Pete Wright:
Welcome to How To Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships, from TruStory FM today. Your toaster is looking for peace and it's your turn to apologize.
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show everybody, I'm Seth Nelson. And as always, I am here with my good friend, Pete Wright. Today, we're talking about forgiveness. Keith Wilson is a licensed mental health counselor and the author of The Road to Reconciliation: A Comprehensive Guide to Peace When Relationships Go Bad and How To Make An Apology You'll Never Have To Make Again. He's with us today to talk about forgiveness and finding peace after divorce. Keith, welcome to The Toaster.
Keith Wilson:
Well, thank you. I hope I won't be toast by the end of it.
Pete Wright:
I can't believe it. You're the first person to ever make that joke. And I'm not kidding you.
Seth Nelson:
It's like 77 shows in.
Pete Wright:
I've never heard that joke.
Seth Nelson:
I'm a little disappointed in ourselves.
Pete Wright:
I'm disappointed in every past guest. Clearly, Keith is good people. He is welcome here.
Keith Wilson:
Well, I am a dad, so I made kind of a dad joke.
Pete Wright:
You know them. So you probably know them all.
Keith Wilson:
Now we know why Pete and I are laughing so hard.
Pete Wright:
Exactly, right. Exactly, right. We're talking about forgiveness. I want to start with your books, particularly How To Make An Apology You'll Never Have To Make Again. I have all kinds of questions about forgiveness, but who are you dealing with that you think this is a book I need to write?
Keith Wilson:
Well, anybody who's really messed up and has found themselves in a doghouse and wants to get out somehow.
Seth Nelson:
See Keith, I'm thinking about this when you say that, and you say How To Make An Apology You'll Never Have To Make Again. I know that has finality to it, but I'm thinking I'm going to need that book. And then the sequel, as well.
Pete Wright:
I'm going to know, you're going to need that book and a plane ticket, just make the apology and leave and that's all you got to do.
Keith Wilson:
Well, all too often, people will apologize for something. And then, a couple days later do the same thing all over again and keep on having to apologize for the same thing. And you know, sooner or later, people are just tired of hearing it. So I'm hoping that people who read this book can not only make their apology, but also engage in some real personal change.
Pete Wright:
All right, well, that's where we hope we're going with this conversation. We've got a couple of books, The Road to Reconciliation: A Comprehensive Guide to Peace When Relationships Go Bad. All of this plays into our conversation today, finding peace and forgiveness after a divorce. Talk to us a little bit about your... You've been a licensed mental health counselor for over 30 years, you've been doing this a long time, working with a wide variety of folks in your practice, in particular troubled couples. How do you see the journey through the divorce process, from your perspective, in an effort to find peace?
Keith Wilson:
Well, first of all, I think the word divorce can be a little misleading. People sometimes, even though they know better, they often feel that if they go through a divorce, they don't have to deal with this person ever again. And that's just not true. It's definitely not true if you have kids and you hope to still be involved together in raising them. But even when that's not the case, there're common friends you have. You might live in the same town and even if you move away and never see her again, you still have her representative in your head, okay? That you're going to have to relate to in some kind of way. So it's never really a question of a relationship ending. It's really more, a divorce is a renegotiation of the relationship.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. It's how a relationship now changes.
Keith Wilson:
Exactly. Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Right. It's, you were married. You had what you believed to be certain roles in a certain relationship and now you are redefining that relationship. But there's still a relationship there, whether you like it or not. If you have children together and even if you don't have children together, you don't want to necessarily bring that relationship into new relationships. Am I hearing you correctly?
Keith Wilson:
That's right. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
You said something that just really stuck with me. You, whether or not you're dealing with them, you have the representation of your former spouse in your head, the relationship in your head. Can you talk about what that means?
Keith Wilson:
Well, I mean, we all have a representative in our head of all the people that we need to deal with on a regular basis. We kind of construct this thing as a way of predicting what they're going to do. In the same way that a meteorologist who wants to know about climate change will set up a model in the computer and plug in some numbers. So, if the temperature rises three degrees in Ecuador, how many polar bears are going to die in the Arctic?
Pete Wright:
Okay. You go dark fast, Keith, you go dark fast.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Yeah. Just this morning, I was wondering that exact question.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. That's right.
Keith Wilson:
That's right.
Seth Nelson:
You know, I had a different number of degrees and a different number of polar bears, but I appreciate where you're coming from.
Keith Wilson:
Okay. So, anyway, you construct this model of this person in your head. And even if the relationship is ended in the usual sense of the word, you're still carrying that model with you, because probably you're going to meet somebody new and you don't know much about them. So you kind of plug in the information you have from the previous relationship and you go with that. And then next thing you know, you're treating your new person in your life similarly to the old one. So, we want to be able to be on better terms, not only with the actual person, but also with the model in your head and kind of understand where they're coming from.
Seth Nelson:
This comes up a lot in divorce cases, and people don't realize that it's coming up. And it's not necessarily the people getting divorced that are causing this issue. So I'm just going to kind of put a star in this for people going through a divorce when they're working with their lawyer. Because what will happen is the lawyer might say, "In this settlement agreement or in this parenting plan, I think we need this provision to solve this hypothetical problem." And I'll say on the other side, this couple's not having that problem. Why is this in this document? And the lawyer will say, "Well, I had this other case where it happened." And I said, I don't draft my documents based on every single issue that I've had in every single case, because now my document is 50, 60, 70 pages long. And there's no way for me to draft a parenting plan to come up with every hypothetical situation that's going to happen in a child's life, so stop doing that in this case. Just because you were just in court yesterday, based on how something was written and what these parents, it's not impacting this case. And I encourage people to kind of fight back with their lawyer a little bit, like why do I need this in this document if this isn't an issue in my case, and be careful of the what ifs.
Keith Wilson:
Yeah. I imagine those what ifs is then if they follow what's in the document, then they're going to be impeded. They're going to be limited in what they're going to do with each other and with the kids, because of what's in some document.
Pete Wright:
Always protect yourself from your lawyer, I think is the lesson that Seth just said.
Seth Nelson:
Right. Exactly. But no, just that concept of, hey, there're other relationships that are coming forward.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
And in your divorce, it might be the lawyer's relationship with his other cases or her other cases to you. And that might not be the beneficial. Now I've certainly had the cases where people have been divorced before and they're getting divorced a second time and they had all these issues with their former spouse on parenting and they're trying to resolve those issues in this case. And I'm like, wait a minute, this is a different person you're divorcing, for different reasons. I hear what Keith is saying. People just keep replaying that in their head over and over and it causes more problems than it solves.
Pete Wright:
Well, it's funny. I thought you were going to go down a different road, which was all of the other relationships of the stories we tell ourselves and that are told about us, of the extended friends and family circle. That, when divorce happens, like you have to navigate all of the stories, not just of your former spouse, but of the separation of friendships and in-laws and all of those relationships. It can get very, very complicated, especially if you're not living in fact and truth. Like operating on what you know, not what you think.
Seth Nelson:
Right. And everything you said also plays out.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
I was just kind of focused on that legal aspect of it.
Pete Wright:
Okay. So let's talk about then the actual effort that goes into finding and forgiving our former spouse. I'm assuming for the sake of our example, that there is some contention in the divorce, that is leading to the reason that you're getting a divorce. What do you tell people to get them into a state of readiness for forgiveness?
Keith Wilson:
I start in what appears to be the opposite direction. I really have to start by having them make a list here of all their grievances and putting it all out there. Not necessarily to show the other person or to show anybody, but just to be able to take stock of this.
Seth Nelson:
So I'm a little confused, Keith. So let me ask a couple questions here. When you're say... I'm getting divorced, let's say. Are you asking me for the grievances I have with my spouse? Or are you asking me for the things that I think I did wrong in the relationship?
Keith Wilson:
Well, start with the grievances against the spouse, which is often, you know, where your head is at at that moment anyway. Okay? So if I'm working with a person that looks like they're heading for divorce, I want to hear them out. I want to hear what the issues have been. Okay? Now this is something that can be a protective factor from the person who offers cheap pardon. Who ends up getting back together, because they are in somewhat of a state of denial for being victimized in any kind of way. Okay? But it's also, in doing that, I'm asking them not only what the grievance is, but what are the damages? And quite often, there's very little damage. Or it's a symbolic damage or something that really can easily be overlooked, if you're willing to do so.
Seth Nelson:
And is there a way to know whether it's symbolic or a little damage when they people say, "Well, it's the principle?"
Keith Wilson:
Well, actual damages would be money spent or bones broken and the things like that. Symbolic damages might be did this person make me feel bad? Well, so they made you feel bad, but we're all somewhat responsible for our own feelings. So they can't be fully responsible for making you feel bad. And then what is often the case is what's been violated, is there's been a broken promise for or two. And when that happens, then there's less trust. You can't trust the person and then it's kind of hard to continue a relationship then.
Seth Nelson:
Okay. So I make my grievances about them.
Keith Wilson:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
Then I turn to the things that I think I've made mistakes on. Is that right?
Keith Wilson:
Well, not only about what you maybe made a mistake on that led to the initial problem, but also even if you are totally victimized, okay? Even if you don't think you did anything and your partner kind of out the blue slept with your best friend, stole all your money, crashed your car and killed your dog.
Seth Nelson:
I was about to say, this sounds like a country song. This sounds like a country song. When you play it backwards, you get your dog back, you get your gun back, you get your girlfriend back. Right?
Keith Wilson:
Right.
Pete Wright:
And you bust your mom out of prison while you're slightly hungover.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Keith Wilson:
Right. Even if you did nothing to deserve that, okay? Still, being victimized in that way, it does not bring the best out in people.
Seth Nelson:
Right. Right.
Keith Wilson:
You know, after the fact, quite often, you act very poorly, in one way or another. Either by forgiving too much. Okay? And letting them do it again, or by being vindictive and never letting them get past it. Okay. So, you do have to not only take into account what you did that brought about the worry, but also what you've done since then.
Pete Wright:
All I can think about right now is Seinfeld, because immediately after the Festivus airing of grievances, are feats of strength. And I'm wondering when we can work into the feats of strength.
The thing I think that becomes central here is when you are running into a place where you just don't want to forgive, right? Like you're getting into a place where, I've got a grudge to hold. I've got a grudge to hold. I'm really pissed and I'm not ready. I don't know how to find peace when I am not ready.
Seth Nelson:
Or I don't even want to find peace. I'm just freaking mad. I don't want to forgive this guy. He did X, Y, and Z. Why should I give him forgiveness? It feels like he's giving [crosstalk 00:15:37].
Pete Wright:
It's giving me fuel, right. In some other way.
Keith Wilson:
Well, this is why probably nowhere in the book, will you ever find the word forgiveness. Because it's very loaded. I do talk about reconciliation. Okay? Which is when you confront the issue and you work through it and hopefully, on the other side of it, come out with a better relationship than you had to start with. Now, that's a wonderful thing when that happens. And it is possible in all kinds of circumstances for that to happen. But a lot of people never get there. Or what often happens is maybe one person is ready for that before the other. Okay?
Pete Wright:
Oh yeah.
Keith Wilson:
And you know, then there's no reconciliation for the time being. Okay. But falling short of reconciliation is what I call personal peace. And personal peace is when a, you are safe from it happening again to you and you are able to move on with your life and have some kind of an understanding that works for you about what you did and are not going to get into this all over again with somebody new.
Seth Nelson:
Well, it's interesting you say that, because what I was just thinking on that personal piece is, and I talk to my clients about this is, you don't have to forgive the person, but if you are holding that grudge, you're allowing that person to control your emotions.
Keith Wilson:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
And this is a person you're telling me is all about control. So why are you giving it to them? If you can let go of that, that's the strongest, most brave thing you can do for you. And a lot of, and this is more just in my experience, we're not trying to be stereotypical here. But when I represent a woman who has reached the end of her rope and has actually said, I'm going to file for divorce, I want out. Even though they know they're going to get cut off from the money, they know they're going to be attacked for their parenting as a mother, which is harder on women I believe, than when people get attacked as a parent as a father, due to our societal makeup, that they know it's all coming and they're still brave enough to say, enough. So I tell them, if you can make that stand, then you can just let all that other stuff go.
Keith Wilson:
Yeah. That stand right there is essential because what that woman is doing is finding safety by saying, I'm not going to let this happen anymore.
Pete Wright:
According to the national Institute on alcohol abuse and alcoholism, approximately 10% of children live with a parent with an alcohol use disorder.
Seth Nelson:
This is an alarming statistic as a family law professional, who deals with custody cases regularly.
Pete Wright:
Finding the balance between the child's safety and helping the child maintain a relationship with both parents is one of the hardest things to navigate. Add in the he said/she said phenomenon that happens with divorcing couples who often weaponize alcohol use against one another and the situation is even more difficult.
Seth Nelson:
All of this is why Soberlink has been one of the most important tools for my clients dealing with these issues. Soberlink's remote alcohol monitoring tool has helped over 500,000 people prove their sobriety and provide peace of mind regarding the child's safety. Soberlink helps keep the focus on the best interest of the child, which is really the most important part in a divorce case dealing with children. I've teamed up with Soberlink to create a parenting plan guide to help people going through divorce that involves alcohol and children.
Pete Wright:
And you can download it today at soberlink.com/toaster. And if you take a look and you think you're ready to order Soberlink, just mention How To Split a Toaster for $50 off their device price.
Seth Nelson:
Our thanks to Soberlink for sponsoring How To Split a Toaster.
Pete Wright:
You said something that got me thinking about, as we were preparing for this conversation, I was trying to figure out what I'm asking for. And you've said that forgiveness is loaded. And I want to hear more about that in party to this question of what is the minimum viable standard for peace, post relationship? Like what is the bare, what are the bare minimum constituents that I need to be striving for after a divorce so that I can feel a sense of motion, so that I can build up a little momentum to move forward and not get stuck in grief in that sort of stasis.
Keith Wilson:
Probably the very least is it can't be happening still. Now, quite often I imagine, even after a divorce, there are all kinds of zingers that people send back and forth to each other.
Seth Nelson:
They do? What?
Keith Wilson:
Really right.
Pete Wright:
Not your clients, Seth? No?
Seth Nelson:
Hold on. Let me go check the 137 emails that I just got from opposing council saying what my client may or may not have done allegedly. Right?
Keith Wilson:
Yeah. So, that does not further peace. For either party, really.
Pete Wright:
So again, step one, always step one, put down the phone right now. What if you're holding a phone and you're ready to text your former spouse? Put it down and back away slowly.
Keith Wilson:
Yeah. And also, you no longer need to convince your spouse of anything. I mean, when you were together, you kind of needed to have his or her sign on to a lot of different things. You needed to get her agreement, but you don't really need to do that anymore. Except when it comes to the kids, perhaps, and all that kind of thing. So quite often, the hardest thing for people to do is to let go of having to change their spouse's mind about them.
Pete Wright:
Wow. That's good. I'm not divorced and I'm having trouble wrapping my head around that.
Seth Nelson:
Well, here's the thing where that comes out sometimes, Pete, is when, and we've talked about this before, when people cannot afford to move out of the house during the pendency of the divorce. And I call it parent on duty, you start a parenting plan of custody or visitation, whatever you want to call it, where one parent's responsible on Monday and Tuesday, the next parent's responsible on Wednesday and Thursday and you switch the weekends. So if you're the one responsible on Monday and Tuesday, life gets a lot easier parenting. If, for the first time, you're a hundred percent in charge. It might be more work, but you don't have anyone telling you're doing it wrong.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
So you can just figure it out. And that sometimes alleviates a lot of stress in the adult relationship to each other, because you're no longer arguing about you're doing it right, you're doing it wrong. What kind of PJ's turn on thing. It's okay to take a bath, don't take a bath, you took one last night, whatever. Okay. They didn't brush their teeth one night. Am I going to make a big deal? She was having a rough day at school. Then you get to make these hundreds of little decisions all in one night in a bedtime routine without having to clear it with somebody else. And all of a sudden, at some levels, it gets easier because you're just focused on the kids doing what you need to do to get them to bed. And there's not right and wrong. There's just different. Some things are more effective or less effective, but rare...
I mean, I'm not talking abuse of children and the like, but whether you read two books or three books is not going to be the end of the world on a Tuesday night. Right? So I think there's some of that when you don't have to negotiate those things with your spouse anymore, that some things get easier. It gets harder on the flip side of that coin, because to Keith's point, you're no longer required to convince them of anything. But when you have no reason to work together, other than it's best for the kids, like you're not working on your relationship anymore. So what you think is best for the kids and what they think is best for the kids is different. How do you bridge that gap now when you don't have a relationship together? That gets harder, but the day to day might get easier.
Pete Wright:
Keith, you want to comment on that? Bridging that gap? Because I mean, I absolutely see what you're saying. So then on the other flip side, is I can imagine it being super like refreshing at some level to be the parent not on duty because you don't have to actually... You know, you can actually see what it's like to free your mind of the noise of having to make the hundreds of decisions at bedtime. Like that must be interesting.
Seth Nelson:
Silver lining of divorce. That's really hard to convince people when they're going through it. is you get every other weekend off. Can you imagine having a weekend off Pete?
Pete Wright:
No. I don't know what that, I don't know what that means, but this idea of learning again to solve problems civilly with someone, with whom you don't have a day to day relationship, but a boatload of emotional history. Like how do you put yourself in a place to navigate that?
Keith Wilson:
Well, I think for starters, if you don't have the kids, you've got to just let your partner or your former partner deal with the kids, his or her own way. If you don't trust that person with the kids, or if you're just kind of a control freak, you might very well be very worried about what's going on there and be hassling your partner when you pick the kids up afterwards about whether they brushed their teeth and all that kind of thing. That kind of over-controlling doesn't really help anybody. It doesn't help you have the weekend off and it doesn't give your former partner a chance to work out things has or her own way. And it definitely doesn't help the kids, because then they get stuck in the middle between a conflict between their parents.
Seth Nelson:
And where that shows itself a lot, Pete, is on these nightly phone calls or weekend phone calls. Because the parent that is not there, that is insecure, maybe rightfully so, but insecure about the other parent's ability to parent, they will start quizzing the kids on what they're doing. What'd you do today? What did you eat? And it becomes a laundry list of things. And it's not a conversation with the child about the child.
Pete Wright:
It's a conversation with the child about the former spouse.
Seth Nelson:
About how they're parenting, right? So ways to help alleviate some of that is if you have a shared parenting calendar and people are putting what the kids are doing on the calendar, then if you check the calendar before you talk to the kid, you can say something like, "Oh, I saw you had a, you know, didn't you have a play date today with your friend? Did you have fun? What did you do?" And now you're talking about the play date, right? And the information you're going to get from that is going to be all about the kid having a good time or something happened. Oh no, my friend was mean to me. Oh, how did that make you feel? Well, it was okay. Daddy helped me or mommy helped me. Right? You're actually going to get more information by talking to the kid about the kid, not about a laundry list of when they went to bed, what did they eat? What did they do? All of that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Seth Nelson:
And the kids can tell the difference. It's just intuitive.
Keith Wilson:
Yeah. That's a great idea.
Pete Wright:
Well, I don't want to get too far down the road of bad mouthing the former spouse. But as long as we're talking about the former spouse, what happens if you're in this relationship where this former spousal relationship, where it's the former spouse that is really struggling, letting go of the grievances, of the grief of the grudges. And, in your effort to move on, they are a hindrance to that.
Keith Wilson:
I don't know. Have you talked with the former spouse about how you think that you did wrong here in this relationship? Have you admitted to your own part of things in whatever way you define that? I tell people to, when you try to take stock of your own mistakes, don't try to predict what your former partners could say. But what do you say you did wrong? Okay? And if you are acknowledging that, then your partner at least knows that you've taken this stuff seriously and are taking responsibility and that can go a long way. If you have more grievances to air, about what your partner is doing, it's hard to really get justice from them if you have not cleaned up your side of the fence there.
Pete Wright:
Is this, it sounds like modeling, both executing and modeling agency is useful.
Keith Wilson:
Exactly. Now sometimes, even if you do take responsibility for your own side of the fence, sometimes you have somebody who takes advantage of that kind of thing. But for the most part, those people respond to that.
Pete Wright:
Well, I'll tell you, this is, as we get down to our final minutes here, this is incredibly useful and also challenging. We recognize to speak so much in the hypothetical, right? We're talking about relationships and former spouses at large. And that's hard to do when every, every separation is different. But if you're faced with this, you know, talking to our listeners, people who are going through this process, 8:00 AM day one, any final points you'd like to give people for just helping them to navigate rough waters ahead.
Keith Wilson:
Well, one thing we never really talked very much about is moving on from that relationship. Sure. And you know, getting a place of your own, learning how to parent, connecting with old friends, doing that kind of thing. Having a life can often do a lot of healing for the feelings that you had with your ex, better than anything you can do with your ex.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. You hear that Seth? You don't have to live in your office.
Seth Nelson:
I was about to say, he just said, get a life. And I'm like, I don't even know what that means, Pete. Like you know, I was thinking about, it's a nice day. Do I go to the beach? Sun is bright, but the wind is cool. I mean, Keith, you made, it just sound so easy. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Like I have to, I have to get down early enough to get my breakfast churro and I'm living the dream.
Seth Nelson:
Right. And I'm just thinking, get a life. Well that's, we're changing the name of this show.
Pete Wright:
But I do get it. Right? It's that idea of like, finding a reason to be dragged into emotional health. Sometimes just finding an old, I love that. Just reach out to an old friend, find somebody to drag you into emotional healing. That's useful. They don't even need to know that you're doing it.
Keith Wilson:
You could change the name of your show to Get Your Own Damn Toaster. I mean, because really whenever you're angry with somebody.
Seth Nelson:
All right, no, we're done now, Keith. That was it. No, we got this whole.
Pete Wright:
Do we actually have a mic to drop?
Seth Nelson:
Or we have this whole thing about splitting the toaster and yeah...
Pete Wright:
No screw that. Get your own damned toaster.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. I basically, they call me to split the toaster. That's how I make my living, Keith. Okay. And we invite you on the show and you're going to just put me into poverty now. I mean, what is going on here?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, this is great. I think it's perfect. Keith is my new best friend. Thank you, Keith, for hanging out with us, give us your plugs. We've talked about your books. Where do people go find more about you and all of the good work you are doing?
Keith Wilson:
Oh, keithwilsoncounseling.com is my website and everything should be there.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding. Links in the show notes. Don't forget everybody. You can head over to howtosplitatoaster.com/ask a question and you can submit your own questions for this show and Seth will answer them. He promises.
Seth Nelson:
I promise, right when I get back from a little toaster shopping.
Pete Wright:
That's right. Outstanding. Thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show, we sure appreciate your time and attention, on behalf of Keith Wilson and America's favorite divorce attorney, Seth Nelson, I'm Pete Wright. We'll catch you back here next week on How To Split A Toaster, the divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
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.
