He was consumed with frustration and anger. With the accusations, the disrespect, and the constant disdain from my ex, all I could think about was how unreasonable I was being and how I was making the whole situation worse than it needed to be.
She refused to listen, was always mad at me, and constantly accused me of something.
She didn’t seem to know what she was committing to, let alone how important it was to try to raise our little three-year-old daughter.
She thought that she was always right and I was always wrong. I felt the same way about her!
I tried to voice my concern for our daughter, but as usual, the ex refused to listen. At one point, she “mandated” that we follow a schedule every other day (providing zero stability or consistency for a three-year-old. This was confirmed by two child psychologists I contacted).
When I shared the views of the two child psychologists with the ex, she only leaned in more!
No matter what I said or did, it only made things worse. I was at my wit’s end and had no idea what to do to try to change the abhorrent situation.
I’m pretty sure the ex felt the same way.
What the hell could I do to try to make things better?
It hit me like a ton of bricks… The more I reacted with intense anger, the worse things got.
As I reflected on anger, I began to understand that whenever I got angry, I lost control of myself, of the interaction, and rarely got what I wanted.
In other words, when I reacted with anger towards the ex, she would never agree to anything I wanted.
In other words, my anger only seemed to backfire when it came to the ex.
He knew he had to get Clarity for what he really wanted. I then had to determine the person I needed to be in order to stay calm and figure out how to communicate with the ex in ways that would be much more likely to have the result I wanted.
My WHY was my three year old daughter. Alie she needed her to do her best, especially to be the best father she could be. This included giving her the best examples I could and trying to figure out how to co-parent her with her mother.
I vowed to make my daughter the top priority and strive to remain calm no matter what during each and every interaction with the ex.
It was perfect? Hell no, but overall I did a great job of staying calm and not reacting.
Over the next several months, the overall situation with the ex began to calm down and we began to do a better job of co-parenting for the sake of our daughter.
What can you do to try to create positive change in the area of your own challenging divorce situation?
There is a free tool to help you gain Clarity so you can determine how to change to start creating positive underlying change.
It’s called The Clarity Exercise and you can access it for free at:
The password is “clarity1”
You will have access to a list of Intentional Ways of Being that will help you understand WHO and HOW you need to intentionally BE in order to create what you want.
I strongly suggest that you start the exercise by asking the best possible question, which should focus on the biggest challenge you are facing.
For me, this question was: “What do I really want for my daughter?”
If you need help, please contact me and I can provide guidance to help you zero in on the most insightful question for you.
Until next time.
Good luck