One of my friends always jokes that the reason I married my ex-husband twice is because I got divorced in three days. Maybe if I'd have to suffer through the 2 years of litigation some others go through, maybe I would've have been so hasty.

Yes, I married my ex-husband twice. And yes, I was able to get through the divorce process so quick it basically came down to signing paperwork and showing up for a final hearing.

I know how that sounds… insane. 

And if you want the full, messy, what-actually-happened version of that story, I’m releasing a YouTube series in the next couple of days where I walk through all of it.

But that’s not what this is about.

This isn’t a play-by-play of what happened. It’s about why it happened—because that’s the part that actually matters when you’re thinking about how you approach your own divorce/custody matter, the agreements you make, and what your co-parenting relationship is going to look like for years after everything is “final.”

When I look back at how I ended up in that relationship, how I divorced him the first time, why I got back together with him, and how it ultimately ended the second time—not to mention everything that followed in co-parenting—I can clearly see a few things that were driving my decisions.

At the time, those decisions felt urgent. Sometimes they felt necessary. Sometimes they didn’t even feel like decisions at all. But looking back, they were often rushed, reactive, and not grounded in a full understanding of what I was actually dealing with.

And now that I can see those patterns in myself, I see them in women all the time.

So instead of just telling you the story, I want to give you what actually matters: the three things that were driving my decision-making, because if you can recognize them in your own life, you can move differently—and get better outcomes—in your divorce, your custody situation, and your co-parenting dynamic.

The three things are simple, but they run deep.

First, I was operating from a place of trauma and didn’t fully understand what that meant or how it was affecting me.

Second, I was listening to voices that were well-intentioned but ultimately unqualified to guide me through what I was dealing with.

And third, I didn’t understand what divorce actually is—how it is a transition, what it sets up, and how much it continues to shape your life long after the paperwork is signed.

I’m going to walk through each of these in detail, and then I’ll tell you what I would do differently if I had to do it all over again.

Because the goal isn’t to get through divorce or custody court as fast as possible.

It’s to do it in a way that actually works for your life moving forward.

I Was Operating From Trauma I Didn’t Understand

I want to talk about trauma for a minute, and I’m going to say this upfront—I’m not a mental health professional.

I’m just someone who has spent a lot of time trying to understand herself after the fact. Because when you marry your ex-husband twice, you tend to do some reflecting.

What I didn’t understand at the time is that trauma isn’t always loud or obvious. It’s not always one big, defining event. A lot of times, it’s a series of smaller experiences that, over time, start to distort how you see yourself, how you interpret situations, and how much you trust your own instincts.

And one of the hardest parts about the kind of trauma I was dealing with is that it didn’t look like trauma from the outside.

That’s because it was rooted in coercive control.

Which is a really subtle, sneaky dynamic. It doesn’t necessarily look dramatic. There’s no obvious headline moment. It’s not always physical. In fact, a lot of the time, it presents as someone who looks completely normal—responsible, involved, even likable—to everyone else.

So when you’re inside of it, and something feels off, and you try to explain it, people don’t always see what you’re seeing.

And that’s where things start to bend.

When I look back at the beginning of that relationship, there were red flags everywhere.

Things moved fast. We got engaged quickly. We got married quickly. By the time we got to the wedding, I had serious doubts. I remember having cold feet and questioning whether I should go through with it.

But I was young. I had already said yes. My parents had paid for the wedding. It felt like something I had committed to, and backing out didn’t even feel like a real option.

So I moved forward.

Then I got pregnant right away. I was in law school. My life was intense and overwhelming in a very real, tangible way. And that made it incredibly easy to tell myself:

“This is probably just stress.”
“This is probably just hormones.”
“This is probably just a hard season.”

That narrative got reinforced by other people, too.

And that’s how you stay longer than you should.

Because you’re not recognizing the pattern—you’re explaining it away.

There’s one moment that stands out really clearly to me.

We were traveling for his cousin’s high school graduation. We had driven there with his mom. I was a few months postpartum, exhausted, trying to take care of a newborn in an environment that didn’t feel supportive.

His family was making comments about how I was caring for the baby. There was criticism, unsolicited input, and a general sense that I was getting it wrong. I already felt out of place, and instead of feeling supported by him, I felt like he was aligning with them.

At one point, I asked for a couple of hours so I could get some work done and asked if someone could help with the baby. That became an issue and was framed as me not taking care of our daughter. It turned into tension, and eventually, an argument.

I remember trying to talk to him about how I was feeling—trying to explain that I needed him to be on my side, that I needed him to prioritize our family—and being completely shut down.

Dismissed. Minimized.

Told, in one way or another, that I was overreacting. That I was emotional. That I was blowing things out of proportion.

I got to a point where I said, if this is how you’re going to handle this, I’m leaving.

And I meant it.

I packed up, got a ride to the airport, bought a plane ticket, and flew back to my parents’ house with our baby.

That wasn’t impulsive. It felt very clear in my body. Something wasn’t right, and I needed space.

And then I got home to my parents’ house.

And instead of someone saying, “I understand why you left,” or helping me sort through what had just happened, the message I received from my parents was that I needed to go back and work it out.

Not only maliciously. Not out of a lack of love.

But because they didn’t have the framework to understand what I was trying to explain.

So when my ex husband drove to my parents house to pick me up, I packed my baby, got in the car with him and went home.

And that’s how this kind of dynamic really takes hold.

Because it’s not just what’s happening inside the relationship—it’s what happens when you try to make sense of it and the people around you can’t quite see it.

It makes you question yourself.

It makes you second-guess your instincts.

It makes you wonder if maybe you are overreacting. Maybe it’s not that bad. Maybe this is just what relationships are like.

Over time, that does something very specific.

You stop trusting your own reality.

You minimize things as they’re happening because they’ve been minimized before. You start filtering your experiences through other people’s reactions instead of your own internal sense of what’s right.

And when you’re in that state, you don’t make decisions from clarity.

You make decisions based on one thing:

How do I make this feeling stop?

That’s how I stayed longer than I should have. That’s how I went back when I knew something wasn’t right. That’s how I made decisions that, looking back, didn’t protect me or my future.

Not because I didn’t know better.

But because I didn’t trust what I knew.

And that’s a very different place to be than most people realize when they’re looking at your life from the outside.

I Was Listening to the Wrong Voices

Another thing that was shaping my decisions, whether I realized it or not, was who I was listening to.

And to be clear, this wasn’t about bad people giving bad advice.

It was about good people giving advice they weren’t actually equipped to give.

I had already shared that moment where I flew back to my parents’ house after that trip. That was me reaching a breaking point and looking for some kind of grounding, some kind of clarity. And what I got, in very practical terms, was, “You need to work this out.”

They called my ex-husband. They encouraged me to go back. And I did.

I don’t fault them for that. I really don’t.

But looking back, I can see that I was leaning heavily on people who didn’t have the right frame of reference for what I was experiencing.

My parents have been married for over forty years. They’ve built a life together that works for them. They share the same values, the same beliefs, the same approach to life. My dad was not coercively controlling my mom. Their marriage didn’t look anything like what I was dealing with.

So when they looked at my situation, they saw it through their lens.

They saw a young couple, a new baby, a stressful season. They saw something that needed to be worked through, not something that needed to be exited.

They weren’t wrong based on what they knew.

They just didn’t know what I was actually living.

The same thing was happening in my friendships, just in a different direction.

Most of my friends weren’t married. They didn’t have kids. They weren’t navigating the weight of trying to raise a family inside a relationship that felt unstable or one-sided. I would try to explain what was happening—how I felt unsupported, how I felt alone in parenting, how things weren’t functioning the way they should—and they cared, but they didn’t have context.

They were living a completely different life. They had flexibility, freedom, and a different set of priorities. So their advice reflected that. It didn’t account for the reality I was trying to hold together.

And then there was the broader “peanut gallery.”

Church communities. Well-meaning people who believed deeply in preserving marriage. People who saw divorce as something to be avoided at almost any cost. People who wanted to help, who wanted to counsel, who wanted to guide.

But again, most of them had never been divorced. They weren’t dealing with coercive control. They weren’t navigating the legal, financial, and emotional layers that come with ending a marriage and restructuring a family.

So the message, over and over again, was to try harder, stay longer, work it out.

What I was doing, without realizing it, was taking all of these inputs—my parents, my friends, my community—and trying to piece them together into a decision-making framework.

But none of those voices were actually grounded in my reality.

They weren’t living it. They weren’t trained to recognize what was happening. And they weren’t going to be the ones dealing with the long-term consequences of the choices I made.

When you’re already in a place where you don’t fully trust yourself, that becomes really dangerous.

Because instead of slowing down and asking, “What is actually true for me?” you start asking, “What would make the most sense to everyone else?”

You start filtering your decisions through other people’s comfort levels, their beliefs, their expectations.

And that’s how you end up making choices that don’t actually align with what you need.

The hardest part about this is that the people you’re listening to can love you deeply and still lead you in the wrong direction.

Not because they’re trying to.

But because they don’t have the lens required to see what you’re dealing with clearly.

That was the position I was in.

I wasn’t just trying to figure out what to do.

I was trying to do it while absorbing advice from people who didn’t have the full picture, and then using that advice to override my own instincts.

And when you combine that with what I talked about in the last section—already being in a state where your sense of reality is shaky—you can see how quickly things start to go off track.

I Didn’t Understand What Divorce Actually Is

This is the part that surprises people the most.

Because at the time I got divorced, I was working in family law.

I knew how to get someone divorced. I understood the mechanics. I knew what needed to go into a decree, how assets and debts were divided, what a standard parenting time schedule looked like, and what the court would accept. From a technical standpoint, I knew exactly what I was doing.

But what I didn’t understand—at all—was what divorce actually is in real life.

Part of that was exposure.

I didn’t grow up around divorce. My parents were still married. Most of my friends’ parents were still married. I hadn’t really watched co-parenting play out over time, especially not in a high-conflict situation. So even though I was working with divorce cases, I was seeing them in snapshots, not in the long arc of how they unfold over years.

What I knew was how to close a case.

What I didn’t understand was what happens after.

In my mind, divorce functioned like a breakup.

You separate. You sign the paperwork. You go your separate ways.

And then you move on.

I genuinely believed that if I could just get him to sign the decree, I would be free. I would take my kids, start over, and build a new life. There was a sense that this was an ending, that once it was finalized, the relationship would be over in any meaningful sense.

That’s what I thought I was working toward.

What I didn’t understand is that divorce—especially when you share children—is not an ending.

It’s a restructuring.

You are not exiting a relationship. You are changing the form of it.

And if the person you’re divorcing is high-conflict or controlling, they are not going to naturally disengage just because the paperwork is signed.

I realized that almost immediately.

I had barely left before the contact started. Accusations, complaints, conflict. It didn’t taper off. It didn’t create space. It just shifted shape.

And it never really stopped.

At work, we used to talk about “frequent flyers,” the same people coming back to court over and over again. At the time, I thought of that as just high-conflict behavior. What I understand now is that, in many cases, it’s one person continuing to exert control through the legal system.

I didn’t recognize that dynamic when I was in it.

I didn’t fully grasp that he could bring me back to court again and again, that he could ask for modifications, raise new issues, create new points of conflict whenever he chose to.

So when I approached my divorce, I treated it like a one-time event.

We divided the assets and debts. We put together a parenting time schedule. We left certain things open-ended—holidays, activities, decisions we thought we would “figure out later.”

I assumed it would settle.

I assumed we would move forward.

I assumed the structure we put in place would be enough.

It wasn’t.

Because anything you leave vague doesn’t resolve itself.

It becomes the next conflict.

And when you’re dealing with someone who is motivated to stay connected, to create contact, or to maintain a level of control, those gaps don’t close. They get used.

I didn’t think forward.

I didn’t think about how our children would grow and how their needs would change. I didn’t think about how often decisions would need to be made, or how those decisions would be made when we didn’t agree. I didn’t think about how the system we created would function under pressure.

I was focused on getting out.

Not on what I was building for the future.

And that’s what created years of issues.

Because I treated divorce like the finish line.

When in reality, it was the starting point for an entirely new kind of relationship—one that I hadn’t fully planned for and didn’t yet understand how to manage. 

What I Would Do Differently

If you’re reading this and thinking, well, great—what am I supposed to do with all of that?—I get it.

Because none of this is helpful if it just leaves you feeling like you missed something or did it wrong.

So let me tell you what I would actually do differently.

The first thing is, I would slow down.

There is no gold star for getting divorced in three days.

And I say that as someone who firmly believes you should not stay stuck in a miserable situation for years longer than necessary. There is a balance. There is a point where moving forward is the right decision.

But there is also a difference between moving forward strategically and moving forward reactively.

If I could go back, I would give myself a real preparation window before filing. Not just mentally deciding I was done, but actually preparing for what comes next.

I would take the time to fully understand my financial picture—what we had, what we owed, what things actually cost, what my life would look like post-divorce. I would get clear on what I wanted my outcome to be, not just in a general sense, but in a very specific, practical way.

And I would spend time really understanding what divorce actually does.

Not just how to get through it, but what it shifts your relationship into. What co-parenting is going to look like. How often you’re going to interact. What kinds of decisions you’re still going to have to make together. What happens when you don’t agree.

Because that’s the part that matters long-term.

The second thing I would do differently is I would seek better counsel.

Even as an attorney, I would not have done it alone again.

There is a difference between knowing the law and being inside your own case. I was too close to it. I was emotional. I made decisions quickly. I missed things that I would have caught immediately if I had been looking at it from the outside.

If I could do it again, I would still do a lot of the preparation myself. I would come in organized, clear, and ready.

But I would hire an attorney intentionally—on a limited scope basis—to do what attorneys do well.

To review, to refine, to catch issues, to communicate strategically, and to create a layer of separation between me and him.

Not to carry the entire process for me, and not to become my emotional support system, but to be a strategic asset in the areas where that actually matters.

The third thing I would do differently is I would be much more selective about who I listened to.

I would not crowdsource one of the biggest decisions of my life.

I would not be filtering my choices through the opinions of people who had never been divorced, never co-parented, and didn’t understand the dynamics I was dealing with.

That doesn’t mean those people don’t love you. It just means they are not qualified to guide you through this.

I would choose a very small circle of input, and I would make sure those people had either lived it, understood it professionally, or could support me without steering my decisions.

And that leads into the next piece, which I think is just as important.

I would make sure I was supported—but in the right way.

Because when you are lonely, overwhelmed, or mentally exhausted, you make different decisions. You make faster decisions. You make decisions just to relieve the pressure you’re feeling in the moment.

If I could go back, I would get myself into a strong support system.

That might look like therapy. It might look like doing deeper work on myself. It might look like something like DBT, where you’re actually learning how to regulate, process, and respond instead of react.

But beyond that, I would get into a divorce-specific support space.

Because there is something incredibly powerful about being in a room—virtual or otherwise—with people who actually understand what you’re going through.

Who aren’t shocked by it. Who don’t minimize it. Who can reflect things back to you clearly.

That alone changes how you move.

And then, finally, I would build an actual strategy.

Not just “get divorced.”

Not just “get through it.”

But a real plan for how I was going to move through the process and what I was building on the other side.

That is exactly why I created the Divorce & Custody Game Plan.

Because what I see over and over again are women walking into this process with emotion, pressure, and a lot of outside noise—but no clear framework for how to think through it.

The Game Plan is designed to give you that structure.

It walks you through how to get clear on your outcomes, how to understand your full picture, how to work with an attorney effectively, and how to move through your case with intention instead of reaction.

It’s everything I wish I had slowed down long enough to think through the first time.

And honestly, it’s the same framework I now use when I’m navigating post-decree issues, because that phase requires just as much strategy.

If you’re in this season—or even thinking about it—you don’t need to have everything figured out.

But you do need a plan.

You can check out the Divorce & Custody Game Plan here.

And if what you really need right now is support while you’re in it, that’s exactly why we created the Pattern Reset Mentorship—a space for women who are navigating these dynamics and want clarity, perspective, and community as they do it.

If this resonated with you, share it with someone who needs it.

Because a lot of women are making these decisions in survival mode.

And you don’t have to.