Month: November 2019

Holiday Loneliness: What To Avoid

If you’re dealing with a divorce around the holidays, it can be pretty rough. You might find yourself feeling quite lonely or isolated. However, when you feel this holiday loneliness, it’s important to avoid some common mistakes. Doing so will help you fight those feelings off in a healthy, productive manner…

Holiday Loneliness: What To Avoid

Watch Your pride

Pride is a major cause of holiday loneliness. For instance, many people don’t like for others to see them as vulnerable. As a result, they won’t reach out to others and ask them if they can possibly spend some holiday season time together. All this does is ensure that they remain lonely, and leaves them feeling even worse than before.

Therefore, don’t be afraid put that pride aside. After all, the holidays are a time of giving and being with others. Reaching out to friends or family, even if you feel awkward about it, can be a good idea. Often enough, they’ll be happy to include you in their holiday plans.

Don’t wallow

Another thing you want to avoid doing when feeling holiday loneliness is wallowing. It can be very easy to get all caught up in your sadness. Adjusting from what you’re used to during the holidays to the new reality can leave you stuck in a cycle of sadness. However, it’s a cycle you don’t need to deal with.

Try to consider the fact that everyone goes through points where they feel down. However, you don’t have to make that sadness the focal point of who you are. Instead, look at the positive things you still have, and can start doing, and you can find yourself being a bit more thankful and happy than you were before.

Avoid unhealthy coping

Holiday loneliness can cause people to slip into some pretty bad habits. Commonly, people like to turn to alcohol in an effort to cope. Or, they might also develop some unhealthy eating habits, or isolate themselves from the rest of the world. All of these things combined aren’t going to be good for you now, or in the future.

Instead, you’ll want to use some more healthy coping mechanisms. Find some better, healthier things you like to do, and focus on them instead. Slipping into unhealthier habits will just make things harder than they already were.

Holiday Season Divorce: A Good Idea?

While the holidays are around the corner, you may have something more pressing on your mind: divorce. Even if you’ve been thinking it over for a while, is a holiday season divorce is a good idea? There’s a few things to consider which can help you make a decision…

Holiday Season Divorce: A Good Idea?

Consider the state of your marriage

When considering a holiday season divorce, you have to look at what your marriage is like now. If your marriage is so toxic that it makes you constantly miserable or unhappy, then it’s best to get things moving towards divorce now. This is especially true if things are abusive, and your well-being is at risk.

However, if things aren’t at those points, then you might want to wait until after the holidays. After all, the holidays tend to be a time where people spend a lot of money and do a lot of travel. That can make it hard to really get your divorce started properly, so it may be better to wait.

Will you regret the timing?

You also have to consider if you’ll regret the timing that comes with a holiday season divorce. After all, choosing to divorce will mean a total change to your holiday plans. Often times, you might end up finding yourself spending this time alone rather than with others like you’re used to.

This kind of change can make the holiday season especially hard. Throw in the demands of divorce, and it can really be difficult to handle. In fact, it could get to the point where the loneliness prompts you to try and go back to a relationship that isn’t good for you. Therefore, you need to make sure you’re ready for this kind of change.

Consider how it will impact others

Divorce is, of course, a very personal matter. However, a holiday season divorce does mean you have to consider the holiday plans of your family and friends. A divorce will put a damper on those plans, especially if you have kids. Divorcing during this time could seriously have a negative impact on them.

Post-Divorce Info: Key Updates

When your divorce is finally over, you might be hoping to finally relax a bit. However, there’s still some post-divorce info you’ll want to get updated. Taking the time now to get everything good to go will save you from headaches down the line…

Post-Divorce Info: Key Updates

Address info

One piece of post-divorce info you want to update pretty quickly is your address. A lot of people will  find themselves getting ready to move to a new home or apartment once their divorce is over. If you find yourself in this kind of position, it’s important that you update your address information properly.

For instance, you’ll want to keep people you trust like your friends and family in the loop about your new address. Depending on your job, it might also be helpful to let your boss know as well. Don’t forget that you might need to update your address for things such as taxes and voter registration.

Financial info

Another piece of post-divorce info to take care of is your financial info. Many married couples will like to either share a bank account together, or have access to each other’s personal accounts. After your divorce, that’s not something you’ll want to have for security reasons. Therefore, you’ll want to update this information too.

If you and you ex had a shared account, then it’s a good idea to go ahead and get your own account. You might also be able to revoke the access your ex had to your own personal account, but it’s safer to open up a brand-new account just in case. Also, remember to let your employer know about any relevant changes, such as if you use direct deposit, to ensure your pay ends up in the right place!

Contact info

Contact information is also some important post-divorce info to update. Some spouses like to share things such as email accounts or phone plans. After your divorce, you might need to make some alterations in these areas.

Many divorced people tend to get new email accounts set up as well as new phone numbers. That way, they don’t have to worry about their ex having any access or control over their accounts. Plus, if you had a particularly nasty divorce, you might want to make changes to these things to improve your privacy, especially away from your ex.

Court Behavior: What To Avoid

How you dress in court is very important. Still, just as important is how you act when you’re there. Your court behavior will have a lot of influence on how smoothly things go for you. Therefore, there’s a few things in particular you want to avoid doing…

Court Behavior: What To Avoid

Being late

Being on time is an important part of your court behavior. Basically, it shows that this is something you’re taking seriously. Being late, even by a little bit, can leave you starting off on the wrong foot. In court, that’s something you want to avoid as best you can.

Therefore, don’t just try to show up on time. Try to make it a little bit earlier instead. That way, you give yourself a buffer in case there’s bad traffic on the drive to the courthouse. Plus, that also gives you time to double-check everything and make sure you have what you need before you leave.

Distractions

One of the worst things you can do in the courtroom is appear to be distracted. If the judge feels like you’re not paying attention, they might think this doesn’t matter to you. That can really shape their impression of you for the rest of the proceedings. As a result, you need to be attentive as part of good court behavior.

Keep your focus on the judge and what they ask of you. It’s also especially important to keep your phone off and away. Being caught on your phone, or even having it go off, can be pretty disrespectful. Don’t take the risk, and keep it out of sight and silent.

Being rude

Rude behavior is a sure-fire way to hurt your chances in court. For starters, it serves to make you look bad to the judge. Also, it can cause the judge to question either your motives, or if you deserve something like child custody. Rudeness just hurts nobody but yourself in the courtroom.

Therefore, always be sure to be polite and respectful. Don’t call names or make backtalk to either the judge, or your spouse. Be sure to watch your emotions as well. You want to come off as someone who is cool, confident, and collected to the judge.