The Divorced Dadvocate: Divorce Support For Dads
The Divorced Dadvocate: Divorce Support For Dads is a weekly podcast designed specifically for fathers navigating divorce. It addresses the unique challenges men face and offers practical guidance, emotional support, and real-life insights to help dads survive — and ultimately thrive — during and after divorce.
Each episode combines honest conversation, personal stories, and action-oriented advice to help listeners rebuild confidence, create healthy co-parenting strategies, manage finances, navigate court complexities, and heal emotionally. Since launching in 2020, the show has become a trusted resource and supportive community for divorced and divorcing dads.
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DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this podcast is to inform, not influence. It is not a substitute for professional care or advice by a qualified professional. The host, as well as guests who speak on this podcast, express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions, and The Divorced Dadvocate podcast & website neither endorses nor opposes any particular views discussed here.
The Divorced Dadvocate: Divorce Support For Dads
272 - Why Every Divorcing Dad Needs a Divorce Coach
The emotional toll of divorce creates a storm of complex emotions that leave men adrift, expected to navigate alone despite lacking experience with this life-altering process. A divorce coach serves as your harbor pilot through these turbulent waters, offering emotional support, strategic planning, improved communication skills, and personal growth opportunities that lawyers and therapists cannot provide.
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Are you a divorced or divorcing dad feeling overwhelmed or struggling to find your footing in this new chapter? You’re not alone. The journey through divorce can be one of the most challenging experiences a man faces but it doesn't have to define your future.
The "Thriving Father" Transformation Program is an exclusive 6-week journey designed for dads ready to do the deep work and sculpt a powerful, positive future. Learn more and register here: DadsGroupCoaching.com
Hello and welcome to the show. Thank you so much for tuning in again. This week we are going to be talking about why it is important for you, while going through and post-divorce, to have a coach to help you navigate this challenging time. But before we jump in and, as usual, let's welcome our new members to the Divorced Advocate community. Those are Alonzo and Nathan. If you are listening to this podcast you've listened more than once make sure to go to thedivorcedadvocatecom and check out all of the resources that we have there. We have created this community for you to find something, whatever you might need, wherever you're at in your process, that can help you through it. That's what the topic is today that we're gonna be talking about and why it is important to have somebody help you guide through. But the website is full of resources, from free to paid, that are gonna help you in this challenging time, so check it out at thedivorcedadvocatecom.
Speaker 1:All right, gentlemen, divorce isn't just an event. It's really a complex or a complete dismantling of your world, a seismic shock, if you will, that unleashes a storm of complex emotions. The maps that you've used in your past life are suddenly useless during this time and you might find yourself adrift on a vast, turbulent sea. The emotional storm is relentless. The waves of hot fury are followed by an undertow of a deep, hollow ache for a future that has vanished, and all of it, while in a thick fog of confusion, obscures any sense of direction. For fathers, this journey is often a solo voyage. Our society hands you a compass that only points in one direction, and that is, quote be strong. You're expected to be the unshakable rock to bottle up your fear and navigate the hurricane in a deafening silence. But the strongest captains are the ones who know when to ask for help and when to ask for guidance. What if you had a harbor pilot who has expertly navigated these exact straits hundreds of times before? Someone who can help you read the unpredictable currents. See past the storms. Unpredictable currents. See past the storms and steer you not just to any port, but to a destination of your choosing. This is the essence of divorce coaching, A steady hand on the helm, providing the clarity and strategy you need to move through the tempest and consciously chart a course for a thriving life after divorce.
Speaker 1:Gentlemen, the divorce is uncharted territory for many of us, particularly if we've not ever gone through it, and for most men, it's a high stakes game You're forced to play without ever seeing the rule book, which is huge. It's a once in a lifetime event, which means you get no practice runs, there's no do-overs and no chance to learn from your mistakes. You're thrust into a bewildering new world of legal proceedings, tense financial negotiations and crushing emotional turmoil, with absolutely no prior experience. This profound lack of knowledge is more than just stressful. It can lead to devastating and costly errors that impact you and your children for years to come. The complexities are immense, because divorce isn't just the end of marriage. It's the complete and awful, brutal restructuring of your entire life, and so I want you to I'm going to spend a little bit of time here of sharing with you what you're really dealing with in going through divorce, and I share this to give you not to scare you, but to give you a real sense of what's going on.
Speaker 1:I know, when I started contemplating divorce, we all know that it's difficult and challenging, but I really had no idea of the immense amount of everything that goes into it, and the first one is really the emotional upheaval. The emotional toll is just a chaotic roller coaster, and it's not just a straight line of sadness. One day you're filled, maybe, like I said, with a white, hot anger at the injustice of all of it, and the next you may be blindsided by a wave of profound grief over losing the future you had spent building. That was my big one. And men, particular, are often conditioned to suppress these feelings, which leads to a dangerous internal pressure. Your friends might mean well and I'm sure that they do but often their advice falls short. They'll either hit you with a useless platitude like quote don't worry, you're better off, which is awful or avoid the topic altogether, leaving you feeling completely isolated. For example, you try to talk to a friend about the pain of your kids leaving after your weekend and he awkwardly changes the subject to football cope by throwing yourself into maybe a 70-hour work week or start drinking more than you should, Anything just to numb the silence of your new home or your new living situation. You're not just grieving your ex-wife, You're grieving the inside jokes, the shared history and the future that you had envisioned, the retirement you were supposed to have together, the simple fact that you will no longer be there to wake your kids up on, maybe like a random Tuesday morning.
Speaker 1:The next is the financial strain. Suddenly you're in a financial fog of war, and that's unfortunately the best way to describe it. The economic stability you built as a team is shattered and one household budget must now stretch into two. It's simple math, right? The language is foreign of what you're going through QDRO, stipends, asset declarations and the costs are staggering. It feels like a negotiation and more like a battle for your financial future. For instance, you pay your lawyer a $10,000 retainer, assuming it will cover most of the process, but you're shocked when it's completely gone. After just a few contentious emails and one court filing, You're staring at a spreadsheet trying to figure out how your single paycheck can possibly cover the rent for your new place, your old mortgage payments For now, child support and your own living expenses. In the moment of emotional exhaustion, you might agree to give up your share of a pension just to end the fighting, a decision made in haste that could and probably will cost you tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement. It's a sad reality.
Speaker 1:The next is co-parenting challenges. Learning to co-parent effectively with someone you are emotionally and legally untangling from is one of the hardest challenges you are ever going to face, and nobody ever talks about that. Communication is a minefield where any topic, no matter how simple it might be, can reignite old conflicts. You've gone from being a full-time dad under one roof to a father who has to schedule time with his own children, operating under a new and often frustrating set of rules. For instance, a simple text message of quote I'm running 15 minutes late to pick up the kids explodes into a mass of arguments rehashing past grievances. You discover that the rules at your ex-wife's house are completely different regarding screen time and bedtime, and your kids have already learned how to play you against each other. You then face the heart-wrenching reality of your first Christmas morning without your children, because the parenting plan dictates it's not quote-unquote your holiday this year.
Speaker 1:The next is an identity crisis. So much of your identity has been wrapped up in your role as a husband and as a provider for a specific family unit. Then, when that is stripped away, passive void is left behind. The social structures you took for granted crumble and you are left to figure out who you are now. For instance, an acquaintance at a party cheerfully asks how's the family? And you freeze A simple question, now feeling impossibly complicated. Your weekends, once filled with family activities and chores, are now vast stretches of silence. When the kids are away, Friends you once shared as a couple slowly drift away and you realize you have to rebuild your social structures from scratch. You find yourself asking fundamental questions you haven't considered in years, like what do I even do? What do I like to even do anymore? Who am I, if not a husband? What does my future look like as a single father? The process of answering those questions is daunting and it's a path you should not have to walk alone. So this takes me to what I feel is the lifeline of divorce coaching.
Speaker 1:Think of a divorce coach as the strategic project manager for this chaotic and overwhelming new phase of your life. While your lawyer is your legal experts focusing on the court battle and all of the legal process, and a therapist helps you heal maybe heal the wounds of the past and deal with your emotions, a coach is your forward-focusing thinking partner. They are on your team to help you manage the present and build your future, providing emotional support, practical guidance and strategic advice every single step of the way. So how does that work and what does that look like? A divorce coach provides that lifeline. By providing one emotional resilience and helping with emotional resilience. They'll provide a safe, non-judgmental space to process this hurricane of emotions. But they do more than just listen. This isn't therapy, right? They equip you with tools to build resilience and make clear-headed decisions when you're emotionally compromised. And let me say that again, they equip you with tools, right. We're going to help teach you tools and build skills to build resilience and make clear-headed decisions when you're emotionally compromised.
Speaker 1:For instance, it's maybe late at night or early in the morning and you receive an infuriating email from your ex full of accusations and blame. Your immediate and this is all of us, our immediate impulse might be to fire back an equally angry response. Instead, you forward it to your coach. They help you vent, validate your frustrations and then act as a crucial pause button the next morning or later that evening, with a clear head, you work together to craft a brief, calm and strategic reply that doesn't escalate the conflict or give away leverage right, but prevents a late night, early morning emotional reaction from becoming a legal liability. You think it doesn't happen? I've seen it happen all the time. I've done it myself, fellas. This is why it's good to have somebody in your corner to help you mitigate stuff like that.
Speaker 1:The next is strategic planning. A great coach helps you get organized. They're also going to help you anticipate challenges, which is huge. You don't know what's happening, what's going to be coming down the pipeline that's where a coach comes in Also will help you to avoid the common pitfalls that cost other men dearly, and they cost in not only time, but also in money and in stress, and all of those have a big toll on you. They help you move from being reactive to being proactive. For example, your lawyer asked you to gather all of your financial documents for your affidavit. It sounds easy, but it can be, and often for the most part, I think most every man says that it is somewhat completely overwhelming, and what? So what a coach will do is help you break it down into a manageable checklist, creating a clear plan of action. I've known, guys, that it's taken a year to get this done, for whatever reason, and we've worked on getting this done in a faster timeline.
Speaker 1:So you spend your coaching sessions preparing for your upcoming mediation. You'll do things like role-playing potential scenarios and defining your non-negotiables. The results will be that you'll walk into high-stakes meetings or hearings or courts with a confidence, saving hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in billable hours you would have spent with your attorney, which I can't even tell you the number of times that attorneys are like that's great. They knew exactly how to show up, what to do and how to act in that and I didn't have to coach them through that right. Your attorney is not your therapist. Your attorney is not somebody that is going to be planning strategy for you 100% of the time. That is incumbent upon you to figure out.
Speaker 1:The next thing a divorce coach provides is improved communication, which is huge. Learning to communicate with your ex-spouse, especially about your children, is critical. Also, with your attorney, a coach will help you strip the emotions out of your interactions and transform them into business-like exchanges focused solely on co-parenting or communicating with your attorney, your attorney. So an example is every text about logistics with an X might be turning into a fight about the past, and your coach can help you learn the BIF method, which is brief, informative, friendly and firm. Instead of a long, triggering message, you learn to write, quote unquote just confirming I'll be at your house Friday at 6 pm for pickup. I'll bring the kids' soccer cleats back Then, thank you. It's a neutral style, gives no fuel for arguments and establishes you as a calm, reliable co-parent. Same thing with your attorney. Instead of hashing out your emotions through emails with them, you can be clear and concise with what it is that you want to do, the direction and course you want to take with your case, and you don't have to go back and forth with them, which gets unbelievably expensive.
Speaker 1:The next thing the divorce coach can provide is personal growth. While I know that divorce feels like an ending, it can also be a catalyst for incredible growth, and a coach is instrumental in helping you design what we call your life 2.0, your life after divorce. For instance, you're facing your first weekend alone, without the kids, and the silence of your new living arrangement is deafening. Instead of descending into misery or numbing it with something else, you use the tools your coach gave you. You make a list of the things you've always wanted to do. Maybe it's joining a hiking group, signing up for a class or finally learning to play that guitar that's been sitting in the corner forever. Your coach helps you take small, incremental, actual steps to rebuild your identity, so that your quote unquote time off from parenting becomes an opportunity for renewal, not a painful reminder of your loss, and I can't emphasize how important that is and what that can do in modeling an example for your kids, which I'm going to describe a little bit later.
Speaker 1:So there's a couple of different ways that you can seek coaching divorce coaching, that is, through group coaching or private coaching. One or the other might be more preferable for you. Choosing the format is a personal decision, much like deciding between playing on a team sport or hiring a personal trainer. Both can be effective, but they serve very different needs. Group coaching that's where the power of a team comes in. You have community and support in the group. You instantly will realize and this happens on every group call we have that you're not in this alone.
Speaker 1:It's amazing the number of times that guys are just like oh my gosh, I thought I was the only one having these feelings or going through this. The shared understanding is incredibly validating and combats the isolation that so many men feel. Self-isolation is the worst thing for us to do during this process, and an example of this is you're struggling with the anger and jealousy of your ex introducing a new partner to your kids. In a group call, another dad shares that he went through the exact same thing last month. He offers practical advice on how he managed it, validating your feelings while giving you a proven path forward. Again, we don't know how to handle these things. We've never gone through it before. Having others surrounding you and lifting you up and helping to strategize and work through this process is huge. The other thing group coaching gives is a diverse perspective. Hearing how other men are navigating their unique challenges can provide invaluable insights and solutions you would have never considered on your own. And because all of our situations are unique and different, the collaborative approach when guys are talking about this together is really phenomenal. I've heard I just heard guys working through stuff together in our group calls and our group coaching meetings that are just spectacular, coming up with unique and creative ways for guys to deal with stuff, and when we bring more minds together and more heads and more experiences, it's just really powerful. The next thing is cost-effective. The group coaching is way more cost-effective, Obviously. Group programs allow you to access high-level support and community for a fraction of the cost of one-on-one coaching. For the price of maybe what some of you are paying for a single hour with your attorney, you can often get a full month of group support and at the end I'm going to share what we've got going on here soon, beginning October 8th of next month with our group meetings, and provide an offer for you as well around that Private coaching. Okay, so that was a group coaching. Those are the benefits of group coaching.
Speaker 1:Private coaching, Think of it. Like I said in the intro, the private coaching is your personal trainer for your divorce. It is personalized attention, one-on-one coaching. It's entirely. It is entirely tailored to you and your specific and unique circumstances. Every minute of every session is dedicated to your challenges and your goals. An example your divorce is especially complex because maybe you and your spouse co-own a business, which requires a nuanced strategy that is way too sensitive and specific for a group setting. Your private coach works with you to entangle the financial and emotional threads preparing you for high stakes negotiations with your legal team and your soon to be ex.
Speaker 1:The other thing that private coaching provides is confidentiality. For men who are intensely private, are public figures or are dealing with sensitive issues, the confidentiality of private coaching is paramount. It's a secure vault, if you will, for your deepest concerns. You need to discuss your personal matters, such as infidelity or substance abuse and how they might be impacting your custody case. A private setting allows you to be completely open and vulnerable, without fear of judgment or exposure. The last is that you're able to really deep dive. The private coaching allows you to go much, much deeper into personal roadblocks. If you find a specific mindset or a behavior that is holding you back, a coach can work with you intensively to overcome it and overcome it in a quicker amount of time. For instance, you recognize that your lifelong habit of avoiding conflict is causing you to cave during negotiations, or you have a lifelong habit of just avoidance in general and you want to put this like the client I talked to you about, that's taking up to a year to try to just get his financials in place. In private sessions, you can work with a coach it will in creating assertive techniques, confidence building exercises that are going to empower you to advocate for something that might be fair and equitable and a good outcome for everybody.
Speaker 1:So what is and why investing in your future, and how can this be really what I would describe as a legacy of strength? It's easy to view divorce as a final, devastating chapter, but I want to encourage you to think of it another way, because of the truth is it's not an ending, it's a crossroads, and if you can reframe that in your mind, the path you take from here will define not only your future but the legacy you leave for your children, and that's critical. Investing in divorce coaching is the most powerful choice you can make at this crossroads. Think of it this way you wouldn't build a house without a blueprint or navigate a hostile business merger without a strategist. So then I ask you, why would you attempt to rebuild your entire life under immense pressure without an expert guide? Investing in coaching, you're making a strategic investment with dividends that pay out for decades to come. You're investing in your financial future.
Speaker 1:A coach is going to help you separate emotions from negotiations, preventing you from making catastrophic financial decisions in a moment of anger or exhaustion and I know this gentleman because I've been there, because I did it and it's impacted my life for more than a decade. Agreeing to a poor settlement to just quote unquote make it go away can cripple you financially for years. A coach keeps you focused on securing stable, equitable outcomes that serve as a foundation for your new life. I cannot emphasize that enough, fellas, You've got to be in a good place financially to be able to provide the environment and the support for your kids ongoing, You're also investing in your own wellbeing. The alternative to proactive support is often a long, bitter road of resentment, stress and loneliness. This emotional baggage doesn't just disappear. It poisons your health, your work and your future relationships, not only romantically, but also with your kiddos.
Speaker 1:Coaching gives you the tools to process the anger and grief constructively so you can emerge from the divorce whole and healthy, not broken and bitter. It's your chance to break old patterns and intentionally design a life of purpose and fulfillment. That's exactly the first step that we take is creating a vision and direction for you that you want post-divorce and, most importantly, you're investing in your children's future. How is it by through coaching that you're investing in your children's future? Because your kids are going to remember how you handled this crisis, and will they remember a father consumed by conflict, who spoke ill of their mother and treated every interaction like a battle? Or will they remember a father who, despite his own intense pain, showed them what resilience, integrity and grace under pressure looks like? A coach helps you become that father by teaching you to manage your own emotions, shield your children from conflict and build a healthy, stable and loving co-parent or parallel parenting relationship. This is the greatest gift you can give your kids and it will shape their emotional health for the rest of their lives, and that is not an underestimated statement. So divorce is not a story that is happening to you, gentlemen. It's a story you are now in charge of writing. Let me say that again Divorce is not happening to you. It is a story that you get to now write. Don't navigate this story and don't navigate this journey by trial and error. You're not going to have a chance to go back and rewrite it, Lost in the storm. The strong choice and the choice of a leader like a captain, like we talked about earlier, is to find an experienced guide. Reach out to a divorce coach, take control of the narrative and take the first, most important step toward building a brighter, stronger future for you and your family.
Speaker 1:Fellas, on this note, I have been working tirelessly now for five years to create a community and provide support and the ability for you to get every possible resource in going through this. We have done group meetings. We have done individual coaching as well, but we are going to be starting a group coaching program. It is a six-week program beginning on October 8th. This is going to be priced affordably for you to be able to spend six weeks with other guys. We're going to have a minimum of five guys that are going to be in this group, a maximum of 10 guys. We're going to continue to start doing this ongoing with group coaching as well as private coaching. To provide just another affordable option. There are going to be all kinds of benefits, like a lifelong membership to the divorced advocate community, as well as being able to work directly with some of the experts that we have had in the past on the show, like a Certified Divorce Financial Planner, Certified Divorce Lender, a Pro Se Coach, a Divorce Real Estates Agent. We have all these resources coming on now. Check out the website We've got. Some of these events are free for you to come and just get some information. Some of them are going to be paid.
Speaker 1:Fellas, get engaged, get a coach, get involved in either some of the free group meetings. Get involved in some of the group coaching meetings. Get involved and find yourself a divorce coach. I cannot emphasize how important it is to go through this with somebody that can help you craft your life post-divorce. That is going to be amazing for you and for your kiddos. Gentlemen, I hope that you found some value in what you heard today. If you have, please share this far and wide on social media with others. Leave us a star rating on whatever platform you're listening. Even better, give us some comments. I sincerely appreciate you listening today. Stay strong, brothers, and God bless.
