[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We continue this hour on divorce with an interesting step. According to the CDC, in 2021 the United States saw well over 600,000 divorces and annulments. Some reports cite the stress of the pandemic and people getting real about what they want out of life. Divorce is a difficult and confusing process for many reasons. Beyond the emotional toll, the financial cost can be daunting, and the legal pathways to divorce can be maze-like.

If you're someone who's thinking about divorce, in the middle of the process, or navigating life post-divorce and would like to remain sane during this whole process, we've brought in a couple of experts who might be able to help. Dr. Elizabeth Cohen is a psychologist who specializes in divorce and couples counseling and hosts the podcast, The Divorce Doctor. Welcome.

Elizabeth Cohen: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Gabrielle Hartley is a divorce attorney and mediator and author of the book, The Secret to Getting Along (And Why It's Easier Than You Think): 3 Steps to Life-Changing Conflict Resolution. Gabrielle, thanks for joining us as well.

Gabrielle Hartley: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. You can call in with your questions, where they could be personal questions, they might be legal questions about divorce. 212-433 WNYC 212-433-9692. If you went through a divorce that you consider successful, not acrimonious, how did you do it? What worked for you? Share your experience with other listeners. 212-433 WNYC 212-433-9692. You can remain anonymous by calling in with a pseudonym, or you can always DM us at Instagram @allofitwnyc. Listeners, get in on this conversation. Dr. Cohen, on the website, you say divorce is a gift. What does that mean?

Elizabeth Cohen: When I work with people who are going through divorce, I like to think of them as superheroes because deciding that either a relationship isn't working for you, so you want to exit it or deciding that when someone comes to you and says they're unhappy, that you're willing to let them go, that's one of the bravest moves you can make. We don't shame people in society for leaving jobs but for whatever reason, we shame people quite a bit for leaving marriages. It's actually a really brave opportunity to say, "Something wasn't working for me and I deserve and want something different." That's a gift to yourself.

Alison Stewart: Gabrielle, on a practical level, what should couples consider before deciding to divorce?

Gabrielle Hartley: There are a lot of different things to consider. The first one is to make sure that you're not being reactive, that you've taken a step back. An interesting statistic that I heard is that fewer than 20% of all couples getting divorced ever even seek marriage counseling. Remember that divorce takes work. The more you work on your marriage, even if you ultimately decide to split, it will create a higher likelihood that when and if you do split up, it's going to be more peaceful and you'll be able to have a more conscious uncoupling sort of situation.

Alison Stewart: What do you make of that term, conscious uncoupling? This came into the lexicon. For both of you, came into lexicon. I think it was Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow, and it felt a little bit woo-woo.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: You're laughing, Gabrielle, why are you laughing?

Gabrielle Hartley: When she said that, I said, "I'm writing the book and she's going to endorse it," and I wrote a book called Better Apart, and she did give me a cover endorsement because I'm like, "This is a little woo-woo, but she's onto something real," something that people can really learn from. I have a lot of opinions but let the psychologist address them.

Alison Stewart: What did you think about this idea of conscious uncoupling?

Elizabeth Cohen: I like the idea of finding a different way than talking about divorce that we have historically, of splitting up or a broken home. People still come into my practice and will say, "Oh, I went out on a date with someone, everything was great but they're from a broken home." That this stigma is still with us. I think this idea of conscious uncoupling is a really nice alternative way of looking at it. As a therapist, of course, I like anything that brings consciousness, awareness, and groundedness to a really important life decision.

Alison Stewart: What is a signal for you as a therapist that a relationship really may have gone past the point of repair?

Elizabeth Cohen: I think the strongest indicator also in marital research is high levels of resentment. Resentment is something that builds over time. If we don't really work on nipping it in the bud, it can really grow to an immense level, even if the initial act was really quite small. I'd say that resentment is really holding onto the past, going over and over something that has happened. Not being able to let go of that resentment, to me, is a real sign of being stuck.

Alison Stewart: Gabrielle, when you think about couples coming in, sometimes they arrive and it's beyond repair. They do not see eye to eye, but perhaps they are sophisticated enough or evolved enough to think like, "We don't want to tear each other down even if I may be really [unintelligible 00:05:24] this person," or "I may have been betrayed by this person," or "This person didn't come through and didn't make good on their promises." When you get a couple who's in conflict, definitely want to divorce, but don't want to destroy each other, what are options aside from having the lawyers duke it out?

Gabrielle Hartley: Oh my goodness. Today really, we've come a long way since the '90s even. Personally, I mediate full-time. I offer something called private divorce solution, which we do use lawyers who can also advise the parties who are separating, but you can do mediation, you can do lawyer-assisted mediation. There's also something called collaborative divorce law. Courtroom law is really not for most people, it's just the low-hanging fruit that everybody knows about. As lawyers, we are trained to use zealous advocacy, but we're not trained that zealous advocacy in the context of a family unit, which is creating a legacy narrative for the children.

To what Dr. Elizabeth just said, the shame and stigma, the shadows that people who are growing up in divorced households live in, even today, is still so negative. If both parties, both people getting divorced, sorry, I'm using legal jargon, both people getting divorced know that they want to do this as positive-- I run from the word amicable. It's not necessarily amicable, but as positive and calm as possible. You work from a mission-based thing. I start with every mediation session, what is the goal here on a high level? Of course, the goals are to extricate your financial entanglements and to manage the kids, but on a high level, what are you hoping for you and for your family, whether the family has children or not, as you look back on your life in 5 years and 10 years and so forth.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Dr. Elizabeth Cohen, a therapist who specializes in divorce and couples counseling, and Gabrielle Hartley. She is a mediator as well as an attorney. We are discussing divorcing. We want to hear from you too. You can call in with legal, financial, and personal questions about divorce. 212-433 WNYC 212-433-9692 or maybe you went through a divorce that you consider to be successful, not acrimonious, share how you did it. 212-433 WNYC. I have a question from Instagram. What advice do you have for how to be a supportive friend to those going through a divorce? What do you think, Dr. Elizabeth?

Elizabeth Cohen: Oh, I love this question, and shout out to that person who wants to support their friend, that's wonderful. I know when I was going through a divorce and with my clients, one of the most shocking experiences is when you tell someone you're going through a divorce and their reaction is, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry." Meanwhile, you are someone who's really happy to be stepping out of this relationship. I always give the advice, as a therapist I'll say, everyone is projecting their stuff onto you.

However, someone's response is usually their own thing, so not to get too wrapped up in that, but if you're the friend, I would always say something neutral. For example, "Wow, that sounds like a really big life experience. How's that going for you? How can I support you during this?" Not bringing any assumptions about how I would feel if my relationship ended or how I feel that my parents' relationship ended. Really meet your friend where they are and bring curiosity to understand what they need in that moment.

Alison Stewart: Gabrielle, when is it not-- [crosstalk] Oh, go ahead.

Gabrielle Hartley: Oh, sorry. I was going to say, and maybe if you have opinions about their soon-to-be ex, that's probably not the time to start piling it on.

Alison Stewart: That was my question. From a legal standpoint and a mediation standpoint, when is it good not to listen to the friends?

Gabrielle Hartley: Oh my goodness, that's a different answer. Listening to that chorus can be quite destructive because if you're going through a divorce or separation and you have a close friend or confidant who has gone through a divorce, what happens is people oftentimes begin to overgeneralize what the friend or confidant is telling you. You may start thinking, "This happened to them. This is what's going to happen to me," but it's really not like that. My biggest piece of advice is to just put yourself around people who lift you up, people who support you and trust advisors, such as Dr. Elizabeth, [laughs] a therapist. If you have one or two friends who are wise and who are good listeners, I think that's really the most important thing. Get your financial information from financial experts, not from the person who you meet for coffee every Saturday.

Alison Stewart: Gabrielle, I was going to ask you this and I'm asking you to rat out other attorneys, I apologize to any attorneys who are listening. When I got divorced and we were going through it, we really worked it out among ourselves, but if something got a little sticky and the lawyers got in, I would always step back and say, "Do we want to send their children to college or our kid to college?" because that's where the money's going. [laughs] He just kept that in mind.

Gabrielle Hartley: In case any of your listeners are divorcing from somebody who is, that terrorist person that like really impossible to deal with person, sometimes you have to go to court. I work with colleagues who are litigators because if you find yourself in court, don't beat yourself up too much over it, but to your point, Alison, do anything and everything that you can to keep your money in your family's hands and you can get a perfectly good divorce for five figures, you don't need to spend six, and in New York City seven-

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Gabrielle Hartley: -sometimes, believe it or not. It's quite incredible.

Alison Stewart: We are talking about how to go through a divorce. We have some calls lined up and some DMs coming in. We'll take a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

This is All Of It on WNYC. My guests are Dr. Elizabeth Cohen, an attorney, and mediator, Gabrielle Hartley. We are talking about various ways you can go through divorce, hopefully, one where everybody comes out whole on the other side. Getting a lot of questions from DMs about going through divorce. Dr. Elizabeth, when you're in a situation where there is either violence or someone on the other side who is a narcissist, where the partner really, really is trouble.

Elizabeth Cohen: First, I just want to say for all those people who are reaching out, it's really, really challenging and really hard. I think one thing that's really important to remember is that when you've decided to have a divorce, you've also had likely years and years of, whether it be physical, emotional, narcissistic abuse. Your sense of yourself can be really whittled down, and divorce requires so much strength, internal strength, external strength, and so it can be really difficult when you're facing those challenges. I think that it's really important to always keep the focus on yourself and what you can do to change yourself, even if it's small.

Your earlier guest was talking about changing her hair. Small little things, because we cannot change another person. I remember going through it and thinking, "Oh, the judge will see that my ex is," fill in the blank. It doesn't matter if anybody else sees that. If that person doesn't see it themselves and want to change, there's probably not going to be much change. I really encourage people to get support and really help themselves come out of it stronger, because they're going to need that internal strength to go through mediation and whatever process they might have for their divorce.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. Toddy is calling in from Jersey City. Hi Toddy, thanks for calling All Of It.

Toddy: Hi Alison. How are you?

Alison Stewart: Great.

Toddy: I'm going to try not to get too [unintelligible 00:13:44] talking about this, but what your guests were saying earlier about keeping it together. My husband and I took about 10 years to get a divorce and my friends who are listening and they're like, "Oh my god, there she is." Anyway, the point being, you have to just forgive. Think back about like what it was like in the early years. One of the things that I said to the screener is that, all of that is really, really hard. Oh, your guest was just saying about the narcissistic abuse and all that insanity, but in our case, we have a child who's in his late twenties now. Thanks me, almost every time I see him because we've remained a family.

My ex-husband, his mother had her hip replaced last week. I was one of the first people he texted because you loved each other once and so many things. I think the point that I'm trying to make is that you had so little control over what was going on at the time you had no control of your own self, the other person, you have to let go because if you had children, it is so, I think, rewarding. I know it's very rewarding to me and my ex-husband now and even now my new husband and my stepkids.

We're all together, and I've told many people, one of the greatest days of my entire adult life is with my son's college graduation. We were all there. My husband, my stepkids, my ex-husband, his mother, my nephew from my first marriage, and just this Easter we had my nephew from my first marriage here at our house. If you can, I think that is, it's honestly the best thing that I've ever done in my life, is to try and still be a family and still be friends.

Alison Stewart: Toddy, oh, well thank you for calling in. Really, really appreciate that. Gabrielle, when you sit down and you begin mediation with a couple, what are some of the first questions that you ask people or ask people to think about?

Gabrielle Hartley: Well, I ask people to think about the concept of perspective, and to try to release their inner narrative around what is fair or reasonable. I hear, "I just want to be fair, why can't he/she be reasonable?" All the time. The reality of it is, anyone who's turned on a television station the last five years knows like there's lots of versions of what's reasonable, and nothing is so extreme as in a divorce situation. We spend a lot of time just talking about perception and expectation management. That last caller spoke about her divorce. I grew up in a family that was just like that actually, and the way that I landed doing divorce this way is that I then worked for a judge in New York City and I saw how horrible divorces really can be.

Just to help people to frame what they want in the most neutral, responsive way possible is really setting themselves up for a successful roll-out over their lifetime. Again, I do think that something that people don't really think about or talk about is the legacy of the narrative that those kids are going to have when they grow up. I think Dr. Elizabeth said something about people coming in, "Oh, but they're from a broken home." I overheard people saying that about me when I grew up.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Gabrielle Hartley: I never liked that. It really annoyed me. Annoyed me is a very benign way of saying it. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Dr. Elizabeth, what about the length of time that it takes to get divorced? Is it better to do it quickly down and dirty and deal with some of the issues later? It depends on the person, but I guess the pros and cons of each, of getting it done quickly. Pros and cons. The pros and cons of dotting every I, crossing every T, having a very, very specific divorce agreement.

Elizabeth Cohen: I love what Gabrielle said about the legacy of the narrative. I think that really plays in here, which is asking yourself and being curious about, why am I either having the urge to rush it or why am I having the urge to lengthen this out, and what is that about for me, and really be curious about that. If it has to do with realistic experiences and expectations, like financial problems, that's one thing, but what psychologically is related to either the urgency or the waiting?

Alison Stewart: Let's take William online, one calling in from Manhattan. Hi William.

William: Hi there. I do mediation for the family courts and I really want to emphasize two things. In every court, there's a free mediation program. When you're talking about the cost, you can go there, deal with the custody and visitation part, get almost everything worked out, and then go file for divorce. We don't deal with child support, that's the other part of the program, but it's amazing how much we can get done before you ever go and have to talk to an attorney or file the paperwork or any of those things.

That's one. I really want to emphasize the person who called in and said about remaining friends. When I do my DV screenings, I always bring the people back to where they were when they met the person, what did they like, what was good, and just to remind them that at one point you got along. There were things you liked about each other and that you're in court so now it's adversarial, but it doesn't need to be that way.

Alison Stewart: William, thank you so much for calling in. Gabrielle, I'm curious, what are some important legal steps to take post-divorce so that things can remain friendly or things that you might want to consider in your divorce agreement so things can remain friendly?

Gabrielle Hartley: That is such a great question. I was thinking about that actually just a moment ago when you asked the question about how specific you want to be in your agreement. You want to be specific, specific, specific in all things in your agreement. Agreements to agree are unenforceable and agreements to agree create problems. People may come in and say, "Oh, we can work it out." Okay, fine. How many times have I had somebody come in when I was practicing litigation and say, "I don't know what happened. Everything was great for seven years and suddenly-" and I say, "Did she/he/they remarry? Have a new partner." Suddenly things blow up.

The best gift you can give yourself is to allow the process of the divorce unfold, go through. Sometimes people want to know, "How quickly can we get this done?" They're just thinking so much about getting it done as quickly and as inexpensively as possible. Of course, I totally get that, but it's going to be more expensive if you don't address everything upfront and you don't really process the entirety. In a lot of relationships you have one person burying their heads in the sand and the other person is steamrollering the whole agreement and next thing you know, they've signed something and then there's a problem later. Take your time, do it once, do it right, and you don't have to do it again.

Alison Stewart: A couple people have DM-ed this, and I think this is a legal question. What's the process to separate when you're not married but have a child?

Gabrielle Hartley: That's a family court issue. You need to have an action for support, custody, and visitation. You'd file with the court of appropriate jurisdiction, which will be the family court in New York State, depending where they're calling in from. You cannot get divorced, you're not going to get a property resolution, but you're going to either pay child support, get child support, or something else around the child or children.

Alison Stewart: Dr. Elizabeth, how do you deal with the competing forces? Let's say you're a parent and you're getting divorced and you really you want to model for your child, you really want to have a good relationship, but you're really hurt or there was a betrayal, and you're really in pain. This is a tough time. How do you talk to people about that, being a good role model for the child, but also, I guess acknowledging your own difficulty and pain, and also making sure you don't spew that all over the kid? [laughs]

Elizabeth Cohen: Excellent question and comes up all the time. There's two things that come to mind. The first is that our children are never our friends. There is a direct line from us to our children and the arrow does not go back. It is never our children's job to make us feel better, to help us through something difficult, to remind us that we're lovable, even though our partner is leaving them. It is our job as adults and as the parents to get the support that we need outside of the children, whether that be a coach, a therapist, a support group, a wonderful mediator like Gabrielle, to really get the support. That's our job as the adult.

I don't have a lot of hard and fast rules as a therapist, but do not talk about your ex to your children in any way, shape, or form. Now, the other thing that I think it's really important related to that why, we often forget that these children, those that are both biologically and not biologically related to the other partner, are part of them. When you talk negatively about the other person, they feel that you are talking or one day will talk about them. It is so powerful to zip your lip, which is really hard, because you're not just insulting your ex, you're insulting and hurting your kid. I really encourage people, "I know it's so hard to zip your lip. Talk to your friends, talk to other people, kids can't handle it emotionally."

Alison Stewart: We only have about a minute and a half left but I think this is an interesting question, Gabrielle, for you, someone who's 80% through the process but doesn't like the lawyer, not sure they're working in their best interest, costing a fortune. See it through, start to look for someone else?

Gabrielle Hartley: That is a complicated question. I guess what I would say is, my instinct is like, "Give me a call offline. That's a really hard question to answer without knowing all the facts." The quick answer is, if it doesn't feel right, get a second opinion and make sure that the advice, even if maybe you don't like them personally or doesn't seem like exactly the right thing, you're making a well-informed decision.

Alison Stewart: In our last 30 seconds, anything you've ever, about divorce, you've wanted to correct, Dr. Elizabeth, you hear people say it and you just want to say, "No. Not that."

Elizabeth Cohen: That it's a failure. That divorce is not a failure. It's a brave movement. It's an opportunity to see your relationship as coming to its perfect and beautiful completion, and now it's time for another chapter.

Alison Stewart: Gabrielle, same for you. Something you'd just like to correct the record on divorce?

Gabrielle Hartley: Oh my gosh. I just like to underscore the exact same sentiment. We've got to bring divorce out of the shadows. Remember that 50% of all of us are not failures and your children deserve to feel like they are part of something whole, which is that now reconfigured family. You can do this well, you can divorce in an uplifted, positive way and make your divorce the launchpad for the rest of your amazing life.

Alison Stewart: Thanks to everyone who sent a DM and to our callers and to Dr. Elizabeth Cohen and Gabrielle Hartley. Thank you so much for your guidance.

Elizabeth Cohen: Thank you for having me.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.