🎙️ Divorce, Co-Parenting & Remarriage: A Real Talk on Recovery 🔑 || Divorce Devil Podcast #259 || David and Rachel

[00:00:00] Welcome, Everybody Out There to Divorce Devil Episode 259. Now that we're both married, do we have a different outlook on helping our peeps with their divorce recovery? I was thinking that our perspective kind of changes because we're on the outside looking in, but we've been there. So our normal now is we're married. We're divorced.

[00:00:30] I've, well yeah, and I think my perspective of it is I can see clearly now the rain is gone. But I also know that if there's storms, there are more storms that will happen even based on the divorce thing. I still have a young son I'm co-parenting with. There's going to be stuff that comes up. It, hopefully it's not crazy or any arguing or fighting or anything like that or any miscommunications now that they're getting older. Teenagers, he'll be, he's starting to drive, all the things.

[00:01:00] But my perspective of it is the only way I can be the best version of me in my marriage is I have to let a little bit of that go in order to eventually let most of it go, right? But it's always part of your journey. So what if getting married is a condom? What?

[00:01:23] I said, what if getting married is a condom and you put the condom on and all the other bullshit is like little spirochetes or little syphilisises. Is it protection from the divorce? No, from the, from the bullshit that tries to pull you back in because that, because getting married is like an extra layer of fulfillment, of happiness.

[00:01:50] And that happiness, which isn't really a condom, I don't know where that came from. This is why we are who we are. We had no topic and we sat here for a couple minutes. Marriage condom. There we go. But no, but I see marriage as a happiness, a new place that you're in that, that negates you from being pulled back into the bullshit. Yeah. Because the bullshit always happens.

[00:02:10] And I think too, whether it's you're the girlfriend or boyfriend or the fiance or whatever it is, there's always that moment that the ex is still a part of this journey, right? Where now I have a husband where it's not so much I'm worried about my ex-husband, but he's the father of my son that I'm raising right now and my older children. But your current husband becomes more important.

[00:02:37] Exactly. And not that he wasn't the most important thing to get to the point of being engaged and married and all things, but it was also whatever affects my son. And that now is my children, my other children and the ex-husband who also makes decisions for the son. And it goes back to now we're like, my husband and I are now this new family that we're, we've become family, but we weren't family.

[00:03:07] We don't have children together. We're a blended family, of course. Right. So now it's this new adventure is my husband and I help raise our son because he's a stepson now and all things and never been treated different or anything like that. But it's also, I also have another partner in making that decision where even a month ago it was okay, whatever your dad decides or whatever this one, whatever I decide. And now it's okay, what is Lance available? Is this available?

[00:03:37] I think you always have that thing in the back of your head. Like at any moment you could potentially break up with this person if you're not married. Right. Cause who wants to go through a divorce again? Not that it's terrible because we get a situation and you have to get divorced again. Right. But now it's now this person who's my husband makes the equal amount of decisions of my marriage with my son, as opposed to if his dad says it's okay.

[00:04:04] If we're doing something and he's with us cause his dad's traveling or something, it really is both of us. So do you know what the next stage is? No, tell me. I'm there. You're not there. When the co-parenting kind of stops. Okay. That's heaven. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's what you, but the deal with you is, which I'm envious. You are such a good, you guys are both great co-parenting. Yeah. Co-parents. I didn't have that. So once the co-parenting stopped, that was like a different level. Yeah. We're definitely like the uniform in that.

[00:04:33] So when you get to the point where you don't, you, I don't co-parent at all now because my kids are 30, 32, 32, 33. Boy, your kids are good. Yeah. Yeah. And they survive the chaos and shit. But once you, especially when the co-parenting is a shit show and you get out of that position, that's a different level.

[00:04:54] And I think too, like one of the recent things that I, not from anybody's input or whatever, I've noticed that the child that was the most affected by the divorce wasn't necessarily the youngest one. And I've talked about it before. My daughter was very angry. She thinks that we, I heard in her perception, perception, we dropped off college said, Hey, we're getting divorced. By the way, we're not going to be living together when you get home. Everything's going to be rearranged, all the stuff.

[00:05:23] In reality, again, that is not how it happens so much, but pretty quickly she went to college. Right. After all the things, right. I saw, especially when I saw the adult daughter interacting with this new blended family, with Lance, with the girls, with her siblings. And we all were finally one. Like we, everybody worked together to throw this wedding quickly.

[00:05:50] And it was really that, okay, this doesn't define her anymore. Yes. Her parents were divorced and now she has a stepdad or whatever it is. And as weird as adult children, my stepdad or whatever, it's, they still say, Oh, Lance or whatever. Not necessarily calling each other mom or dad, right? Our kids are older. So that's just a different dynamic, right? But Logan, he's my stepdad where the other kids, they call me bonus mom or bonus dad, all the things like that.

[00:06:16] So I think watching my daughter be my maid of honor and delegating and including and doing all the things that she was so adamant that you're not my family. This is not how it's supposed to be. I want my mom and dad together. And again, I told you, I was like that. My dad had died. Maybe my mom and dad can get back together in heaven. So as a child, you want your parents to be together unless it's not conducive, unless it's not a great relationship. Right.

[00:06:44] So seeing her embrace the new and all the stuff, I knew that this was exactly where we were supposed to be. And this is where we're meant to be. And two of the girls had to go back home. They're from the, at the, on the East coast. And we drove them to the airport in the morning. And then Kimberly got to us. I brought you breakfast. It was so nice. And then he's like, Hey, I brought, Kimberly brought me breakfast. It was very like. Together. Yeah. They had a relationship now. They had all this stuff. And so it was really, it was nice to see.

[00:07:14] It was nice to witness and bringing these two families together, especially in love and in my favorite place in the whole world and having my friends there. And unfortunately, a lot of my family couldn't be there because it was so quick, but hopefully we'll have a big shindig where they can all come and celebrate us and all things. I definitely want to reach out to our listeners. And just because we're married, we're not abandoning the people just starting their divorce or just starting to heal. We're still going to speak to you guys. We realize that everybody's not at the point that we are.

[00:07:43] We're just fortunate to be there, but we have been where you are now. So I'm, you know, I literally the night before the wedding had that moment of my first wedding, right? Oh my gosh. What if he doesn't show up? What if I run away? What happens? All the things that can happen and knowing the process it takes to get divorced. Overthinking.

[00:08:10] At no point was I thinking I was running away, but all these things that led me to where I was at that moment to get remarried flooded all those things that also created me to get divorced, right? So when you get married, you don't go out there and be like, hey, if this doesn't work out, we'll get divorced, right? Hopefully that's not how you're going into it.

[00:08:31] But all the things that I allowed during my marriage, I had to go through in my mind and be like, no, I won't allow someone to disrespect me. I won't allow this to happen. I won't allow people to talk behind my back. I won't believe when I, I'm not always going to be first based on what the kids need or something like that. But we will always put each other first, right?

[00:08:56] In doing that, if we need to take care of my son or if we need to fly out east because of something, we're going as a team and not as, you know, in my marriage. A lot of times I felt like I was fifth, sixth, sometimes not even on the same page. And that's not the case now.

[00:09:12] It's him and I have healed so much in all the things that have affected us and made us who we are and things that work and don't work and over talk, over communicating therapy, all the things that the divorce podcast, all the things, all the time was I ask him, what's your opinion on all the things have led us to this.

[00:09:31] And not all of them were easy to have conversations about, but if you can't communicate with each other, like I would don't want to go down that road where, Hey, I can't talk to him because it's going to upset someone else. Or I can't do this, or I can't voice my opinion because it's going to make an in-law upset or any other version of that. What, which was my marriage, right? I got out of the marriage because again, I should have been at least first or second most of the time. Sometimes I'm going to be second.

[00:10:01] But in it, you have to know the boundaries and the rules that you will and won't accept going into it. So what can you tell our listeners that are just starting at the beginning? Our journeys have been different and their journey will be different. You want to tell them their journey will be different and their journey will happen to them as it happens to them. And it's not linear. Oh yeah. I think my journey started out, I got to the point where I was so pissed off.

[00:10:31] That in my mind, there was no love to be had, whether to be received or given. So there was like this stalemate. Love is the devil. My parents used to say the thing they had hall sex. They'd pass in the hall and say, fuck you. Damn. It got to that. Where at no point was I was like, no, let's not go on. No, let's not go out to the movies. No, let's not go out. Never envisioned this years later. No, no. And they can't either. No, exactly.

[00:10:59] And so I think a lot, you've talked about your anger a lot. You have to be so angry that you're either willing to leave or that the other person did something so bad that they leave. Someone has to make that decision and it really has to come of, I have to worry about myself. So at some point, that little light will go off and you go, hey, you know what? In order to be happy, I need to let go of this. That might be your marriage.

[00:11:27] That might be, I need my person to stick up for me with their mother. I need my person to also take my side with their siblings. I need them to do this. And if they're not willing to do that or they're not respecting your boundaries, that's when you get to divorce. Once you get there, you're going to be less angry and then you're going to be sad. Then you're going to be angry. Then you're going to be like disappointed that you don't have the white picket fence. You're not growing all together.

[00:11:56] There's a lot of phases of it. And we talk about grief a lot. This is a grief where the person is still there. You have to see them, especially if you have children. You have to be reminded that there is a wound that has not even been close to creating a scab. Correct. And how do you take care of that wound? Are you cleaning it with alcohol? Are you doing peroxide? Are you putting a bandage on it? Macuricone. I can smell that every time someone says that word. Macuricone. Oh, yeah.

[00:12:26] Yeah. When anybody says that, I can still smell that. But how are you helping to heal that actual wound? And so is it. Do I keep going back? Oh, let's work it out. Let's work it out. And then this time there's no working it out. Right. So now the wound is fresh again. How are you treating the wound, which is part of you? And if you're just going to add, let me put that dirty piece of cloth on the ground because that's all I'm worth. That's what I should get or whatever. It's not going to heal. You're not going to heal.

[00:12:54] If you don't do the work to make the wound heal, you won't eventually get to the scab and then don't get to the scar. And eventually that scar is part of you, but it's not the whole, your whole body. We don't promote divorce. If you can work it out, man, work it up. But if you can't, that's where we step in. That's where we have our podcast for and to help you go down the road. And also divorce is the gift that keeps giving. You're reminded over and over.

[00:13:23] Your court date is postponed. No one goes in the ground. But one person doesn't want the divorce or one person doesn't do their child's thing or watch that terrible video. It'd be great if divorce came and you put them in the ground, you bury them. But nope, it doesn't go that way. Yeah. And I think people, especially us being a little farther out, I think I'm thinking of it now, right? In order to get divorced, there's been a lot of turmoil and chaos and all the things, right? So you forget about how many times you've forgiven.

[00:13:53] I forgive you this time. I keep going back. I'm going to keep going. But a lot of times that pattern doesn't change and then it gets comfortable. And then you're 10 years into this marriage that you knew. We fight all the time. We can't communicate whether infidelity happened or whatever the cause that finally gets you to go like, what the fuck have I been doing? We live a very short life in the spectrum of the world, right? Hopefully you get 80, 90 years.

[00:14:18] But to stay in something and not take care of yourself, you are your own gift that the world has given, right? Take care of yourself. So again, maybe you go to counseling together. Maybe one wants to go to counseling and the other one doesn't. I know a lot of people who start going to therapy and they realize, ah, I'm not the problem. And then sometimes you are the problem and you can heal and do all the things. But there's a lot of situations where if you're in a relationship with a narcissist, like,

[00:14:47] or my mother-in-law was an absolute narcissist. And Jerry will tell you online she was. And a lot of times because you don't want to upset the narcissist, you placate that. You give it fuel. You allow it to keep doing the things. That's just how she is. She's old now. What are you going to do? You can't change her because she's old. Well, no, you can tell her that we won't allow disrespect or you don't get to see us. I was always the, the. It's about taking your power back. Yeah.

[00:15:15] And so I was always the daughter-in-law who tried to make amends and never let the kids know. Like we didn't really share with the kids how terrible their grandma was. We wanted them to have grandparents because my parents were gone very early in their lives. We didn't really share it. But when they started seeing her talk to me like that or seeing them talking to their dad like that or the brothers or the uncles and all the things, there was a new kind of, Hey, I cannot stay here and have my children see this type of relationship. This is not how it's supposed to be.

[00:15:42] And I think when my mind was like, I don't want them to get into unhealthy relationships because we were in an unhealthy relationship. And now like we're in the most healthy relationship and we're not even together because we have set boundaries. We have done the things that we should have done in our marriage. We had done the things that people don't see until it's too late and better apart than together. Yeah. And so I think early on, you have to remember you, of course it's new, all the things that led you to that.

[00:16:10] But as you go on and you start to heal more, you'll start to forget a lot of the, I don't know, mundane arguments that arguments that you had until something else comes up. And then it's like, Oh, it's a fucking asshole. Oh, she's bitch. All this, whatever. And you have to let go of that stuff. You have to let go of some of those things like in order to go forward. Yeah. And so the more you hold on to that, and I'm not even talking about grudges because you know me, I'm the queen of grudges. I love me a good grudge. Right. Right.

[00:16:38] But generally, if I'm holding a grudge, you have done enough shit to me that I'm, you're no, you no longer get access. You're done. And then the grudge is gone. And I'll let you know a little, and I'm not going to try to be an asshole. I'm going to let you know, I'm sorry, you're done. You don't have access to me. You don't get to have any part of my life. And I'm sorry because I'm really fucking awesome. You could have had the great version of me. That's part of the steps of divorce. Yeah. All right. We'll keep it quick and sharp. Famous last words.

[00:17:06] I think what you need to do when you're going through divorce, whatever stage it is, you have to celebrate the positive things that have happened. Even if it's the tiniest, this thing I showered today, I actually called someone back. I tech, I know a lot of people don't call. I text someone back. Again, we have a short time on this planet and that little bit of effort of, hey, thank you for dropping a cookie off at my desk today because I didn't have enough in me to make a lunch. Or I got my kid together, but I couldn't get myself together. I wore two different shoes to work today.

[00:17:37] Thank you for having an extra pair of shoes in your car. So just little things that get you into it. And then in each part, like I'd say, I'm not going to give it a timeline, but like maybe check in six months from the time and go, okay, let me assess myself. How do I feel? What am I doing? Am I eating healthy? Am I exercising? Am I taking care of myself? Are my bills paid? All the things. And then in a year, that one year mark, I feel like with any types of grief is like that the anticipation of the one year is a lot worse than the actual day, right?

[00:18:04] That you have your, I got divorce on this day, blah, blah. And then it generally gets easy where you're not like having to be like this time I told this person off or this time I did that. But just keep checking in with yourself and make sure that you're doing things to become the better version of you and not allowing people who are shitty or trying to find shit on you and make waves because they're miserable. Try to figure out who you are and what you want and why you're here on this planet.

[00:18:31] It is to be a happy version and make a positive impact on each other and be kind to somebody and especially yourself. Mine's going to be, we will not abandon you. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. I think finding those people that you saw at the wedding, the people, most of the people there that were on my side are friends that have become family because most of my family is back home, back East. And the people that showed up literally helped us decorate and do all the things and pull

[00:19:00] things apart because the day before it was raining and just all the things that had to happen in order to make it a beautiful day. Everybody was there decorating and doing all the things that that's what a real family is about. And we appreciate everything and everybody being there and all the things. And so find your people. If it's one person, find somebody that you can just talk to neutral therapy, all the things. Again, our perspective is a little different now that we're both married, but I see in

[00:19:28] it, I see it a different way that each step will lead you to a happiness. I'm not saying you because again, the beginning was like, I'm never fucking getting married again. This is dumb. This is stupid, blah, blah, blah. But I learned how to love myself and create the boundaries that I needed and not to allow other people's shit that I'm not responsible for affect me. And a lot of my healing was childhood stuff. And in relationships, people disappoint you, whether it's all siblings, parents, boyfriends, best friends, all the things.

[00:19:56] So find your people, love yourself. And again, and if you are at the stage where you're dating, you got to put yourself out there because you go, ah, there's no good men. If you're not looking for them or there's no good women. Again, match.com. Lance and I found ourselves, found each other on, but that might not work for everybody. Put yourself out there. Be safe. Love yourself. Buy a new toy if you need to. All right, everybody. Love you. Love you. Bye.