Control Who You Listen To

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Control Who You Listen To

Joshua

Whether it is something that is totally unexpected or whether it represents a scenario that you had kind of anticipated, it does not matter. Being told that you are just about to suffer a divorce is going to come as a massive shock. It is also likely to make you feel extremely vulnerable and isolated.

In such a situation, there will be lots of people who want to give you the benefit of their advice.

It is, however, very important that you appreciate that, no matter how unbiased or impartial other people try to be when they tell you what they think, their advice will still be influenced or tainted by their own opinions, ideas and prejudices.

For example, your own family members will be desperate to help you, and they will therefore be happy to give you the benefit of their own experiences and knowledge. Without a doubt, they will try to be as helpful as they can, but there lies one of the dangers of listening to family members. In this situation, it is common for family members to give you the advice that they believe that you want to hear.

At the same time, after hearing your side of the story (which will be the only side of the story they hear) there will be a natural resentment and antipathy towards your divorcing partner. Somebody will, almost inevitably, come out with the hoary old chestnut I never liked her anyway.

While your family members are trying to help, it is likely that their advice and suggestions will add to your confusion more than anything else. In fact, they may feel more bitter and angry than you do yourself, and make the situation worse rather than better as a result. It is, for instance, all too common for divorcing couples to end up arguing about the silliest, pettiest things that they previously had little or no interest in (and I want the dining table) because their family members have encouraged them to do so.

The bottom line is that, while your family will try to help they may not always end up doing so. By all means, listen to everything that they say and suggest, but be very cautious about placing too much importance on the advice that you receive.

The suggestions of mutual friends of yours and your wifes also represent another potential minefield of poor or misguided advice. After all, it is natural that, while these people may have been friends of everybody in the family, they will still have a bias towards one party or another. It is inevitable that either you or your wife will be the person that they felt the closest to, and, therefore, you do not really know whose side they are on.

Perhaps with the majority of your mutual friends, their primary loyalties will be relatively clear, but that is not always the case. For whatever reason, some of the people who you would assume would be loyal to your wife will, in fact, feel an attachment to you and vice versa.

It is, therefore, almost impossible to know for certain where peoples loyalties lie. For that reason, you should be very careful when listening to the advice of mutual friends.

None of this is meant to suggest that you should not listen to other peoples advice and experiences. At a time of great emotional stress like this, it always helps to be able to talk to others and to discuss your problems. Having the ability to do so should help to relieve some of inevitable pressure that youre carrying on your shoulders.

The important point to appreciate, however, is that you are vulnerable, no matter how strong you think you are, or how much resistance you imagine you are putting up. At a time of vulnerability, it is far too easy to accept everything other people say as being the gospel truth, rather than listening to your own inner voices and your innate common sense.

For instance, family members and friends will inevitably have suffered divorce themselves. They will, therefore, think that they know all there is to know about divorce, whereas, in fact, what they know only applies to their own situation, and every divorce is different. Basing your own actions on what these well-meaning people recommend is not such a smart idea.

At the end of the day, probably the best people to listen to are your old personal friends, the people that you know from way back when, those who were (most relevantly) on the scene before your wife ever appeared. Old friends of this nature will not suffer divided loyalties.

They have known you almost from the beginning of time (or so it seems) and there is no question whatsoever that they are interested in protecting or helping anyone other than you.

Of course, your family members are looking out for you as well. Such old friends are different, however. They are one step removed from the extreme emotional involvement that family members feel.

Because there is this degree of detachment from what is actually happening, their advice is far more likely to be driven by common sense and practicality than emotions.

Nor are they likely to be comfortable with the idea of telling you only the things that you want to hear. They understand and appreciate that hearing what you want to hear is not necessarily going to help you, and that such advice could even be harmful in the longer term.

If, therefore, you seek the advice of old personal friends, be prepared to hear some home truths that you may not really want to hear!

For instance, while you may think that you are the entirely innocent party, old friends might know differently, and not be afraid of telling you the facts. As the saying has it - the truth sometimes hurts, - but it is going to hurt far less than relying on foolish or misguided advice and messing up your divorce as a result.

By all means, seek advice from those around you. However, be sure that you give most credence to the advice of those who, while they have your best interests at heart, are nevertheless still able to separate common sense from anger and bitterness.

Seek advice by all means, but understand that controlling whose advice you listen to and follow is the key.