"Surviving Divorce: What To Think About To Ensure Surviving Divorce" by Karl Augustine

"Surviving Divorce: What To Think About To Ensure Surviving Divorce" by Karl Augustine

Surviving divorce can be a valid fear if you're contemplating getting a divorce. In order to ensure surviving divorce, you should first understand that your divorce decision shouldn't be taken lightly. Ensuring that you'll be surviving divorce can be comforting and can influence your path as you consider your reasons for divorce and take the emotional plunge into actually going through with it.

Its tough enough to think about how your immediate life will be impacted by getting a divorce let alone thinking about divorce from an aspect of "the aftermath" of divorce. You may be considering a variety of things in the short term including living arrangements, spouse's schedules, attorneys, kids, property, etc. Its tough to plan so you can really ensure that you'll be surviving divorce once its finally over with.

Surviving divorce, just like deciding to divorce, is about separating emotion from logic and making sure you think about the past, present and future. Of course, how you plan for surviving divorce, will differ from others in some respects, but there are some common themes to think about that should ensure you will be successful surviving divorce.

The most common things to think about when you want to be successful surviving divorce are self-evident and basic, but highly important:

Surviving Divorce Concept 1: Reflect on the past to make sure you can eliminate potential regret.

Make sure that you take the time to reflect on the past and remember the reasons that got you to this state of mind. One thing you absolutely must avoid is going through a divorce and regretting your decision. Evaluate, in detail, your reasons for divorce and confirm to yourself yet again that divorce is the best course of action. This will help eliminate regret...and regret can be a large factor in determining your chance of surviving divorce.

Surviving Divorce Concept 2: Admit to yourself that, no matter how your situation got to this breaking point of wanting divorce, that you had a hand in it, and plan to improve yourself.

Even if you know your present spouse is not a good fit for you, be smart enough to know that you shouldn't waste the opportunity that you have right now to improve yourself, for your own good in the future. At a time like this when emotions are running high, there tends to be a lot of soul searching going on, and that's a good thing if you want to ensure that you've got a solid chance of surviving divorce. Realize that you need to improve for you, this will only help you in the future. Remember, it takes two to tango!

Surviving Divorce Concept 3: Remember that your happiness and plan for surviving divorce should include evaluating and establishing a certain level of self-confidence.

Having self confidence is absolutely critical to surviving divorce because without it, fear usually will win out and your situation will not improve. Even if you get divorced but you don't evaluate your own level of self confidence in the hopes of improving it, you may be in for a rough time after divorce. If you want a sure-fire way to feel good about surviving divorce, do yourself a favor and get your self-confidence in line.

If your overall confidence and desire to start over with your love life support making a change, you're off to a good start in making a smart decision about whether to divorce or not.

Surviving Divorce Concept 4: Get your finances in a row and understand that your life will change most likely from a monetary perspective.

This is a major portion of the surviving divorce equation, especially for women in divorce. A lot of time, women in divorce situations have to deal with finance issues and they fear going out on their own because they've had financial support previously. Still, this concept is not gender specific and can resonate with anyone because, one some level, your life will change financially as a result of divorce...that's a guarantee.

In order to make sure your chance at surviving divorce is high, you need to be willing to trade potential financial loss to get a divorce. If you're ready to do this, maybe you're ready to really take the big step.

Surviving Divorce Concept 5: Understand the true value of using "projection" to ensure surviving divorce.
This is a terrific exercise to go through when you're faced with a divorce decision and want to ensure you've got a great chance of surviving divorce. "Projection" simply means looking to the future and actually imagining what your life will be like once you're divorced. And, if you're smart, you'll see multiple scenarios of what your life will become after divorce and you'll be able to pin down which factors lead to each one of those scenarios. Then, choose the scenario you'd like to actually live, and take the necessary steps needed to implement those factors. This one of the most important practices to ensure that you're chances of surviving divorce are high.

Surviving divorce is a difficult thing but it can easily be accomplished if you plan, reflect, think, and execute based on your own goals and needs.


About the Author
Author of "A Practical Guide To
Deciding Whether Or Not To Get A
Divorce", the eBook recommended by
counselors to thier clients.
Proven "Actions Items" to help you decide!

Deciding on Divorce

Surviving Divorce

What Parents Should Do For Children To Do Their Best After Divorce? by Ruben Francia

What Parents Should Do For Children To Do Their Best After Divorce? by Ruben Francia

Why do some children still do best after divorce and separation? Is there divorce parenting approaches that really work? Read and learn the divorce parenting approaches that really work.

Going through the process of divorce is a challenging life transition for both parents and children. During their parents' divorce, children often feel a wide variety of conflicting emotions. It is very important for parents to provide their children with understanding and support. Overall, the children who do best after divorce and separation are those whose parents dominantly employ 5 divorce parenting approaches. They:

1. Listen to children and nurture an independent and empathic relationship with each of them.
2. Fully support the children's relationships with the other parent making them feel loved and wanted in both homes.
3. Develop positive strategies for setting limits and imposing appropriate discipline.
4. Continue to hold reasonably high expectations for the children, regardless of trying circumstances.
5. Shield the children from their parental disagreements and resentments.

Each of the above is presented here below in great detail.

1. Listen to children and nurture an independent and empathic relationship with each of them.

To better help our children we must first understand them. To be able to understand them completely, we need to listen and create an environment favorable for them to speak out. To make things happen, you need to:

Encourage your children to talk about how they feel. Let your children know that they can openly talk to you about their feelings of your separation or divorce.
Keep lines of communication open and answer all questions about the changes. Make sure your children feels like they can ask you questions and get answers about why the divorce happened and what to expect.
Convey that you are genuinely interested in their input. This will make your children feel they are participating in contributing to the process of recovering from the divorce.

2. Fully support the children's relationships with the other parent making them feel loved and wanted in both homes.

Research tells us that children benefit from keeping the familial ties in their life that were meaningful and important to them prior to the divorce. Of these familial ties, the most important are the child-parent ties. Remember that divorce does not end children's need for parents or it ends your role as parent. You should:

Recognize that for your child to have the best chance of growing up to be a functional human male or female, he/she will need both parents as role models and nurturers. This means that there should be some pathway of getting through to the child whatever good that parent has to offer.
Respect your child's needs to have both parents there for them, without having them worry that they are going to die of embarrassment if you both start to fight in public. Encourage the other parent to stay involved in the children's school and extra-curricular activities.
Allow the children to enjoy the time that they spend with each parent. Encourage your children to spend good times with the other parent. Don't be jealous or upset, as children do not want to take sides and love one parent more than the other.
Help your children and ex-spouse have a successful relationship as just as you would help your children to succeed in school or sports. Remember that your ex-spouse is an important part of your child's life. Just like you, your children have a shared history with this person as well as the present and future.

3. Develop positive strategies for setting limits and imposing appropriate discipline.

Often after a divorce parents will either become stricter or more lenient. Some parents feel like the other parent is letting the child get away with everything; therefore, they attempt to enforce discipline across both homes. Other parents do not want to spend the limited time they have with their child punishing them and tend to be too lenient. It can be difficult for children when their parents have drastically different rules and expectations. To give the child a sense of stability and security, you should do the following:

Maintain consistent routines. Children feel more secure when there is a standard routine. At times, some parenting issues require communication and coordination between parents, if the child spends time with both parents. Both parents don't have to do things exactly the same way, but it is easier for children if most things are similar at each home.
Set limits and rules clearly, and enforces them. But within these limits do allow leeway for your children to be children.

4. Continue to hold reasonably high expectations for the children, regardless of trying circumstances.

Help your children have positive feelings about themselves. Children who feel good about them usually succeed. They seem to get better grades in school, they are better at taking on hard jobs, and they try their best. Also, they tend to make better friends because they seem surer of themselves. As parents, you can play an important role in helping children have positive feelings about themselves. Here are some ways you can help your children to feel good about them.

Help them learn to set realistic and reachable goals so they can regularly achieve success. Praise them for success.
Give your children responsibility so that they feel useful, and valued. Asking nothing of them implies that you think they are not capable of doing a job well, which is demeaning.
Encourage them to make decisions, and teach that they must accept responsibility for those decisions.

5. Shield the children from their parental disagreements and resentments.

Stop fighting and work hard to get along with each other. Rumbles of discontent between parents leave children feeling insecure. It is therefore so important for you and your partner to try to agree on matters related to children and their needs. You can employ strategies such as:

Be able to step back and keep your feelings about your ex-spouse separate from those you have about your children's parent. Many people make lousy husbands or wives, but they are terrific parents.
If you cannot be civil with your ex-spouse, then work out a plan and set up rules so that your child does not have to witness your wrath. Let your children feel with ease rather than going through a gauntlet of your venom for each other.
Get to work on resolving your feelings about your ex-spouse. That means if you can't get over this yourself, get some help. Other people are suffering besides you, and those other people are your children!

Certainly, some children still do best after divorce and separation. All their parents did were employing tested divorce parenting approaches that really work. You can raise healthy, happy and successful children even if you're divorced. Follow the above approaches for your children sake.

Copyright by Ruben Francia. All Rights Reserved.

Publishing Rights: You have permission to publish this article electronically, in print, in your ebook or on your website, free of charge, as long as the author's information and web link are included at the bottom of the article. The web link should be active when the article is reprinted on a web site or in an email. Minor edits and alterations are acceptable so long as they do not distort or change the content of the article.

About the Author
Ruben Francia is an author of an indispensable divorce parenting guide ebook, entitled "101 Ways To Raise Your 'Divorced' Children To Success". Discover the ways to raising healthy, happy and successful children even if you're on divorced. Visit his web site at http://www.101divorceparenting.com