A potential client (let’s call her Mary) came to me late last week with the following problem: her friends are all telling her to go for the jugular, hire the shark with the sharpest teeth, and rip her husband apart and take everything he has. Her therapist is telling her to get out of the abusive relationship whatever it costs, even at the cost of walking away from everything but the kids. Her priest is telling her that all marriages have problems and that she and her husband need to work on their marriage more and recommit to its success. Her mother hated the guy from the day she first laid eyes on him and her father says, stay together for the children — divorce is always wrong. She cannot live with the man any longer but doesn’t want the children to lose their father.
What to do?
The problem is that Mary is listening to all this advice from outside herself; even the best meaning advisors cannot know your heart. If you don’t know your own heart how can you decide what is best for you? This is not some sort of new-age “follow your bliss” sort of thing. If you cannot know what you truly need to do then how can you make this sort of life-changing decision?
Each of Mary’s advisors is trying to help her; each believes he or she is seeking Mary’s best interests, but the advice of each is colored by that person’s biases and own interests. What Mary needs is someone who is knowledgeable about divorce, the realities of the Courts, and can help her to discover what she believes is really in her best interests.
That is what our divorce consulting and coaching services provide: an unbiased analysis and step-by-step decision-making process based on the real facts of the marriage, the realities of the Court System, and a discovery process with Mary herself by which she can discover what makes the most real sense for her.
It is crazy to jump into the maelstrom of divorce without having first discovered within yourself what results are realistic and most satisfy your long term needs — material, familial, financial, and otherwise.
