321 - Divorce Anxiety and Sleepless Nights — How to Stay Anchored When You Can't Control the Outcome

So let's start with something I think explains a lot about why this particular season is so brutal for so many of you, specifically the men in this community who tend to be capable, driven, high-functioning guys.

Here's the pattern that I see over and over again.

Men who are used to being competent, used to solving problems, used to being the guy who figures it out, build an entire sense of self-worth and stability around their ability to control outcomes.

You're being rewarded your whole life in your career, in your finances, in in a hundred other areas for working hard and producing results.

Efforts in, results out.

That's the equation that's worked for you probably for decades.

And then divorce happens, and especially high conflict divorce.

And suddenly, that equation completely breaks down.

And you can try to do everything right, show up to every hearing, follow every court order to the letter, be patient, be reasonable, hire the best attorney you can afford, and still not control the outcome.

A judge can rule in a way you didn't expect happens all of the time.

And your acts can make a decision that completely blindsides you.

The timeline can stretch out for another six months for reasons that you have nothing to do with and that you didn't want.

And for a man who has built his entire sense of stability on the premise that effort produces control, that is a profoundly disorienting experience.

And it's not just stressful.

It is really identity shaking because the mechanism that you've relied, I should say we, right, because this was me too, that you've relied on your whole life to keep the ground steady beneath you has stopped working right at, in the worst possible time, right at the exact moment you need steady ground the most.

So let me name something here, though, also that I think is really important.

And it's something a lot of the dads in this exact situation don't say out loud even to themselves.

A lot of the anxiety, the sleeplessness, the low-grade dread that so many of... that so many of you described feeling during the season isn't really about any one specific outcome.

And it's not really about whether you get every other weekend or every other week.

It's about the terrifying experience of not being in control of your life for possibly the first time in your adult life and not having a framework for how to be okay with that.

And let me just say that again, because it's really, really important and, and, and, You need to think about this because this is where the anxiety comes from.

This is where the sleeplessness, this is where the dread comes.

And it's because it's not really about whether you get what you're looking for through this process every other weekend, parenting times, financial, et cetera.

It is about the experience of not being in control of your own life for possibly the first time in your adult life and not having a framework for for how to be okay with that and how to deal with it.

And so sit with this for a minute, dads.