Compassionate Divorce for Dads – Insights from Andy Heller

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I'm your host, Jackie Finneman, and today I have a special guest joining us, Mr. Andy Heller. He's the author of Take the High Road, Divorce with Compassion for Yourself and Your Family. Andy's journey from successful businessman to advocate for compassionate divorce offers invaluable insights for parents navigating the challenges of separation.

Welcome to the show, Andy. Jackie, thanks for having me. Can't wait. I am just intrigued by the fact that you wrote this book on divorce when it's really not even, you know, wasn't on your radar to do so.

Your background is in business, but you've really become a passionate advocate for compassionate divorce. So share with us what inspired this transition in your life. Basically, Jackie, I had a therapist I was seeing for my own divorce, and I'm kind of a very level-headed guy. I'm the guy in every group that people can go to for advice, and I try to look at both sides.

And something happened with my ex, and I said, rather than act on it, I said, I got this session. I'm going to go ahead and just bounce it off my therapist. But I knew what I wanted. I knew how I want to handle it.

So I walk into this for office and I said, hey, this is what happened. But don't worry, I've thought it through. And this is what I'm going to do. And she went the whole therapy speak.

Well, you know, Andy, it's good that you feel that way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you're not going to do what you're going to do. You can do the opposite. I'm like, what?

What? And after I stopped badgering back, I finally listened to her, Jackie. I'm like, oh, my God, she's 100% right. I was 100% wrong with what I had was going to do.

I realized at that moment how emotionally compromised I was and not making good decisions. Now, by this time, I'd read about a dozen other divorce books. When I stress, I don't sleep a lot. So I'd read a lot of other books. And I noticed a gap in divorce book space. So what I set out to do was to fill that gap. So that began a seven-year project of interviews with field experts, co-parenting counselors, therapists, divorce attorneys, divorce couples who went through traumatic divorces and landed in good spaces where they're co-parenting effectively. I took all these counsel from these experts and I put it into a kind of a business best practices book for divorce.

And, you know, I'm humbled by a lot of things. And one is the, all the reviews from the, particularly the therapy community is some divorces. I may have nailed something. So that's my story. The fact that you said, hey, not only did that help you, but you're like, all right, now I want to help other people. There's something to this and we can make things just a little bit easier. In the book, Take the High Road, you emphasize the importance of compassion during divorce, which I think oftentimes parents might say those two words don't go hand in hand, compassion and divorce. You don't often hear them put together, but how can parents model this behavior for their children during such a challenging time? How can you bring compassion into the equation? Now, first I'll say, Jackie, it's not an easy thing to do in most cases.

You're upset, you're agitated, you could be hurt. You've got a whole cocktail of emotions and most of them are not good. The best thing for dealing with your ex is you just got to ask yourself, how would I want to be treated myself? And that's how you need to deal with most of the situations.

And it's not easy. And if you're not able to, no pun intended with the words, divorce yourself from the predicament at that time, take a step back and just say to your ex, I'll get back to you later or whatever. You need to calm down. All right. With your kids, the most compassionate thing you can do for your children, hands down, is get them in therapy. Why? Well, you're dealing with a lot of drama yourself. And even if it's not a high conflict divorce, you're going from a one household environment to a two household environment. Your life is being disrupted. Okay. You can't be both the consoler and the disruptor in your children's lives. So if they are seeing a therapist and they're having coping challenges that you may not be aware of, the therapist will be an advocate for your kids, not for you. So that's the best thing you can do. You know, with my ex, we had a high conflict divorce. We now are co-parenting effectively. I've remarried Jackie. Things are great. But I got to say, in her world, she had one of those blow up divorces where, you know,

guy comes home, somebody she knows, guy comes home and he was having an affair and kicks his wife out. And within 24 hours, the three kids, their lives were just completely disrupted. So she said, we're not going to do it that way. All right. And to her credit, she got our kids in therapy before we even let them know about the divorce so that the therapist could help guide them. That's another great tip, guys. If you haven't yet separated, but you know it's inevitable, get your kids in therapy before they learn about this why that's the way the therapist can establish a foundation so he or she can be a rudder for your kids when they get the news as opposed to being in damage control okay point yeah yeah yeah that's one and that actually came from a california therapist i interviewed and she said she has since made it a requirement for her clients to get the kids in therapy for at least three months before they get the news because her ability to be impactful and helpful for the kids is exponentially higher because of timing. These are details that we parents, again, this is why it's helpful to give your kids an advocate. The devil's in the details on how you separate, and you may not be realizing that something about your process is going to actually make it more difficult on your children where minor modifications and adjustments can make it so much easier on them. Getting your kids in therapy ahead of time. How did you do

that yourself as far as getting your kids into therapy if they don't want to go? I'm just going to be really what they say on ESPN, cold hard facts. You guys are the parents, not them. You need to insist on it. And if you have to dangle something that means a lot to them, like cell phone or TV time or video games, you do it. They don't have a choice, okay?

And you want to look at it, everybody, as a gift. You're giving your kids the gift of therapy because they need help. One of the quotes in my book that's one of the most powerful but scary quotes came from a divorcee I interviewed, and he had a high-conflict divorce, landed in a great place. And he said, Andy, we adults, we will recover. Most of us will find new partners or land in a good place where we have a good life. The children never recover. Now, I'm not sure.

I think if you ask 100 therapists their take on that, you'll get 100 different answers. I think my takeaway from that statement is that the child's life will be forever changed because they go from a single household to two households. They go from being parented by two parents at the same time to one parent at one time. And it is disruptive.

And we have an obligation as parents to minimize that disruption to the best of our abilities. And there's no better gift that can do that than giving your kids an advocate that they can speak to. And that's a trained children's therapist. Now, in my research, I learned there's many different types of therapy.

Now, you can't, you know, a six and seven year old kids are not going to sit on a couch and say, well, this is what my thoughts are. there's a subset of therapy for kids called play therapy, where basically a therapist plays with the kids. And in doing that, she or he learns how well the kids are managing the disruption in their lives. And you may think, I don't want to pay 200 bucks an hour for somebody to play games.

I'll play games. But it's worth it. And get yourself a good one. Probably the best money that you'll spend. And that's the one place where you don't want to shortchange.

So as far as having that conversation with your kids, because I'm a no problem parenting, you know, we're teaching about seeking first to understand, preparing for the worst and changing the conversation. And I am a big proponent of not just putting your kids in therapy unless the child and unless you have the conversation with them that says explains or describes what the end goal is of therapy or what the what the reason for the therapy is.

I shared this before on the podcast that oftentimes when I'm working with families who are divorced, sometimes the teens will say, yeah, my parents say the divorce isn't my fault, but then why am I the one in therapy? You know, if the parents aren't going or the kid is going. And so while I agree wholeheartedly with you that having that, not mediator really, but having that unbiased person, neutral, thank you, that neutral person for the child or teen to talk with is really vital and key.

and can help uncover or bring to light some of the issues or challenges or struggles that the kid are having that maybe you or the ex wouldn't even know were going on because you're so into your own stuff or the child's just really good at hiding it. I think therapy is great. It's that, how do you get them there and how do you share with them why you think that's important without them thinking, oh, there's something wrong with me and I'm the reason mom and dad got divorced?

Well, I'm going to give two comments. First of all, I don't think this is difficult for younger children. It does get challenging when your kids get older. So the first part of the answer is, I'm going to talk about myself for a second, even though this book is not about me.

I'm a successful businessman, and during a co-parenting session with my ex, the co-parenting counselor said, you know, you guys are dealing with a lot of drama here. This is a high-conflict divorce. I recommend you each get therapists. And I'm like, you know, can't hurt. So I asked for three recommendations of therapists who dealt with divorced men, and I found a great one.

So the first part of the answer is, if you're seeing somebody yourself, you can much easier say to that teenager, look, dad's doing it, mom's doing it, and you're going to do it. Now, if you are not going yourself, then my recommendation is to say something that is very sensitive and kid-centric. The honest answer is your mom and I, your dad and I, our lives are being disrupted, and we need to make sure that there's an advocate for you and dedicated only to you without all the noise going around, at least for a little while.

I would put it in terms of that I need to make sure that there's an advocate for you to hear you and help you navigate. Andy, I love that you say that, that advocate, this is an advocate for you. And the fact that sometimes our kids will actually try to take care of us through the divorce, and that is not their job nor their role. And so being sure that you're, you know, saying to the kids, because I don't want you to just take my side or feel like you have to take care of me or just take mom's side and feel like you have to take care of her.

This is a great way for you to have an advocate to make sure that your needs are being met and you're being taken care of. I love that. Co-parenting can be, oh man, just a significant challenge for divorced parents. And then if you're in a more sticky situation or more traumatic kind of divorce, it can be 10 times harder.

What advice do you have for parents who are struggling to kind of navigate the co-parenting aspect of the relationship? One third of my book is that advice. I'll give you one of my favorite ones. To involve a referee.

And the trained referee is what we call a co-parenting counselor. Now, the beauty about this, everybody, is you pay per usage. Actually, it's like it's a job that is designed for the employer to become unemployed because there's going to be a motivation for you because you don't want to pay this money to get to a point where you don't need that person. So the way it would work, everybody, it's typically somebody from your field, a trained therapist.

Sometimes it's actually a former judge, a former attorney. They go into co-parenting. So the couple comes in and says, okay, these are the things that we're dealing with right now. And the co-parenting counselor, the good ones in a one or two hour session are trained to help you arrive at compromises and decisions that need to be made, even though you're not able to get along.

So because your kids' lives will not pause while you and your ex reach a point where you guys can co-parent effectively. That's why you need this co-parenting counselor. So it might look like this in a perfect world. You go once a month for the first six to 12 months.

You're actually able to get some things accomplished on your own. And then you start going every six weeks. Then you start going every two months. Then you start going once a quarter.

Then you go twice a year. Then you go as needed. Then you stop going. That's how the process will look.

There's other tools like Family Wizard online tools and for basically communication and managing communications, expenses and stuff like that. Those are all really helpful, but they're not going to help you reach decisions on do we really put little Johnny in ballet? He doesn't want to do it. Or does he go to basketball?

All right. What about the tutoring that our daughter needs and she doesn't want to do that? So this is where you need some help. And I will say I actually do believe I'm not being corny here, everybody.

I do believe that there's a financial savings here because typically the longer people are fighting, the more it costs, both emotional and financial. And if a co-parenting counselor who is a trained professional in a once-a-month session can help you reach seven or eight decisions that you are going to otherwise fight about, guys, that's money in the bank. Take it and run with it. So that's my favorite suggestion.

But again, probably about a third of my book deals with how to co-parent with somebody you couldn't live with. don't lose sight of the fact that your children need something fun to look forward to. Your life is blowing up, right? And I'm a big believer in talking about in one of my chapters, actually making sure there's something fun for you, yourself, also for your children.

Why is the former important? Well, the former is important because you got to keep your sanity. And for many people, like, well, it's all about the kids. It's all about the kids. It's all about the kids. It is. But if you lose your marbles because you're so stressed out, you're worried about going back into the workforce or you're worried about cooking a healthy dinner and you've never cooked before, whatever your stressors can be, put something on the calendar that's for you to look forward to.

You always want to join a bowling league, do it. You always want to join a book club, do it. And that is going to help you get through those challenging months and actually make you a better parent. I'll tell you about one of my chapters that's a really funny one.

So the way the book is designed, everybody, there's 46 different chapters, which are each chapter is essentially a tip. And there's four sections. One section about pre-divorce, about choosing the right divorce strategy, be it a kitchen table divorce, picking the right attorney, managing your attorney, et cetera. Then there's the chapter about dealing with your ex, yourself, and co-parenting with your kids.

Okay. So there's one of the chapters I'm like, oh, you know what? This is a great tip, but it's kind of hokey, but I put it in. And it is like the most asked about chapter in all of my podcasts. And I think that the title of the chapter is The Rubber Suit. And it came as a tip from a divorcee. And he was co-parenting for three months in the home that they used to share.

He moved in with a buddy while he waited to get his own place. And like he said, you know, I don't fault my ex, but she doesn't realize how rude she's being to me and how uncomfortable I am co-parenting in her home. I don't even have a home right now. And I'm trying to be a good dad and insults with flying this and that. So what he did before he walked in the door, he envision he put on imaginary rubber suit and every insult would bounce off him.

And he played a game like, OK, let's see if I can get a better insult this time than last time. And it sounded really hokey, but what it is is that most divorcees, the big takeaway point from that chapter is most divorcees need a coping mechanism for those first months, even maybe years, because your ex is not realizing he or she is being rude very often and disrespectful. You're realizing it, but they're not. now that now the good news is everybody it almost always improves but we do need coping mechanisms in place while it's happening so that you can still be an effective parent if you're being insulted even unintentionally in the presence of your kids so the rubber suit was that chapter that dealt with one dad's wacky coping mechanism.

And the takeaway point is that everybody is pretty healthy to take a step back and say, how am I going to deal with this when I'm in the company of my ex, when I'm sitting at that ballet recital and we're sitting together like the co-parenting counselors tell us to do? I don't want to be there. What's my strategy going to be to cope with that so I can be there with a smile and enjoy my children? Love that. Are you speaking primarily to men? Is it men and women, moms and dads?

My book was written in a unisex manner. The counsel, in fact, I've probably got more compliments from women than men because my gender, we don't read enough self-help books. We should. But, you know, I do it in one point of the book, Jackie, I do note that the writer is a man.

But the advice is completely intended to be equally valuable for both gender, genders. And it doesn't skew one way or the other. We have a lot of stories that I changed the names, I changed some details. But these are stories that have come from high conflict divorces, stories that we can learn from.

And they're very equally balanced. As corny as this sounds, if you can get a copy in the hand of both you and your divorce and spouse, then you can have a framework by which you guys can hopefully divorce in a manner that is not as disruptive to your children and healthier for you. I'm really humbled because I am a businessman. I'm a successful businessman.

I wrote this book as corny as this sounds, Jackie, to help people. All right. This is not a moneymaker, everybody. I've got a successful business. But if it doesn't get in the hands of people, it's not going to help people. And all of you know somebody who's getting divorced or a therapist who deals with divorcees. My book would be a fantastic rudder for them.

if you are going through divorce or you're likely to go through divorce or you have been through divorce and you're struggling still. Divorce is a marathon. It's not a sprint. And almost always your life gets better over time. And while I might be a glass half full guy, that is tends to be the fact. And when I put my book together, I interviewed countless couples who they themselves went through high conflict divorces. And they all said the same thing. I didn't think it would get better. Life couldn't get much worse. And I eventually landed in a place where I'm enjoying my life and I can co-parent effectively with my ex. Maybe not optimally, but effectively.

Now, my hope is you get to a point where you can do it optimally in a two household environment. you have resources like Jackie's podcast, like my book. But if you do find yourself getting down, it typically does get better. And it's okay to get down a bit because it's disruptive. You don't have to be that all like macho or super strong lady that, hey, this doesn't affect. No, it's going to affect you because it's disruptive. Even if you want a divorce, it's disruptive because now you've got a lot more pressure on you in a two household environment.

But it does typically get better. And remind yourself of that. And I do mention that throughout my book. Sometimes that will help you during the periods when it is difficult.

Yeah, good advice. Good advice. We don't know what we don't know. And often we fear the unknown.

And then the stinking thinking comes into play. And we fill our minds with all these negative thoughts and all these shoulds and shouldn'ts and just all the things. And it's like, yeah, take a deep breath. It's hard sometimes to foresee the future being bright again.

But just one foot in front of the other day in, day out, you can get there. And I think your book is definitely supporting parents and helping them get to that point where they see that light at the end of the tunnel and the bright light in their lives again. So thank you so much, Andy, for being with me today. Listeners, remember that navigating divorce is never easy, but Take the High Road is here to support you.

We're going to have links in the show notes for you to grab that book. Andy, I just thank you so much for being with me on the show. Jackie, it's been my pleasure. and anytime you want me back, I'd love to.

All right, that's it for today's episode of the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Hey, thanks guys for tuning in. If you found value in today's episode, click the subscribe button and share it with other parents who might need a little boost. Stay connected on our socials by following at No Problem Parents for more parenting tips and get your free download of the 60 ways to respond to your kids without losing your cool.

Go to noproblemparents.com. Until next time, remember, your confidence comes from embracing both successes and setbacks. So take a deep breath, embrace the chaos, and remember, you got this.