Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Our guests today have worked hard to craft a loving and tight-knit family. Their effort to create that family has only intensified since their divorce in 2007. In an effort to help others see what’s possible, Ben Heldfond and Nikki DeBartolo created “Our Happy Divorce,” a book, channel, and community dedicated to building a healthy, happy, post-divorce modern family.
Show Notes
Our guests today have worked hard to craft a loving and tight-knit family. Their effort to create that family has only intensified since their divorce in 2007. In an effort to help others see what’s possible, Ben Heldfond and Nikki DeBartolo created “Our Happy Divorce,” a book, channel, and community dedicated to building a healthy, happy, post-divorce modern family.
This week on the show, Ben and Nikki share their perspectives on building a family as family membership changes. They share their dating stories, and how they introduced new partners successfully to the family unit. And, most important, they tell us how their efforts are guided by their love and dedication to the children in both their lives. This passion has made their family an aspiration for others and we’re thrilled to have them on the show with us today.
Links & Notes
- Our Happy Divorce by Ben Helfond & Nikki DeBartolo
- Subscribe to Our Happy Divorce on YouTube
- OurHappyDivorce.com
- (00:00) - Welcome to How to Split a Toaster
- (00:35) - Ben & Nikki – Our Happy Divorce
- (02:06) - The Players
- (04:33) - Figuring Out How to Be a Team Post-Divorce
- (07:57) - Learning to Find the Strength to Interact With Your Ex
- (10:58) - Acknowledging the Issues Will Still Be There
- (12:39) - The Coffee Shop – Additions, Not Subtractions
- (16:13) - Ego & Shame
- (20:06) - When to Introduce the Kids to the New Partner
- (26:24) - Little Minds Telling You How They Need to Be Parented
- (29:07) - The Toll on Kids
- (35:55) - Getting Through Jealousy and Hurt
- (38:40) - Knowing Which Forms of Communication Work and Don't Work
- (39:48) - Changes During COVID
- (42:28) - Setting an Example as You Figure It Out
- (46:08) - https://ourhappydivorce.com/
- (47:29) - Wrapping Up
Creators and Guests
Host
Host
What is How to Split a Toaster: A Divorce Podcast About Saving Your Relationships?
Seth Nelson is a Tampa based family lawyer known for devising creative solutions to difficult problems. In How to Split a Toaster, Nelson and co-host Pete Wright take on the challenge of divorce with a central objective — saving your most important relationships with your family, your former spouse, and yourself.
Announcer:
Welcome to How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships, from True Story FM. Today, can you make a whole new toaster out of parts from old toasters?
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show, everyone. I'm Seth Nelson, and I'm here, as always, with my good friend, Pete Wright. Our guests today have been working hard to craft a loving and a tight-knit family and, by all accounts, their efforts to create that family has only intensified since their divorce in 2007. In an effort to help others see what's possible, Ben and Nikki created Quote the Book, Our Happy Divorce. It's a book, it's a channel, it's a community dedicated to building a happy, healthy, post-divorce modern family. Ben and Nikki, welcome to The Toaster.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Thank you.
Ben Helfond:
Thank you for having us. I have to just say that-
Nikki DeBartolo:
I think we rebuilt the toaster.
Ben Helfond:
I love what Seth said, but before that, and Seth, we've had these conversations, but-
Nikki DeBartolo:
Occasionally, a little bit.
Ben Helfond:
But by far, the best name of any podcast in the history of the, what is it, 782,000 podcasts, or however many.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Is there really that many?
Ben Helfond:
I don't know. I just said a number. It's probably seven million, but the best name ever.
Pete Wright:
It's settled science.
Seth Nelson:
Well, we appreciate that. It's kind of gotten condense to The Toaster, trying to make it hip and cool. I don't know how that happened.
Pete Wright:
It's just natural, it's just natural. I hope you guys, first of all, you're amazing. I spent the last two hours this morning just reading blog posts and watching livestreams. I just love what you have done. I think it would help our listeners to get a sense of the players. Can you introduce your family experience, and give us a sense of how you got here?
Ben Helfond:
The players started off with Nikki and I, obviously. We were husband and wife, we had a beautiful son in 2003, Asher. We split in 2006, 2007, in that area. Then along the process, I think divorce isn't just about the judgment that the judge gives you. It's something, especially with kids, it's going to last you the rest of your life or the rest of you kid's life. But then we both found new partners. Nikki married a great guy named Chad, and I married a woman named Nadia. Nadia and I-
Nikki DeBartolo:
She's a great woman.
Ben Helfond:
She is a great woman.
Nikki DeBartolo:
She is also great.
Ben Helfond:
Not smart, but great. Evidenced by-
Nikki DeBartolo:
She's really smart. I just don't know about her choice in husband.
Ben Helfond:
It's book smart. But the other ... We have two beautiful children, Isabella and Jackson. So there are, what is it, seven of us.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Seven.
Ben Helfond:
Now. Which started-
Nikki DeBartolo:
Do you need your fingers to count?
Ben Helfond:
Yeah, exactly. Which started off as just Nikki and I going down the path of marriage, and then it's turned into something ... I think what we at least try to tell people, and we didn't realize this until after we wrote the book, is it's a crazy story. Seth has a similar one. It's a land of unicorns, and waterfalls, rainbow waterfalls. But Our Happy Divorce-
Nikki DeBartolo:
There is still some mud.
Ben Helfond:
Oh, there is a lot of mud. But for the most part, we live seven houses down, we travel together, we have family dinners once a week. But we could never have imagined this life, or this relationship, or even writing a book back in 2007. The other thing is Our Happy Divorce, if you're listening, and this story might seem a little crazy, it doesn't have to be, in our eyes, our story. I think a happy divorce is if you are able to, at the end of the day, not hand your kids the emotional bill for them to pay for something they had no choice in, you've created a happy divorce.
Seth Nelson:
Nikki, disagree with him somehow. You got to give us something here.
Nikki DeBartolo:
I always disagree with him. I mean, no, I think you're pretty spot-on. But I do think that people have to make happiness their own way. I think that we, in the beginning, decided that, you know what, let's just try to figure out a way for us to be able to be in the same room together, and not make it totally uncomfortable for everybody else around us that can be sitting there, staring at us, going, "Oh, what are they thinking, what are they doing?"
Nikki DeBartolo:
We didn't want our son to ever feel like, "Oh, I just had ... I was in a play, and I can sit down. Do I sit with Dad, do I sit with Mom? But what if I sit with Mom, I'm going to hurt Dad's feelings, if I sit with Dad, I'm going to hurt Mom's feelings." So I think for us, it was like, "Okay, we need to make this child's life as normal as possible, with it being abnormal."
Ben Helfond:
One of the things that I grew up in was a high conflict divorce. It's something where after sporting event, after school event, after graduation, after a marriage, a wedding, after a second wedding, it's not something that I was able to avoid. You're walking over, and you sort of keeping a mental count, "Okay, I think I went over to Mom last time. But maybe I should go over to Dad across the room." It's just a terrible place.
Seth Nelson:
Ben, on that point, and I am very fortunate that my former spouse is just amazing, and her husband is just loves my kid. My view has always been you can never have too many people that love your child.
Ben Helfond:
Absolutely.
Nikki DeBartolo:
100%.
Seth Nelson:
It's just that simple. But to your point, both of you, is my former spouse and I, when we go to my son's plays, he's into acting, or when we'd go to his afterschool activities, or events, we would always save each other's seats. Even sitting next to each other, where there was no conflict, my son, I sometimes would hesitate when he would come up to us, when he was little, on who to hug first. Just because we lived ... I'd always say, "Oh, give Mommy a hug." I would always just direct him. I'm getting my hug in a second, it's all going to be fine.
Seth Nelson:
But it's those little type things where a child should never have to choose, unfortunately sometimes the way parents deal with kids, that kids do have preferences, and those issues come up, unfortunately, in court, or with guardian [inaudible 00:06:59] and the like. But when you're at all of these events, which are countless moments in time that you never get back, it's so important on what you're saying of, it wasn't their fault, why do they have to choose?
Ben Helfond:
Yeah. In the beginning, I love what you said, Seth, because in the beginning, Nikki and I did not want to sit next to each other at Asher's Kindergarten graduation, we did not want to sit together, or whatever the event was. But we did it. Right? We put on our big boy pants, and we sucked up our ego, and we sat next to each other. It was uncomfortable, and it was terrible. I wanted to strangle her, and she probably wanted-
Nikki DeBartolo:
It was uncomfortable, until all of a sudden, one day, it wasn't.
Ben Helfond:
Right. We always say, we didn't have a manual on how to do this. But what we did do in the beginning was we faked it until we made it.
Seth Nelson:
That's one of my questions is for people listening, and they're in it right now, they're going through a divorce, things are unsettled, they don't know where they're going to live, how the money is going to work, what the parenting plan is going to look like, the custody, the visitation. It's all wrong. How, if you can explain, Nikki, I'll start with you, that you mustered enough strength to sit next to Ben in that moment?
Seth Nelson:
It's easy now, the time has passed, there has been positive interactions for years. I was in the same boat, my former spouse and I were in that same boat that you guys just described. I remember swim lessons being the kid. When he was so little, eh would cry to go into the pool. But at that moment, Nikki, how did you muster it to put it all aside for your kid? Because I see people struggle with that every day.
Ben Helfond:
Lots of red wine.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Lots of red wine. No, I think for me, it had a lot to do with me trying to set my ego aside, and realizing that with the way I'm feeling has nothing to do with that child. If I continue to feel this way, you sit there, and I had to check myself, rolling my eyes while I was sitting there. So no one saw me, so he didn't see me, or just biting my tongue, which is really difficult for me, too. But I think it had a lot to do with my ego. So it didn't mean I didn't go home and wasn't like wanting to scream. But during those minutes, I was like, "You know what? It's not about me."
Ben Helfond:
Yeah. I think the other thing that we did right, looking back on it, not knowing that we were doing it right, or that it would lead to this, is at the end of the day, all those things you said, I don't think anybody is exempt from those feelings of divorce. Divorce sucks. It is an emotional, financial, mixed-up, muddled-up, miracle growth sprinkled on all of those things, and we went through it too.
Ben Helfond:
But one of the things that we did, I think, in the beginning, before we dealt with the business side of it, because at the end of the day, it is just a business deal, right? You're splitting up assets you're dealing with lawyers. The crux of it, or the ending of it, it's a business deal. But it's wrapped up in all of the emotions that you talked about, fear, insecurity, romance, finance, everything. We dealt with the emotional side first, to get at least on the path to be able to deal with the business side of it later. Which made it a little bit easier to deal with the business side, because we weren't making decisions off The Toaster, right? Nikki wasn't trying to screw me because she knew how important that toaster was to me.
Nikki DeBartolo:
You're would have been the coffee pot.
Ben Helfond:
Or the coffee pot. Whatever it is that you spend hours in mediation, or litigation, over something that you-
Nikki DeBartolo:
And spending more money than the actual toaster.
Ben Helfond:
You can buy 10 of them, right? So I think the emotional side of it was the key. Therapy, Nikki and I made amends to each other.
Nikki DeBartolo:
A lot of therapy. A lot of therapy and a lot of red wine.
Pete Wright:
That's absolutely one of my biggest questions in this whole thine. Because you got divorced for a reason, whatever that reason is. Can't communicate anymore, whatever the problems you were facing. It sounds like you actually, post-divorce, still had to face those issues.
Ben Helfond:
Oh, we still do. I mean, we'd be silly to say that everything is great. Yes, we are best friends, I love this woman. But we are still co-parenting a kid. We still have-
Nikki DeBartolo:
You are recording that, that he said that? Right?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah.
Ben Helfond:
Right. So many times.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, the whole thing. So many times. Every one of us [crosstalk 00:11:35].
Ben Helfond:
But that some of the personality reasons or issues that we had with each other are still there, and still rear their ugly heads. They don't go away.
Nikki DeBartolo:
No, we just deal with them differently.
Ben Helfond:
It's a lot easier to accept it when she's your best friend than your wife. So those issues of maybe why our marriage end ... We don't talk a lot about why or the reasons. I think those were all just symptoms of what somebody did, or didn't do, because at the of the day, when we made amends to each other, we tried to put that in the past as much as possible, so we weren't making decisions off of how I felt that the ending of the marriage was all her fault.
Nikki DeBartolo:
I think, too, we actually sat down and really, literally, said, "I'm sorry," to each other. From that point, it wasn't, "I'm sorry, but, I'm sorry, but you should have done that. I'm sorry, but you suck. I'm sorry, but." It was actually, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, let's try to move forward from that."
Seth Nelson:
That part, in the book, at the coffee shop, to me, was just ... There were two parts that really struck me. One is when you're at the coffee shop and Ben starts with, "I'm sorry." Nikki is all stressed coming in, and you know her coffee order. You kind of was like, "I'm not being fooled by he knows my coffee order."
Nikki DeBartolo:
Exactly.
Seth Nelson:
Right. There has been a lot of shit going on here. A cup of coffee is not gong to fix it. But it's what message he brought behind it. Then too fast forward, now I will tell you, I cry at Super Bowl commercials. I am such a softy.
Nikki DeBartolo:
So do I. So do I.
Seth Nelson:
The reason I'm prefacing that is then, when Nikki's now husband Chad comes to Ben, at the same coffee shop, at the same table, and starts with an apology. Like, "Maybe I didn't handle my relationship with Nikki the way I should have. But I want to marry your former spouse." That part was amazing in and of itself. But here is what got me, is when he says, "I want to get Asher involved in the proposal. Is that okay with you?" Ben sucks up his ego, and says, "Yes." The part where I cried, Nikki, is when your son asks you to marry your now husband.
Nikki DeBartolo:
He did. That's going to make me cry.
Seth Nelson:
Tears started flowing.
Ben Helfond:
Softies. No, but that, there is so-
Seth Nelson:
Look at Pete's face, though. Look at the shock in it.
Pete Wright:
I just, somebody screenplay this, please. This needs, okay, let's see, who is going to play you in the movie? I'm going to be noodling on that.
Ben Helfond:
Nikki wants Jennifer Lopez.
Nikki DeBartolo:
I mean, I would take that in a heartbeat. I would take, what's the other girl that's an actress? I mean, a singer.
Ben Helfond:
But that was the moment ... Look, no matter how much I tried to talk Chad out of it, and try to give him some inside ball about what he was about to get into, regardless of whether I said yes or no, he still was going to do it. But it was at that point, and this is the important thing, I think also about introducing new people, and bringing new people into our lives is ... This is going to sound apathetic. But Nikki ... I'm sorry, Nadia and Chad would not be in our lives today if they didn't understand what we were trying to accomplish before they came into our lives. Right? So at that point, Chad, there was nothing really, if I was taking ego out of it, I had no leg to stand on about what a bad guy this was, right? I'm sure my ego could convince me
Ben Helfond:
. But at the end of the day, like Seth says, he loved my son. He loved my ex-wife. He was going to be an addition to this life we're trying to create, not a subtraction. Then later on down the line, same thing with Nadia. It was just, for me, was it a gut punch to hear another man ask to use your kid to ask your ex-wife to marry her? Yes, it was. I mean, I'm not going to sit here and lie and say that that didn't, as a man, initially, and as a father, kind of gut punch. But what we try not to do today is react off of ego. It was what was best for Asher, it was a great thing-
Nikki DeBartolo:
[inaudible 00:16:08] better than Asher going to you, and going, "Hey, guess what I did today?"
Ben Helfond:
Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Pete Wright:
I got to ask you guys, you both talk about ego and shame in the process. Specifically, you've got hits lovely introduction to the book, video on your website. You both say in turn, "I didn't want to be," for Ben, "A divorce dad. I didn't want to carry this stigma of being a divorce dad." Nikki, "I didn't want to be the stigma of being a single mom." I wonder when that resolved for you?
Nikki DeBartolo:
I think for me, honestly, I keep saying it, but I do think that therapy helped that. I think, for me, it was sort of getting divorced kind of knocked me down. I felt like, "Oh, shit, how am I going to get up from this and be the person that I know that I can be?" I didn't want my son to see me upset. I think I was really, really hard on myself when we first got divorced, because no one in my family has been divorced. No one.
Nikki DeBartolo:
So it was like, me going to my parents and having to say, "Hey, guys, guess what? I'm getting a divorce." I felt like I was stabbing myself in the chest. So I think I had to get over all of that. It wasn't like, oh, I was scared my parents were going to be mad at me. I just was like, "You know what? I'm disappointing so many people, including my son, that I just ..." I think that's what I really had to work through.
Seth Nelson:
I think that's profound. What I mean by that is so much of what you're dealing with are your own internal emotions on how we view divorce. There is the emotional divorce, which is what you're really describing there. Then there is the legal divorce. I tell people from a legal perspective, this is a process. It's not a scarlet letter. When I was divorced, and was dating at the time, I would say, "I'm a single dad." People would say, "Oh my god. Did you lose your wife?" But no one says that to a single mom, right? These words matter.
Seth Nelson:
Like Ben says, I didn't want to be a divorced dad. But I was like a single dad. I'm like, "No, she's a single mom, I'm a single dad." But no one really views it that way. So I worked hard to change, in my own mind, who I was and how I accepted myself in this role that I'm having right now. I really worked hard to pushback on what I would say societal stereotypical views, and how that might have impacted me, because I didn't want those views to, as you're saying, to impact my son.
Ben Helfond:
You said the two words of shame and ego. Shame, at least, speaks directly to my ego, right? What I was shameful of was the fact of ... Well, there were two things. But one, when it came to other women or how people think is when I say I'm divorced, like, what do they think? What are they thinking?
Nikki DeBartolo:
What's wrong with you?
Ben Helfond:
"This guy must be really screwed up. I'm not going to get in anything with him." So that was a shame. But looking back on it, that was just because of potentially hurt ego. Now the other part of it, which was a bigger shame for me, and I don't think anybody, I think it's safe to assume, goes down the aisle to get married expecting to get divorced, right?
Ben Helfond:
I had the opposite experience of Nikki, like we talked about earlier, of being in a high conflict divorce, a child of a high conflict divorce, that, "Oh, god, I'm going to repeat this with my son." I'm going to put my son through this, which was something I think everybody who has a problem with their upbringing says, "Oh, I don't want to be like my parents." But here I was, being like my parents. So there was a lot of shame around that as well.
Seth Nelson:
Did you guys, you have Chad and Nadia, did you date other people before then?
Ben Helfond:
I did.
Nikki DeBartolo:
He did.
Ben Helfond:
Lots.
Nikki DeBartolo:
He dated a lot. Chandelier, Crystal-
Ben Helfond:
Diamond.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Diamond.
Ben Helfond:
Mercedes.
Seth Nelson:
I want to talk about that, because we're talking about the kids, bringing the kids into the new family process. It feels like there is a lot of fear that comes from introducing your kids to the people you're dating. Is that a challenge? Is that a myth? How did you handle that with Asher?
Nikki DeBartolo:
Well, I politely asked Ben, in the beginning-
Ben Helfond:
This is a perfect example. Here you go.
Nikki DeBartolo:
To kindly, please, do not introduce every Crystal, every Chandelier, everybody to Asher, until he actually found somebody that he really cared about. Because I knew that he was dating.
Ben Helfond:
Yeah.
Nikki DeBartolo:
In quotes, I'm going to use those.
Ben Helfond:
I was. My first reaction, or at least my first thought, when she said that, I don't know how kind it was, or how sweet it was. But that's Nikki's perception.
Nikki DeBartolo:
I probably was like, "Benjamin, don't introduce-"
Ben Helfond:
Exactly. But the first thought, or I should say the first thought was, "Who the hell is this woman to tell me who I can and can't bring around my son?" Right? Then when you stop, you take ego out of it, and you look at it from what's best for our son, she was absolutely right, right? She wasn't saying it out of her ego that she didn't want another woman around our son.
Ben Helfond:
But she was saying, "What kind of message, he's already been through the trauma of his parent's divorce. What's this revolving door of women going to do to him about how he looks at relationships, and how he views it?" So she was right. So I made her that promise. It was a year that Nadia and I were dating before I introduced the two. When it came time, I made her fully aware of how it was going to go, what was going to happen, because she's a part of it.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, absolutely. From a legal perspective, I so appreciate how you both approached that topic. I'll get a call that says, "I want it in the parenting plan that you cannot introduce anyone for at least six months in a committed relationship." I'll say, "Okay. A court is not going to order that. If you and your spouse want to agree to that, that's fine. But I don't think timeframe has anything to do with it. I think it's how you feel you're in a committed relationship, is it an appropriate time? How old is the child at the time, how does that all play out? There is all these things. Oh, and by the way, how am I going to enforce this provision on determining where the starting part of a committed relationship began?"
Seth Nelson:
It's just ripe with problems, as opposed to taking a step back and saying, "Here is what we're just asking to do." There is no enforcement. We think this is what's best for our kid. Let's really just kind of think these things through, and go from there.
Ben Helfond:
Yeah. For me, it was who and what is benefiting, if I were to introduce Asher to a girl I'd been dating, whatever, a month, or two months? What's the benefit, who is going to win out of that? So I can have woman around my son, and we can go to the beach, or do something? Like, it doesn't benefit him.
Nikki DeBartolo:
I'm sure you've never been to the beach.
Ben Helfond:
Yeah. I made that up. Or whatever it is. The movies, but it would just be for my own ... So I feel good, so I feel ... Then if she's gone the next week, who is going to face the consequences? That's going to be Asher. Then what does that tell him about relationships? He's already probably, like I said, traumatized by divorce, and what does it mean. But now he's got, because we handled introducing partners correctly, he's got shining examples of two marriages of what marriages should look like.
Seth Nelson:
So let me share this with you. I was in the car with my son, and it was a random Thursday night or Tuesday night, let's say, or Saturday night, whatever night it was. He says, "Oh, Daddy, there is Mommy." Literally, she was walking from a parking lot, around on the street, going into a restaurant, and we were pulling into the drugstore across the street. He says, "Can we say hi?" Now, she's walking in on a date.
Pete Wright:
You Paparazzi-ed your former spouse?
Seth Nelson:
Okay, thank you for pointing the blame on me, Pete.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Really, Pete?
Seth Nelson:
I froze and said, "Of course we can say hello to Mommy." What am I going to do, say no? So we get out of the car, and he yells, "Mommy," across the street. She looks up, and now she's horrified, as she should be. We cross the street, says hello, introduces, in the most awkward first meeting. It was the first date.
Pete Wright:
Oh, Seth.
Seth Nelson:
To the guy she's married to-
Pete Wright:
I'm sorry, I'm not even divorced, and I know that ... Sorry, Mommy's in a business meeting.
Seth Nelson:
Right?
Pete Wright:
We can't interrupt. That's the answer. Mommy's in a meeting, we can't interrupt. We'll call her tomorrow.
Nikki DeBartolo:
It's like, but I just saw her walking, she's not in a meeting yet.
Pete Wright:
It's a meeting of her food, it's a thing. That is so awkward. I am horrified.
Nikki DeBartolo:
That's funny.
Ben Helfond:
That's awkward. We have an awkward story about our-
Seth Nelson:
They're married now. Hold on, Ben. They're married now. First date, the guy she married. Great guy, Steve is amazing. I've already apologized to Steve, and if I haven't, in front of the world, Steve, I am apologizing again.
Pete Wright:
Wait a minute. Maybe, actually, this is a way for you to take credit for it.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Thank you for making me so ... You made Steve so uncomfortable.
Ben Helfond:
There is a time ... So Asher and Nadia had met.
Nikki DeBartolo:
I had not met Nadia yet.
Ben Helfond:
Nikki and Nadia-
Nikki DeBartolo:
I knew she existed. Yeah. I knew that Nadia existed. I knew she was spending time with Asher. So every, any time Asher was at Ben's house, I would call him every night to say goodnight. So one night, I call him, and I'm like, just talking to him about his day, just getting ready to say tonight. He said, "Hey, Mommy." I said, "What?" He said, "Do you know Nadia?" I said, "I haven't had a chance to meet Nadia yet, but I know who Nadia is." He said, "Well, here, she's right here. I think you two should talk." He's like four, four and a half-
Ben Helfond:
Five. Yeah.
Nikki DeBartolo:
He hands her the telephone.
Ben Helfond:
My wife is very dark.
Nikki DeBartolo:
My heart dropped.
Ben Helfond:
I can't imagine her face, because I couldn't see it. But I could see my wife's face, or girlfriend at the time. White as a ghost. "Uh, hi." But it was Asher's idea.
Nikki DeBartolo:
It's kind of his way of saying-
Ben Helfond:
It's time.
Nikki DeBartolo:
"This woman is with me. I don't ever see you two together, but you're my mom. So it's time."
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, so Pete, my story doesn't sound so bad after all, now does it?
Ben Helfond:
Kids are smarter than we give them credit for.
Pete Wright:
Kids are amazing. This is Asher's way of saying, "Get over yourselves, it's time to move on."
Nikki DeBartolo:
Figure it out.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. That's amazing.
Ben Helfond:
It is another example of many of this idea that we tried to outsmart our children, or hide it from him. Along the way, like I said, there are others that just showed us we weren't giving him enough credit for being aware, whether it was four years old, five years old, eight years old, whatever, for being aware enough of what was going on.
Pete Wright:
Well, I love that, because there is so many words that we throw around, like step parenting, and co-parenting, and un-parenting, and re-parenting. It sounds like in some ways, Asher sort of took the lead, and demonstrated to you how it was important for him to be parented.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben Helfond:
That's a brilliant point. He was old enough to realize that he saw this woman around his dad, around him more and more often. He knew that she was important in my life, and his life, and he was saying, "Okay, enough parents. I'm old enough now to figure out what I want. I see these two women in my dad's life, and it's time that they met." He forced it. His little smile on his face, too.
Pete Wright:
Diabolical.
Ben Helfond:
He was very proud.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Totally proud of himself, I bet. Like, okay, I did this. All right, good.
Pete Wright:
That's fantastic.
Seth Nelson:
So I do have a question, because I have a 16 year old, almost 17, Asher is 17 now. Is he just over you guys talking about how this all works?
Nikki DeBartolo:
Sometimes.
Ben Helfond:
Yeah. I think on the social media front-
Nikki DeBartolo:
Oh yeah. It's, "Don't post my picture."
Ben Helfond:
"Don't post my picture."
Nikki DeBartolo:
"Don't say me, I don't want to talk about it."
Ben Helfond:
But that's not just Our Happy Divorce, that's any, even on our own personal ones. He's 17, you know? He's too cool for school, or doesn't want ... But he has been great. In 8th grade, for his application to high school, and it's in the book, the question was write an essay on somebody you admire. Without Nikki and I making him, his essay was on his mom and dad, for what they did, and the life they created in a bad situation, and divorce. So he understands ... I don't know if he has a lot of friends that have high conflict divorces. But he understands what we've done. He understands the alternative. To us, that's great.
Ben Helfond:
But the other thing he understands, and this is an idea, this shows you how hard divorce is on kids, even when it's good. We were fishing a couple of years ago, and we were on a boat. He says, "Dad, this divorce has been hard on me." Again, first thought, first reaction, ego, "You have no idea, you little ungrateful SOB about what a hard divorce is." But you know, not acting off of ego, or not acting off of first-
Nikki DeBartolo:
Ben put his good dad hat on and didn't say that to him.
Ben Helfond:
Right. But able to realize, and maybe through my own experience, is if you take away all the nonsense, you take away all of the putting kids, using them as blocking and tackling tools, like put that aside, the whole logistics of a divorce is hard on a kid. Going to a different house every couple of days, and every weekend. I remember forgetting my math book at my Mom's, and what a big deal that ... Then that's the little things. The big things is it wasn't his decision. If it was, we would still be together.
Ben Helfond:
So that, he's into it, and he understands it. But also, it's hard on him. We wrote a book called Our Happy Divorce. We live seven houses apart. He can walk between houses, we go on vacations. But it's still not his decision. It's still hard on him, even as good as it gets. Now you sprinkle the other stuff that we put aside on top of it, and imagine what a traumatic experience it is for those kids.
Seth Nelson:
I'm with you. What I really, there is so many things I love about your book. But one of my other favorite parts is at the end, Asher writes the last chapter. For no other reason alone, I've got two quotes that I just want to let everyone know about, because they just struck me. If my kid would ever write this, I would be just so thrilled, honored, and pleased, and loved, and proud. But he says, quote, "I really don't have a favorite parent. Both Mom and Dad are awesome." I want to write a book just so my kid has to say that.
Ben Helfond:
Lying, he's lying. I'm his favorite. But that's okay.
Seth Nelson:
But here is the thing that struck me just a few paragraphs down, where he says, "Chad and Nadia are my parents too. They love me like parents, and they argue with me like parents." Which I just thought was classic, coming from a kid's perspective. Then he goes on and says, "Look, they have different things to teach me than my parents." That is the essence, to me, of you can't have too many people loving your kid and showing them different experiences, and different ways to approach life, and problems, and solve problems. Kudos to him as a young man working through that, and at four years old, putting her on the phone, and then even today, going back and forth. I get it, Ben. I tell people all the time. Go buy the same pillow.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Right. Buy the same bedding. At least we can make it seem like it's ... It works.
Ben Helfond:
The other thing is ... One of the great things, there is so many, of having a relationship with Nikki. But it should show you how dumb teenagers really are. But we communicate. Now we're not going to agree. I think the idea of co-parenting, Nadia and I are married. We co-parent our children together because we have different parenting styles.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Yeah, we have different views on things.
Ben Helfond:
But we talk about it. The big ticket item, so there is some uniformity across the board between the two houses, because we communicate. The co of co-parenting, the co of communication is together. So to show you how dumb he is, he still tries to play us against each other. "Well, Mom said this." Oh really? "Hey, Nikki, did you say ..."
Nikki DeBartolo:
He does. "Mom said I could do that." Or, "Mom said it's fine with her. But you're probably going to say no."
Ben Helfond:
Right. So I say, "Asher, do you know that your mom and I wrote a book called Our Happy Divorce, and we're best friends, and we talk all the time?" He kind of goes, "Oh, shit." Yeah, he forgot about it.
Nikki DeBartolo:
We have a group text chain with all four parents and him on it. So we know that when he's going someplace that's not really at the top of our list for him to be doing, he's got to go through that.
Ben Helfond:
Or, curfew, or-
Nikki DeBartolo:
Yes, the curfew.
Ben Helfond:
But everything is as uniform as it can be, without Nikki and I being married. I think that's the consistency, that's the thing that makes this a little bit easier on him. Now I'm lucky, because I don't have to shop for ... One other good thing about Our Happy Divorce is this one, she'll buy two pairs of tennis shoes for Asher.
Nikki DeBartolo:
I also come and clean his closet.
Ben Helfond:
She does. I walked in the other day, of my house, and my ex-wife is sitting in the house, in Asher's room. I go, "What are you doing here?" She goes, "Oh, cleaning the closets."
Nikki DeBartolo:
I got to come do it again. He's too big.
Ben Helfond:
I said, "All right."
Seth Nelson:
There are some benefits to living in a modern society and raising a child in two different households, just on technology. To have that group chat, and to be able to say, "Are you kidding me? I talked to [crosstalk 00:35:40]." Or, "Dad would never say it that way." Right?
Ben Helfond:
Meanwhile, Dad is on the text.
Seth Nelson:
Right.
Ben Helfond:
That's the mind of, the intelligence of a 17 year old.
Seth Nelson:
What is something, Nikki, that you've, even through all this great stuff we're doing, and the reason I'm asking this pointed question is I don't want people to feel like it's not hard. It's still sometimes hard. Is there anything that happens with Asher over at Ben's house with Nadia? I know, Ben, that Asher went on a hunting trip with Chad. It's like a little bit of a gut punch. Is there anything, Nikki, that still tenses you up, that you have to take a moment to check that ego? How do you do it in the moment?
Nikki DeBartolo:
I mean, honestly, as a mom, everything does. Every minute that she has with him that I don't have, hurts. It still hurts. So I think for me, it's every day. Every day there could be something. When he's not with me, it always hurts. But I've just had to toughen up and get used to it, because she loves him. She's a great mom. She's a good person. She's grown to be one of my best friends. So I have to just be happy that he has somebody that loves him, just like he was her own, and I just have to swallow my pride. It does, all the time. It's still, all the time.
Ben Helfond:
Yeah. I think whenever ... I mean, Chad and I have had issues. Nadia and Nikki have had issues. Nikki and I have had many issues, right? But I think when you, postmortem, those fights, or those issues, it comes down to what you said, Seth, is when we react off of the ego. Right? It's when we make decisions later on down the line, because my ego was hurt because Chad took Asher hunting. I make a decision, or I react to Chad off of what happened maybe a month ago. So I think when we look at all the fights that we have, or whatever disagreements we have, it usually comes down to someone is making a selfish decision, or a decision based on ego, not what's best for Asher. It's just become easier over time.
Seth Nelson:
On that point, I advocate responding, not reacting. The difference is that a reaction is without thought, right?
Ben Helfond:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
A response is let me think about it, let me check where I am in this conversation, and my own ego, and my own thought process. What is the real issue here? Is there a real issue here? Or is it just my own baggage that I'm dealing with?
Ben Helfond:
Yeah. The other thing I think Nikki and I are very grateful of, is text messaging was around when we got divorced. But we talked about it earlier in the show about the coffee shop, and sitting face-to-face. I don't know if we would have survived or definitely wouldn't have written a book if we were communicating over emails, and text messages, and not sitting across, face-to-face-
Nikki DeBartolo:
Having real conversations.
Ben Helfond:
Or on the phone, because some of the biggest arguments we get in, or the longest, is when we F you back and forth on text messages, and it turns into something bigger, because at that point, I see her almost as the woman that I saw her as when we got divorced, reading her text messages, and that's how she's responding to me. So text messaging is not good for Nikki and I.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Yep.
Ben Helfond:
As a communication tool.
Nikki DeBartolo:
No. That's how we fight.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, stick to messages in bottles, two cans and a string, like anything to soften the blow.
Ben Helfond:
Faxes, morse code.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, right. Faxes are amazing. As we get to wrapping up here, you guys are fantastic. One of the posts on your blog that I ran into was how the coronavirus made us stronger than ever, dated April 2nd, 2020. Now that we're more than a year on, how has Our Happy Divorce held up in the pandemic?
Ben Helfond:
Oh, that's a great question.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Honestly, I mean, I really do think it made us stronger. In the beginning, we only saw each other, because in the beginning we basically locked it down. I didn't see my, we didn't see our other family. I didn't see my sister, I didn't see her kids, because it was like our pod, together.
Ben Helfond:
We podded together.
Nikki DeBartolo:
We only saw each other's kids.
Ben Helfond:
Yeah. Because we quarantined together because we had this outbreak monkey going between the houses.
Nikki DeBartolo:
So we figured-
Ben Helfond:
If there was going to be a problem, it was going to be Asher was going to bring it back and forth to each other's houses. So we-
Nikki DeBartolo:
I think it made us really have to talk a lot more, too, because Asher had a strict set of rules. He kept trying to, every five minutes, the kid was trying to break them. "Well, my friends can do this, well, my friends can do this." I mean, none of his friends were quarantined during anything. So he was the only one that actually had to stay home with us.
Ben Helfond:
Yeah, we get together a lot. But we got together a whole lot more during the quarantine. Even when there was, I think-
Nikki DeBartolo:
I almost got in big trouble when I dyed his daughter's hair pink.
Ben Helfond:
Yeah. That was an issue. Yeah.
Nikki DeBartolo:
I bleached the end of her hair, and I dyed her hair pink.
Ben Helfond:
But at that point, it was like, okay, doing whatever we can to just keep our sanity. But we were lucky. I mean, this was another check mark for pro-happy divorce is that instead of arguing more, which we heard couples do. We did livestreams on it. That's why we started our livestream was because people were breaking custody agreements, and using it as an excuse to-
Nikki DeBartolo:
We already couldn't get divorced, because we were already divorced.
Ben Helfond:
But we used it to a benefit, to be able to have a different environment, have a different house, just as far as a different location that we were all locked down. So it made it better. But it also reinforced that this is definitely the easier, softer way. Then I think we took one vacation, all together in Montana, for the 4th of July. Then so fast forward a year, I think that blog was written last year, around this time. Nothing much has changed as far as ... It didn't get worse. So that's a good thing.
Seth Nelson:
I have a point on that. This is an own personal experience that I had, Pete, as you know, Ben, Nikki, and I all live in Florida, in the Tampa Bay area. We deal with hurricanes. Hurricanes are a mini-lockdown. Right? It's not a COVID lockdown. But we had a hurricane come through, and at the time it did, my former spouse was living in a house that is 100 years old, with a flat roof, and a big tree on top. She called me and said, "It's really not safe for Ky to be here. Can he come stay with you in your condo, newly built, hurricane, windows?" I'm like, "If it's not safe for him, it's not safe for you, and Steve, and the dogs." They all came and sheltered-
Ben Helfond:
Bring everybody.
Seth Nelson:
Right. We all hunkered down, and sheltered in during the hurricane, which ultimately led to her and her husband Steve liking the area that I lived, and they bought a condo four blocks away. So as Asher goes seven houses, my son goes four blocks back and forth. But from a kid's perspective, what I liked about us hunkering down, he wasn't at one parent's home, worried about the other. When you're going through a pandemic, what's going on at that house? Did anyone catch it? He knows the whole scene, because he's in it, he gets to see it.
Seth Nelson:
There is no questions. There is no concerns about what's going on at the other house. Which I think just helps immensely. Then he's like, "Of course my parents got along. We were hanging out during the hurricane, or lockdown in the pandemic." But from a kid's perspective, it's so important to realize that they are viewing all of us, and watching everything, and listening to our conversations, and how we talk about the other parent. I mean, Pete, I always use former spouse, because I think ex has a derogatory connotation. But when I refer to my former spouse at home, when I'm talking to my son, I don't say your mom. I say Mommy, or Mom, because if we were living together, that's what we would say. So I think those words matter.
Nikki DeBartolo:
I agree with that.
Ben Helfond:
Yeah. Again, it's just one of those things. We try to at least tell people that this is ... If you're listening, and you're thinking about divorce, you're just in the beginning of divorce, or that you're just post divorce, newly post divorce, we could never have imagined this being, writing a book, or much less even-
Nikki DeBartolo:
This is what our relationship would be like.
Ben Helfond:
That this is what our relationship would be like. But it was just a progress, not perfection. We stumble along the way, we try things too early. There is a story, we went on a family vacation too early.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Too early.
Ben Helfond:
With Nadia and Chad. It was the first time that all five of us went, the little ones weren't born yet. But it was too early. It was drama, it was just bad. But it didn't stop us. So I think one of the things that we try to tell people is that-
Nikki DeBartolo:
We recognized it and we tried it again.
Ben Helfond:
Right. Or sad story, or any other story you hear of a great, amicable divorce, for us, at least, it took time. It was so far, if you had asked us at that coffee shop, even after we said we were sorry, what we wanted our divorce to look like, and if we opened that up right now, we would have undershot it by miles.
Pete Wright:
An overnight success, 13 years in the making.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Exactly.
Ben Helfond:
That's great.
Pete Wright:
That's fantastic, you guys. This is really great. You've got so many wonderful resources for folks. You want to plug something? It seems like everything might just be under the banner of Our Happy Divorce. But tell us about it.
Ben Helfond:
Everything is Our Happy Divorce. The book, Our Happy Divorce, is available anywhere books are sold. One thing we've done with our publisher is if you go to mascotbooks.com, it took two of us to make this relationship. It took two of us to ruin the marriage. So there is a two for one special, because we really love for both the husband and the wife to be able to read this book. If not, the story is pretty simple. It's all over the place.
Ben Helfond:
We take snippets of it on our website, and blog it. So again, we are not doctors, lawyers, we have no initials behind our names, except for some might say I have BS a lot behind my name. But we're just two people who got it right. This is just our story. We just wanted to put it out there to give people hope that it doesn't have to be [inaudible 00:47:11]. It doesn't have to be this toxic cloud that follows you around for the rest of your life.
Seth Nelson:
It's one of those things, if we learned anything through these conversation on this podcast, a successful divorce is made up of every single tiny conversation, or tiny choice you make along the way.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Totally.
Seth Nelson:
This has been a great conversation. Thank you guys so much. Ben Helfond, Nikki DeBartolo.
Pete Wright:
Thanks Ben, thanks Nikki.
Ben Helfond:
Thank you for having us.
Nikki DeBartolo:
Thank you guys.
Ben Helfond:
You guys are great. Yeah, thank you.
Seth Nelson:
Thank you, everybody for hanging out and listening to this show. We appreciate your time, your attention, your downloads. We'll catch you next week, right here on How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Announcer 2:
Seth Nelson is an attorney with Nelson Koster Family Law and Mediation, with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of Nelson Koster. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
This transcript was exported on Apr 21, 2021 - view latest version here.
toaster_301 (Completed 04/12/21)
Transcript by Rev.com
Page 1 of 2