Nobody tells you what it feels like to sit in a courtroom and watch your marriage get argued over by two people who have never met you, do not particularly like each other, and are both being billed by the hour.

You are sitting there in the outfit you spent forty-five minutes picking out, watching the legal version of your life presented to a judge who has seen ten thousand versions of this exact situation and is not even a little bit shocked by any of it.

Somewhere in the middle of it, you think this is a complete circus. And, somehow, this is my actual life.

Coping with divorce is one of the most emotionally and logistically overwhelming experiences a person can go through. Here are some things someone should have told you before you walked through that attorney’s door for the first time.

Your attorney is not your therapist. Or your friend.

You walk in raw and scared, hoping someone will take care of you. What you get is a person who is professionally obligated to be somewhat jaded about the whole thing. That is not a criticism. It is just reality.

Find an attorney you trust to fight for you. Find a therapist for divorce support to process everything else. Find a friend who will sit with you in the parking lot afterward. You need all three. They are not interchangeable.

The paperwork is going to make you feel like you are losing your mind

At some point, you will be asked to produce a complete financial statement of your marriage. Bank statements. Tax returns. Property records. A detailed accounting of what your shared life is worth on paper. While also going to work, making dinner, and functioning like a person whose foundation has not just been pulled out from under them.

Ask for help. You do not have to do this alone, and you probably should not try. The numbness that comes with this season is real.

The process will test your character. Let it.

Divorce can bring out the worst in people. You may feel pulled toward retaliation. You may want to say things that feel satisfying in the moment and costly later.

Your character is the one thing in this entire process that belongs entirely to you. Stay honest. Stay as calm as you can manage. Do not put anything in writing that you would not want read aloud in a courtroom.

You will come out the other side of this. And when you do, you want to be able to look back knowing you handled it with integrity.

You do not have to white-knuckle this alone

At AIM Counseling and Wellness, we provide mental health support and divorce counseling for people in the middle of the process and people finding their footing on the other side. Men and women. Every age. Every kind of ending.

You do not need to have it together to reach out. 

 Let’s get you through this.