Many years ago, when I was far younger and less experienced, I remember listening to an episode of This American Life titled “Plan B”. It’s all about how most of us aren’t living the kind of life we thought we would be. In fact, most of us aren’t even on our plan B—we’re on plan E, F, G, or even R.
Why is that? Why do we assume that the plans we have for our lives when we’re young will come to fruition?
One reason is that humans are terrible at predicting, managing, and embracing change. There are numerous studies on this very topic. If we look to the past, we can see how much we’ve changed over the course of 5 or 10 years—but when we’re asked if we think we’ll change in the future, we just can’t get there.
I mention all of this because I fell into the same trap. I got married young, and the idea of divorce had never once crossed my mind. My parents had been married their entire lives—so we would be too. I believed the people my wife and I were in our early 20s would be the same people we’d be in our 40s. I couldn’t fathom the changes I would go through in the decades to follow.
“Change before you have to.” — Jack Welch
Over the 15 years of my marriage, I changed—a lot. I let go of things that no longer served me and no longer aligned with my personal values. Looking back, I’m not sure those things ever truly aligned with who I was—or who I am now. I was changing, growing, and ultimately, our marriage wouldn’t survive. The process of separation and divorce would become one of the most painful experiences of my life.
We hired a mediator to help us divide assets and put together a shared parenting plan. Before this, I didn’t even know family mediators existed. I thought everyone ended up hiring lawyers and fighting it out. I won’t go into too much detail about what the mediation process was like for me (I’ll save that for a future post), but let’s just say it’s a big reason I decided to become a mediator myself.
“Divorce is hard. It doesn’t matter if you’re the one leaving or if you’re the one who got left. It makes folks do crazy things.” — Ted Lasso
My plan is to post weekly—sharing ideas and strategies to help you through the meat grinder that is divorce. If you end up hiring me as your mediator, great! If you don’t, I still hope you find value in what I’m sharing here.
You can have Ground Rules delivered weekly to your inbox. Subscribe below.