If you need to end a relationship, you want to try to do it in the most loving and peaceful way possible. This is something I say often, but there’s one problem with it: not everyone wants to be loving and peaceful about separating.

One of my clients, parent coach Julie Zivah, finds herself in a highly contentious divorce with her husband of 22 years. Yet she has found a way to keep her peace while still going through the process. And she wanted to be on the podcast to take us through her journey as someone in a high-conflict divorce.

In this episode of The Loving Truth podcast, you’ll hear about how Julie’s divorce has gone thus far and how she’s learned to stay calm and zen. You’ll learn about the hard realizations she’s had about her relationship with her husband and kids, the tools she’s used to help navigate her situation mentally and emotionally, and her supportive mindset and approach as her family’s dynamic continues to be in transition.

2:20 - Julie describes where she was mentally and emotionally in her marriage when we started working together

5:40 - How Julie got to the decision to end her relationship with her husband

8:35 - Does Julie ever get cold feet and feel tempted to change her mind?

11:21 - The moment Julie knew her divorce wasn’t going to be loving and peaceful (and an important side note about her approach to this conversation)

14:15 - Julie shares one of the hardest realizations in this process and how her relationship with her kids has changed

21:57 - The importance of a dependable adult for kids and teaching your kids how to manage difficult people

24:05 - How Julie’s experience has changed her parent coaching practice

26:03 - Collaborative divorce proceedings with a high-conflict personality and what happened when Julie switched to a non-collaborative process

31:09 - The tool that helps Julie do things with love and kindness while going through a difficult divorce

34:40 - How Julie kept her peace when things got really tough and she had moments of doubt

38:47 - The importance of using helpful tools when you’re not in crisis

40:14 - Julie’s advice if you suspect a high-conflict separation on the horizon

46:01 - Where Julie’s relationships with her partner and kids stand today

Mentioned In How to Keep Your Peace Through a High-Conflict Divorce

High Conflict Institute

Splitting and Don’t Alienate the Kids! by Bill Eddy

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Are you avoiding spending time alone with your partner? Do you feel like you’ve lost momentum on going forward with your divorce decision after talking about it with your spouse? I answered a couple of questions from Tiffany and another caller who found themselves in these situations.

In this episode of The Loving Truth podcast, you’ll hear about how you get to a place of disconnection in your marriage and how the way you approach the divorce conversation with your partner can cause you to waver on your decision. I’ll also teach you how to build your muscle of discomfort to help you stop avoiding your husband and how you can move the separation process along as smoothly as possible.

0:40 - A choice between befriending a little discomfort or a lifetime of avoiding your husband

4:08 - Why sometimes you avoid being alone with your partner

5:35 - How to start breaking down the buffers you’ve become used to in your relationship

9:48 - A common thing that happens in marriages with kids

12:45 - Why the conversation to end your marriage is just the first of many

16:56 - The importance of how you enter a conversation with your partner about separation

18:49 - How to move the separation and divorce process along as peacefully and loving as possible

Mentioned In Avoiding Time Alone and a Divorce Discussion Gone Wrong

Have a Question? Leave Me a Voicemail Message at 727-537-0359.

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Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

So you’ve decided to end your relationship in divorce. What’s the first thing you should do next? The answer might surprise you.

In this episode of The Loving Truth podcast, you’ll learn about a much more productive first step you can take instead of the one that most likely immediately comes to mind. I’ll also teach you why it helps you commit to your decision to end your marriage.

1:19 - Your first instinct after you realize divorce is the answer

2:08 - What a wobble list is, and the point of making one

4:18 - The process of creating your wobble list (with examples)

7:00 - Why you will second-guess your commitment to divorce at some point 

7:55 - Scenarios that can cause you to second-guess yourself most often

Mentioned In The First Thing You Should Do When You Decide to Get a Divorce

Free, On-Demand Training: Undoing I Do

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

You feel like you’re at the end of your rope when it comes to your marriage. Divorce looks like the inevitable next step...but is it?

What if there was another way? What if there was the possibility of still saving your relationship by evolving it into a newer, better version?

In this episode of The Loving Truth podcast, you’ll learn about the divorce alternative that many of my clients have used. I’ll teach you the similarity between relationships and technology and reveal how one client has started evolving her marriage.

1:03 - How “Julie’s” and “Chris’” relationship dynamic changed in 23 years

3:05 - How you need to think of marriage evolution

6:09 - How we get to the point of being stuck in the same miserable cycle in our relationship

9:03 - What the process of evolving your marriage depends on

10:36 - What marriage is and the change in “Julie’s” marriage with “Chris” as it began to evolve

13:11 - What if your marriage can’t evolve beyond where it is right now?

Mentioned In Instead of Divorce, Can You Save Your Marriage By Evolving It?

Truth & Clarity Session with Sharon

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

“What other people think of you doesn’t matter.”

You can hear that a thousand times. You can even tell it to yourself over and over until you’re blue in the face. And while a select few may not be rattled by it, most of us feel the effects of someone else’s judgment.

But you can bounce back instead of letting it affect you for weeks, months, or a lifetime. In this episode of The Loving Truth podcast, you’ll learn three ways of thinking about this that’ll help soften and shorten the blow to just a few days (or even hours) of hurt feelings. I’ll even share with you how I’ve learned to deal with judgment from family members about what I do in my business.

3:24 - Why the way someone feels about you has nothing to do with you

5:50 - What you can’t control (even if you think you can) and why

8:29 - The only opinion that ultimately matters (and a scenario that highlights why)

10:37 - The choices we all face when someone judges us

Mentioned In Worrying About What Others Think of You? How to Bounce Back Quickly

Stay or Go? How to Find Confidence and Clarity So You Can Fix Your Marriage, or Move Forward Without Regret by Sharon Pope

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

Want to move forward with decisions in your life and marriage? That’s what my monthly Q&As are designed to help you do! And today, it’s time to answer questions from three more listeners for November.

Sherry is on the verge of going to a divorce lawyer and is afraid. Amanda has a stressful situation that has caused her husband to separate from her and use her as an emotional punching bag. And Tamara has a husband seeking affirmation that she feels she can’t give him.

In this episode of The Loving Truth podcast, you’ll learn about how to handle any fear you have about divorcing, separation-causing situations that have you feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place, and unrealized fears from a previous relationship that can give you a sense of deja vu. I’ll also reveal why being asked to do what doesn’t come naturally to you doesn’t have to derail your relationship.

1:01 - Why you should see multiple attorneys if you’re moving toward divorce

6:13 - Helping Sherry navigate through her fear (and how I did it after the breakup of my first marriage)

12:21 - Why Amanda’s husband decided to separate from her

16:30 - Should Amanda completely close the book on her relationship?

18:51 - How Tamara’s unhealed wound from her first marriage is affecting her current relationship

22:30 - How I got through a similar situation and the opportunity Tamara has in front of her right now

26:21 - What’s really behind Tamara’s reluctance to speak her husband’s love language and how she can resolve it

Mentioned In Fearing Divorce, Stressful Separation Point, and Love Language Trepidation

Have a Question? Leave Me a Voicemail Message at 727-537-0359.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

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Do you trust your partner? Even when we say no, we often don’t consider exactly what it is we don’t trust about them.

This goes beyond cheating, by the way, which is what most people automatically think of when it comes to trust in a marriage. Having a lack of trust anywhere in a relationship creates disappointment, disconnection, and a lack of intimacy with your spouse.

What areas of your marriage do you need to reconsider when it comes to trust? And how do you resolve it when you find that there’s mistrust?

In this episode of The Loving Truth, you’ll learn about the different types of trust to consider inside your relationship. I’ll give you examples of how these mistrustful issues can affect your marriage and teach you what you can do about it.

00:46 - Why trust is important inside of relationships

4:53 - The biggest type of trust issue I see in my community

7:16 - How lack of physical trust doesn’t always show up as physical abuse

9:03 - The third type of trust that can erode your relationship

10:21 - An area of trust to keep an eye on even if you’re in the process of divorcing

12:43 - Other areas to look at and uncover any trust issues 

Mentioned In Different Types of Trust You Need to Consider in Your Marriage

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Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

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You’d think if our society failed at something 40-50% of the time, we’d probably be doing everything we could to solve the problem...

Yet, we don’t do that with the institution of marriage, which sees that rate of divorce among first-timers (it’s even worse for second and third marriages). Instead, we assume our partner is the problem; therefore, the solution is just getting out of the relationship.

But we still take ourselves with us to the next relationship. What we really need to do is change the ways we approach marriage itself.

In this episode of The Loving Truth podcast, you’ll learn five ways to upgrade your marriage. I’ll also teach you three big reasons why people as a society tend to give up on their relationships and contribute to this thrashing of the institution.

1:56 - Three significant ingredients that can cause people to give up on their marriages

6:39 - The first perspective to help you be more conscious and much happier inside your relationships

11:41 - Expecting and embracing lots of changes in your marriage

13:42 - Why it takes a village to exist in relationships with people

17:00 - Why owning your shit is essential for a healthy relationship

18:28 - The last upgrade that leads to more ease and connection in your marriage

23:18 - How you can start implementing these upgrades

Mentioned In Five Ways to Upgrade Your Marriage for More Relationship Success

Stay or Go? How to Find Confidence and Clarity So You Can Fix Your Marriage, or Move Forward Without Regret by Sharon Pope

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

You’ll find stuff that scares the crap out of you as a parent, if you search Google on the impact of divorce on kids. And while it’s not wrong, it’s not the full story either.

There’s something missing from statistics that show the effects of parents divorcing on their children. How you and your husband go through the process is really what’s critical to their emotional well-being.

In this episode of The Loving Truth podcast, you’ll learn about how the way you go through the divorce process can affect your kids and their relationship with you and your soon-to-be ex. I’ll also reveal some tools that provide better options to help them understand and accept what’s happening.

3:05 - Examples of the downstream impact of how you divorce

10:32 - The destructive impact of sharing intimate details of your marriage with your children (even if they’re adults now)

12:46 - Examples of better ways to handle divorcing so that it doesn’t cause your kids to suffer

15:39 - How to talk (and listen) to your kids when going through a divorce

20:12 - Why it’s okay for your children to see you struggle (and where it gets unhealthy)

21:09 - One last practical thing to help your kids get through their parent’s divorce

Mentioned In The Missing Piece to the Research on the Impact of Divorce on Your Kids

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Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

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Do you cringe at the thought of sex with your husband? Do you even recoil from his intimate touch?

After helping sooo many women in my work, I can count on one hand the number of women contemplating divorce who still enjoy sex with their spouse. But how do we get from “til death do us part” and the honeymoon night to moving away when he reaches for you for some intimacy?

While there are several reasons why you might be avoiding sex with your partner, in this episode of The Loving Truth podcast, we’ll focus on one specific reason. You’ll also learn how to stop getting in your own way and take things into your own hands (so to speak) regarding sex.

1:28 - Some things that can lead to not wanting sex with your husband

2:53 - The myth about men and sex and what’s necessary for women to be into sex

4:44 - What you can’t be doing when you’re trying to orgasm

6:10 - Why you shouldn’t leave him in charge of sex all the time

8:33 - Advocacy for yourself and what you shouldn’t make a lack of craving sex say about you

Mentioned In Why You REALLY Don’t Want to Have Sex With Your Husband (& How to Fix It)

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Emily Nagoski

Sex With Emily 

Vanessa Marin

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.