If you just found this video, you might be worried about what to do when your
spouse wants a divorce? I've got some ideas for you. It's often one of the most
devastating things that you can actually hear that your spouse wants a divorce.
What's up with that? I didn't see this coming.
Ugh! It's not what I wanted. It's not what I expected. Nobody gets married to get
divorced. It's not in the plan, originally. Okay, so I've encountered this several
times as a professional. I'm so thankful and grateful that it has not happened to
me personally and i think that there's some principles that we can apply that
will help through this kind of a difficult situation. A quick context and
some of you already know this. I spent about 13 years of my career doing child
custody evaluations for the court. I have worked with so many families who are
locked in the most nasty divorces that you can even imagine and I've had
countless clients over the years who have encountered this very event. So what
do you do? How do you handle it when your spouse wants a divorce?
Three tips for you today and these will be fairly quick. Number one - "breathe". okay?
Keep breathing and by that, I mean we get into crisis mode sometimes and when
something like this happens it feels like a huge crisis and it is in so many
ways. Most of what needs to happen is important but not urgent. So I want you
to keep breathing and get that brain of yours out of fight-or-flight mode
because if you respond to your inclination to fight or run away,
probably it's going to make it worse. Understand that your brain is wired to
do that, we've done some other videos that talk about the brain science behind
this. Keep breathing and literally breathe. I mean take a deep breath in
through the nose, hold. Let us stretch for just a second.
Out through the mouth nice and slow.
Do two or three of those. Get yourself calm now, chillax a little bit. Let's get
that brain out of fight-or-flight mode. This is important. It's not necessarily
urgent but it's going to feel urgent. So number one tip, "breathe".
Number two - "focus on what's wrong, not who's wrong." Focus on what's wrong, not
who's wrong. You can see why I would say this because when a relationship gets to
the point where someone is saying that they want a divorce,
usually it's because there have been patterns or dynamics that have built up
usually over time where there's something going wrong in the
relationship. Let's compare and contrast that for just a minute with the
alternate view which is someone is wrong in this relationship. See as long as
we're focused on who's wrong, we're going to be blaming and criticizing that makes
it worse. A huge monster study done by Dr. John Gottman demonstrated, that
almost 70% of all of the problems in a relationship are unresolvable. He
found that this was true of happy, well-adjusted, stable, satisfied couples
as well as the miserable, highly conflicted, headed for divorce couples.
They all have problems. What makes the difference?
Well, the miserable couples over here got into a pattern, four-part pattern. He
called it the "4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse" that starts with criticism
which leads to defensiveness, which leads to contempt, which leads to stonewalling
or turning away from each other instead of turning toward each other,
that's what Gottman found. When we focus on who's wrong, even if we don't intend
it, it comes across as criticism and then
we're off to the races with that four-part negative process that was
shown in the research to drive people apart not together. Now, I said that I
would share three tips with you. Here's the third one -
"focus on you" okay? You start working on personal improvement, personal
development. You're going to be distracted I know because you're going
to see all of these things that your spouse or possibly your soon-to-be ex
spouse could be doing better and you know that you're right and you are.
I mean we're going to give you that one. Yeah, things would be better if they
would shape up. Problem is you don't have any control over there.
And when you focus on what they could do better, it's kind of like teaching a pig
to sing. It just frustrates you and makes the pig mad. So instead, we're turning our
focus back here where we've got some control. I guarantee there are things you
could be working on. You follow? Yeah, work on those things. You commit to personal
development and personal improvement no matter what and don't do it for the
purpose of trying to get your spouse back. No. That almost always backfires you.
Do it no matter what. Because no regardless of the outcome of this
marriage, you're going to need to be in a better position and I know that there's
things that you could be working on. So those are my three tips. Breathe okay?
Keep breathing, calm down that fight-or-flight response,
Number 2, focus on what's wrong not who's wrong. That will lead you to the
solution of what's right not who's right. And then third commit to a process of
personal development and personal improvement no matter what. Was that
helpful? I hope it was. If you've got some suggestions for other topics or ways
that I could do a better job working for you, leave me a comment.