Episode 8: Accepting Better Apart & The Secrets to Getting Along - Gabrielle Hartley

Our guest for today's episode:

Gabrielle Hartley

Gabrielle Hartley, Esq. is an online divorce mediator, former court to NYS Supreme Court Judge Jeffrey Sunshine, past American Bar Association Mediation Committee co-chair and is currently in a leadership position at the American Bar Association Dispute Resolution Section . She is the author of Better Apart; The Radically Positive Way to Separate (Harper Collins 2019) and The Secret to Getting Along and Why It's Easier than You Think (Sourcebooks 2023). She has a popular TEDx on how to get along better using her Y.E.S. Method. Gabrielle is focused on making the world a better place by making divorce easier, and less acrimonious for children and families. She is a graduate of Brooklyn Law School and Cornell University.

Gabrielle's Website

Divorce Support Resources

• Ted Talk
• Book: Better Apart; The Radically Positive Way to Separate

Summary

In this conversation, Tania Leichliter and Gabrielle Hartley explore the complexities of divorce, emphasizing the importance of mindfulness, emotional management, and effective communication. They discuss how acceptance and clarity can lead to better decision-making during the divorce process and the significance of forgiveness and self-compassion. The conversation also touches on the impact of divorce on children, the necessity of building a supportive network, and the transformative potential of the YES method for communication. Ultimately, they advocate for viewing divorce as an opportunity for personal growth and reestablishing one's identity.

Takeaways

• Divorce can be navigated with mindfulness and emotional awareness.
• Emotional management is crucial for a smoother divorce process.
• Acceptance of the situation is key to moving forward.
• Forgiveness is about self-acceptance and letting go of bitterness.
• Building a supportive network is essential during divorce.
• Positive communication about ex-partners benefits children.
• Children can develop resilience through their parents' divorce.
• Reestablishing identity post-divorce is vital for personal growth.
• The YES method helps clarify needs in communication.
• Rethinking marriage contracts could change relationship dynamics.

Sound Bites

"You need to be a child."

"You have to go through it."

"You can do it."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Gabrielle Hartley and Her Work

06:58 Essential Elements of a Better Divorce

13:31 Reframing Divorce as an Opportunity

20:57 Overcoming Stigma and Shame in Divorce

36:10 The Concept of a Marriage Contract with Renewal Options

37:02 Top Tips for Navigating Divorce

39:48 The YES Method for Effective Communication

41:30 Keeping Children at the Forefront of Divorce Discussions

Keywords

divorce, mindfulness, emotional management, acceptance, forgiveness, communication, children, identity, YES method, marriage contracts

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Welcome to the Better Than Bitter Divorce Podcast, where we flip the script on divorce and show you how to have a more amicable divorce resolution. I'm your host, Tania Leichliter a divorce coach, a certified life coach, and the mastermind behind the Better Than Bitter five-step game plan course, where I help individuals build a pathway towards a more amicable divorce resolution.

Each week, I'll bring you uplifting stories from people who've successfully experienced amicable separations, proving that divorce doesn't have to be a battleground. Whether you're overwhelmed with grief, struggling with custody and co-parenting, or just dealing with a high-conflict individual, this podcast is here to guide you towards reclaiming your life and being what I know is possible, better than bitter.

Hello and welcome to the Better Than Bitter Podcast, episode number nine. Today we have Gabrielle Hartley. Gabrielle has written the book Better Apart, as well as The Secret to Getting Along and Why It's Easier Than You Think. Gabrielle's book was so important to me personally. It really did get me through the beginning stages of my divorce. She is an online mediator, but she's also a former...

to the New York State Supreme Court Judge, Jeffrey Sunshine. And she has been part of the American Bar Association and mediation for a very long time. She is a committee member and a co-chair and is currently taking on a leadership position at the American Bar Associates. my goodness, she has so many titles that I can't even say them right.

She is one of the best online divorce mediators. I'm so excited for you to hear her speak today. One of the things that I do want to remind you is the incredible, incredible books that she has authored, Better Apart, A Radically Positive Way to Separate, and The Secret to Getting Along and Why It's Easier. She has such a great TED Talk. So if you do have the opportunity, that will be in the show notes.

And I hope all of you listen to that because it really does describe a lot of what she talks about in her communication book. again, check it out if you want to learn how to get along better, don't we all in divorce? And she is so focused just like I am in making this world a better place and making divorce easier. And she really is focused on this less acrimonious divorce process for both of you and your children. She is a graduate of the Brooklyn Law School and Cornell University. Welcome, Gabrielle.

my gosh, so nice to be here with you today, Tania. Thank you so much for that nice warm introduction. I really appreciate it.

good. Well, we have so many things to talk about today. But today I want to start with your book Better Apart, because like I said, this was the first book that I found when I was searching for kind of amicable divorce solutions. And it just touched me in such a profound way, not only just the words and the education but also just the mindfulness that you teach throughout that book as well that just

really is so important and I can't stress that to people who are starting their process enough. So can you tell me why, like what was the impetus for Better Apart and you know how did you come to you know deciding that this was the book you were going to write?

Yeah, so Tania, I've been a divorce lawyer for about 30 years, but I never thought I was going to do divorce law at all. I grew up with parents who were divorced. They actually had a very good divorce. They were almost like braggy about how great it was. I will tell you, it's not like it was perfect. Like there was plenty of drama. There were plenty of, you know, families, blended family situations, which were not always pleasant. But when I went and I...

for Judge Sunshine in the divorce court in New York City, I saw how unbelievably acrimonious the process is,, it's not really necessarily the fault of the lawyers or of the judge or of the process, but the three things working together are used as though that's the fallback, whereas from my point of view, from my worldview, that should be really.

where you go as a last resort if you've got somebody who's absolutely unable to communicate in any way, shape, form in a forward-moving manner. so I worked in court and I thought, my gosh, people need to know that there's a better way. And I looked in the bookstores, actually, very old-fashioned, right? And I saw that there were a lot of books written at the time.

by lawyers, how to represent yourself, and then by people who'd been divorced, who were like coaches or yoga teachers, et cetera, who had a good divorce and were trying to tell people that they could get divorced well. And I thought, gosh, I really want to tell this story as someone who both grew up with divorced parents and who worked in the trenches helping to resolve almost a thousand high-conflict divorces.

and as someone who practiced yoga at the time, I was practicing yoga every day. So I really wanted to bring in mindfulness and I don't mean in a woo-woo yoga, overly yoga way, I just mean in a like self-empowerment, like you can do this and it's all about you, right? So like, it's almost like the concept of being selfish right now when you're going through your divorce is actually, it's selfless to be selfish, if that makes sense like it's a circle.

We could unpack that, essentially it's like, felt like I can't reach the world. I'm in my office. And even though now, yes, I do all my mediations online. So theoretically, yes, I'm reaching the world, but I'm only reaching that one person at a time. And I thought I'd write this book and it would have broader reach and I could make people feel a little bit better during this horrible time and let them know there's a better way.

Yeah, I just, think that we have the same mission. You know, I created Better Than Bitter for that as well, because again, we can only touch one individual at a time, whether as an attorney or a mediator or a coach, but yet like, how do we take this idea that divorce doesn't have to be a battleground, that there is a better way? And I love the fact that you too utilize a lot of mindfulness, because I talk a lot.

in my work about space and creating space and being able to get out of that fight, flight or freeze mentality that is being overrun by our primitive brain and how we can get into our prefrontal cortex, how we can create space so we can think more logically, where we can have more rational thinking.

I talk about the fact that, we have to move ourselves through this emotional divorce before we step into the trenches in our legal divorce so we don't end up spending millions of dollars on having our lawyer be our therapist, right? Or coming, or just, you know, representing yourself from a place of emotion. You know, we're not, when we're emotional, we're not making good decisions. So talk about the highlights of like, better apart. And like, if you were to, you know, tell,

somebody currently who is really just either in the trenches and it's not going the way that they want it to go or they're at the beginning stages and they really can create a framework. What would you suggest to them to say like, yeah, first read my book. But secondly, these are just things to think about in terms of the acceptance about being a part I think is so important. So where does that come into play?

So I'm so glad you just said that last, the acceptance about being divorced. Another impetus for writing the book was to a little bit lift the shame and stigma around divorce. We live in the shadows, you're outside, you're in the grocery store, everybody else looks so happy pulling things off the shelves and you feel like, my gosh, my life is such a mess. I made all these poor mistakes, I stayed too long or whatever your particular narrative is. I really think that just

Remind yourself that you're, you're a perfectly good person, whether you were the quote-unquote wrongdoer or if you stayed with the wrongdoer or whatever your particular narrative is. A step back is usually the best way forward. When you're getting divorced or you're in any kind of traumatic state, think of it as your thinking brain is co-opted by your emotional brain and you literally cannot make good decisions.

Right? So you really have to slow down your thinking, give yourself the space to grieve, give yourself grace. I talk about the five essential elements of a better apart divorce. And just to touch briefly on what they are, peace, patience, respect, clarity and forgiveness. Clarity is really what you want. Once you have clarity,

You can make better decisions. If you're right now working with a lawyer or a mediator or by yourselves and trying to figure things out. If you're asking yourself, if you're finding that you're perseverating on your position, the what that you want, ask yourself why you want what you want. Because when you can understand.

your motivation or your need rather than your want or your more surface desire, you're going to find that it's easier to feel satisfied at the other side of that rainbow. There's no pot of gold there, but there is a sense of peace and satisfaction. So getting really clear with yourself about where do you want to go from here?

And you know, there's sort of something exciting about that, Tania, right? Wouldn't you say like, once you break free from being kind of stuck in the narrative of what was and all the loss and pain, you can start to feel and see a little light. And so like, when I talk about forgiveness, I don't mean forgive somebody who did something terrible to you. I mean, to radically love yourself and accept the situation and know that that person

no matter how garbagey they might have treated you or left you feeling, know, I happen to be of the mindset that people do the best they can in the moment where they are. Their best might be your worst, but maybe, you saw them through the lens of your abilities, not their abilities or something like that, right? So forgiveness is all about acceptance. If I were rewriting Better Apart Now, I'd probably call it acceptance because...

what I've learned over the last six years of talking to many thousands of women and men. Nobody likes the word forgiveness. So.

So I actually, when I talk about the seven phases of grief, I bundle kind of forgiveness and acceptance together in the sense that it's not forgiveness of a certain person's actions. It is forgiving yourself for the ability to relieve the burden of bitterness. I have the capacity to relieve myself

from the bitterness that I feel right now. I'm forgiving to move forward. So I forgive to accept. It's not saying, yeah, so it's forgiving to accept because I don't want to carry that burden of bitterness forward in my post-divorce life, right? So because that's where, like you divorce somebody and you hold onto the resentment and the bitterness and the anger, and then you might as well just be married.

Exactly, more people are happier, not angrier, right? And then, know, peace, I'm not talking about, you know, peace signs and unicorns and rainbows, I'm just talking about feeling a state of okay. So, you know, there are ways to achieve peace, you know, very quickly, you know, noticing lots of neutral behavior on the part of the person who's doing incredibly aggravating things can be really helpful, it can go a long way.

Exactly.

Respect, it's about self-respect and your feelings of self-respect, depending where you are in your divorce process can be pretty darn low. And so what I advise you to do or what I would do if I were in a situation where I'm feeling a low sense of self-respect is to do things that make you feel good, that you're good at, be with people who lift you up. If you have a best friend who is just constantly

insulting your ex or telling you why you shouldn't have stayed or second-guessing you, put that relationship on a shelf and be around people who allow you to grow and to become the next better version of yourself in this life, right? And so, you know, and it all takes patience. And I write a lot about patience because I need to learn patience. I'm a highly impatient person by nature and

You know, you have to be patient with yourself, with your ex, with your kids, with the lawyers, with the therapist, with the judge, with the system. mean, you we could, with the teachers, with the school system, we could go on and on and on. And so really by building yourself up, working with a coach, if possible, working, you know, working with a therapist, working with a therapist and a coach and a mediator and a lawyer. mean, getting as much of a team as you have the capacity to get.

Yeah.

Sometimes you can't do it all at once because it's too expensive, but that's okay too. You can do things in tandem and you can really make this an opportunity, make your divorce an opportunity to launch the next better stage of your life.

I know. So that's what I talk about too. So many of my clients come to me with this sense of failure, right? So I failed and what I coach them on is that divorce isn't about failure. It's an opportunity for personal growth and self-discovery. And as soon as you can switch your mindset into that, into that abundance mindset and allow for yourself to think about what the possibilities of your life.

could be. And again, just like you said, having clarity, having clarity around what is the bigger picture that you're striving for, not just the tangible assets, but the bigger vision of what the life that you want post-divorce is. As soon as you get clarity around that, you know, and that you can look at this as a personal growth opportunity. And we do a lot of work on self-discovery, know, self-awareness, learning who your authentic self is. So much of us.

We're a person pre-marriage and we get married and our person changes not for the good or for the bad, but it just changes. But it's about reestablishing your passions, the things that you love, the things that maybe you didn't get to experience when you were married for whatever reason and just regenerating those and bringing those back to life so you can feel good about your future.

and who you want to be. It is a new chapter. And I got so much of that from your book. It's really just, how do you create that next chapter? And the world is your oyster. I know that's such a cliche, but it's true.

I know, but there's a reason there's, mean, some trite cliche things are just true, right? You to your core self, like, who are you? I was talking to a guy who was divorced recently, and he talked about, he'd been with his wife since he was 19 years old, and he went back to his house and he's like, all right, it's just us, and who the heck are we? I'm here again, right? Like there'd been a whole family, and then the family wasn't there anymore in the same sense of the word, and it's like.

Yes!

Yes.

It's about reestablishing yourself. you know, the thing about it is most people getting divorced are doing it in somewhat of a silo. You may have one or two confidants, but just know that it's something you will get through. You really will. I mean, if you haven't experienced the death of a loved one, it's, you know, when you're going through that, it feels like you're never going to get over that, but you do most of the time, depending, know, a divorce is better than that, you know.

Let's talk a little bit. You just said something that's really interesting. So, in my course, I talk about communication plans and we talk about how to communicate externally to your friends, your family, and your children. But from your perspective, there's so much, I guess, shame still that that stigma of being divorced or the stigma that people who are getting divorced feel that they believe that other people are looking at them in a different way.

What are your thoughts on getting past that feeling or that stigma and giving people some level of empowerment to not feel embarrassed about where they are in their lives and how to approach that from an external communication perspective?

Yeah. So , from an external communication perspective, other than one or two confidants, I would really encourage your world to not speak poorly about your ex. They can say, I hope you're okay. They can say things that are like supportive, but the fact of the matter is your ex is still a part of your past narrative. And I don't really think it does anybody any good to feel like a whole.

section of their life was a lie, that anything, you it's not a this or that, it's not a binary. Your experience may have had some great parts too. Like to think that maybe you stayed there for some reasons beyond, I was financially trapped, I had to stay with the kids, my family would disown me, whatever. I think that it's really important to draw lines, especially if you have children , because it just...

is communicating that your children are half bad if they're half the offspring of your ex, right? Think about it and your ex is not your child's ex. I can remember overhearing things as a child from my parents friends who are perfectly nice saying like unkind things about the other parent and like whatever I wasn't like upset by it. I more thought that you know, they were you know, I just I didn't have like the highest

thoughts about them. I would just communicate less because also you're going to move through it more than other people will, especially if you have an ongoing relationship because you're co-parenting. And then if people see you as being positive and being highly functional, they are going to be less inclined to keep on repeating that negative narrative, which is not going to help you.

over time. Now, I said all that, but I'm also going to say, if you have friends and you're really not comfortable being in the same environment with your ex for a period of years, you might say, hey, right now I'm really not comfortable being in the same place. It's totally cool if you just invite them or if we alternate or you, know, I know experience like situations where the two parties decide to alternate on their own when they know mutual friends are going to invite both of them.

But it doesn't mean you have to demean each other.

Yeah, and you are my third guest who gave the exact example about not throwing the other spouse under the bus for the exact reason, especially in front of the children. you know, never, I don't believe it should ever happen, but especially in front of the children, because you use the exact language as two other guests. Our children are 50 % of each parent. So when you begin to speak poorly about the other parent, that child

Really?

recognizes that they are 50 % that person and that they are then bad.

I actually, you know, maybe this is TMI, this is not because I'm a lawyer or mediator, but I, as a young woman, remember thinking, like, noticing like a lot of my friend's parents had intact families, and they were just a little less self-critical, a little less critical of their parents. Like, this just...

It's very slight, but I was very aware of this concept that it's really bad. And my parents actually didn't demean each other much at all. I, yeah, , but you could imagine that if it does happen, it's really not good. And, you, I'm just going to say if my parents could do it, I don't know Tania's parents, but I'm going to say if Tania's parents could do it, you can do it too. And it's not because in my situation, it's not because my parents either of them were.

Mind it in the end.

Perfect, my dad had like a new wife kind of character every four years or so. But they were all good, I still know all of them. And my father passed away a few years ago and many of them showed up to his funeral and it was all fine, you know.

Yeah, you it's funny that you referenced that, because I do believe that, you know, when we, you know, with my kids, you know, the whole idea that I'm divorced and my parents were divorced and that my ex's parents were divorced. And so my daughter especially is like, my gosh, does that mean I'm going to get divorced?

And I wanted to share with her your story, like, hey, listen, I came from a divorced family and I'm still married. it's not, it doesn't, anyway, marriage is hard. And if you work in your relationship, it doesn't matter if your parents were divorced or not, just relationships are hard in general. 50 % of people getting married get divorced, right? So at the end of the day, no child should feel doom and gloom.

because they come from divorced families. What do you say about that?

Yeah, I totally agree. I actually think, I mean, this is also like a weird thing to say, but I think that if your parents if your parents handle your divorce well, your kids are gonna develop skills that they never would otherwise have gotten. In other words, having to be a little more organized with their things, having to learn how to.

you know, share a room with a step-sibling, having to do like all the things that your child is going to become more flexible, more resilient, more understanding. But it takes a lot of work unless you are both sort of like very Zen people. For most people, it takes a lot of pauses shelving space, as I think Tania likes to call it. Space is a good thing. Take a time-out.

You know, we all need timeouts and it is not going to ruin your children for you to get divorced. For you to be fighting constantly, whether you're married or divorced is not good.

Yeah.

Yeah, I totally agree. And the other thing is people are like, well, you're so, you know, your parents were amicable. Neither one of them must've had an affair. Wrong.

Yeah, same here. Right, right. I was subtly saying my father had like constant girlfriends all the time.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And it takes like, again, like when you have that bitterness because that happened, you know, that is, that is where the drama forms. It's the bitterness and the resentment and the anger. So like you have to process your grief, obviously feel your feels, understanding what your thoughts are about that are creating those feelings. And that's the model by which we coach. coach

around cognitive restructuring. So it's not our life circumstances that are causing us to feel, it's how we think about our life circumstances or the facts in our life that make us feel. And the way that we feel, that makes us act, react, and behave in certain ways. Those feelings are what making us act, react, and behave. But it comes from our thinking. It comes from the stories and beliefs we're telling ourselves. So if your spouse has had an affair, okay, but what are you making that mean?

say something, I now know why you love Better Apart so much because you are, like it was probably very affirming. I talk so much about re-narrating that inner narrative because what you think things mean is what they mean to you. And I had a situation where someone canceled on a friend of mine and-

I was like, well, and in my mind, I made all these valid reasons why they might have done it, which made total sense and had nothing to do with the friend. And my friend's take was like, they must not really care about our relationship. I'm like, what are you talking about?

You know what I do this coaching to myself every single day, right? We all have busy lives and you know people are doing the best they can as humans and especially if you have children you've got hectic jobs or whatever like what are you making it mean if somebody is not living up to your manual the first chapter in my course is about the manual that we have for others and if you believe that everyone's going to work according to your manual. You're always going to show up disappointed resentful and angry right and that is your

That is your mindset, right? Because nobody's coming and no one's showing up the way you want them to. But that's a mindset issue. That's a thought issue. That's a belief system issue that you can't change others, right? You can't control others. The only thing that you can control is how you react to them. And it's so important.

So I do want to just touch on the next book because like I want everybody to hear about the yes method, you know, because so many, like I said, I do workshops on how to communicate to get what you want in divorce. And what you say about your yes method is so aligned with everything that we talk about at Better Than Bitter. I feel like we could have written a book together and tell us or tell our audience here about, you know, the idea around communication and how to get through mediation.

utilizing this idea around the yes.

Okay, so the yes method is really a way to break down how to get to the core of what it is that you want. And yes is just an acronym for your role, like what are you doing? And that's asking you to stop and ask yourself, what is the core behavior that I'm displaying right now that's getting in the way of my figuring out my E, right? And the E is,

is the emotion, it's the need, it's the motivation. This is very theoretical. I'll make it more practical in a second. It's the emotional story, why we want what we want, right? And then the S is the activating agent, shelving the heated conversation caused by your behavior to get to the E, right? So, you may, in a divorce, both people really want the house, okay? So the story is,

I need the house, I need the house. And what happens is people start either catastrophizing things, you know, I'll never get another house. The kids will have to leave the school district minimizing. don't worry, you'll find something. Or, you know, or burying their head in the sand like, I want to buy the house. Well, there's no way to pay for the house, right? Or somebody else comes in, steamrollers. There's all these different things that we do that cause relationships and arguments to froth up, to escalate, right?

But if we do the S, which is to shelve the heated conversation before it gets out of hand, we can take that pause, right? That's all shelving means is pausing, step back and say, huh, why am I minimizing what they want rather than thinking about what I need? Because that centerpiece, the E, the what you need, which links back and better apart to the clarity piece, understanding

Your core motivation will bring you to the solution that actually tends not to contradict what the other person's need is. That's how mediation works. It's like, it's actually crazy. I don't tell people to do these things. I kind of just do it with them, but that is really what's happening. So let's say both people want the house and maybe, you know, one person wants it because they think if they don't have it, the kids will never visit them. And the other person wants it because they think if they don't have it, they'll never be able to, you know,

afford another house. But if we, I've seen this happen time and time again, we say, okay, let's do a little experiment. Let's rent an apartment in the summer. Let's say a family, you can rent a three-month apartment or something. Let's see what happens. Let the kids start getting on a visitation schedule at that apartment. Right. And they, and they do that and they say, then they, then that parent starts to have heightened confidence that the kids are actually going to come and visit. Right. And then maybe.

the parent who doesn't think they're going to be able to afford the house, they didn't realize how much they're going to get in support or they didn't realize, with this new free time, they can get another job or whatever. Suddenly nobody wants the house, right? Nobody liked the house in the first place, but they came in blazing guns that they needed the house, right? And so we unpacked it, but because what they were doing was one person is getting all heated up and the other person is saying, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, which just gets the first person.

more heated up and it gets into a cycle. And then if you go to court, well, good, that just costs you each $60,000. Right. It was more fights and more fights and more fights rather than noticing what's going on and getting behind, you know, the, the, the why of the what. So I don't know if I explained that very clearly. Listen to my Ted talk. It's much more clear.

Yeah.

Yeah, I listened to it and I think everybody should listen to it. Everybody Google Gabrielle Harley. Actually, the link will be in the show notes of the...

It's just a secret to getting along, if you do too, yeah. But it's like, you know, I give an example there of somebody who like didn't want their kid to have overnights at their father's house. And it turned out, and she was really arguing a lot about, because the kid's hair wasn't being done well for school. And when I kind of, in real life, I kind of said, is that what this is really about?

It's so good. It's so good.

And she said yes. And then I was like, really, or is it that you miss your daughter? And when I said that, you know, then she started to cry. And then she let him have the overnights. You know, when I started to do this kind of law, I was only 30 when I was working in the courthouse. And so, you know, when you're 30 years old, you're pretty young and you're just, know, maybe if you're listening right now and you're 30, you don't feel young. You are young. You just don't realize that you're young. you know, I used to, I noticed that

When I would reflect how people felt or what I thought they were feeling, they would go from angry to almost like teary, not crying, but teary. It'd be like the mask was broken. And when I broke through the mask, all of the arguing just melted away.

Mm-hmm.

It's incredible. It's like, and then you realize, well, if that works on other people, that can also work on me. I'm like really hard on myself. And I say, what am I really fighting about? What am I really upset about? And an important thing from my second book, The Secrets of Getting Along is also, you know, I think I, I think I call it like hashtag relationship goals or something like that. It's like, do you care about this relationship that much? Cause sometimes walking away.

is the best thing to do. That's maybe not the case when you have kids, but I just think that's a good life lesson. Some relationships are not meant to continue forever, and that's okay.

And I, know, and as much as, you know, reflectively looking back at my marriage, I was like, we are so much better apart. We are better communicators. We are better friends. We respect each other more. We have more patience. We are co-parenting better as an apart couple than we were before. And it just goes back to all of your guidelines that you talk about, the peace and the respect, the clarity.

And it's just so amazing how, again, if you can separate yourself from the, have to be together because it's the commitment we made to like, you know, maybe we just are gonna be better, not in a, you know, marital partnership because it is about.

redoing the partnership, because if you do have kids, you have to redo, right? You don't want to take over the bad partnership you had here and move it into the post-divorce partnership. Like, you want to rejigger and you want to be able to reframe. And if you can take all the principles that you said, like how to have, like how to do this better apart better, and you can take that into a more productive, communicative, collaborative, co-parenting relationship, that is where the power comes. Like you said, that's like,

That's the sweet spot. And you have to believe you can, okay? Because again, I feel like the term narcissistic person is so overused right now because everybody whose marriage didn't work out is married to a narcissist. And it's just like we all have narcissistic behaviors. Like every person in the entire world has some level of narcissism because like, you know, it's a sense of self at the end of the day, but it's, it is,

It is how you nurture that or feed it or rebel against it. And that's where like, that's where the turmoil comes in. And again, just separating and creating that space between you and then rethinking how to have a more productive relationship versus the blame back, which is never good, you know.

Yeah, the labeling and the anger that may get you through the darkest days. And that's okay if you need it then. But that angry naming, know, calling your ex a narcissist, clinically, very few people are actually narcissists. You know, people are selfish. People are self-centered, especially, you know, when I, when I used to work for the judge,

Mm-hmm.

they, we'd often do something called, we'd have to get a forensic, which is like a clinical evaluation of the person. you know, I would see them, I'd put my hands over and I'd say, let me guess, obsessive-compulsive narcissism, because everyone getting divorced is a little obsessive-compulsive and acts a little narcissistic, because it's, it is a trauma. It really is a trauma. I even feel like it's important. You know, I talk about the positive divorce movement and things being positive and better and all that, but,

I am not sugarcoating and glazing over the fact that this is hard. You have a road ahead. You can't go around. It's like that bear hunt story. You can't go around, you can't go over. You have to go through it. I don't know if anybody knows what I'm talking about, but there's a chosen group going on a bear hunt. You know, and there's, I remember to this day, and I'm so grateful that my mother did this. I asked her why she was getting divorced and what she said. And she was not the like bad one, right?

She was, sure not perfect, but not like my dad. I'm sorry, dad, who's not alive. I shouldn't say things like that, but anyway, be that as it may. She said to me, when I said, why are you getting divorced? She said, dad and I have grown-up problems. We love each other, but we cannot stay married. You are a child. Don't worry about why we are getting divorced. You need to be a child. And I mean, like, what a gift.

Thank

I'm gonna call her and thank her after we hang up.

My parents said something similar. just said, listen, we still love each other, but we've just decided that we're not in love with each other. So we're just not going to stay married, but we both love you so much. And we are so committed to being as loving parents as we can to you.

My parents also told me and my brother, like, you're not running circles around us. They were very, they were very united. but you know, Tania, we're really lucky. Most of you, anyone listening right now, like if your family models are not like our families, like that's normal, that's okay. And you can do it. You can do it.

I know.

Well, I know that we need to start wrapping up and I have one other question and I ask all of my guests. I wrote a blog, it's called the 20-year marriage contract with the option to renew. Of course, it doesn't need to be 20 years, it could be 15 years, but it's this idea that when we get, it's really easy to get married, but it's super hard to get divorced. So if you were to think about a 15,

or 20-year marriage contract when you got married, but it had the option to renew, what would you believe the trajectory of marriage to be and would there be a shift if you had to talk about all of these kind of life decisions, staying at home, deciding not to work, one person working, like having some level of early contract again and how you treat each other knowing that you have the option to just be like, I'm done.

Yeah, so I think that if that were the norm, I think marriage would be very different. I think everybody would work because it'd be scary not to work from a financial point of view. Think there are lots of statistics that show when people live together and they're not married, they're more likely to break up. think relationships would end more easily. I think there's a reason marriage is structured the way it is. Well, obviously there's a reason we had shorter life expectancies, et cetera, when it was first created.

Thank

I do think that it would really change the nature of marriage significantly.

So thank you again, Gabrielle, for being a guest today. Really appreciate it. And I hope that everybody does read your books because again, it really, really did help me in my process and I hope it'll help many people moving forward.

Thank you so much for having me. really appreciate it, Tania.

So at the end of every podcast, I always like to sum it up with my three top tips based on what I have gotten from the podcast and the person I'm interviewing. Gabrielle had so many amazing things that she said today. But in summary, the three top things that I got out of today's episode was number one, is that she talks about the five different ways that you can approach your

being better apart. And the one that really stood out to me on top of, you know, just being peaceful and respectful is really the one about clarity, because it's so important when you are getting divorced to have clarity, not just on what you want, but have intent around the why, meaning understanding why you want what you want, because you need to be able to step back from the minutia and the little

bits and pieces about the asset division or the parenting plan. But take a step up, look at it from a drone's view and thinking about the bigger picture and really understanding why is it that what I want? Because it's important to take the emotion out of the equation. So the second thing that I got from her talk was about the yes method and

The three parts of the yes method in order to communicate to get what you want is really about one, understanding the part that you are playing and understanding that in order to communicate properly, pointing blame back at the other person is only going to give them power over your emotions. So being able to understand your role and being able to

to move this divorce forward and the amicability portion of that really just comes back to controlling what you can control and that is yourself. The next part is really the emotion. So where is the emotion coming from? Understanding that primitive brain, understanding that fight, flight or freeze mentality, understanding that you need to give yourself space and the S.

is being able to shelf it. So the E and the S go together, meaning that in order for the E to be managed, your emotions to be managed, you need to be able to shelf conversations. You need to be able to press pause. And the last thing that I really want to point out in Gabrielle's discussion is similar to where I have ended with other interviewees.

meaning that we need to keep our children at top of mind. That when you throw the other spouse under the bus, when you allow for other people to speak poorly of them, that especially in front of the children, that those children really do recognize that they're 50 % of each one of those spouses. So you need to make sure that they believe that each of 50 % of them is good.

And if you are constantly surrounding yourself with negativity with people who are speaking so poorly of your soon-to-be spouse or soon-to-be ex who you are only going to create more negativity in your life. So make sure that you are staying positive about the good things that you see in that individual and not so focused on all of the best.

And one of the most amazing things with having such incredible guests is that you get the chance to work with them. And I want to be able to allow for you all to explore working with Gabrielle. So if you go to gabriellehartley.com, you will be able to see all the different ways that you can hire her as your mediator. Now, if you are in New York or in Massachusetts,

she can draft a complete agreement so you can work with her as a mediator and do that through Zoom and she can draft the entire mediation divorce agreement for you. If you are outside of those two states, she will draft a memorandum of understanding. So all of the key elements that need to be in your divorce agreement by which you would have an attorney draft for you.

And I can't say enough about working with somebody who has had a 99 % success rate of keeping people out of the courtroom. So definitely be sure to reach out to Gabrielle. So thank you again, and I look forward to seeing you all on the next episode of Better Than Bitter.

Thanks for tuning in to Better Than Bitter™, navigating an amicable divorce. Whether you are at the beginning of your divorce journey, midway through, or even done, we want the stories from our guests to give you hope that an amicable resolution is possible. If you'd like to dive deeper into today's episode, check out our show notes for a full transcript, reflections, and links to learn more about Better Than Bitter's coaching courses, and how to connect with our fabulous guests. If you're ready for more support, you can head over to betterthanbitter.coach .

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