How to Decide Whether to Divorce
Divorce is a just legal mechanism, but it’s a legal mechanism with tremendous power to change your life for the positive. Leaving an unhappy marriage for a better future is transformative.
But how do you determine what you want? How do you decide if what you have is better than the alternative? What future do you want to create?
When you think about your goals for your future, you want to think about time, money, and relationships. Your present and your future are all built on those three things.
Here are questions to help you think about time, money, and relationships in terms of (1) where you are and (2) where you want to be.
How to Decide Whether to Divorce: Questions to Guide You in Determining Where You Are and Where You Want to Be
Time
- How are you getting to spend or having to spend your time? How do you want to be using it?
- How much time do you have left until __________? (i.e. you retire, your kids go to college, you or your kids reach a certain age, etc.). What do you want to do during that time?
Money
- What do you have to lose financially? What do you have to gain?
- How do you earn money now? What could you do to earn money instead?
- How do you feel about money?
- How does money control or not control your most important decisions?
- What do you spend money on now? How would you rather spend money?
- How does having (or not having) money affects your health, self-image, self-esteem, and other options in life?
- How does the way you currently earn money affect your health, self-image, self-esteem, other options in life?
- How would the way you could be earning money affect your health, self-image, self-esteem, and your other options in life?
Relationships
- How are you perceived by your friends, your family, your kids, your clients, your colleagues, your ancestors, total strangers, and the person you see in the mirror every morning?
- How do you want to be perceived by your friends, your family, your kids, your clients, your colleagues, your ancestors, total strangers, and the person you see in the mirror every morning?
- How do those perceptions affect you in terms of your time, money, health, self-image, self-esteem, and your other options in life?
Putting it All Together
If it came down to it and you had to pick, which is most important to you?
- Time
- Money, or
- Relationships?
Next Steps
At Freed Marcroft, we have helped hundreds of people move forward to a better life. At our first step, the Goals & Planning Conference, we start by working through these questions with you to help you figure out your goals. If you decide that divorce is part of what you need to do to get you to the future you want, we can help you. If it isn’t, we will support you and help you figure out what you need to get you there instead. Let’s keep you moving forward.
