When You Need to Restart Your Life

Because of some of the life experiences I've blogged about, I've been asked for some advice on starting life over after a divorce, and for starting (or restarting) a career in midlife.

First - on the divorce aspect. I was dumped out of the blue. My then-husband admitted I was a great wife, and good to him, and that he couldn't ask for more in a life partner, yet he still was attracted to someone else enough to have entered a relationship with her and that he was leaving me. It was over, just like that. He felt guilty as hell, told me I was "a saint" over how I was handling it all (I didn't scream or rail at him), and he wanted to somehow make up for his terrible treatment of me through the division of assets.

He initially was insisting on giving me the better/newer car, the house, all contents/possessions, paying 1/2 the mortgage for a period of time, plus paying two years of alimony ($1,000.00 per month). But I didn't want or need to take him to the cleaners. I just wanted a clean 50/50 split. He came around to this when a) he could not find a lawyer to represent him based on what he was proposing - i.e., giving me everything; and b) as time passed he started to feel less guilty about his cheating, and began to be less inclined to be so generous. This shift only took 3-4 months to transpire.

We essentially wound up with an equitable split, but he absolutely refused to sign any version of a separation agreement that did not contain a 2 year, $1,000 per month alimony payment clause. Fine, I had that included in the separation agreement but did not intend to ever invoke it. But then, I found out the weasel had immediately turned around and sold our house for quite a profit (after having paid me out for "half" the estimated value, but that half value was calculated on a much lower price than what he actually sold it for) so he got more money out of the house than I did. What a flip-flop from initially "wanting to do right" by me financially!

When the moron refused to share that additional house profit with me, I simply invoked the alimony clause in our separation agreement. He made it almost impossible and very unpleasant to collect the money each month, but I doggedly pursued it for a few months and only ceased when I had secured my fair share of the additional house profit he got.

Long story made short - the lesson I learned is you should move quickly, decisively and with good legal advice to quickly negotiate a separation agreement if your marriage is over. Even the most contrite ex-husband loses his feeling of guilt and remorse with the passage of time and, if he is with a new woman, you can bet she will be working on him to minimize whatever he has to spend on you. His rationalizing and self justification will kick in big time.

You need to strike while the iron is hot, especially in the case of a husband's infidelity or his unilateral, arbitrary ending of the marriage - you will never be in a stronger negotiating position than in the immediate aftermath of his announcement of his screwing up and screwing around.

It doesn't have to be warfare, you can do the collaborative divorce route - there are many options. But don't let it drag on and out. The goal posts will start to change too often and too much and you will be driven crazy. You run the risk of being divorced TO him, rather than divorced FROM him.

Okay, onto starting or restarting a career in midlife, and/or after a divorce. If you are feeling disconnected from yourself - i.e., you are no longer sure of who you are, what you want, don't really know what your passion is, or what your contributions to the world should be...here are the books and resources that helped me successfully chart my path forward (and that I have used with my coaching clients).

The following 4 books are full of best exercises, tools and tips I have found in 10+ years of intensive searching/researching:

Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self by Sarah Ban Breathnach
The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success by Nicholas Lore
Take Time for Your Life: A Personal Coach's 7-Step Program for Creating the Life You Want by Cheryl Richardson
Stand Up for Your Life: A Practical Step-by-Step Plan to Build Inner Confidence and Personal Power by Cheryl Richardson
If you don't know what your natural strengths, orientations and skills are, order this extensive career self assessment tool from Amazon.com:

Career Anchors by Edgar Schein.

The results of this low cost assessment will help you determine what kind of work and work environment would be best for you, and if you are best suited to leadership or teamwork, or for being a entrepreneur and starting your own business.

The results of this low cost assessment will help you determine what kind of work and work environment would be best for you, and if you are best suited to leadership or teamwork, or for being a entrepreneur and starting your own business.

Once you know what you may want to target in your career, you will have a lot of research ahead of you - use the internet, and business planning resources; and the books and guides on writing resumes, cover letters and successfully doing job interviews are unlimited and too many to list or even recommend here.

All you need to do is spend an hour or so browsing the "Business/Career" shelves at your local bookstore in the resume/interview section and you will find and choose a couple of guides that will be right for you. This is my no-fail approach to finding help - the bookstore. Just go, start pulling some titles off the shelf and look at the table of contents. Trust that the right information will find you, but put yourself in the place of most potential for that happening.

That's it on the subject for now.

Todo bien. (It's all good.)