“One of the biggest things I see is ‘quiet quitting’ or ‘silent divorce’.
It’s where you’re living together and you’re just disconnected. So we find ourselves sitting on the couch, one person’s scrolling on their phone the other person’s watching Netflix – there’s no real communication. We probably are, in our mind, separated already but we’re there because of kids and bills and mortgages, and it’s either too hard or too expensive or too scary to actually get separated.
The big one I see – and you’ll hear it all the time – is ‘we stayed because of the kids’. So there’s this stigma around breaking up the family. I really do think the opposite. I think kids suffer so much worse living in a house where parents aren’t really together, because they don’t see the love and the connection and they grow up with a warped view of family, parenthood and relationships.
I certainly don’t go around saying you must get separated or have a divorce because life’s better. I don’t think it is. I don’t think the grass is always greener. But what I do think is we need to look at why separation and divorce happens.
Once I was married, I understood more about what different clients were saying in terms of what was going on at home and the balance in load and who took on what responsibilities. So my advice in that respect would certainly have changed.
I better understood that division of labour within the home; that juggle between working and looking after kids, doing the washing and the cooking and the cleaning. They all seem like little things, but they are the bits and pieces that we do consider and analyse in family law.
That [feeling of unequal division] causes the biggest strain. It’s that imbalance of understanding that mental load fully. When you’ve got two busy parents or adults and you’re not stepping back to say ‘what’s going on in our relationship?’ I don’t think you actually realise how much goes on in that other person’s head.
When it all falls to mum – and I say mum because it usually is mum – that is when things very much start to break.
More often than not, it’s just the disconnect that leads to relationship breakdown. Nothing’s so bad that I’m going to leave, but nothing’s particularly exciting. And I think it just takes a wake-up call. Usually there’s that kind of gotcha moment where something happens, unfortunately, that then causes that relationship to end.
By the time people actually do separate, there’s normally one person who’s really surprised because they think everything was going OK. But the other person sort of steps back and says, no, I’ve been planning this for years or I’ve been thinking about it for so long.
That impacts divorce and family law – it’s the one who wasn’t expecting it that’s then finding it difficult to cope. And they’re the one delaying the proceedings, won’t get back to emails, they’re dragging it out because they’re in shock. The other party just wants to move it along, get it done, and you’ve got this poor person on the other side who is grieving.
If I could change one thing, it would be, yes, people need resolution, but they also need time to heal and grieve. And until they’ve been through that healing journey, I don’t think they see clearly enough.
And maybe that is why I see so many parents fighting about, I would say, the most insignificant of parenting issues, where if they just stepped back and thought, what do my kids actually need here? And what’s going to benefit them long term? I don’t think they’d last as many years as they do in courtrooms and with lawyers.
One of the biggest red flags in a relationship is when you no longer seek to argue. A lot of experts say when you’re having an argument or you’re engaging in conflict, it’s because you still care and there’s something there. But once you stop seeking to argue, it’s because there’s that lack of care.
If two people can’t communicate, then there’s going to be a big breakdown in that relationship. I think it’s important to have a chat with your partner or your spouse at night. How was your day? How are you feeling? Those things are really important because they show someone you care and you’re actually interested in their life and their mental wellbeing.
I do it now I’m re-partnered after my own divorce. It sounds silly but when you’re two working professionals it’s diarising date nights without kids and without the stress of everything else, and maybe rules like: we don’t talk about work, or we don’t talk about those sorts of pressures.
But you need to have big discussions about values and morals and what you want out of life early on. I think a lot of people rush into living together and it’s only then that you start realising, I’m so different. One person might really value time with extended family and the other person absolutely hates it, and that’s going to be a big issue in a relationship. It’s important to know who you’re getting into bed with, essentially. Otherwise things take you by surprise.”
