To Stay or Go? Divorce Pro Kate Anthony on How to Decide (and Thrive)
Show Snapshot:
Kate Anthony is a certified divorce coach and host of the mega-popular (and New York Times recommended podcast) The Divorce Survival Guide.
After leaving her own “toxic marriage” to successfully craft a “stellar” divorce, Kate now brings keen insight, warmth, and rigor to help women navigate the dislocating dissolution of a partnership.
Kate walks us through how to know when it’s time to call it quits—and how to survive with your sanity and bank account intact.
Plus, she shares fascinating wisdom on how to architect a marriage or partnership that is healthy and sustainable. So even if divorce isn’t on your radar, you will love her science-backed tools on relationship building. (And her super cool back story. Sesame Street actor, what?!!?).
In This Episode We Cover:
1. Kate’s path from a successful acting career to divorce coach.
2. What is divorce coaching and how does it work?
3. Ever heard of “role nausea?” Why you may be “sick and tired” of your relationship dynamics.
4. Thinking about getting divorced? Ask yourself these 3 questions.
5. Why a healthy marriage looks more like a high-function workplace than you might expect.
6. How is the pandemic affecting divorce?
7. Tips on putting your kids first in a divorce.
8. The #1 divorce watch out that can wreck your bank account.
9. How to take agency of your own happiness at midlife.
Quotable:
I’m 50, I’ve been divorced for 12 years and I am fine. I’m me and I’m happy. I am fulfilled on my own as a human.
If a marriage has gotten to a point where people are no longer being intentional with each other, you can redirect intention back to the places where it needs to be. This is not the case in emotional abuse, where the foundation is control, not love.
Word of Mouth. Kate Recommends:
I really wish that everybody knew that mediation is an option, even for people in high conflict divorces. And that you want to find a really good mediator because mediators are not all created equal. Like the coaching industry, it’s not regulated. So, I would say follow my friend Susan Guthrie on Instagram. She’s an amazing resource, she trains mediators. Know that there are options out there for you and that litigation is like pouring toxic fuel on your relationship, your future, and your finances.
More Resources:
Support Groups:
Follow Kate:
The Divorce Survival Guide Website
Most Popular Pod Episode:
Kate on Social Media:
Transcript
Katie [00:11]: Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women on life after 50 who are unafraid to age out loud. I’m your host Katie Fogarty.
If you would have guessed the number of marriages that end in divorce, what number would you pick? 50%? More? Less? When I hit the Google to figure this out, I was surprised to learn that in the US divorce is actually on the decline and hit a 50 year low right before COVID rolled into town. The divorce rate hovers now around 39%. But percents and numbers mean nothing when you examine your own marriage or partnership. The only number that most of us care about is whether we’re dividing our twosome back into one.
I’m joined today by a guest who can help answer the question: should I stay or should I go? And if I’m going, how to survive with my sanity and bank account intact. Kate Anthony is a certified divorce coach, and the host of the mega-popular podcast, The Divorce Survival Guide, which the New York Times calls a must-listen. Welcome, Kate.
Kate Anthony [01:09]: Thank you so much Katie, it’s so nice to be here with you.
Katie [01:12]: I’m so excited to have you as a guest. Before we dive in and talk all things divorce, I would love if you could share a little bit about your personal story because you have an usual one, right? Your early career was in acting, you had a 30-year career that ranged from being a child actor on Sesame Street to being an adult actor on Grey’s Anatomy. How did you pivot into divorce coaching and creating The Divorce Survival Guide?
Kate [01:39]: Oh that’s such a great question. Yeah, it sounds so glamorous, right?
Katie [01:44]: It does sound glamorous.
Kate [01:44]: But it’s not. [both laugh]
Katie [01:48]: To be friends with Oscar the Grouch and McDreamy, this is like, cultural icons.
Kate [01:52]: Yeah, I mean, right. What was I thinking? [both laugh] I mean, I peaked early I guess.
I mean actually, it was really a product of my divorce because, you know, being an actor in New York or LA, is not as glamorous as it sounds. Being on Grey’s Anatomy was fabulous, but it’s also not as glamorous or as lucrative as it sounds when you’re not a series regular. And I recurred on the show for many, many years and it wonderful and I just loved the experience of it. And, you know, it’s not a stable career. [laughs] let’s just say.
So, when I got divorced, I had been a stay-at-home mom for about 5 years. My son was three and a half but I had lost my job before, when I was pregnant so it had been about 5 years and I was like, you know looking at my future and thinking, what am I gonna do? And the acting thing, I was just kinda done with it for a variety of reasons. I was raised in the theatre, film, and television really wasn’t doing much for my creative juices. Theatre in LA, it’s fun, but it’s not paying. And the auditioning, and the driving with a 3-year-old, like it made no sense. I often say, in the book that I’m writing, I say that the cost-benefit traffic analysis really didn’t add up.
And so I realized I needed to find something else, right? So many of us reinvent ourselves after divorce, we have to. So many women, especially the ones who have been stay-at-home moms. We’re either restarting careers or we’re starting again from scratch, so that’s what I did, I started from scratch. People kept telling me I should be a therapist and I was like, I don’t want to go to school like that. [laughs]
Katie [04:02]: Sure, that’s another huge commitment.
Kate [04:04]: I had a three and a half-year-old, I was like, how the hell am I gonna go to graduate school? I mean look, many people do it, my mother did it. My mom got her Ph.D. when I was growing up, but because of that I think, I knew what that would take and I was not willing or able, constitutionally, to do that.
And then I had a friend, a very close family friend that I’d known my entire life and she said, “You know Katie I really think that you should be a coach.” I was like, “Well, what’s that?” And she had gone to school and become a coach, so I knew about it a little bit so I went for the first weekend of training and was like “Oh yes, this is it.” And I ended up studying coaching for the next three years and I really did go into it wanting to help people get through their divorces in the best possible way for their children. So I really geared my training towards that so I was certified as an individual coach and then I went back to school and I studied more as a relationship systems coach because that’s really what all of this is.
Katie [05:20]: That is so fascinating because I know there’s coaching, there’s wonderful coaching organizations and there’s career coaching, and there’s you know financial coaching and life coaching, but I honestly didn’t realize there was divorce coaching or relationship systems coaching and I wanna hear more about that. What is relationships- I can’t even say it, let alone… [laughs]
Kate [05:38]: I know it’s hard. [laughs]
Katie [05:41]: tell me about that
Kate [05:43]: It was organization and relationship [laughs] systems coaching, it’s really complicated. I mean essentially what that is, is coaching for more than one person. So, whether it’s in organizations, you’ll have coaches go into organizations and look at where the system is breaking down. I mean systems coaching is based on Systems theory. So, this is like, family systems and constellations, and you’re looking at the organization, or the relationship, as it’s own entity.
So essentially when two people enter into a relationship, they create what in this coaching modality we call, a third entity. So there’s person A, person B and then there’s the relationship. And what happens and what’s the dynamic that’s created when these two people come together and that’s completely separate from either one of them. In my case, that’s super, super toxic [laughs], right. I’m not necessarily toxic, I’ve never been toxic in any other relationship, I cannot speak for my ex-husband. I can but I won’t [both laugh] But our dynamic, when we were together, it was bad, right. And so, that was our entity.
And so, the coaching that work in is about sort of looking at all of the functions of the relationship and the dynamic that happens when the two people come together. And then there are all these other factors in the system. So, if you’re looking at an organization, the system is comprised of the CEO down to the janitors, and what does each member of the system sort of represent, what role do they play? And there are inner roles and outer roles, there are job titles. But then there’s like, the nurturer, there’s the complainer, there’s the disrupter, there’s in many cases the abuser.
And for a system to remain, all of these established roles, they kind of get established and they need to remain, in order for the system to remain. And so the system almost demands it. And this is particularly useful when you’re exiting a toxic relationship what tends to happen is we tend to maintain those dynamics because the system of that relationship demands it.
Katie [08:21]: What does that mean? When you say it demands it? This is so fascinating and my brain is literally whirling right now because I’m thinking of all of these systems. I mean you’re talking about the janitor and the CEO, I was like, I think moms have every title.
Kate [08:38]: They do, right. And so what happens is this thing we call role nausea. So, if you’re a mom, if you’re a stay-at-home mom, that may be one of your roles. One of your inner roles might be the nurturer and the caretaker. And sometimes we get really tired of being everyone else’s nurturer and caretaker and so we get this sort of role fatigue where we actually don’t want that anymore and we would like someone else in the system to take that on. Because the system doesn’t work if nobody- like in a family if no one is the nurturer and caretaker there’s a problem. But there’s also a problem if only one person has that role because it’s exhausting.
So, you know, in a healthy relationship you would go to someone else in the system, in the family, and you would say “Hey, you know what, I’m exhausted, by carrying the burden of this role, I need help, I need someone to help alleviate that.” And in a healthy system someone says, “Oh my god, yeah, I totally get that I can see why that would be exhausting for you, let me do my best to help you with that, I don’t want you to be tired.” In an unhealthy system, in a more toxic system,the response would be quite different. You know, and then this kind of exhaustion can lead to you know, this is why 69% of divorces are initiated by women, by the way.
Katie [10:21]: That is so fascinating and not remotely surprising [both laugh]
Kate [10:26]: Exactly.
Katie [10:27]: I can see that too because women really do a lot of the managing of, even in a healthy system, women I think are bearing the lion’s share of so many of the emotional decision making. It’s not even just doing all the work it’s doing a lot of the thinking about the work. I think even about my own relationship, which I think is you know, pretty solid. My husband is more than happy to do work if I tell him, I finally had to be like, “I’m sick of telling you, figure it out. That is not okay, why do I know everything that needs to get done and you’re not my employee and I’m tired of being the boss. I want a co-founder.”
So, I love the way that you even organize the thinking in ways that a lot of us can understand because we’ve all, for the most part, we’ve worked at some point. We’re familiar with the concept of janitor and CEO and boss, underling and direct report, and role sharing. But I don’t think that we’re typically cognizant of how those kinds of dynamics come to play in a relationship. Because I think we’re also sometimes sold the big bill of goods by the media, about love and marriage and how it all works. And there’s nothing more surprised than a brand new mother where you’re like, “Wait a minute, this is like, hard. I have seen all of those movies and none of them look like this.”
Kate [11:55]: None of them, right, exactly, you’re like, “Wait a minute this is false advertising.” I mean really, right, isn’t that illegal? That’s what I said when I had my son, I was like “Woah, false advertising, I am not okay with this.”
Katie [12:08]: Exactly, so you’re sort of surprised and it’s interesting to think about the family and the relationship, the marriage being a system that the two people who are in it, it’s obviously not always a man and woman, it’s two men it’s two women, it’s whoever it is. But they’ve created this sort of entity that they need to be a part of.
When I looked at your website and did the deep dive into The Divorce Survival Guide podcast, which is just totally amazing, I saw on your website that you actually also offer a coaching program which is basically Should I Stay or Should I Go? Which is so interesting. What are those questions? How do you, what are the key questions that — my audience is women — that a woman needs to ask when she’s trying to answer that question?
Kate [12:56]: Oh, you know, I wish it was…
Katie [12:58]: Do we have all day? [both laugh]
Kate [12:59]: Here are these, I know right, can we just go through the program? Because I wish it was like, answer these five questions. Because that’s not what it’s about. But I will say that my program is broken into three main categories or modules.
The first is, we all come to this question wanting to blame the other person and wanting to be right, [laughs] make them wrong. And that’s fine, to a degree, right. I’m sure he’s wrong, I’m sure he is, [laughs] but that’s not helpful. So, the first place we need to look is inside, the first thing we have to do is do the really hard self-work. And there are a few reasons for this.
The first is, given the stats that you were talking about earlier and the divorce rate going down. I think the divorce rate has gone a lot because I think the marriage rate is also going down a lot.
Katie [14:02]: No totally, there’s a lot, it doesn’t mean it’s all sunshine and roses for marriage…
Kate [14:07]: Absolutely not.
Katie [14:07]: …it just means that there’s fewer marriages and people are maybe not getting married, people maybe can’t afford to get divorced, there’s a whole host of reasons why people are not getting divorced that don’t mean good things. But I was surprised because growing up I thought it was 50% and I was like, this is going down, interesting.
Kate [14:23]: It is and then in August I think, or June, at the beginning of the pandemic it spiked by 35%. [laughs]
Katie [14:34]: That is not surprising either.
Kate [14:36]: Exactly, exactly.
Katie [14:37]: We were all like, hanging on by our fingernails. And I feel that those kinds of stresses are the things that put big fissures into relationships.
Kate [14:47]: Yeah. So, if we just take, you know, the first, the general statistics are first marriages, 50%, that’s changing, that’s great. The divorce for second marriages is 68%.
Katie [15:04]: Wow.
Kate [15:05]: And the divorce rate for third marriages is 74%.
Katie [15:10]: So, what do you attribute that to?
Kate [15:13]: To people not looking at themselves, to people wanting to blame him, blame the other person, and say hey, the other person was the problem, he or she was the problem, so let me just get rid of him or her and then get a new one. They’re not looking deeply at what had them choose that other person in the first place because that’s the same picker [laughs] that’s picking again.
Katie [15:42]: Yeah, you’re just getting like copy B of the same jerk…
Kate [15:46]: Exactly. He looks completely different, he’s you know, hotter, he wears different clothes, but he’s the same guy. And so, this is one of those things, this is why my program starts with the internal work.
Katie [16:05]: I think that makes so much sense. So what do you have to ask yourself? I wonder if it’s, go ahead, you tell me, what are you asking yourself to make sure that you’ve done the work so that you’re putting yourself in a better position to have a healthy, sustainable, amazing relationship?
Kate [16:23]: Well you know, you’ve gotta do the work on getting in touch with your inner critics and sort of healing those wounds and where did that come from. You want to look at your attachment style, how did the way that you were raised have you— what is the direct line to this relationship that is now feeling unhealthy or toxic or that you just don’t want anymore? A lot of this is about generational cycles of abuse or wounding or trauma. So, you’ve gotta look at those and you’ve gotta heal them. So, the only way that you avoid doing this over and over and over again is through your own healing. So, that’s sort of the first part and it’s a lot, by the way. [laughs]
Katie [17:12]: I’m sure, it’s hard.
Kate [17:14]: It’s not a list of questions, it is deep, deep work. And you know, it’s an online coaching program so, there’s only so much that I can, you know, help work on with them. But there’s a lot of information that I give people and a lot of tools to then, which I highly recommend bring to therapy or to private coaching.
Katie [17:41]: That’s so smart.
Kate [17:41]: That it really does give them the outline of, you know. People learn a lot just by doing their attachment style quizzes. Like “Oh! I have an avoidant attachment style, that’s why my husband is constantly feeling like we’re not connected. I’m actually avoidant.” That’s important information and that can be worked on, right. Attachment styles are not rigid. So, that is stuff that can be worked on but that’s important information to have.
It’s important to know what your love language is. Now it’s not important that you choose someone who has the same love language as you, but it’s important that you’re in a marriage with someone who cares enough about you, to learn what your love language is and then show their love to you in a way that you receive it. And it’s important that you care enough about your partner to do the same. So, if your partner's love language is physical touch, that means that I don’t care if you don’t like physical touch, he does. He feels love when you hold his hand. If you love him, it’s your job to hold his hand, whether you think that is silly or not. That the point of love languages and people get this backward and it makes me crazy. [both laugh] So, those are the important things that you need to know.
So, then the second module we move into, so that’s all the internal work. And then in the second module, we move more into the external. And that’s where we have really hard conversations about emotional abuse, what that looks like, what that feels like, what to do about it. It’s where we talk about communication, it’s where we, gosh what else do we do in that module, I can’t even…
Katie [19:28]: So, quick question for you Kate about emotional abuse. So, what about people who also just have, because I’ve seen a couple of friends go through this where it’s more like atrophy than abuse. But is that considered to be a form of emotional indifference, what is your take on that?
Kate [19:48]: No, that’s different from abuse. That’s the kind of thing that if you call attention to it, you can change it because you care. There’s a foundation of love, right. And if a marriage has gotten to a point where people are no longer being intentional with each other, you can redirect intention back to the places where it needs to be. In cases of emotional abuse, the foundation is control, it’s not love.
Katie [20:24]: Is that fixable, or no? Because you say on your website that you had a very contentious and volatile marriage so — this is not like a spoiler, it’s part of what you share on your website — but that you had a really stellar divorce. So, explain how one negative was able to become a positive and how did you create that?
Kate [20:46]: So, the first thing was that once we stopped getting our “emotional needs” met, stopped trying so hard to get our emotional needs met from each other, it was really easy for us to let go and show up for ourselves. We had an agreement and a commitment that we made in our very first mediation session in which we decided that everything that we did from then on forward was going to be in service of our child. And if it wasn’t good for our son, it wouldn’t happen. Even if it was good for me and I wanted it, you know, if it wasn’t the best thing for our son, it was off the table. And sure there were a couple of times when ego really got in the way.
Katie [21:39]: I bet, it’s hard.
Kate [21:41]: Totally, totally. And then you go and take a walk around the block and you’re like, "Ahh shit, all right, I guess I have to give that one up because it’s not best for my son.”
So, there’s that, and then also the system thing came into play and I, hope he never hears this [Katie laughs] because…
Katie [22:06]: This is a show mostly listened to by 50 plus women.
Kate [22:10]: So, that’s right, that’s not gonna be him or his wife. So, this is where that system thing comes in. In the beginning stages of our divorce, it went great. We were best friends, we did all sorts of stuff together, it was super great and like, we were the poster children for how to do divorce.
And then as time went on I would notice that we would still have these emotional flare-ups. And there were many, many instances where he was still being emotionally abusive to me in the ways that he had been during our marriage. They were you know, fewer and farther between, but they were still happening and I realized that I was still occupying the role of victim.
Katie [23:03]: So fascinating.
Kate [23:05]: Yeah. And that our system, and I needed to vacate it. And that was my power. My power was: I actually get to vacate this role, I actually get to not be a victim anymore. And I felt at the time…
Katie [23:23]: Was that hard though? Because it’s so difficult to change patterns.
Kate [23:29]: Oh yeah, it was messy and horrible, not gonna lie. [laughs] It was messy and horrible. You know, look, I’d been in a lot of therapy I was already coaching at the time, I’d done two decades at this point of sort of self-work. It’s not easy and it was messy as I’ll get out. But I did it. I had to simply just stop showing up and I actually severed ties with him for a bit.
Katie [24:07]: Did that distance give you the ability to just come back in a new format with your relationship?
Kate [24:14]: Yeah and unfortunately what ended up happening, you know when this started I thought, “Well all right, so the system will demand that there’s another victim.” And he had just gotten engaged and I thought, “If he’s not abusing me anymore, he’s gonna have to start doing it to her,” and unfortunately from what I’ve heard, he has. And that’s her journey and you know, we’re all very good friends, so this is actually a difficult conversation to sort of have. But we’re all very close and I hear this third hand I hear this from other family members, and I’m like, “I don’t want to know about it.”
That being said, they also have sort of outwardly a far better dynamic than we ever had. They laugh, he seems to genuinely enjoy her, which he never seemed to do with me, like I never felt like he really liked me. I think he genuinely likes her and I think their household is full of love and happiness and joy and all of those things, which is fantastic, for our kids. There are three kids in the mix here and it’s amazing. And also I have heard that this dynamic is showing up because he needs somewhere to put it.
Katie [25:47]: Do his own work I guess, I guess we all do. So much of this is about taking agency over our own behaviors and our mindset.
Hearing you talk, I was thinking about a moment that I had for myself in my own life, where I felt like I really need to take agency over my own happiness. Do you know what I mean? It’s not like victimhood, but it’s more about, I have a loving relationship with a man that I adore, that I’ve been with since I was a senior in college, but at different points, I was requiring that our happiness be combined in some way and finally I was like, I am totally in charge of how I want to be.
It wasn’t a big thing, but it was an evolution over time where I felt like I had the time and the bandwidth as my kids aged to really want for myself that was just mine, you know, and that wasn’t part of something that we shared and that was interesting. It wasn’t a big— there was no dust-up or anything, But it was just more like, “Hey, this is what I need for myself and the fact that you’re busy doing your thing, I shouldn’t be relying on you to help me.” Do you think this is something that people come to as they get older? No matter what it is, the system or the role that they play. Do you think that people are better about understanding how to create a new role or how to be who they need to be as they age? Or is it something that people get really quickly when they’re younger? Because you work with a range of ages.
Kate [27:21]: I do. I don’t think we tend to get this intuitively, and I think for all the reasons that you stated earlier, we’re started off with fairytales of our Prince Charming coming to rescue us and make us happy and make us whole, [laughs] Right? We’re actually passed out till we get a kiss, [Katie laughs] we literally come back to life because the man has kissed us. So, the messaging that women especially, and we have all of these images and all of these stories of this sort of enmeshment and we think that the other person is supposed to make us happy.
Katie [28:12]: Totally. But I think that’s changing. I just saw Natalie Portman released a book and I think it’s like Fairytales for Rebel Girls and my daughter picked out a book for my niece at one point for her birthday and it was Bedtime Stories for Rebel Girls, or I may be mixing the two titles. But it’s literally taking these narratives that we grew up with and just modernizing them in a way that is so needed. And so perhaps this will be changing the way people think about marriage and the roles that we play.
I’m curious, I want to hear your take on aging and divorce around 50 because I do know that marriages do sometimes fall apart when kids leave the nest and maybe it’s run its course because people have been together for a while. It’s that 69% of women that you were saying are like, “Hey, I want something new in the next act.” But for women who are really afraid of that, what’s getting in the way? Is it fear about money? Is it fear about telling your kids? Is it just inertia? What do you think is an obstacle?
Kate [29:20]: I think the top three are: finances, kids, and fear of being alone. We’re so, women are so-
Katie [29:29]: I wanna be alone. [both laugh]
Kate [29:31]: That’s because you’re not.
Katie [29:32]: I have been sheltering in place with all five of my family members and our COVID puppy, for a year. Oh my gosh. Being alone sounds so exotic
Kate [29:44]: Doesn’t it sound exotic? But I think so many women suffer from this codependency, where they really do derive their happiness from other people, and their self-worth from the attention of a man, whether it’s positive or negative. And so many women come to me and say what if I’m alone for the rest of my life and I’m like, what if? [both laugh] Oh no. [laughs] You may be, you may not be.
Look, I’m 50, I’ve been divorced for 12 years and I’m single. I am fine, like fine. I’m super happy. I’ve been in a couple of great relationships since my divorce, I’ve had some long-term relationships, I’ve had a couple of short ones, I’ve had some really short ones. [both laugh] I wouldn’t categorize those as relationships, but you know what I’m saying. And so I have, but I’m me and I’m happy. I am fulfilled on my own as a human.
If I meet someone who thinks that’s awesome, and I think they’re awesome and we can come together and make something even more often together, as individuals, then like, rock on. But if I don’t, I’m fine. Sure, I’m like, you know, I’m sex-starved, as most, well, single people are during the pandemic, we’re sex-starved and we’re lonely. You know, sure there are times of loneliness, but it’s not desperate loneliness.
Katie [31:34]: People can be lonely in relationships, too.
Kate [31:36]: Oh, hell yeah. I am never as lonely now as I was in my marriage.
Katie [31:43]: And that’s such a powerful statement. So, I’m curious, for women who are listening who may be, we sort of covered questions to ask yourself, work to do, actually consider whether or not you’re getting a divorce; starting with some inner work, and then figuring out how you’re not going to replicate these things.
How do you recover, because I feel that transitions are hard. We’ve all experienced that this past year because our lives changed overnight and it was so dislocating and every fabric. A divorce is like that, it’s a big dislocation and an absolute 180 from the way you were living your life. What coaching would you give to women, if you had to have them focus on one to two things, besides the self-work? What are one to two things that make a difference in navigating a divorce successfully in those first few months?
Kate [32:40]: The first thing is a community and the support of other people. And that unfortunately might change, that may not be your current community. There’s a wonderful community on Instagram and Facebook called “Divorce Over 40”. They are becoming national. It was just a group of divorced friends, who started meeting up together in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and they’ve created this national movement because it’s not about dating, it’s about finding your people as you’re going through divorce. People who get it.
So, I highly recommend that that is the most important thing. And it can be really devastating to realize that your people are not the people you thought they were. And that’s one of the hardest parts about divorce, is losing friends and family members that you thought had your back but they turn on you. It’s never about you, it’s always about what they’re going through. Often you’re holding a mirror up to people, to their relationships, and they don’t want to look in it. So, that’s super common.
So community, I think that’s the most important. Another thing, that’s not self-care, I’m trying to think…
Katie [34:03]: You know, when you had mentioned also that one of big concerns that keeps people where they are and prevents them from getting a divorce is kids. So, what would be your one to two tips to make sure your kids get through this change? Feeling loved and supported and not anxious.
Kate [34:20]: Yes, one of the most important things you can do is do everything you can to stay out of the litigation system in the US. A lot of people tell you the first thing you need to do when you get divorced is lawyer up, and that is probably the last thing you should do. I mean it is actually the last thing you should do.
Katie [34:34]: I’ve seen friends go through that, I agree. It’s expensive.
Kate [34:38]: So, as soon as you lawyer up, they start preparing for trial and litigation and it becomes contentious. The definition of divorce law is adversarial. So, you want to try and stay out of court as much as possible.
The most important thing you want to do is put your kids at the center and not in the middle, of every choice that you make.
Katie [35:03]: So define that, what do you mean by center but not middle?
Kate [35:06]: Well, if they’re in the middle, you’re fighting over them. If they’re in the middle it’s: no I want him on Tuesday, no I get him, Christmas Eve, it’s that push and pull, or pull and pull. If you’re putting them in the center, it’s: what would be best, what would the best way for us to spend Christmas in service of our child be? How would he want Christmas to be? Not, what do I want?
Because most of the time when you’re fighting about this stuff it’s because you’re trying to win, you’re trying to win a battle against, or over your ex. But if you come at it from a place of love of your child and what’s best for them, your ego needs to go away. And it often will, it’ll often like, “Oh yeah, you’re right, okay.”
Katie [36:02]: I’m sure it gets a little bit easier with distance too. Because even when I think about, you know, fights that I’ve had with my own husband, some knock down drag outs, eventually some time passes and you’re like, what were we arguing about? You’ve completely forgotten and if you do get this distance and move away from them, I bet it’s a little bit easier. Assuming that you do the work and you change your own response systems, because at the end of the day we can only control our actions and our reactions to things.
Kate [36:31]: Exactly.
Katie [36:32]: That is literally all that you can control and I think that is the bumper sticker we all need to be living our lives with. It’s hard. It’s hard, because sometimes, you know, as a parent you do want to control your kids, you want to shape and guide them. As a spouse or a partner sometimes, you really do have a different vision. So, that’s really tricky.
You’ve shared so many amazing things. I just wanna ask you though, if somebody was going through this divorce right now and wanting to come out on the other side. Have you seen that happen? What are the structures in place to have a second chapter?
Kate [37:11]: Well, I think doing all the work that we’ve been talking about, really, I think is one of the most important and helpful. And sort of going back to your other point which actually feeds this point, which is like, heal this stuff. So much of the fighting and the aggression that happens in divorce is because you’re not actually letting go of that relationship. It’s now, it’s negative intimacy. So, you’re fighting in court so you’re still connected. You’re not letting go of the relationship.
Katie [37:50]: Yeah, you’re fueling on the drama. I can’t remember this quote but it’s something about how when you hold onto a hot lump of anger, the only person you’re burning is yourself. To just really let go, because you feel like they’re wrong, but so what? At the end of the day, you have to say that’s okay. They can be wrong and you need to move on.
Kate [38:12]: Yes. But are you willing to let go? Because you’re not just letting go of that coal, that hot lump of coal, you’re also letting go of him. Are you ready and willing to actually let him go because sometimes the fighting is the thing that keeps you connected, it’s a toxic connection? But if you’re getting divorced, please, by all means, get divorced. And that means emotionally as well as legally.
Katie [38:39]: That’s such great advice, oh my gosh. We’re gonna leave it there.
But I do want to ask you before we wrap up, you have Kate’s website is a wealth of information, her Instagram is insane, she shares fantastic tips on it. The podcast is amazing. But I do wanna ask, what is one sort of tool or resource that every time you hear somebody’s getting divorced, you think to yourself, I really wish this person knew about x because it would make their journey easier. Is there something like that?
Kate [39:11]: I mean one thing is: don’t lawyer up. [laughs] I really wish that everybody knew that mediation is an option, even for people in high conflict divorces. And that you want to find a really good mediator because mediators are not all created equal. Like the coaching industry, it’s not regulated. So, I would say follow my friend Susan Guthrie on Instagram. She’s an amazing resource, she trains mediators. Know that there are options out there for you and that litigation is like pouring toxic fuel on your relationship, your future, and your finances.
Katie [40:04]: I was gonna say, it’s like lighting your money on fire and like throwing it into the toilet. So, we don’t want that. So, I will link to your friend in the show notes and I will link to all your stuff too. But tell our listeners before we say goodbye, where they can find you, and keep following The Divorce Survival Podcast.
Kate [40:21]: Yup, so my podcast, The Divorce Survival Guide Podcast, is on all of the places, everywhere that you listen to podcasts. I am @thedivorcesurvivalguide on Instagram. My website is kateanthony.com and I have a really great Facebook group, a “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Facebook group on, on Facebook, obviously. [both laugh]
Katie [40:47]: Sometimes you still have to say it twice, we’re moms. [Kate laughs] It’s not always that obvious.
Kate [40:54]: It’s on Facebook you guys. It’s great, I’m in there all the time. It is not your average divorce Facebook group, where people bash their husbands and are really bitter and nasty. It is supportive and educational, and I’m in there all the time, so that’s another great place. Those are all my free resources, so many free resources for you to learn in my world.
Katie [41:18]: Fabulous. Kate, thank you so much for coming on today.
Kate [41:21]: Thanks for having me Katie, I so appreciate it.
Katie [41:23]: This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women over 50 who are aging without apology. If you enjoy the show please head to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, to rate and review the show. Come keep me company over on Instagram @acertainagepod, do not make me hang out there alone. I love your company and your comments.
I hope you’ll join me next week, as I sit down with journalist and writer Leslie Gray Streeter. Leslie is the author of the laugh-out-loud, funny, and tender memoir, Black Widow, about the heartbreak and absurdity of unexpectedly becoming a young widow. We talk picking yourself up off the floor when life knocks you down. See you next time, and until then: age boldly, beauties.