Marriage is hard.
Dismantling a marriage is hard.
Divorce is hard.
Recovering and grief are hard.
Dating in a sea of baggage-laden midlifers is hard.
But do you know what’s even harder?
Experiencing those things feeling like your hair’s on fire and your heart is permanently pumping Speed. A place where you are constantly fire-fighting from a place of external reaction, feeling worried and thrown about like an old slipper by a puppy, no sense of agency or intention or control, feeling constantly on the back foot, and in a perpetual state of emergency mode.
I know. I was there for a time. It overshadowed every part of my days, nights and thoughts, until I got some coaching and was able to separate the divorce from the rest of my life.
Midlife, now an extended, decades long stage of life, will throw any number of curve balls at us - relationship issues, grief, loss, disappointment, overwhelm, and yes, sometimes, the end of a significant relationship. That doesn’t mean we have failed.
Why divorce is not a dirty word
We are never the same person twice. We are constantly evolving and growing as individuals, constantly influenced by terrible and wonderful new experiences and interests and sometimes the fall out of evolving within the pressure cooker capsule of a family environment can mean the person we started out with is no longer the person we can continue with. Not withstanding the fact that people can (and very often do) behave badly, it doesn’t have to be a failure of any kind. It just is what it is.
When I found out my husband was gay, we happened to have friends staying for the weekend. Yep, it was a total shitshow. I mean, there was shit hitting the proverbial fan all around while our friends sat in the midst of it wiping themselves down, wondering how the hell they had ended up in the horror show unfolding. In many ways though it felt poignant since they were the same friends who had been there when my ex-husband and I met and got together, so I told them later it was their payback!
On the evening of the day my marriage fell apart, one remaining friend who was in the midst of his own separation (and the weekend had been organised to give him a fun time away from it all - oh how we still laugh about that!), he mentioned to me he knew a good divorce lawyer. It was only at this point I collapsed on the floor in horror. Not when I found out my husband was gay, Not when I realised he’d been cheating on me. Not when it dawned on me that the marriage was over and I’d be left with the Herculean task of raising the girls mostly on my own,
No. It was when he mentioned the word divorce.
Only then did the enormity hit me. That we now had to dismantle this marriage (although unwittingly it had actually be unravelling for some time) and imploding the family I had so carefully cultivated.
It can be, and was for me, the most challenging experience in my life (and I’ve had a few). We think about the legal wrangling and time spent totting up every single expense from tampons to taxis for accountants and solicitors to pour over your life and make decisions not based on the lies, pain and betrayal inflicted on you, but by a spreadsheet that doesn’t take into account the loneliness of endless 4am’s when you’ve three sad kids in your bed and another night is spent with no sleep.
But it’s the emotional toll that wrecks you. The bickering, the email grenades landing in your inbox without warning that derail your day, the lacerations of logistics that used to be wrapped in love. It is devastating.
How coaching can help you divorce better
What I have learned is that divorcing well - ie not being eviscerated in the process - is all about boundaries and trying to agree rules of engagement, yet we can get so caught up in the day to day fire-fighting and missile launching we never pull back and agree a plan for how to act, respond and define what a successful functioning family might look like and then work towards that.
I went to coaching during my divorce and the mere experience of having that neutral space to think and process the process was in itself powerful. Drilling down to understand what some of the main issues where (not of the divorce but in the process itself that was drowning me) and put strong boundaries in place was game-changing.
Just one little example was putting boundaries around when we communicated to each other. It had become all consuming and drained the energy from me that I desperately needed to be focusing elsewhere, so when my coach asked me how could I separate the divorce from the the day to day living of raising three small girls alone and trying to manage my career, I was able to recognise that part of it was the constant stream of emails and texts I’d get from my ex - the bitter battles over WhatsApp, logistics getting lost in long emotional outpourings, the devastation of not being seen and heard - that just populated every day with no restraint. I began to dread opening my laptop in the morning and my stomach would lurch every time my phone pinged.
But so simply, and so quickly, using the power of coaching that I use every day to help my clients see clearly, she helped me first recognise that I could bring some agency to that experience, and secondly, form a plan around boundaries.
I emailed my ex, explaining how emotionally and practically disruptive it was to have no structure around our communications and I was sure it was the same for him. Could we agree please on a period of time each week where we would exchange our emails / answer queries / respond to messages so that we could live our lives more effectively and then be present when we were engaging with each other? I suggested Friday afternoons so I could focus on work, but asked him to suggest another time if that didn’t suit. He replied that was fine. And suddenly we had a structure that meant we could elliminate a considerable amount of emotional stress. And here’s what happened:
I kept an open document where I threw any thoughts / reactions / requests and then once a week pulled it all together. What I found was that often by the time Friday came I could remove a lot of emotion from the facts.
I was able to breathe throughout the week and focus my attention where it needed to be.
We had a clear boundary and so if I happened to get a rogue email on a Tuesday morning, I simply didn’t open it and went about my day. I felt an agency and a sense of regulation I hadn’t before.
That one small change, changed so much. When I’m coaching a women going through the gruelling process of separation or divorce I help her get perspective and put shape and boundaries on the experience so she can also focus on building her new life in whatever form that needs to take.
Not negating the disappointment or hurt, the end of a relationship is not a failure, but if not handled with intention and support, divorce can be devastating.
With an extended midlife, it is very likely that the search for The One is now less singular. It is far more likely to mean finding The One ‘for now’ at various stages of our lives. The fairytale that one person will come along and save us, is perhaps too much for one person to take responsibility for over a 60 year period.
As we are bombarded by the love language of Hallmark and commercialism around times like Valentine’s Day, it can be be daunting to digest where we are on the love adventure, especially in midlife when there are likely multiple other drains on time and energy, such as child-care, parent-care, and careers.
How we talk about our love history has a huge impact on our love future. The words we use, the memories we magnify, the narrative we relate has a profound impact on how much we get to write the next chapters of our love life.
While divorce can certainly be distressing, it doesn’t have to be a disaster. Prioritising your emotional wealth as much as dividing the spoils, can mean a healthy recovery, an empowering reset, and a confident approach to relove.
I'm thrilled to be running a new workshop called *Renew : Recover, Reset & Relove After Divorce* with Geneveive Gresset, relationship coach and one of only a few Master Certified Matchmakers in the world. Taking place on 30th June, in Howth Yacht Club, Dublin, we’ll also be running this in London in the Autumn so please email me and I’ll send you the details shortly (alana@alanakirk.com). Find details for early bird tickets for the Dublin event here.
We’ll be helping attendees reflect on their past dating patterns, their current desires and their future needs, this one-day workshop deals with the emotional rollercoaster from divorce to finding love again. But most importantly, we'll be giving tangible, practical tools to help women navigate the process of separation or divorce in a way that isn't destructive to their emotional wellbeing (and long-term outcomes).
Here is a link to a chat Genevieve and I had on midlife love a few months ago.
I’d love to know how you think about this topic, so please join me in the comments below (if you’re reading this in an email, please click on the link below to go through to the website to join the conversation.)
And please take a moment to like and share if you enjoyed it!
Also, come join me for my next fun and practical Happier Habits Adventure starting in the 3rd June. Spread over 4 weeks, it will be packed full of life-enhancing habits to help you manage your emotional weather, regardless of the actual weather! The tools I share will be life-long habits you can build easily into your everyday life… going deep enough to give you real practical, powerful tools to run your life rather than feel run down by it, but easy and light enough to fit around your life while you get on with the day job of being you, in all the roles and responsibilities that entails.
We’ll be covering things like
🌟 life and health audits,
🌟 habit hacking,
🌟 goal setting (not in a whip-led way, but based on redefining what you want in various areas of your life).
🌟 I’ll be explaining the three superpowers of midlife,
🌟 and most of all we’ll be looking at how you build life-long habits and practises for self-connection.
All the details are here.
If you’d like to take a moment to check in on your life to see how you can do to have more good days, you can book a one hour 1:1 Discovery Coaching Session with me where you get to think about you, how to manage this life you are living, and invest some time and thought on you. Radical idea that, is it? To invest some time and thought on you? Details are here.
Paid subscribers get a 10% discount - just email me at alana@alanakirk.com