Breaking up is hard to do
“They say that breaking up is hard to do, now, I know, I know that its true. Don’t say that this is the end, instead of breaking up I wish that we were making up again” sang Neil Sedaka on my Spotify play list (where on earth did they pull this up from!), as I was cooking dinner last night.
Reflecting on the lyrics (which have of course become one of those worms in my ear), I think the breaking up bit, the conversation, is the easy part. It’s the bit before, the, will I or won’t I part, and of course the bit that comes after you have had your Rhett Butler moment and slammed the door and exited with his famous line. “My dear, I don’t give a damn” that are much harder.
I was chatting with my good friend and colleague Kimberlee Sweeney (Degrees of Separation and the Co-Founder of the Divorce and Separation Coaching Institute NZ) about this very topic earlier in the week.
The Will I or Won’t I phase and how that goes, has a huge impact on the next phase of your life, but it’s not often talked about. So, I’m going to address the elephant in a lot of rooms and talk about it now. It has a huge impact on both your emotional and financial future, and having been there done that more than once, and helped numerous couples through it, I’m probably pretty qualified to talk about both the emotional and financial aspects, with a little bit of help from Kimberlee and the Gottman Institute.
Just for clarity, I’m not talking about the “I’m out of here” conversation after your third date. I’m talking about longer term relationships; you may have children together. You’re financially joined with mortgages, debt and living expenses. You have joint friends, and you have been a couple for a few years.
According to Gottman’s research, in California 80% of marriages end due to emotional disengagement. These are relationships where friendship and intimacy have dried up. I wouldn’t be surprised if the statistics here for relationships (whether married or not) were similar.
This can happen in relationships where both partners are working full-time, you’re racing around after children, worrying about paying the mortgage, keeping your job, and you have just run out of time for each other. Or, at the other end, the children are gone, the mortgage is nearly gone, life should be starting to be fun, and over breakfast you look at your partner and go ‘I don’t even know you anymore, and I don’t know myself either”.
You start to wonder, is the grass greener on the other side? Would I better off, without this person in my life? If you could freeze time at this exact moment, this is when the Will I, or Won’t I question first raises its head. It’s also at this point that you can stop it going any further, by having a conversation with your partner, and potentially heading off for some relationship counselling, or a dirty weekend away! Whatever you need to do to reconnect with each other.
If that doesn’t happen, you might start to see your partner in a different light. Those endearing little habits that used to be cute, now drive you crazy. You start to look for faults and negative traits that justify your thoughts that the grass is greener on the other side. The confirmation bias of a friend who is having a great life after separation helps this along. Gottman’s four horseman appear in your relationship, and you are on the slippery slope to going.
Or you decide to work on your relationship and be more positive and quietly rekindle things in the background. You communicate more with your partner, you actively seek out the positives in your relationship, you get the help and support that your relationship needs (no, I don’t mean Google, or reality TV), and you are able to work together and get back on track.
This emotional roller coaster phase can last a few months, or a few years. In my own case, after packing the Xmas decorations in his and hers boxes for the second year in a row, prompted a very close friend and confidant, to ask me if I was going to do it for a third time? In other words, make a decision. Commit fully to the relationship or go.
This is what is happening on the emotional side. But there are some other very important things to bring into this stage, and that is the practical side. Particularly if you are leaning more towards the leaving pendulum swing.
You need to start to gather facts, get reality checks, find out exactly where you are financially, in relation to your children, your career, and get a picture as best you can, as to whether the grass really is financially greener on the other side.
If you don’t know much about your financial situation, now is the time to start to find out. If you have access to bank accounts, login and look. Build a picture of what you own and what you owe as best you can. If you have no idea, quietly start digging and asking questions. Call the bank, the insurance company. This is also the time to get very close up and personal with your spending and what life costs, and how much you contribute to that lifestyle. How are you going to fund two households while you work through the separation process. Depending on your stage in life and career, will the bank lend you money to buy another house? All this practical financial stuff is the last thing you are going to want to do, but it is so important.
If you stay, you have more knowledge than you did before and you can rebuild your relationship emotionally and financially as a team (anecdotally 70-80% of relationships blame money for the breakup). If you go, you will be so much better prepared when you split the pie.
When do you need to talk to a lawyer? It’s entirely up to you, and if you have contracting out agreements. Family Trusts, or businesses, probably best to engage with them before you slam the door.
But if you simply need some help on the process and find out what you don’t know. Don’t ask your friends who have separated, they have their own story and their own biases. Talk to a professional who can guide you, whether it is a Divorce Coach, a financial advisor, or counsellor they are equipped and happy to help and support you and educate you along the way.
Too often both Kimberlee and I hear from clients six months after separation, when they are arguing over children and money, ‘I have no idea who this person is, I didn’t expect it to be like this”.
Don’t let that be you. Whether you stay or go, know your financial situation, do the work on your relationship, look into the crystal ball as much and you can, listen to Neil Sedaka and then decide what is best for you and your future.