Coping with divorce | And life after divorce

what's up guys I'm Fabio Salas and welcome to the living man channel where we talk all about the American dream so today I want to talk to you about life after divorce it's kind of a pretty big topic nowadays because as we know lots of marriages are ending in divorce depending on the statistics that you read the studies that you read it's anywhere between 40 as high as 50 s 55 percent of marriages ending in divorce so why do I want to talk to you about divorce well let me tell you I've been divorced you see that building behind me 19 years ago this November I was a young 20 year old brand-new to the Marine Corps and I came right here walked into this building and got married you see this building here this was the last call my son attended when were still living together as a family lastly this building behind me is the last place where my ex my son and I all live together as a family this is actually my first time back here in six years since we separated this is Pensacola Florida right now I live in Illinois and some of you might know I'm in the military just so happened at this month in Pensacola Florida for training which is just a little bit past of a couple months past of the anniversary of us splitting up so six years and a couple months ago this was our last family home as I walk around and drive around just all these memories keep coming back to me about being married our lives together and that's what inspired me to make this video and share with you you know some of my thoughts on on life after divorce so if you've watched enough of my videos the one thing that I hope you understand or that you that you come to get a sense of from our videos is first of all I'm talking about the American dream but the American Dream is not perfect and you need to understand that we a lot of times we have this picture that the American Dream is no we grow up we get the perfect job it makes us happy pays us six-figure salary we get married we stay married so we're old and it's great til death do us part we have the kids the kids are good in school they go to great schools grow up go to college you get the picture we have this idea of what the American dream is for real life's not like that real life is messy and it will kick you hard when you least expect it and it will knock you down when you least expected but part of living the American dream is being able to get back up to rise up from the ashes when everything's trying to hold you down that's part of the American dream it's not always gonna be easy and divorce is one of those things that none of us ever aspired for and none of us ever think when I grow up I want to get married and get divorced five times that's I seriously doubt that's anybody's girl I know it certainly wasn't my goal so please don't understand that when I talk about the American dream I'm not saying if you're a divorcee you're not living the American dream if your kids aren't with you and not living the American dream if you're not making 60 grand a year or more you're not living the American dream because that's not what it's about the American Dream is very different for every single person out there it's different for me as I'm sure it's gonna be different for all of you watching so that said how do we live the American dream after divorce there's a million things that I wish I could tell you but I want to try to keep this video short so I'm gonna share with you just four things that I've taken away from my experiences after my own divorce that I hope can help you not just for your own divorce but maybe you know a friend who's divorced or a family member who's divorced or going through divorce so I think this is something that's beneficial for everybody out there so the first thing is when you're going through a divorce you should seek help I will tell you when when I first separated with my ex and I first separated I got moved to Japan she stayed here in the States with our son and I got moved to Japan I'm in the military they said boom go that was very hard having my son away away from me my eggs it was basically like my whole life changed the blink of an eye and there were times where things just felt so overwhelming just so hard I felt so alone so desperate but I would sit in my room sit on my couch and just cry and that's not something I generally shared with people but I tell you because I want you to understand that that's that's how real things get that's how hard things good and I'm not somebody who generally cries I'm not it's not it's not part of my culture being a Marine it's definitely not you know something Marines do so it's it felt unnatural but it was necessary and I had to go throughout and they helped me process those emotions but I knew that I needed to seek help so another thing that I did is I spoke to a counselor we had a counselor on base who helped people dealing with family issues and I will go talk to her once a week I did that for I think about six months or so and and she would give me advice and tapes on on things and I would just vent to her about called my son yesterday and he wouldn't answer you know whatever the case may be I also made a couple friends that I'm still friends with today that were huge help to me at that time but I was able to confide in and the great thing about having good friends is that they're not gonna judge you they're gonna listen and they're gonna give you advice when you need it and just basically help you through those tough times so for me that was huge the friends that I had and the counselor and just basically basically getting to a point where I understood I can't do this alone I'm not somebody who generally seeks help I like to think I can do things on my own but I had to accept this is not one of those times I need help I need somebody to help me get through this tough time so the first thing I want you to remember is sometimes you got to seek help a second thing that I'll tell you that helped me get through tough times it's fine find something that makes you happy so for me while I was in Japan I got into scuba diving had never done scuba diving before I got into woodworking I had done woodworking before but never as much I rode my motorcycle a lot I've always been into riding motorcycles but I was doing it a lot there exercising was a very regular part of my routine riding bicycles and running all over the island so there's a lot of things that I got into that I used to try to fill up my free time so I would have less time sitting at home feeling alone feeling depressed now I don't want you to think that I'm telling you you should try to escape your problems or try to escape your negative emotions because that's not gonna be healthy in the long run you've got to deal with the pain you've got to confront the pain as hard as that may be you've gotta confront the pain so if you if you need to cry cry if you need to go talk to a counselor or a chaplain a friend a family member whoever go talk to them you've got to deal with those emotions what I don't want you to do or what I suggest you don't do is dwell in those negative emotions all the time so I don't want you to get off work go to your house and cry every single day for three years four years five years on end you've got to make time for yourself to make yourself happy again whether that's hobbies hanging out with friends vacations maybe you're not the painting whatever you like doing do that do that do it for you do it so that there's something in your life that you can feel positive about because you're gonna feel down about this divorce you're gonna feel down about splitting up from your girlfriend and boyfriend or whatever the case may be so you need stuff in your life that's still gonna give you some positivity that's gonna make you feel good about things the third piece of advice that I can give you is accept responsibility what do I mean by that I would say I'm just gonna throw out a number right there I would say 90% of marriages that fail and this is just me estimating so please take that with a grain of salt most marriages that that end in divorce have fault on both sides now listen to me here for a second there may be a tuck there may be a marriage that ends in divorce because the wife cheated on the husband or the husband cheated on the wife or maybe they end in divorce because one of them loses their job and that causes marital issues what are the kids maybe more often than not there's gonna be blamed there's gonna be enough blame to go around for both of them and and that's something that I say because if you're divorced or if you've separated from boyfriend/girlfriend and you've been together for a long time I think it's important that you take some time to just figure out how the relationship went and why it ended because I venture to say that more often than not you're gonna find something that maybe you could have done different to help make things better now I'm not saying that every relationship can be saved what I am saying is as I look back on my marriage and I think about getting married in the future I know that I was not always the perfect husband I was not always the most loving I was not always the most understanding and those are things that I've had to think about as I try to process this information and try to figure out how can I do this better than next time so that it doesn't end in divorce so for example you know making sure I picked the right person making sure that our goals and values are aligned making sure that our communication is in order so we don't argue about things we shouldn't argue about making sure we think about money the same way so that money doesn't become an issue between us a million other things that that I've thought about for myself and it's gonna be different for you but the point is you've got to think about that what can you do to make your next relationship better because too many people get divorced once get married again get divorced twice get married again can divorce the third time statistically speaking there's a lot of studies out there so you can look this up for yourself statistically speaking second and follow-on marriages are more likely to end in divorce than the first marriage that's not good odds I'll tell you for me I haven't been divorced once do you want to get married again I do not want to be a second time divorcee so because of that I've got I've gotta take some stock on my past situation and try to figure out is there something that I could have done better and is there something that I can try to do better in the future to help ensure that I don't end up in divorce again it's gotta be it goes right back to the beginning to making sure before I get married I choose the right person but once I make that commitment what can I do to make sure that everything we we talked about at the beginning when we said I do stays true all the way through so you've gotta accept responsibility now I get it some of you might be stuck in relationships that order either physically abusive emotionally abusive and you can't control if somebody's beating you what you can't control is leaving that person so they don't continue beating you were emotionally abusing you so you know this my my words may be a little bit out of context for those situations but again I think for most people there is something that you can gain something you can learn from a failed marriage from a failed relationship and it's important to take stock of that to help yourself in the future all right the fourth thing that I want to talk to you about is just understanding that like I said earlier the American Dream is not perfect and unfortunately that applies to marriage as well so just because your marriage ended in divorce does not mean that love does not exist or that you're meant to be alone or that nobody's ever gonna love you what I'm saying is don't give up don't give up on love don't give up on yourself don't give up on relationships don't give up on life don't give up if you want to get married again you're gonna have to date now that means you're probably gonna have to date a lot of bad people before you find the right one and that's this hard thing I'm 39 years old now and when I talk to other single people that are in my age category a lot of them are disheartened just because they've met no I talk to women and they've met so many bad bad guys they just want to cheat on them and mistreat them talk to guys who you know say oh well women are only care about money or whatever you know just don't care about the personality and they just get this defeated personality that love just isn't a real thing or it can't happen at my age but that's the thing you gotta keep trying you can't give up just because your first marriage failed doesn't mean that the second one's gonna fail unless you go into it with the mentality that it is gonna fail and that's something that I'm still dealing with so and so I'm sitting here talking to you all about all this stuff it's not like a like I said at the beginning it's not easy it's been six years since my ex and I separated six years this summer and I'm still trying to figure things out I'm still trying to figure out what kind of person I want to be in my future marriage I'm not trying to paint the picture that it's all perfect and you know in a year or two you'll be fine you're never gonna be fine you're never gonna be the same which is because you're never the same just because you're never this picture-perfect 100% whole person does not mean that you can't be happy again I feel like I'm happy again do I have hard times still yes there are still times where I sit back and think about what it was like when I was married and what it was like when I had my son with me every time my son comes and stays with me as I long for having him with me all the time when I have to go drop him off at his mom's house I I get I get moments of depression I get moments where I wanna cry so it's not easy it's not it's not something that's gonna get easy ever but it does get easier it doesn't get easy but it does get easier so just don't give up believe in yourself keep being a good person keep treating other people well and good things will come to you alright guys that's it for me today hopefully you got something out of this this this video was a little bit more personal than I would say all of my previous videos and that's because that's I think about the content that I want to put out I know that I want to share with you my life experiences because I feel like that is the best way for me to convey my thoughts and opinions and again my my experience is my opinions are not the end-all be-all please don't think that I'm saying you have to live the way that I'm living I'm just sharing with you what I think based on my own life experiences in the hopes that you get something out of it so that you too can live your version of the American dream alright guys if you like this content if you want to see more hit that like button so the world knows that it's good hit that subscribe button there's a little bell right next to it you hit that little Bell you'll be notified every time I upload a video keep leaving man and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Living MAD

Views: 27,816

Rating: 4.9689922 out of 5

Keywords: #farawayparent, coping with divorce, life after divorce for men, coping with divorce and separation, #depression, #separated, #pain, life after divorce, break up, healing from divorce, dealing with divorce for men, divorce, marriage, relationships, divorce advice, divorce tips, coping with divorce for men, coping with divorce stress, help coping with divorce, healing from divorce youtube, life after divorce for women

Id: BvYbOUNDOcM

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 08 2019