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A board-certified family law attorney, Jaime Davis and her guests provide information and tips for getting through a separation and divorce without destroying family relationships or finances. From marriage therapists and financial planners to private investigators and parenting coordinators, learn how to navigate divorce without destruction.
JAMIE: Welcome to a year in a day. I'm Jamie Davis, board certified family law attorney
at Gaylor Hunt. On this show, I talk with lawyers.
JOHANNA: Psychologists, and other experts with
the goal of helping you navigate divorce without destruction. In this episode, I'm talking with Joanna Lynn, relationship specialist
and found of the family imprint institute.
JAMIE: With over 20 years of expertise in.
JOHANNA: Resolving inherited family patterns,
joanna helps her clients dismantle unhealthy patterns,
restore relationships, and create resilient boundaries.
JAMIE: We're going to talk with Joanna about.
JOHANNA: How you can get on the same team with
your co parent.
JAMIE: Thanks for joining me, Joanna.
SPEAKER C: It's so great to be here, Jamie.
JAMIE: So what are some of the common relationship
issues you see between couples who have gone through
a divorce?
SPEAKER C: Well, I think we all know money issues
don't. They say it's the number one reason why
couples come into some friction and challenge,
and sometimes it means the end of the relationship.
Some of the things I see in my practice are different
views on parenting. Different values start to
emerge a couple of years into the relationship. Certainly, infidelity is a top one. Broken trust. I think
the inlaws come in a lot, and we joke a little
bit in the work we do. We start calling them the
outlaws. That a lot of times they can cause all
kinds of challenges inside the family unit that
is present. And there can be some negotiation
that needs to be talked about, and I think that
leads right into healthy boundaries. So it can
be a mix of one or two top themes or all of the
above.
JAMIE: And so when you are working with couples
who have experienced a divorce or going through
a divorce, how do you get the co parents on the
same page?
SPEAKER C: That's a big one, because our kids
feel the stress, the tension, whether it's something
they overhear or something they just feel between
us. And I think a big part of the work that I
start to do with couples who are trying to figure
out this whole co parenting dynamic thing is to
really come into that space where if I look at the other person, I'm really acknowledging that without them, my children, who
I love so much, wouldn't be who they are. To really
acknowledge that that other person that's caused
me heartache and difficulty and all the things
I'm still processing is half of my children. And
so to really kind of come from that foundational
place first and to begin to look at, it will always
be for the love of these children that we're going
to share. And so that's something that we can
meet on the same page about and the commitment,
in a way. And even if you're the only one that's
starting, someone's got to start to find that
resolution that the hurt from the relationship
is now over. So we separate out the relationship
hurt from the co parenting choices and begin to
look at how we can come forward from here, keeping
the love of our children as sort of the guidepost,
as the way we can look forward together. I think
a big part of looking at ourselves, because it
sounds easy, okay, let's separate my relationship
hurt from my co parenting choices. But I think
the biggest empowerment can come from our self looking at, well, who am I
now after really loving this person? What have
I learned about myself through how things got
really sticky or the final separation of this
relationship? And the big one is, are there any
gifts that I'm taking with me? Who am I after
spending all these years with this person? And
sometimes the gifts are looking right back at
us through the eyes of our children.
JAMIE: That's so interesting. I feel like I say
this to my clients all the time. They really do
tend to have a very hard time separating the pain
of the separation and the end of their marriage
from this co parenting relationship that they
have to have moving forward. We tell them all
the time it's about putting your children first
and making sure they feel loved by both of you.
And while it may be tempting in your email communications
with your co parent to respond to some of those
negative comments they may get, that's really
not furthering the goal of what's best for the
kids.
SPEAKER C: Not at all. And I think we can do all
kinds of things for the love of our children.
And I know I started to do a lot of my own work
once I became a mom with this feeling of, OOH, I don't want to repeat past
pain. And these are things I never looked at before,
Jamie, in all the years of just living life, but
something about for the greater love of our children.
And so I would encourage your listeners to really
consider, how do I drop some of that pain that
belongs between the two of us and protect our
kiddos from that as much as possible?
JAMIE: Absolutely. How do you get parents to understand
why their co parent may be doing what they are
doing or acting the way that they are acting?
SPEAKER C: Yeah, that can be super preventative.
We want to start to look at where their reactions
come from, and the strongest place to do that
is start to look at their relational family history.
So how long have you been married to this person?
You know their mom, you know their dad, or you
know, the stories that are held inside of your
ex about them and to recognize that what's going
to get played out has a lot to do with what's
unresolved back there. So a big place to be kind
of neutral is to understand a lot of the conflict.
A lot of the trying to negotiate and figure things
out is probably not even addressed to you. The
stonewalling, the withdraw, the criticism even
the name calling to be able to call it what it
is, which is almost like you could imagine turning
your ex back towards their family of origin as
a way to put them back in sometimes where they
could go with you from a relational perspective
and where they never could. And let's face it,
a lot of that is probably the reason why the relationship
has ended or the relationship has turned out the
way it has. So we've got to kind of accept that
what's unresolved between the two of us is now bleeding into the co parenting dynamic and we're back to it's time
to separate that out. Otherwise our kids are going
to kind of carry the weight of that. And so the
practice here is as much as possible not to take
it personally, to understand the full context,
to hear where it's coming from so that you can
stay centered and grounded. As soon as we take
it personally, we're pulled into reaction or defense
and then it's kind of all downhill from there.
JAMIE: So is the idea I just want to make sure
that I'm understanding here is the idea that the
co parent may have learned these patterns from his or her parents based
upon things that they have witnessed. Like for
example, is this them modeling marriage? Right?
Like were the co parents parents modeling marriage
and it's a repeat of that or is it more about
the co parent's relationship with his or her parents
and how they were treated?
SPEAKER C: That's a great distinction. And so
it's both. So the first thing to remember through
the science of epigenetics is that we are literally born imprinted with what's unresolved the emotional
hurts, the life experiences of our parents and
our grandparents. So it's even more so what was
modeled. That's one part of it. And the other
part is what is imprinted. And so we really want
to look at ourselves, our own marriages, our own
children in the context of the larger family system.
So that's why it's so important when we look at
this co parenting piece as oh my gosh, my gorgeous
son or my amazing daughter, they're half me and
they're half my ex. And so sometimes we might
see the traits of our ex coming out on our child
and we kind of cringe or we pull back and the
biggest gift we can give our kids is to say things
like, you know what? You are so funny, just like
your dad. Or when I first met your mom, that was
what we would laugh about for hours. And you've
got that same trait in you giving that gift of
being able to say the things I see in you from
your mom or your dad. I really appreciate and
love it's great to see them in you. The worst
thing I hear from many of my clients is my mom
used to tell me, you're just like your father
in that tone and we all know what that means. That's a pretty loaded conversation and so we want to
pull that back into understanding it's not just
the modeling, it's also what's been imprinted.
JAMIE: So once you've gotten to this place where
the co parents are hopefully understanding why
the co parent is acting the way that they are,
how do you create open communication with your
co parent? How do you get them to do that?
SPEAKER C: I think it's so important to stay present,
to stay with what is the decision we're talking
about today? Instead of bringing back the old
hurt from what might be unresolved, separating
it out, these various parenting decisions or showing
up present to the school appointment or to the
recital or the game for the children to really
be there and having conversations. Are we going
to celebrate the birthdays together? Are we going
to have some, I don't know, Thanksgiving piece
where maybe it's not the whole dinner together,
but we're going to get together and just have
a family moment that is it possible to hold how
I communicate with my co parent that of course
we are still a family and now it just looks different.
And what is that look different for us? That works
well as we're healing from the separation and
also models the best option for our kids moving
forward.
JAMIE: I really like what you said about being
present. That's something else that I try to stress
with my clients that once we've reached an agreement
about what the custody schedule is going to be,
there is no need to continually go back and rehash
all of the evidence that you were going to use
against your co parent in court. We're moving
forward and we're learning to co parent. We're
not keeping tabs for court.
SPEAKER C: Well, exactly. It's so much about I'm
still in a fight for what I didn't get enough
of in the marriage or I still need to be heard
for what went wrong here. And I think it moves
us further and further away from a healthy co parenting piece. It's almost like we
don't act in our marriage like we do when we're
dating and we don't act in our co parenting like
we did in the fight of the marriage. We've got
to be able to move that trajectory along in now
how we're.
JAMIE: Relating, how can co parents avoid unnecessary
conflict?
SPEAKER C: I think one thing to keep in mind is
to be very careful of our language. So watch the
statements like she always or he never does. We
get locked into these positions and we kind of
don't let ourself get to know this new relationship.
So what I mean by that is you were once my partner
and now you're my ex and now you're my co parent
and so how am I relating to you now? Differently.
I want to give up the fight for how things went
back then and I want to look at how we can be
constructive together. So coming from that place
that we both share this love for our children,
and how can we meet there? Let that be the guiding
principle.
JAMIE: How do you ever learn to rely on your co
parent?
SPEAKER C: That can be a really big one, because
the marriage ended for a reason, right? And a
lot of that was, I stopped relying on you. My
heart closed to you. We've got our own dynamic
in that. I think the foundational piece to that,
though, Jamie, is if I couldn't rely on my parent,
if that was my early life experience to recognize, oh, I'm playing that out again here.
So the first part is really the ownership of OOH,
that's familiar. That's my part. And that's actually
good news because it doesn't require the co parent
to be involved at all. It's the recognition that
I had a hard time trusting my parents to be there
for me. Oh, this not being able to rely on really
played out in the marriage and how might the co parenting piece look differently? And so
that might be some pretty honest conversations
about setting up realistic expectations. That's
sort of more logistical and practical. But the
biggest piece that moves the needle there is healing
at the origin. Otherwise it has no other option
but to replay in the present.
JAMIE: Why is it important for children to see
their parents getting along?
SPEAKER C: Well, the simple truth of that is that
our parents are the template for our future generations.
Our parents are the template for our future relationships.
So how we were loved as a child unconsciously
becomes how we expect love to go in our relationships.
So we're modeling to our kids even how to do conflict,
how to be kind, how to keep our heart open even
when it hurts, how to have boundaries, how to
negotiate difficult situations. There's so many
learning opportunities in this dynamic. It's very
important to know that if our child takes a side,
it hurts them. So one example is if I'm the daughter,
and I can only see my dad through my mum's eyes as the person who hurts
her, the person who makes her cry, I lose my dad,
I lose the ability to be the daughter, and I become mom's. Ally I
see mostly all men through the way she sees dad,
and that's probably not the healthiest way to
do it. And so a lot of what I'm working with, with my clients in their forty s fifty s?
Sixty s is this piece. Oh, gosh. Back in my teens,
when my parents separated, I went over there,
quote unquote, on Mom's team, and I ended up with
a very similar marriage to what I saw with my
parents. Keeping in mind this all happens underneath
the surface, this is all unconscious, but this
is what I mean by our sort of love imprint, or
the blueprint that we run from, depending on how
things went for us in our childhood.
JAMIE: This is also very interesting. And as you're
talking, I'm kind of thinking through similar
things that I say to my clients in my practice.
Someone comes in for a consultation and they don't
want to get separated because they don't want
their child to have two homes. And so as I dig
a little more into the marriage and the things
the child is witnessing in the home of these two
people who do not get along, they're very high
conflict. They're yelling in front of the child.
I say to the person, you do realize you're modeling
marriage for your child and your child is going
to grow up thinking this is okay either to talk
to someone this way or on the flip side, to be
talked to that way, depending upon which role.
And so it's very interesting to hear your take
on this as well.
SPEAKER C: Oh, and I couldn't agree more with
exactly what you've said. I think I say to many
of my clients, sometimes separation is the healthiest
way to show respect. Sometimes that separation
gives us almost the space we need to find it.
Because when we're in such close proximity, all
there is, is friction. And so sometimes it's the
separation that actually protects our kids and
models to them something that can again, we're
still a family, it just looks different. And what
else is possible?
JAMIE: Well, and the child is going to be better
off if he or she has two healthy parents. Maybe
they live in two separate homes, but they're both
healthy and have the opportunity to be happy.
And the child gets to see that.
SPEAKER C: Exactly that's what we want at the
end of the day.
JAMIE: Well, so let's say that you've gotten through
the separation, you've gotten through the divorce,
and you are ready to begin dating or searching
for a new relationship. How and when do you communicate
that to the children?
SPEAKER C: I think it's really going to be very
individual. There is no sort of formula to follow.
It takes time to get to know a new person. It
takes time to see how that dynamic is going to
unfold between two people. But I think a primary
thing to sort of use as a guideline is to keep our kids out
of our adult problems, our adult relationships,
our grown up decisions. And so that's our primary
role as their parent. And so we've got to know
as much as possible, is this person really going
to be a long term part of our lives. And so for
some of us, that takes four months, six months,
for others, it's well into a year. But it's deciding
for yourself first before almost doing like a
test run. How do the kids like him or her? Or
how does this all fit together, that you really
want to test out that dynamic for yourself so
that your kids don't have to go through yet another
separation in six months to twelve months time.
JAMIE: So let's say that you feel like you have
met the right person that's going to be around
for a while. What is the best way to discuss that
new relationship with your co parent?
SPEAKER C: Well, optimally, in an ideal world,
this conversation is part of the custody agreement
or sort of set forth as all of the main decisions
are decided. Because I think when the time comes
and we've met that person but our co parent doesn't
want that person to be around the kids or we can
just get into all kinds of challenges and conflict
when that arises. So if at all possible, plan ahead. If we're at that crossroads and it hasn't been discussed, I
think it's a great idea to have our co parent
out for a cup of tea or coffee without the kiddos
and just have an open conversation if that is
impossible because it's too high conflict. I think
it's important enough to bring in a mediator to
bring in some sort of relationship specialist
to walk through this and come to a very secure agreement that can be moved forward
from here. Like you say, you don't have to go back and forth
and keep having a decision on every little game
or night out.
JAMIE: So let's take things one step further and
complicate it a little bit more. Let's say that
you want to get involved with someone, you've
gotten serious with them and they also have children
and so you're trying to blend to families. What
is the best way to go about that?
SPEAKER C: I think, stepping in with very clear
expectations so that to recognize, okay, we're
a second relationship. We're getting together,
and he's got three kids and I've got two. That
we step in acknowledging we are both in fifth
place, meaning our children's needs come first
before the marriage, at least until they're off
to university or college or off in their next
phase of life, that this won't be like this forever.
But while the kids are young, this is kind of
the agreement or the rules of engagement of this
blended family that we've got to accept that we're
in fifth place with each other. There gets to
be all kinds of entanglements and complications when me, the new partner, is jealous of the time my
partner is spending with his daughter or son.
And so we sort of have to recognize that even
if I come in as a stepparent, I am my partner's trusted adult
friend to his kids, but I'm certainly not a parent.
That we really have to understand that they've
got a mom, they've got a dad, and we sort of separate
our place, which is, I'm a trusted adult. You
can come to me, and I want to be a good friend,
but I don't take the place of your parent.
JAMIE: Yeah. One of the issues that I see a lot when clients have exes who have started dating and relationships
are becoming serious and the client does not want
the new person around the children, even though
maybe this new person is now a fiance or a wife
or a husband. And one of the things I always say
is it's a good thing to have as many people love
your children as will love your children. That's
not a bad thing to have more folks who are willing
to be kind to your kids.
SPEAKER C: Oh, I couldn't agree more. And nine
times out of ten, Jamie, that goes back to that
parent and their own insecurity. Will I be replaced?
Will my daughter like the step mom more than me?
And the complexities that might go on as that
daughter gets a little bit older? And so we've
really got to be honest with ourselves. And look at OOH, is that my insecurity getting in
the way of inviting another person in to love
my daughter, to love her in a different way, to
give her new perspectives or experiences, to be
able to be whole enough within ourselves so that
we don't project that out onto our kids? Divorce
opens all of this up. It's not just a legal process
or just an emotional completion. There's so many moving parts. That's why I think your podcast
is so important, just to give information to those
people who are trying to reorganize their lives
and make it make sense again.
JAMIE: Absolutely. I could not agree with you
more about all of the moving parts and just trying
to get the legal and the emotional and the business
sides of things to all come together. If you could
only share one piece of advice with someone going
through a divorce, what would it be?
SPEAKER C: I think it's to really get honest with
yourself about how the relationship came to an
end. What were the factors, what was it really
about? At the end of the day, looking at what
you need in your loving connections. The more
you take time to review this and really understand
sort of the more subtle under the hood kind of
stuff that went on, it's less likely that you'll
repeat these patterns in your next relationship.
None of us get to be the way we are in relationship
by accident. And so starting to look at gosh,
what was my love imprint? How did I show up in
this relationship? What maybe unresolved pieces
did I bring? And of course, it's not taking it
all on for ourselves. There is the other half
of it, but I think many of those folks I've worked
with in their divorce, they're really in hurt
and blame. And I think blame is the cheapest hit of power going. We're just all fingers are out to
them. And I'd like to turn that inward to look
at what was my part, because we can only ever
change ourselves.
JAMIE: That is wonderful advice and I have thoroughly
enjoyed our conversation today. Thank you so much.
If one of our listeners is looking for help from
you in their divorce. What's the best way for
them to get in touch with you?
SPEAKER C: A great resource is to find me on LinkedIn under Joanna Lynn. I have a divorce recovery newsletter
that they can subscribe to and get all kinds of
information there. If they'd like to learn more,
they could certainly visit my website, which is
Triple, W, Dot, Joannalin, CA all kinds of podcasts
and articles there too, just to learn more and
gain some more insights.
JOHANNA: Thanks, Joanna, for joining us. And thank
you for listening. If you like this episode, be
sure to follow the show wherever you get your
podcast so you don't miss the next one. While
this information is intended to provide you with
general information to navigate divorce without
destruction, this podcast is not legal advice.
This information is specific to the law in North
Carolina. If you have any questions before taking
action, consult an attorney who is licensed in
your state. If you are in need of assistance in North Carolina, contact us at gaylorhunt by visiting divorcestuff.com. I'm Jamie Davis,
and I'll talk with you next time on A Year in A Day.