Navigating Divorce Without Regret: Avoiding Common Mistakes

Divorce.

It’s become a common occurrence.

The statistics are bleak.

1 in 2 first marriages will end in divorce.

The rate is even higher for second marriages, with 2 out of every 3 ending in divorce.

With statistics like these, it’s no wonder that most people have friends and family who have been through a divorce. If you are close enough to someone who has been through a divorce, it’s likely that they have shared with you some of the regrets they have about how they navigated their divorce.

It’s not so much that they regret their decision to end the marriage. It’s more that they regret how they did it.
When they look back on their divorce journey, they see the mistakes they made and regret not having done things differently.

The Divorce Minefield

I compare navigating divorce to navigating a minefield. Landmines are everywhere.

Each stage of your divorce journey hides potential landmines that can wreak havoc on every aspect of your life, now and for decades to come. From how to decide whether to end your marriage, all the way through to beginning a new relationship, and everything in between.

Stepping on a landmine in the context of divorce leads to financial, legal, and practical mistakes that can negatively impact your children and your relationship with them, your work or business, your mental and physical health, and even your future relationships.

These mistakes create financial challenges as well as co-parenting challenges, both of which are detrimental to your children and often lead to bitterness, resentment, and regret.

This might explain the statistic I referred to earlier that has 2/3 of second marriages ending in divorce.

Identifying Divorce Landmines

The good news about actual landmines is that once you uncover them, it becomes exponentially easier to avoid setting them off.

Divorce landmines are the same.

Without a plan to navigate divorce, without a map of where the landmines are, no matter how careful you are taking each step, you’re almost sure to step on a landmine.

This is where my work as a Divorce Mentor and Coach comes in. You’re not expected to know everything there is to know about navigating divorce. The work I do with my coaching clients allows them to uncover the divorce landmines and navigate them successfully.

Here are the most common landmines or mistakes I help my clients avoid:

1. Making a hasty decision to end the marriage
2. Not having a plan for talking to their spouse about their decision
3. Making financial decisions without having all the necessary financial information
4. Hiring a lawyer and choosing the traditional adversarial legal route rather than exploring other more collaborative options
5. Making hasty legal decisions focusing on the divorce itself rather than the life they want for themselves post-divorce
6. Getting into a new relationship without having done the work to avoid repeating the same patterns

Managing Emotions During Divorce

Each of these mistakes results from decisions made from a place of heightened emotion. I’m not suggesting that emotions don’t have their place in the context of divorce. Divorce is absolutely an emotional experience, and feeling strong emotions is inevitable. In fact, trying to suppress or ignore them is a mistake. Suppressing your emotions is like holding a beach ball under water—it’s only a matter of time before the emotions resurface, usually with great force.

The key to navigating divorce without regret is to acknowledge these emotions, without letting them “drive the bus.” It’s about inviting them in and placing them in the backseat. That way, they get to come along for the ride, but they are nowhere near the steering wheel.

I understand all too well that this is easier said than done. Which is another reason why it’s a mistake to try to navigate divorce alone. There are various professionals available to help you make sound, reasoned, informed decisions every step of the way. Professionals such as financial advisors, mediators, therapists, child psychologists, and divorce lawyers who deal with issues related to divorce all day, every day. Each has an area of expertise to help you avoid making decisions that you will later regret.

Seeking Professional Guidance

One of my responsibilities as a Divorce Mentor and Coach is to ensure you know about all the resources available to you and to help you decide which one is appropriate for you at each stage of your divorce journey.

My ultimate goal is to help you make the decisions you need to navigate divorce without regret and create a solid foundation for an extraordinary life post-divorce.

It is absolutely possible.

Let me show you how. xo

If you're ready to take the first step towards creating an extraordinary life after divorce, I invite you to reach out and book a Discovery Call with me.