Do You Have A Dark Passenger?

I know you're dealing with a lot-post-divorce. It is, however, an opportunity to take stock. Do you have a dark passenger? Sometimes it's our dark passenger that's "responsible" for our relationship problems. This post originally appeared in YourTango and it might be useful for your divorce recovery...

Late to the Dexter party, it was only this year that I inhaled all eight seasons after a free Showtime offer landed in my inbox. I started with a few episodes, the gateway to a full-blown addiction. 

Dexter's dark passenger was part of my fascination. What is a dark passenger exactly? Is it a secret, or more like a drive, or perhaps a secret drive? Does everyone have one lurking? Do I? More importantly—do you? 

For a long time I believe my nicotine addiction was my dark passenger. "It" made me sneak around and lie, things I would not normally do. When I was young and couldn't always afford to buy smokes, "it" made me steal cigarettes from an unsuspecting aunt's purse or money from my mother because she had no cigarettes to steal. 

The dark passenger changes you into a person even you don't quite know: liar, cheater, sneak, impostor, pretender. 

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Are You A Mama's Boy (Or Girl)?

Is being married to a mama's boy or girl one of the issues in your divorce? Or are you one yourself?

We've all heard the stories about millennials being so close with family they take their moms with them on job interviews. My immediate reaction was that we are witnessing a generation of  mama's boys and girls. Yes, I said girls. Woman can suffer from the same overinvolved, enmeshed relationships with their mothers that guys do. 

Mama's boy has a pejorative ring, like Don Juan or gold digger, for good reason. I've said, in these pages, If you want a baby to take care of, then have a baby, don't marry one. As we approach mother's day, consider that your mother might prefer a grown up son…or daughter. 

Typically, sometime during or after adolescence, you psychologically separate from your parents. You become a unique individual with your own set of ideas, beliefs and morals. You establish adult relationships with your parents. If you didn't have secrets before, you definitely have them now.

Mama's boys and girls do not manage the separation and individuation well. They remain attached in ways that can suffocate new relationships. Sometimes the problem behaviors are couched in religious, ethnic or regional cloaks, like, you must always respect your parents, or, your elders are always right.

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Get Out of the Post-Divorce Doldrums…It's Spring!

Spring is a great time for renewal, reinvigoration and reinvention. It's a time to leave the post-divorce doldrums behind. 

You can get stuck in the doldrums after any period of stress like divorce, maybe even anytime after you hit the big 5-0. An area near the equator, the doldrums are famous for diabolical transitions from calm to squalls, with, by one definition, "light, baffling winds." The doldrums can keep a ship stuck. If this sounds like your life, you're not alone. 

As any life coach will tell you, anytime is a good time to move forward in your life. With the sun shining a little more and life returning all around us, spring is a really good time to seriously consider taking a few steps to leave the doldrums behind and start smelling the flowers again. 

Change is different for everyone. Some of my suggestions may float your boat, others may not. Both will trigger thoughts of things you might like to try. To see big changes in your life, you can start by trying something new. 

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The Post-Divorce Survival Guide

The Post-Divorce Survival Guide

I am excited to announce the publication of my new eBook, The Post-Divorce Survival Guide.Tools For Your Journey. It is available  on Amazon .

With tips and steps to escape negative thinking, emotional impasses and behavioral stagnation, the book will help you negotiate the treacherous terrain of post-divorce life. Lightened up with a heavy dose of humor, I draw on the positive psychology literature with concrete suggestions to pro-actively manage and thrive in the difficult situations and adverse conditions that arise in the wake of divorce. 

I call on my personal experience with divorce, and years of work with clients going through this devastating life experience, to show you how you can emerge even better than you were before. The book addresses three tasks of post-divorce adjustment. The first is "Acceptance," identifying the reasons for the divorce and viewing them in an empowering way. The second, "Coping," provides help dealing with the often unexpected consequences associated with divorce. "Becoming," the final section, encourages you to aspire to be your best self and view your divorce as an opportunity to flourish. 

There are chapters on developing a positive mindset, identifying and using signature strengths, developing more optimism, setting and reaching goals, becoming happier and cultivating mindfulness. There are also chapters devoted to practical aspects of post-divorce adjustment including acceptance, emotional reactions, coping with your ex and dealing with issues like holidays and vacations, relationships with friends and relatives and dating.

I hope you find it useful and enjoy it. I'd love to hear your comments. 

Are You Addicted to Comfort?

If you're addicted to comfort, divorce will solve that problem for you. I wrote:


In our constant search for happiness and the good life, we may be shortchanging ourselves by seeking to eliminate all negative emotions, thoughts and experiences from our lives. That's what Robert Biswas-Diener and Todd Kashdan say in their forthcoming book, The Upside of Your Darkside. You can see a preview in Biswas-Diener's TEDx talk about comfort addiction. 

Consider that our desire for creature comforts (do I really need Google Glass?) and intense efforts to avoid discomfort (the vacation to Club Med instead of a real place) make us increasingly unable to deal with the discomforts life inevitably brings. 

Happiness experts uniformly suggest that curiosity and challenges, with their associated discomfort, enrich our lives. 

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Avoid Post-Performance Blues…Develop Your Recovery Routine

If you consider your marriage to be something like a uninspired performance you must recover from,  these suggestions about developing a recovery plan will be useful.

In an ironic turn of events, the day after finishing a half-marathon, and a week after I finished writing a book, I came across my notes for a possible article about post-performance routines. It was sorely needed, as I was feeling the lackadaisical lassitude of the post-partier. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of the party, but what now? 

Unless you're a professional party planner, you probably don't consider the events of your life to be like a big event you just arranged, and you probably don't systematically examine what worked and what didn't work. We all have our personal parties, be they public speeches, musical or athletic performances, or our performance as parents, partners or employees. 

During the party, you have difficult moments you may have anticipated, like when the cake doesn't arrive on time and you must find a substitute, or you're two minutes behind target at the midpoint of the race. 

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