Your Guide to Surviving Divorce

After 12 years of marriage, my ex wife Amy and I decided that it was finally time to end the long hard road we had traveled on for several years now. We got married and were truly in love for many years but we both began to change in many ways and our lives started to take us in different directions.

We eventually grew apart and often did not see eye to eye. We were constantly arguing and couldn’t seem to agree on anything. We believed that it wold be much better for our kids if we ended the marriage and lived separately.

Our 11 year old son Jacob was very hurt by our decision. We talked to him about the situation in terms that we thought he would have been able to understand. Once he knew that I was moving out I could see the hurt and resentment in his eyes. He thought I was leaving him, not his mom. (more…)

All I can say is that this divorce definitely played havoc on my entire family. My ex-wife Amy and I had our struggles during the 12 years we were married. At the end we were fighting more than we were talking.

We tried married counseling but came to a mutual agreement that divorce was the best option for us. It sounds pretty simple when you read it but our daughter Sarah had a really hard time understanding what was going on and why it had to happen.

She was always active in her school drama club and had a few close friends that she talked to on a regular basis. Her world was really disrupted when we told them about the divorce. (more…)

My wife Amy and I knew that this divorce would be difficult on everyone involved. It seemed to be especially hard on our daughter Sarah.

Sarah was the typical 13 year old girl before the divorce. She had her close friends that she shared laughs and secrets with and loved to take part in the drama club at school. She loved visiting the mall and checking out the new fashion trends as she was very fashion forward. All of that was great and then the divorce happened.

Our vibrant Sarah suddenly turned into an angry and scared little girl. She seemed to have lost her excitement for life and was in a state that was very close to depression. Amy and I had to do something to help her out. (more…)

Anyone that has ever been through a divorce when they had young kids at home can tell you that the task is not a simple one. Even though Amy, my ex wife, and I knew that it was best for us and the family, our kids had a difficult time accepting it. While we had our challenges with them all, our youngest son Matthew presented us with different problems.

Soon after the divorce I moved to a small apartment about two hours from where my ex and the kids live. I was at my mom’s house taking care of her lawn when I got a call from my ex wife. Matthew had gotten sent home from school again because he was sick to his stomach and had a headache. This had become a very frequent occurrence and Amy and I were getting very worried. It was time to get him to the doctor.

After meeting with the pediatrician on a couple different occasions we had finally decided to take a different route. (more…)

Going through a divorce when you have three very loving, very impressionable children is not an easy feat. This is something that I discovered when my wife Amy and I decided that after 12 years of marriage we were finally ready to admit that our marriage was over. While the divorce had its effects on all of us, our son Jacob was having a really hard time with his emotions.

Jacob has always been an average student. He plays football for his school and does a really good job at it. When the divorce was final and when I moved two hours away from his mother, his brother and his sister, he was left feeling alone and forgotten. He was very angry at me and felt like I had abandoned him. (more…)

There is no doubt that our divorce has been rough on Olivia leaving her feeling extremely insecure. While I expected some regression in her behavior and felt it would be normal under the circumstances, I was shocked by how much she regressed.

She went through a long period of thumb sucking which she hasn’t done since she was about her brother Andrew’s age, who is now two, and she also began wetting the bed again. I knew I had to do something fast before these behaviors became too ingrained. What my daughter needed was reassurance that she was going to be all right…that we were going to be all right as a family.

I called a psychologist friend of mine who deals with children on a daily basis and has seen all kinds of behaviors in children after divorce. (more…)

One thing that I discovered going through my divorce is that it affects not only my ex-wife Amy and I, but also our children. My 8 year old son Matt has always been a strong, independent, team player.  He is the captain of his soccer team and is very active with Boy Scouts. Since the divorce however, Matt has started to bully other kids around.

After spending considerable time talking with him, I discovered that he was struggling with an important decision. He thought that he needed to decide which side he was on, his mothers or mine. (more…)

To say the divorce was hard on everyone in our family would be an understatement. After all, Amy and I were married for 12 years and we have three wonderful children.

Our life became really difficult quite some time before the divorce. We tried counseling but it just made Amy and I realize that we were better off apart. That didn’t mean that we were leaving the love that we shared for our children though.

My middle child, Jacob, is eleven years old. He took the divorce very hard. We tried to explain the situation to him as best we could as we did with all 3 children. They all reacted differently to the news and are all handling it in their own individual ways.

As for Jacob, he has become distracted and withdrawn. It is to the point that we got a call from his teacher the other day who told us that his grades have began to suffer and they are threatening to suspend him from the football team unless his grades improve. (more…)

My daughter Sarah, who is now the “wise” age of 13, had a tough time with our divorce. While she had the drama club and her close knit circle of friends, she really had some tough feelings towards the whole divorce thing.

The downfall of our marriage caused Sarah to begin to worry about her future. She became very cautious about getting close to anyone and said that she was afraid of getting involved in any relationships. She even said that she would never get married.

Amy and I knew that it was our jobs as parents to help her get her through these fears. We needed to help her understand that just because her mother and I did not stay together, it didn’t mean that we didn’t love and cherish each other very much while we were married. And it certainly did not mean that our daughters relationships would fail. We knew it would not easy at this point, but…… (more…)

I think in many ways the separation and divorce has been much harder on my preschool daughter, Olivia (age 5) than on her younger brother Andrew (age 2).

While Olivia still doesn’t understand exactly what divorce is, she did notice some of the tension between my now ex-husband and I in the weeks before the separation.

When Mark left, I tried to spend more one on one time with the children and made special time just for Olivia and I because she seemed to becoming quite withdrawn.

Then one day I got a call from her kindergarten teacher. I had to immediately leave work and pick her up from preschool because she had kicked another child. I could tell by the look on her face that she thought she was in big trouble. (more…)