Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
This isn’t a breakup pep talk. It’s a full-body recalibration.
Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary—the only podcast for women navigating the messy aftermath of divorce who are done with quick fixes and spiritual fluff.
I’m Dawn Wiggins, therapist and homeopath, and I’m here to give you something the divorce advice space rarely does: real healing.
Through somatic therapy, EMDR, IFS, and homeopathy, we go deeper—into your nervous system, your unspoken grief, and your buried rage.
Every week, we hold the tension: the body-based anxiety you can’t shake; the hormonal upheaval no one warned you about; the unresolved longing for identity.
You’ll hear raw solo episodes, real voice notes from women in the trenches, and intimate interviews with experts who do more than perform healing.
Here, you won’t be asked to “just move on.”
You’ll be asked to feel.
If you’re tired of tutorials that leave your nervous system humming and your heart disconnected, hit subscribe.
Your nervous system already knows the truth—it just wants a safe space to embody it.
Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
264. The Real Reason Why 90% of Divorced Women Already Knew It Wouldn’t Last
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Dear Divorce Diary: Dedicated to Healing
Exclusive access to premium content!Most women know long before the papers are signed that their marriage is crumbling. But why do we ignore that inner knowing?
You’ll Learn
- The psychological and nervous system cues women overlook.
- How denial protects us—until it keeps us stuck.
- What reclaiming your intuition looks like after divorce.
💎 Ready to trust your intuition again? Join A Different D Word
and learn to hear and honor your inner voice.
Deep down, most divorced women admit they knew. They felt it in their body, in their gut, in the quiet moments of doubt—but stayed anyway. In this episode, I unpack why we override our intuition, how trauma and codependency keep us in cycles of denial, and what it takes to reclaim the wisdom you already have. Your body has always known the truth. It’s time to finally listen.
After divorce, your body’s intuition is the compass that leads you forward.
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A podcast exploring the journey of life after divorce, delving into topics like divorce grief, loneliness, anxiety, the impact of different attachment styles and codependency, setting healthy boundaries, energy healing with homeopathy, managing the nervous system during divorce depression, understanding the stages of divorce grief, and using the Law of Attraction and EMDR therapy in the process of forgiveness and letting go.
Hi love. Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence. I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome. Hello and welcome. I'm Lori Gerber. This is going to be interesting because I'm going to teach you the concept of the three H's, and usually I teach this to daters. So if you're a dater, this is going to be incredibly valuable. But it is also an incredibly valuable tool or lens to look at relationships through, even if you're already in a relationship, if you're in a short-term relationship, if you're in a long-term relationship, and, honestly, it's actually a really interesting lens to look through. So, if you're buying a new house or a new outfit or hiring somebody, or it's a very useful lens to use for a lot of different things. So please use it where it applies to you, given where you are right now. If you are someone who likes to take notes, you might want to take notes. So I do recommend taking notes, because this is the kind of thing where we're going to go over it very quickly, but I'm going to want you to, or encourage you to, go back to it and keep, keep, keep chewing on it.
Speaker 2:So I have been doing this for 20 years, over 20 years. I've been saying 20 years for a lot of years now. So I've been coaching individuals, couples, groups, I've been leading events, webinars. I was the dating expert at matchcom, at Seuss, at J-Date. I have done dozens and dozens probably hundreds actually, of webinars and live events over the last 20 years and I'm the go-to girl when it comes to love, marriage, couple stuff, relationship stuff and dating. And I teach something called the Handel method of coaching. So it is a codified method that was developed at MIT and Stanford and it has this principle called the 3H dating system, which is what I'm going to reveal to you over the course of this conversation. I've been featured in all these wonderful publications that are in front of you. I've done a TEDx talk, I've been on television, radio, podcasts, all of this. And I'm not saying that to you know, like to chew my horn. I'm just saying it to just establish the credibility that I'm just speaking from years of experience here, credibility that I'm just speaking from years of experience here, as well as my own personal experience, and so you can trust me that I I've learned some things along along the way. And then there's my personal journey. So I think it's important that you understand where I'm personally coming from. You all, before we started recording, told me where you're coming from. You should know where I'm coming from and I am married for a very long time. I got married in 1998. How many years was that? 27? 27 at the time of this recording.
Speaker 2:But before I was with my husband I had many bad relationships and when I went to analyze that, what I concluded was that I was more interested in conquesting and looking for what I could not have, like proving I could get what not intellectually appropriate for me and wasn't that into me. And then I'd get rejected by that guy. And then I'd be smarting. From the rejection I'd swing the other way and pick the nice guy that I wasn't attracted to. It was easy to get and I would get bored so fast I would give us both whiplash and I just kept going back and forth from one pattern to the other, hurting being hurt, hurting being hurt, until I was just exhausted. So I came to the conclusion that it was me manifesting all of those experiences and I don't regret any of them. I learned so much. There really is not one relationship fail that I regret, because I learned and I needed to learn. But personally, I was exhausted, I was tired of it, I wanted to get serious and find the right person for me. So I decided that all those past experiences did not add up to why I couldn't have love, but instead, because I decided to learn from them, they would be the reason that I should believe in love.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people here are actually proof of that, and so I took an inventory of what my parents had taught me about love and what I had learned from that family of ours, and I took an inventory of my own shenanigans and my dating history, as I summarized, and I decided to do it differently the next time. I was going to do it differently, I was going to look for something different, and then, when I found that different thing, I was going to make it work, no matter what, and that was a shift in mindset that changed everything for me. I think that shift in mindset is what makes possible the right matches to start to show up for you. If you agree with that, just say something in the chat, because I think some of you may have actually had that same experience of like, oh, something in my mind shifted about what I desire, what I deserve, what is right for me, and then, all of a sudden, what was before blocked or invisible in terms of potential choices is now visible and now possible, and so the right match could then appear to me once. I shifted my mindset and I in fact met my husband the day I made that decision, the very same day, and what was different about him is that we matched well, we would be what I would call a 3H match. So we had similar intellect, similar values, similar backgrounds, we wanted the same things, we admired each other, we could see our dreams compatibly unfolding together and we were attracted to each other. So, finally, I had picked well, I had picked the whole package, and because we were a good match, he picked me back.
Speaker 2:And again, I mark that moment of taking full responsibility for my past and for my future as that critical turning point moment. So I stopped blaming my parents, I stopped blaming my exes, I stopped blaming myself and I just stood fully in my own power, owning past choices, forgiving myself of course, forgiving myself of course, and then looking soberly at the family of origin stuff and the past relationship stuff and declaring none of that any sort of determinant of what was possible for my future. And I believe the same is possible for everybody, the same is true for you, that nothing about your past predicts your future. So whether you're in a relationship that's not great now you're in a relationship you're not sure of right now you're not in a relationship you don't believe you can be in a relationship, whatever situation you are in the past does not predict the future. That is a scientific fact. It does not predict the future find the last love of their lives, and that that is a great privilege and that we all deserve that. So hence the 3H method and why I teach it.
Speaker 2:And here is the beginning of the lesson on the 3Hs. So if you've been wondering what Hs stand for, they stand for the head, the heart and the hoo-ha. The three Hs the head, the heart and the hoo-ha. The three H's the head, the heart and the hoo-ha. Matchcom did not like hoo-ha. They made me call it heat the head, the heart and the heat. Sometimes men don't like hoo-ha either, but you get the idea. So these are the three voices inside of each of us that have real needs when it comes to your love life, and most people do not consider each one of them in the way that they deserve to be considered.
Speaker 2:Most of us think of love as a pie, where head is what's sensible, what's practical, what looks good on paper, what works in your life. Heart is how it feels and uha is the turn-on factor or the chemistry factor. And most people think there's one pie and you have to divide it between the H's. So if it's really hot let's say hotness is 70% you only get 30% to divide between heart and head. Or if it's a really sensible choice, you're certainly not going to have a lot of hoo-ha left over. So most people think about it as one pie, that they have to split between all three H's and that's impossible because that means you are selling out on one or more of the H's. You're not going to be happy in one of one or more of those areas. So and let me just be clear, most people so like.
Speaker 2:In my pattern, for example, I would go all head. When I first, I'd go pretty much 80% hoo-ha, you know, probably 80% hoo-ha, 20% heart, 0% head. And then I would swing the other way to 80% head, 0% hoo-ha, 20% heart. Okay, so most people sell out on one or more of the H's and most people have only one or two patterns of how they sell out on the H's. So that's just something for you to have in the background as you think about what is your pattern when it comes to the three H's? Which H lobbies louder and manipulates or silences the other H's in your world? And then for some of us, we just keep making the same mistake over and over again. For some of us, we have what I did, which was like a pendulum where we would go back and forth between two patterns. Is anyone already seeing a pattern or having an insight? If you are, just write it into the chat. If you are already seeing a pattern you might have when it comes to the three H's, I would love to see that, hear that, know that, but we can talk about that all later as well.
Speaker 2:Okay, so when I work with clients, either privately or in the group, they take a long time to think about what their true criteria are in head, heart and hoo-ha. And this goes for when I'm meeting someone who's on the bench, not even ready to date, to someone who is dating but not actively seeing anyone, to someone who's in an early dating situation with someone, to someone who's in a long-term relationship with someone. Everyone has to do the assessment what are my true criteria? Because, guess what, my criteria for when I met my husband are not the same as my criteria now, 27 years later absolutely not the same. I had such different criteria then than I do now.
Speaker 2:So just because you're compatible once upon a time and I'm sure if you're going through a separation or divorce, you know the ages can change and what your needs are can change. So this bears repeating on a regular basis what are the needs of your head, your heart and your hoo-ha? I pray the needs of your hoo-ha change over time as well, because we mature and more becomes possible. Okay, so if you're working with me, you're going through this. You're spending a lot of time Today we're gonna spend about four minutes on each one. So that's why I'm saying take screenshots, take notes, come back to this, watch it again so that you can really dig in and ask yourself what are the five to 10 most important criteria for me in head, heart and hoo-ha.
Speaker 2:And I will just warn you for most people, whatever you think of first, that's not your realist. For most people, they have to actually spend time with it and think it through and ask themselves questions to determine if that's not your real list. For most people, they have to actually spend time with it and think it through and ask themselves questions to determine if that's really their core, most essential five to 10 things. Okay, let's do head. This is what's sensible, what's practical. If you're divorced or you're broken up with someone and we're going through the h's and the criteria, you might go so that's why it didn't work out. Okay, I totally ignored that right.
Speaker 2:So there are certain things that are so important to your head, that are important for the practicality of your life, the workability of your life. These ones seem obvious, but people sell out on these all the time. For example, geographical compatibility. Some people think you have to be in the same town to have compatible love. That's not true. However, you can't have geographical incompatibility and have compatible love. That's not true. However, you can't have geographical incompatibility and have healthy love If you are not able to see each other and be together to the extent that you want to because of geography. That's a deal breaker, that is an incompatibility. So geography is the first thing I always have.
Speaker 2:People get really honest with themselves about what they need and why they need it. Parenting and family life and how those mesh together Time and availability, whether or not you have the time and space not just the time, but the frequency, the duration and the literal day of the week right. There are so many ways in which, if that does not line up, well, you're not. It's just it's not gonna work. Money, wealth and spending you do not need to be the same financially, but you need to be compatible financially. So if one of you is used to a certain lifestyle, the other person is going to need to mesh well with that. Let's just say, not impede it. So some people think they need someone with the same amount or more money. That's not true. However, if all of a sudden you're going to be supporting someone and you don't believe in doing that, that doesn't work either.
Speaker 2:So very practical things for your head. A lot of people who come to me post-divorce which is most of my people have very strong feelings about what they are and are not willing to do with their money going forward. I'm not going to go through every single one, but you can see activities, how you do vacations, how healthy food choices, your vegan food choices, whatever your food choices are, or they're repulsed by your love of steak or whatever it is. That can actually be a problem. Cats, right, if you're allergic to the animals they love, that could be a problem. So again, I'm not going to go through each one. Politics, more and more, is becoming one that people need to get very crystal clear about. Addictions and bad habits also is one where, if you've been a codependent or you've been an addict, you have to be very mindful of the next relationship and how you want to hold those very serious, you know relationship killers.
Speaker 2:Basically, I'm going to pause and let everybody just think about what are the most important five to 10 criteria to you and ask you are there any other criteria in the realm of head, you know, are there any other things that your head really cares about that I didn't put on here? Write them into the chat. If you have an idea for a head criteria that I didn't put here, write them into the chat. If you have an idea for a head criteria that I didn't put here, I see some patterns in the chat. Thank you for writing. She's in Again. If you're watching later, you can always send me a message here again. If you're watching later, you can always send me a message here.
Speaker 2:So, someone who's committed to their own emotional wellbeing and mental health and healing you could put that under head, but you might also put that under heart right, cause it makes you feel a way, makes you feel secure, it makes you feel met. So that could go under head, that could go under heart. General roommate stuff like cleans up after oneself, it shares the chores 100%. In fact, a top five most frequent arguments in couples have to do with the division of labor in a household Roommate stuff, as you put it. Yes, that would go under our head 100%. Okay, in the interest of time, I am heading to heart now. Heart is about how things make you feel Heart.
Speaker 2:Now, the problem with heart is you for the head things when you're bantering online or you're meeting someone for the first time or you're on a first date, you can say so. How was the last election for you time? Or you're on a first date? You can say so. How was the last election for you? Do you like cats? You know what's your schedule like? You know you can ask very simple questions about head. For heart, you're going to be asking yourself how do I feel in this person's presence? For heart, you're going to be asking things like what do your friends know you for? You know what are you known for in your friend group, or what's a really memorable experience you had with a family member and why was it so memorable? What do you admire most about your mother? What do you admire most about your sister, right? So you're going to be asking questions that elicit the answers of how compatible you might be on a heart level and you're just going to be experiencing life with this person. Asking questions, answering questions, going on dates.
Speaker 2:If you're in a relationship, every single day is an opportunity for you to discover. Does this sense of humor work for me? Does this intensity or energy work for me? Does this style of speaking and listening work for me? Does the amount of independence, dependence, interdependence work for me? Does the amount of independence, dependence, interdependence work for me? Does the amount of attention and the kind of attention I'm getting work for me? Do the activities we do together work for me? Does how he shows up in his family work for me?
Speaker 2:And, most importantly, I think, should be on everyone's list as a heart criteria? Do our dreams and goals intersect? Well, so I do not think you need to have the same dreams and goals as your partner, heavens. No, I do think that your dreams and goals need to be successfully intertwined, in other words, not usually exclusive. So if one of you has a dream to travel the world and the other has a dream to pick your grandkids up every other day from after school, those dreams do not intersect well and people are forever because of boo-ha and other and loneliness. People are forever making excuses for why it's okay to give up on a dream or a goal in order to make love work, rather than looking for someone.
Speaker 2:Talking about dreams in the beginning and as you go along and making sure that you both value very much making sure the other person's dreams can come true. I think that is actually the basis of a healthy relationship. If you agree, say amen in the chat, please. So these are just some heart criteria. This is not all the heart criteria, you know. They love country music could be a heart criteria for you. They love my kid could be a heart criteria for you. They love their mom could be a heart criteria for you. Right, they love to rub my back right, like. So you can have whatever heart criteria you want.
Speaker 2:It's about what makes you feel the way you want to feel in a relationship. And again, you're on the bench. You're thinking about dating. You're in early dating, you're in an early relationship or you're in a long-term relationship, reassess what is important. Not everything's important, not everything's important. Some things are really important and you need to be able to articulate what is really important to you in the area of heart. And then you can't sell out on hoo-ha and I can't tell you how many people do.
Speaker 2:My personal story is I had a few years of sexy time with my husband and then I was like nevermind, I'm opting out. Um, because I didn't think who I was an important part of a successful relationship. I just didn't think it was required because in my family of origin that's how it was I knew my parents weren't having sex and that was just normal. So it didn't occur to me that it was even a problem until I had a near divorce experience that had me wake up to the fact. In fact, I hired a coach and she said well, did you ever consider that the only differentiation between roommate and partner is the sex? So if you're not doing that, what are you doing? And are you trying to keep your marriage? And that was a light bulb moment for me to go, if I want what's called a marriage or partnership or romantic partnership, that that is part of the deal and, um, what the heck is going on with me, that I'm not even interested like what's, what's up with that story for another time. But bottom line, there was something up with that. It wasn't good for my myself or my relationship. So hoohawk should not be sold out upon during dating, nor in a relationship, no matter how old that relationship is.
Speaker 2:And whereas normally we think of chemistry, attraction, to be about how somebody looks and you're tight, what I have learned from 20 years and 10,000 hours of experience coaching people is that is not actually what makes most women attracted to their partners. It can help, but it's usually not the biggest factor in attraction. In other words, height, weight, body type, age, hair color, eye color, race, bone structure those kinds of things are. They're low hanging fruit to describe what you like, but they're not usually the thing that really is the thing that makes you attracted to the partner. Okay, so you can put that in your list, but don't be fooled, it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is something like I want to kiss them, I feel sexy around them, I feel safe around them, I can express myself sexually around them. We talk about it easily, I'm turned on. He knows how to make me whatever Please me. He knows how he wants to Whatever.
Speaker 2:So go a little deeper than the basic tall, dark and handsome that everyone says. Go a little deeper than the basic tall, dark and handsome that everyone says and ask yourself what are the five or 10 things most important to you about, or about attraction? Um, it could also just be the way he looks at you, the way he talks it to you. For me, there was a way I wanted to feel in a man's arms that just you know that that was my image of attraction. So it's different for everybody, so different, so gloriously different, which is why you don't belong with everybody. But you do belong with certain people because you have the interesting little quirky things in common. But if you can't articulate it, if you don't know it, if you can't articulate it, if you can't say it, it's much harder to find it. And again, that goes for if you're dating or in a relationship. You have to be able to talk about it in order to get it.
Speaker 2:Okie, dokie, take a moment to write down your favorites, the things in kookah that are probably most important to you, and now that you know what the three H's are, you can start to again take a guess at. What do you usually go for and what do you usually forsake, what do you usually prioritize and what do you usually deprioritize, and what happens? Aka, how do you sell out on your dream? Aka, how do you sell out on your dream? If you're brave, write it into the chat or send me an email. When you work with me, you get super nerdy and you make a spreadsheet, because I love spreadsheets so much. Tiffany's smiling.
Speaker 2:Um, when you can see something in black and white, it becomes accessible, usable, conscious, present. No substitute for it. Sorry, so this is not meant to be read. It's very small on your screen. Probably you could take a screenshot and blow it up later if you want.
Speaker 2:But I don't mean for you to imitate someone else's 3h chart. I just mean for you to see what it looks like. It's got five to ten head, five to 10 heart criteria and five to 10 who hot criteria. And then you see the color coding below because as you date somebody, you turn a green If it's a yes, red if it's a no and yellow if you don't know yet. And you need to find out. And I give my clients three dates to turn the chart all red or green. In other words, you are on freaking purpose to discover if the person meets your 3-H criteria or not. And guess what, since dating is not an interview process, they are also figuring out if you meet their 3-H criteria, whether they know their criteria or not. That is what they are doing as well. So that is what dating, early dating, is for is to discover whether or not these criteria are met.
Speaker 2:And what we're going for is overall eight out of 10, nine out of 10 or 10 out of 10 in all three H's, not a total of 100%, 100%, 100%, 100%. Or, said another way, way 80 to 100% in each H. Right, the person doesn't need to have everything. They don't need to be perfect. There will be deal breakers. The deal breakers have to be green, but for everything else, everything's weighted differently and you have an overall sense of this person's an eight or above or not, based on what you've learned about how they meet or don't meet those criteria. So I'm making something that is very unconscious and very subjective into something that is slightly more objective, much more nerdy and much more quantitative than most people approach it, because we're such a-holes when it comes to love, and we basically cannot help making the same mistakes our parents made, or some variation on a theme of the mistakes our parents made. And because we are so programmed and so numb and dumb in this area, putting it in black and white and making it as quantitative as possible helps us stay awake and accountable to our dreams, and that's why we do it this way.
Speaker 2:I will also suggest a few more things. If you are dating, if you are seeing, if you are thinking of dating, dating or seeing someone, all the questions you ask your partner should be based on your 3H criteria. It not only helps you be honest with yourself, but it helps you decide what you want to talk about with your potential partner or your partner. It helps you vet your candidates and, like I said, do limit the number of dates you're willing to have. If someone doesn't meet your criteria. What most people do is they then double down right. So if someone doesn't meet your criteria, you're like well, the next three days I'm sure I can get it to happen, but then by then you're in love or you're invested, or you're having sex, and now you're stuck and you knew. And, by the way, everyone who gets divorced is it everyone. I'm going to say between 90 and a hundred percent of people who get divorced say they knew. They knew before they got married. They knew when they got married. They knew the thing that was going to break them up. They ignored it, right? Nobody's like I have no clue, hardly anybody. So when you're getting those clues early on in your next relationship, please this time listen and do tell your friends what's on that list so they can hold you to accountable.
Speaker 2:I call dating a team sport. That's why I, when I, when people do my digital course, they join group coaching. Because you need a posse, you need a team. You guys know the power of a team. You need, you need you need your girlfriends, you need someone to remind you. No, we're not doing that anymore. You're worth this. You deserve. It's okay to let go. There's the next one's coming, don't worry. And so it's a team sport, so do treat it like a team sport.
Speaker 2:I have a newsletter that's free. I have a quiz about whether you're ready to date. That's free. I have a webinar about the three H's that's free. Just go to lauriegerbercom. Take a picture. Those are your little gifts. Love is the most important thing. It really is, even after your career or whatever raising your kids or whatever else that is what you're focused on. It's going to be years and years before you die, and the challenge of finding and maintaining healthy love, I think, is the greatest adventure, greatest privilege and something everybody deserves to have, if you even have the inkling of the desire to do so. So please do not give up just because mistakes have been made in the past or just because your past patterns haven't worked out to your highest good. Those patterns can be changed, and it begins with being able to articulate, tap into and articulate what it is that you want. And that is what the 3-H tool is all about, and that is why I offer it to you.
Speaker 1:Dear Divorce Diary is a podcast by MyCoachDawn. You can find more at mycoachdawncom.
