SOS London Makeover: Michelle’s journey….

Michelle is taking part in the “SOS London Divorce Makeover”. This means she will benefit from some free advice and inspiration from a selection of our SOS exhibitors who have generously donated their time to show what options and choices are available to someone going through divorce or relationship breakup.

The story begins with Michelle telling us about the complexity and pain of her situation.

Early November 2009

“My husband has petitioned for divorce and I have yet to receive the court paper work. So we are in the initial stages of divorce.  We separated on the 27th December 2007, the timing of which, was down to the house opposite ours becoming vacant and available for rent.

My husband moved out of the marital home and into this smaller 3 bedroomed rental property opposite our home, just across a small village green.  Many questioned our decision and thought this too close for comfort, but actually the practicality of it worked out very well…

Our marriage failed for a number of reasons.  We both tried hard, took advice, and even explored counseling.  None of which helped and the marriage was doomed.  No-one was to blame for the untimely ending of the marriage, as there were no other persons involved at the time.

Things moved on and we were happy going our separate ways.  We agreed good contact with the children (every other weekend and half of the school holidays) from the outset of the separation. Living opposite one another this was really just a basis from which we worked. The children afforded themselves a lot more contact with one or other parent as they wished.

Both my husband and I explored other relationships, both of which failed as I personally felt it was too soon for either party to be involved in another relationship (I know this is how it worked out for me).

Since then, we both have new steady partnerships.  We initially agreed to wait the standard two years separation and then opt for a quickie divorce (if there is such a thing).

Things soured between the both of us, after the arrival of his new girlfriend. Her agenda for their relationship was differing to what we agreed and my husband made an application for divorce in recent months.

I no longer live in the marital home due to relocating for a while to care for my terminally ill mother who passed away in March. It was planned I would return to the marital home if/when I returned, however my husband changed that agreement and the marital home is currently still up for sale.

My husband secured another rental property (just round the corner from the marital home) of my limited choice of what was available. Of which he now refuses to pay the rent for and which I can not afford to pay for myself. This has thrown me into the hands of the benefit system and I also now face potential homelessness due to the shortfall in benefit and actually how much the rent costs.

Due to financial restrictions imposed through mediation I am currently planning to represent myself (in court) and have a fixed fee solicitor to complete all the paperwork as respondent.

Mediation was helpful in as much as outlining the finances, but most of what was agreed has now been changed to suit circumstances imposed. This was a costly process for both of us and I now face bankruptcy due to my dire financial situation.

So as the divorce rumbles away in the back ground, my husband and his girlfriend have contact with the children as outlined above and I face the tough job of patching them up emotionally between visits.

My husband’s parents fail to acknowledge me as the children’s mother and after writing them a very heart felt letter I received a very cold response. I now have nothing to do with them, other than encourage the children to call them at least once a fortnight.

In the outset everything was very amicable between my husband and I, now however we no longer speak, unless its of an urgent nature via mobile or the odd email.

I’m not sure if their is a way forward to improve our situation and feel it offers some comfort to his girlfriend if we have no communication.

I’m Bi-Polar and in receipt of incapacity benefit. Although the government in their infinite wisdom feel it’s necessary to apply pressure to me, in the form of getting me back into work, which as I suffer with a mental illness I feel is pretty mad (I can say that being Bi-Polar, its an in joke).  Obviously the effects of which contribute to my illness and therefore make the situation worse.

This obviously effects everything around me…as well as my day to day moods etc.  I’d like to be able to converse with my husband on an improved level with regards to our two children from our marriage and my daughter from a previous relationship (with whom he has deserted and wants nothing more to do with).  He does however see our children on a regular basis.

It saddens me the effect this is having on our children, however after making a number of suggestions (family therapy for us all) I was stonewalled and ignored. I now prefer to control the things within my
power and let go of the things I can’t.

Its hard to actually add feeling to the writing of all of this, however I must add I’m not bitter about the situation, just frustrated by it.

Any advice or an independent outlook would be most welcomed.”

Michelle

So how can we empower Michelle and help her see what choices and options she can access?

We are going to arrange for her to receive information and inspiration from the SOS professionals, and I will be interviewing her about her experiences, and how her thoughts, attitudes and actions are influenced by the advice and help that she receives.

The journey begins…..

Download the pdf here to see full details of Michelle’s SOS Makeover: makeover-michelle-mathias-5-nov-09

Thursday 12 November 09

Michelle receives the following email from SOS coach Julie Jones of Changes Forever.  Julie prepares Michelle for the journey she is about to begin:
Dear Michelle,

I am so thrilled that you are having a day especially for YOU and I very much look forward to welcoming you here on 19th November.

I am not sure if you have received my kind of coaching before but it needs to be experienced to realise its full potential and is designed to help address any specific personal issues, business projects or general conditions of your life that need improving.  It involves honest and open discussion and is completely confidential.

The session will be for 2 hours: In the first hour we will explore your wheel of life, and use the second hour to work on the specific issues you have identified.

Your coach will be me Julie Jones and I am based in my cosy pink coaching room, where we will start with the  Wheel of Life.  In ancient Chinese philosophy they talk about a wheel running smoothly.  By completing this exercise you will see if your wheel is a bit bumpy in places making your life journey a bit uncomfortable!

It’s worth repeating from time to time to see where you’re going and identify if things are moving in the right direction.  We usually suggest every 6 months although sometimes the wheel can change daily!

Initial Exploration/Coaching Session

The aim of the session is to enable you to move forward with whatever you decide is the most pressing issue: you will spend some time identifying an area you specifically want to work on setting a goal and by the end you will have created a plan on a way forward using the options you have identified.

You will be comfortable and not disturbed and it is best if your mobile phone is switched to silent prior to the session.

You will be able to spend a couple of minutes before the session relaxing and thinking about you and what you may like to talk about.  It is useful to have a pen/pencil and something to write on during the session and a soft drink to sip on will be provided

I feel very privileged to have been asked to work with you on what I feel will be an exciting part of your journey, before we head off into London for your meeting with Suzy and the team in Covent Garden.

Warm wishes

Julie Jones
Founder and Relationship/ Lifestyle Coach
Changes Forever
Tel: 01462 643695
Mobile: 07967 135 870

‘Making relationships work for you…at home, work, with yourself and in life’

Accredited Life Coach with Coaching & Mentoring International

If California ban divorce – should the UK follow suit?

With the UK divorce laws under attack from Lady Deech and the chances of your marriage failing having much better odds than you winning the lottery, the initiative by John Marcotte to change the law in California to ‘ban divorce’ may be more dangerous than it sounds.

The Starting Over Show - which was the UK’s first ‘divorce fair’ and which hopes one day to take it’s mixture of legal and financial information to the US, along with it’s inspiration to start over whilst keeping on talking terms with your Ex, not surprisingly vehemently opposes such a proposition – but for reasons that we should all be concerned about.

As the Starting Over Show’s creator, I believe that it is a fundamental human right to feel supported and encouraged when you want to move forward from any life changing event, and that to be condemned to going back to a society where abuse and adultery were tolerated, couples slept in separate rooms and ’till death us do part’ was the only way out, this would be the result of any ‘ban’ or attempts to make divorce more difficult. This would also mean that accidentally backing the car over your spouse would become the best option for those no longer willing to accept a life-time of punishment, because their marriage didn’t pan out as planned.

But how real is the threat of public support for banning divorce?

By October 17^th John Marcotte will have heard from the US Secretary of State whether he will be allowed to gather signatures supporting his proposed law to ‘ban divorce’ in California. Marcotte has 4,000 Facebook fans, and close to a thousand dollars in donations. He’s even sold out of T-shirts which read, ” You said, till death do us part, you’re not dead yet.”

Following on from Lady Deech’s accusations that the the old public divorce hearings have been replaced by “an unpleasant inquisitorial procedure designed to establish the husband’s financial position and revials the old law in its depth, length, cost, temptation to lie and humiliation,” and a clear desire to stem the tide of “undeserved millions” being handed out to celebrity wives, is it just possible, that with the more right-wing approach to government likely after the next general election, that such outrageous ideas of banning divorce altogether could take hold in the UK?

The Conservative think tank that produced ‘Every Family Matters’, an in-depth review of family law in Britain, estimated that the direct financial cost of family breakdown in the UK to be in excess of £20 billion pounds per annum. They were also clear about not wanting to currently reform the lack of legal protection for the increasing number of people who cohabit: “we want to encourage a high commitment culture and break the relationship breakdown culture”. This is a significant statement, when you consider that ‘common law marriage’ is a myth and particularly women with children are increasingly finding themselves without any legal rights if their relationship breaks down – unlike their married counterparts. 58% of the YouGov Poll (April 2008 & January 2009) thought that giving cohabitants similar legal rights to marriage would undermine marriage, and 84% agreed that it is important for the law to support marriage.

Surely the simplest way to achieve this is to make divorce more difficult? Is this not what is effectively happening with the stubborn refusal of Government to bring in ‘no fault divorce’ as a standard, irrespective of the (sensible) need for ‘cooling off periods’? Although marriage is undeniably a legal contract that should be respected as such, the very fact that what is essentially an emotional and spiritual matter is not treated as such by the current legal system suggests that for government, marriage is seen as an indicator of a healthy society – or at least one that is behaving as the powers that be wish it to.

More progressive family lawyers, who are increasingly gaining links with mediators or becoming ‘collaborative’ lawyers, approach divorce with more sensitivity to the emotional state of their clients than has traditionally been the case.

The Starting Over Show exhibitors have regular networking meetings so that the lawyers can form trusted relationships with the mediators, divorce coaches and holistic therapists so that they will be better able to refer their clients to specialists who can help make a less combative divorce the primary focus. It’s hard to be nice, or even reasonable, to someone you’re divorcing when you are frightened, confused, don’t have any positive vision for your future and have forgotten that your children deserve you to at least try to be a ‘good Ex’.

I agree with one thing Marcotte says about banning divorce: “What it might do is cause people to really think about it, and really value their marriage while they are in it.” But wouldn’t it be better to encourage people to do that in a more proactive way, rather than punishing them if they get it wrong? The Social Justice Report ‘Every Family Matters’ concludes “that there should be strong government encouragement of couples getting married to take part in high-quality, standardized and accredited pre-marriage information and preparation, delivered in an accessible fashion.” Of course they are right that we should not all go into marriage without a tool-box of skills – such as communication techniques, parenting skills, positive shared visions for the future – but are government the right people to be judging and accrediting how we access those skills? Let’s face it, are we able to find any politicians or government employees to hold up as fine examples, mentors even, of how to have a ‘successful marriage’?

US attorney Kevin Healey says, a “No Divorce” law is unconstitutional and will never happen.
“Anybody can get something before the voters, but I think it will be shot down handily. ” But does Healey have a facebook group of 4,000 fans, many of whom are taking comedy writer John Marcotte’s campaign as a serious suggestion, not as the ‘parody’ that some claim it to be?

Whether it’s pre-marriage support, refusing to provide legal protection for cohabiting couples or making divorce even more difficult and painful than it already is, the political drive to control society in order to reduce that £20 billion pound cost of ‘family breakdown’ needs to be taken seriously.

UPDATE:

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen today authorized the backer of an initiative that would ban divorce to begin collecting signatures to put the proposed constitutional amendment before voters.

John Marcotte now has until March 22, 2010, to collect 694,354 signatures of registered voters in order to get the measure on the ballot next year. The proposal would change the California Constitution to “eliminate the ability of married couples to get divorced in California.”

Couples could still get their marriages annulled under the proposal.

Here is the official text of the initiative:

ELIMINATES THE LAW ALLOWING MARRIED COUPLES TO DIVORCE. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the ability of married couples to get divorced in California. Preserves the ability of married couples to seek an annulment. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Savings to the state of up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually for support of the court system due to the elimination of divorce proceedings.

References:

New York Times: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/10/ban-divorce-ballot-effort-gets-ok-to-gather-signatures.html#comments

Times article on Lady Deech’s speech http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article6832973.ece

Fox40 News

http://www.fox40.com/news/headlines/ktxl-nodivorce,0,5509809.story

Getting Hitched Information Pack

With all the talk from Conservative think tanks about bribing couples to stay married (£40 a week – is that really going to be enough?) and cooling off periods, and suggestions from other comentators on making it harder to get married in the first place, I think they are all barking up the wrong tree.  Personally, I don’t think we should do anything that is essentially negative.

Anyone with children knows that punishments and deterrents only have short term effect.  Why not make it easier for couples to have a long and happy relationship by creating a ritual around the preparation for marriage which includes, effectively, relationship coaching as well as practical financial and legal advice?

Not an ‘induction course’ but more like a spiritual non denominational rite of passage – taking the relationship onto a higher level – with a load of fantastic life skills weaved into the fabric of it.  Just like getting a Home Information Pack when buying a house, couples could get a Getting Hitched Information Pack when they are getting married, a civil partnership or deciding to live together.

If you were to create such a pack, what would you put in it?

Could be nasty

Heads of state from more than 50 countries have been attending meetings of the Non-Aligned Movement in Egypt.

I saw the news on Twitter and thought “how amazing!  A non-aligned, presumably free thinking organization focused on good ideas rather than tying themselves to some political or social dogma.”

And how relevant it seemed to me at this time, about to be interviewed for the “Ex Files” column in the Observer Women’s supplement.  Because when it comes to relationships, I’m becoming increasingly less influenced by conventional ways of thinking, and learning not to just take relationships and pop them into a nice neat socially acceptable box, and create a Cold War situation where once there was love and harmony.  Especially since the box for ex’s seems to be marked (and not without cause) ‘agent of destruction’.

The diversity of opinions on Twitter was interesting too.  Let’s face it, from a traditional PR point of view, me sticking my relationships into print and not knowing exactly what my ‘ex’ is going to say about me, would be a crazy thing to do and if I had a traditional PR agency managing the Starting Over Show I should be no doubt told to stop being so reckless.

But SOS is just me, and my PR queen is @SuziPR who is amazingly supportive of my desire to just be, well – real.

CourageousLover

@SuzyMiller Fascinating oppotunity – see how you’ve grown/he’s grown. And in print for the public. Good luck.

@CourageousLover has it right – even if I’m being reckless, my ex is being very courageous. It’s one thing to share your stuff with friends, but to have it printed with a full length photo in the Observer Magazine is quite something else.

NeilDenny

@SuzyMiller Wow, I hope that Observer article works out alright. Could be nasty.

@NeilDenny is a Collaborative lawyer and keynote presenter/trainer on how conflict affects us as individuals and organisations – and he was right to point out how risky this article could prove to be.

But somehow, going through relationship breakup leaves one with a certain amount of courage – how can anything else (apart from physical death) be as bad?  And of course, my ex and I are working – slowly – upon finding our way through into a different relationship.  Needing to mediate with ourselves as much as with each other.

The Non-Aligned Movement was born during the Cold War in 1961, aiming to unite countries which officially expressed the wish not to be allied either with the US-led western bloc or the Soviet-dominated eastern bloc.

It now has 118 member states, with 15 observer states, representing two-thirds of the members of the United Nations and half of the world’s population.  But it still struggles to have a voice.

Sometimes a relationship can crumble and bitterness and pain prevails, but given support, opportunity and courage, it can revive and become something else, something non-aligned and even uncomfortable to those who prefer things to stay in a nice neat box, part of a defined movement or belief system.

The interview is tomorrow morning.  Wish me luck.

Even Swans sometimes get Divorced

Petra isn’t known for her philandering. A number of male swans attempted to make her acquaintance in the two years preceding December 2007 – but Petra rejected them all, for she was in love with a plastic swan-shaped pedal boat.

The romantic escapades of the black swan hit headlines around the world last year when she began following a white pedal boat around on the lake where she lived. When winter arrived, she refused to be separated from the boat when workers removed it from the lake for the winter. The local zoo found a place for the swan and the boat to spend the winter together.

But despite Petra’s love and devotion to her unusual choice of mate, and our own human desire to believe in life long commitments between creatures other than ourselves, it has been discovered that five percent of whooping swan pairs end in divorce, and as many as 1 in 10 pairs of mute swans split up.

Unlike with humans, the swans’ divorce process seems not to dissolve into years or rancour, unhappiness and debt.

One of the objectives of the Starting Over Show (the UK’s first divorce fair) taking place on 15 March in Brighton this year, is to provide the information and the inspirational support human beings need when going through relationship break ups. “We can’t help swans who are getting divorced” admits Suzy Miller, the shows producer, “but we can try to reverse the stigma over break up and help people feel supported through the process. If even swans can sometimes need to change partners, we shouldn’t make humans feel like failures because they haven’t made their relationship work for an entire lifetime.”

Swans, Wikipedia tells us, usually mate for life. Divorce, though, the entry goes on, “does sometimes occur, particularly following nesting failure.” Which perhaps explains why Petra, the famous black swan from the German town of Münster, finally ditched her boyfriend for a new beau. It is, after all, difficult to nest with a giant, plastic pedal boat.

Not many nests are wrecked by the rigours of the credit crunch, so what does drive this icon of romance, the swan that `mates for life’, to divorce? Biologists are scrutinizing bird families, from courtship to breakup, with new interest these days. For years, scientists assumed that birds which nested together pretty much stayed together without slipping off to visit alluring neighbours. In the 1980s, however, DNA analyses of nestlings revealed that the male who helps tend them is not always their genetic father. “A lot of birds are having a bit on the side,” says Jeffrey M. Black of the University of Cambridge in England, “so many theories about evolution and social behaviour have been turned on their heads.”

From this upset, studies of feathered divorce have begun to emerge. “I think you’re going to see a lot more,” Black predicts. Many researchers use the term “divorce” for paired birds that separate or fail to reunite during the next breeding opportunity. When the word first showed up in ornithology papers, “there was an uproar,” Black remembers. However, ornithologists didn’t seem to take to such proposed alternatives as “severance,” “breakage,” “dissolution,” or that masterpiece of neutrality, “nonretainment.”

Black has collected estimates of divorce rates in more than 100 species of birds. The percentage of pair bonds that break ranges from nearly 100, in house martins and greater flamingos, to roughly zero in Australian ravens and the waved albatross. Humans, who divorce in 40 to 50 percent of new marriages in the United States and are predicted to reach such levels in the UK, fall into the same range as the masked booby. Divorce rates differ not only among species but among different populations of the same species, much as humans in Hove untie the knot at a higher rate than those in Cheshire.

The frequency of deserting females does not surprise Andre Dhondt of the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology, who compares relative investments in reproduction. “There is more at stake for females than males,” he points out. To find out who benefits from a divorce, Dhondt has tallied the number of subsequent offspring of divorced male and female blue tits. “Typically, females improve their breeding success, but the males don’t,” he reports.

The singles scene can be tough for some species. Among red-billed gulls in a region with few males, 32 percent of females that lose their mates through death or divorce never breed again. Long-time gull watcher James A. Mills of Corning, N.Y., who reports that number, notes that some of these loners lived 10 more years.

“Luckily, humans don’t have to rely on being able to reproduce to find a happy partnership., comments Suzy Miller. But we do need a great deal of practical and emotional support to help us start over successfully when things don’t work out.” In humans, second or third-time around UK divorces have doubled since 1981, say official statistics. According to the Office for National Statistics, one in five of all couples divorcing in 2005 already had one marriage break-up behind them.

But there is hope yet – apparently, Bewick’s swans never separate. Well… almost never.

To find out more and secure tickets for the Starting Over Show go to: http://www.startingovershow.co.uk, or visit the SOS Village resource site at www.sos-village.org.

Sources:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,523762,00.html

When Birds Divorce  Who splits, who benefits, and who gets the nest By Susan Milius
http://www.netpets.org/birds/newsroom/divorce.html

Jeffrey M. Black, Cambridge University, Department of Zoology, Downing St. Cambridge CB2 3EJ England
Andre A. Dhondt, Cornell University, Laboratory of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd, Ithaca, NY 14850

Why one person wants to be at the Starting Over Show this March….

Hi Suzy,

I was in Brighton staying at the Ship on Friday night with some girlfriends for a birthday and I picked up the Sos leaflet about the show on the 15th MARCH.

I have been seperated from my husband for 5 years now after he started an affair and left after a year of indecision as to what to do about it. I have always wanted him to come back – feeling as if he has left a void for me and my 2 children (15 and 11, then 9 and 6). I feel true love for him despite all the hurt he has caused us.

On 4 occasions (almost yearly), having sometimes met other people and not seeming to make myself feel the right way about them, and his relationship with the same woman often not working out as he had planned, we have almost got back together, but each time he has gone back to her as I believe her to be the most powerful out of us two women. I still love him very much, and reading your article ‘a strange gift’ has helped me realise I am not alone feeling that and that I can use that love to help the children in keeping us ‘ healthily and positively apart’.

Now I am not a weak person. I am a freelance food stylist, preparing food for photography and writing recipes for magazines and books. I love my job and all those I work with. I have many friends and I love to help others. I spend alot of time with friends and doing what I can for others makes me feel ‘needed’ and making, what I believe to be the best, for my children also gives me that sense of responsibility and purpose that I seem to desperately need to be at one with myself.

I took the children to Australia last year for the whole of the school summer holidays and I take them every year to the Isle of Wight Festival – putting my own tent up and down!!! (I read your article in eve magazine!) I know I do so much with my life now that I would never have done had I been with my ex still. I run my sons football team and have done for 4 years etc….. but I still have a void. I keep ridiculously busy with so much – but I know its to distract my thoughts from my failed relationship.

I feel happy and I feel motivated but still something is not right and I dont necessarily feel that a man would make that better – which is why I am not actively looking and rarely have done!

Having picked up your leaflet I feel hugely inspired and excited about such a show and I will most definately be there. Meeting others with similar situations could most definately help – which is something I have not done – not in a therapy situation anyway and its something I feel the need to do. Workshops sound a great idea for the show too. I feel so able to help others and do so as much as I can, but helping myself emotionally is not as easy!

Many thanks for taking the time to read this

An inspired SOS ticket holder!!

Emma