me, all the good stuff that happened that I could have never guessed WOULD happen at the beginning of the year.  There have been years when I became a grandfather, made a new friend, got a promotion or got to spend some wonderful time with someone I love.  I can also see where a dream came true for me that I would have never guessed.  I suppose what I am saying is that there is so much POTENTIAL in a year!  Good stuff!

For those of us who have been divorced a long time the New Year can give us a reason to do that looking back and see how our lives have changed since the divorce.  It is easy sometimes to focus on the bad – the money spent on alimony, the lack on contact with our kids . . .but it can also be a chance to reflect on some positive stuff as well.  Maybe you’ve found a new lady in your life – maybe you’re going to school or taking up a hobby you always wanted to pursue.  Maybe you’ve had a change in jobs or you’ve moved to a new town.  All of these have the potential to be positive.

Having said all of this I know that for many of you this Christmas seems anything but Merry and Bright; in fact is seems like one of the darkest and most hopeless times you’ve ever faced.  I won’t try to gloss it over – it is indeed a very dark time filled with pain and loss and sadness.  So don’t try to have a “merry Christmas” just grit your teeth and focus on getting through it.   Go ahead on to work if you can or sleep in late, watch Rambo movies all day and try to ignore the fact that it’s the holidays.  If you have to spend it with family and friends then just accept the fact that it’s going to be different and that you aren’t going to be the life of the party.  What ever it takes to get through the next 48 hours.  Things DO get better (believe it or not) I think every divorced dude on this site who has been divorced for a while will tell you the same thing – it gets better.  Life goes on and there IS happiness and joy and goodness to be found on the other side of divorce.  It doesn’t always come quickly but just like Christmas it comes just the same.

Merry or not I wish you all a blessed Christmas and New Year

Be Well

Bill

One of the hardest decisions you’ll ever have to make is the one involving if and when to leave your marriage.  Here at DudesnDivorce.com we believe in marriage and that it is the best possible institution upon which to base a family and raise children.  The best that is as long as both parties are reasonably emotionally healthy adults who are committed to working on the marital relationship.  Russ and I both know very well that sometimes that’s not the case and that when things degrade beyond a certain point that it is sometimes necessary for someone to finally say “enough is enough” and at least temporarily leave the relationship.

But how do you know when that time has come?  That truly is the nexus of the problem!  Having been there myself and having heard many other men wrestle with the same question I know very well how torturous it can be.  If you leave are you leaving too soon?  Is there still maybe some hope for the relationship?  Are you leaving for the right reasons?  Do those reasons justify the impact this will have on the children?  If you stay can you live with things if they don’t change?  What will the home life be like and what will that do to yourself and the children.  On and on and round and round the questions go with no resolution in sight.

Of course there is no way for someone outside of the marriage to answer those questions definitively for you.  While there is never a shortage of “friends” or family who will eagerly counsel you to leave they are really doing you a disservice since they won’t suffer any of the consequences of leaving and can’t really know all the factors to be considered the way that you do.  Contrarily there are also usually a few people who will tell you to “stick with it” no matter what – again this isn’t always the best advice since it’s frequently based more on ideology that on an accurate assessment of the costs of leaving vs. staying (emotional, financial, physical). 

While sources of balanced and helpful advice may be few and far between there are, I believe, some general principles that can serve you well in making a choice about when to leave and when to stay.  I’d like to briefly introduce each of these and then we can discuss them in greater length in following posts.

1.  Commitment – What is the commitment level?  Obviously since you’re thinking about leaving there are some problems in this department – how pervasive are they?  It’s normal and natural to entertain doubts about any relationship as your level of commitment to your partner ebbs and wanes over time. Relationships go through periods of boredom and the spark can seem to go out as the daily grind extinguishes meaningful communication – is that what is happening?  Or is it something much deeper?  Is there an active disregard for one another’s needs or just a passive one?  If you’ve gotten too lazy to serve one another then it’s probably fixable – but if you are both actively doing things that intentionally disregard the good of the other . . . well then the problem is much deeper.  Not unfixable – but much harder to do so.

2.  Trust – Without trust a marriage can not survive long.  This is why affairs are so deadly – they undermine the most basic level of trust between husband and wife.  Of course infidelity is not the only source of distrust.  A couple can be completely faithful to one another and yet still have issues in this area.  Reckless spending, undependability and lying are all trust destroyers.  How long has the trust been an issue?  The longer the pattern of behavior the harder it is to change and the more difficult to rebuild trust.

3.  Respect – Spouses should seek to build up and encourage their mate, not pull them down.  They should also not take each other for granted and expect a one way street in terms of meeting each others needs.  This is often a common problem when the wife is a stay at home mom who cooks and cleans and cares for children while the husband earns the daily bread out in the workforce.  Quite often we men tend to take the situation for granted and just expect a clean house and a hot meal . . . without thinking too much about our wife’s needs.  Of course that shoe fits either foot and women sometimes expect a lot from their husbands without much consideration.  While it’s easy to slip into with the daily grind a lack of respect for the contributions of each other can quickly undermine the satisfaction either spouse derives from the marriage – and that introduces a multitude of potential problems.

4.  Communication – Okay, for clarifications sake let me just say right here and now that “pass the salt” does not qualify as “communication”.   Communication involves actively seeking to gain a deeper understanding of the other person and their thoughts, beliefs, feelings and desires.  It’s not a debate, it’s not a fencing match and it doesn’t always involve you doing all the talking.  Communication isn’t something that comes naturally, believe it or not, and takes practice to learn how to do effectively.  If communication in your marriage is limited to long monologues by one person interspersed by a few grunts of acknowledgement by the other – or by lots of fighting – then you’ve got a problem.  If you can’t communicate then preserving the relationship is going to be hard – but if you CAN learn to communicate then any problem is instantly 5 giant steps closer to a resolution.

5.  Safety – Sometimes a relationship can become so toxic that it becomes literally dangerous to stay in it.  Most commonly this is a product of substance abuse, domestic violence and/or mental health issues.  If you find yourself in a situation in which either you or your children are in danger of physical or significant emotional harm then you need to get out – you don’t have to divorce but you need to put yourself and them out of immediate danger.

Those five general principles are a good starting point as you weigh your options and consider which road to take.  They can’t predict the future but they do help you gauge the possibility of restoring the relationship.  Not a simple answer but no simple answer is going to be worth much at this point.  If you are considering a divorce or separation then things have already become much too complicated for a simple solution.

My next post will concentrate on looking a bit more deeply into the idea of comitment.

Until then – Be Well!!

Bill

I’m going to start out this post by being very up-front with all of you; I am under a lot of stress.  Yes, I know, we all are but recently my stress level has really skyrocketed.  Some of it has to do with things in the workplace, some of it has to do with changes and challenges in my personal life and some of it amounts to a habit of thought I got into while I was down with the flu a few weeks ago.  You’ve probably noticed that there haven’t been too many posts from me lately and for that I apologize but the creative juices have just dried up and it’s been very difficult to compose something new for quite some time.

Well this weekend I accidently found myself with some free time; some plans I’d made fell through and I was left with a couple days “plan-free”.   Now Russ likes to insist that I am a Type “A” personality to which I respond that I will gladly work longer and harder than anyone else to prove him wrong!  But I DO have a slight tendency to put more on my plate that I should and so it was tempting to do the same with all that free time I stumbled into this weekend.   But on Saturday night as I was raking up the last of the leaves in the yard I took a moment to just stop and “be still”.  The sunset was beautiful in the cool Fall evening and the smell of the leaves and wood smoke from someone’s chimney combined into that special scent that only Autumn brings.  My rooster crowed his hens to roost and way off at the bottom of the hill I could just make out the sound of the creek water spilling over the stones.   Everything was peaceful and quite and calming and reminded me how much I love living in the country.

I guess that moment of peace touched off a deeper change in my perspective for the rest of the weekend as I found myself stopping more to enjoy the world around me.  I guess I just really took the time to APPRECIATE all the blessings in my life.  Not just my place in the country but my kids, my friends and my extended family.  It’s amazing how simple that sounds and yet how profoundly it affected my stress levels!  I found that I wasn’t worrying about undone projects at work, about bills or situations in my personal life.  A Man just can not appreciate the goodness in his life and be stressed out at the same time . . . it’s just impossible!

It is so easy to get wrapped up in worry and caught up in deadlines and projects and to-do lists but while many of those things are important they aren’t worth the damage to your health or the lost pleasure in your life that such stress can and does bring with it.  Not to say we all need to just sit back in a lotus position and meditate on the abstract . . . a little stress is good and healthy since it motivates us to get done what needs doing.  But – if your like me – it’s important to remember to take the time to enjoy life and adopt an attitude of appreciation for the goodness and pleasure in your life.

As divorced dudes I think this lesson is especially valuable as most men going through a divorce are dealing with more stress than probably any other time.

Worth a thought anyway

Be well

Bill