Latest / The Conscious Divorce / We Both Got Divorced at 50. Here’s What It Taught Us

Transcript

We Both Got Divorced at 50. Here’s What It Taught Us · The Conscious Divorce

• Justin Milrad: Somebody asks you how things are at home, and you say fine. You're not lying, the bills get paid, the kids get where they need to go, no one's screaming. There was no affair, no blow up, nothing you could point out and say, that's the thing that broke it. And yet, if you're honest, and I mean the kind of honest you only get when everyone is asleep and the house is finally quiet, something hasn't been right for a while. You can't remember the last real conversation you had with your spouse. That didn't involve kids in logistics. So here's a question that person's actually carrying around all day. not should I leave? It's is this fixable? And almost no one can answer it because almost no one has ever been handed a way to tell. So let me hand you one right now before we do anything else. There are two kinds of marriage trouble. There's a skills problem, and there is a foundations problem. A skills problem is when you stop being present, you stop saying the good things, and one person is quietly carrying the entire family around in their head. And that's learnable. That can come back. A foundational problem Is when you don't want the same life or you've already checked out. No date night on earth fixes that one. And here's the part that costs people years. Most of the marriages that feel like they're failing are skills problems wearing the foundation problems clothing. People walk away from something repairable because they lost the skills and thought they'd lost the foundation. My guest today got the call the other way. His was a foundation problem. By the time he could see it clearly, it was already too late to save. And then he did something I didn't see coming. He spent the next few years collecting every skill the divorce forced on him, and he wrote them down for the people who are still married. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Welcome to the Conscious Divorce Podcast. I'm Justin Milrad. I'm a CDC certified divorce coach. A financial planner and an MBA, as well as the founder of Reclaim and Reboot Transformational Coaching. The show exists for one reason. Divorce is not a crisis to survive, it's a transformation to execute. The people who come out on the other side stronger are not the ones who got lucky. They're the ones who got strategic and did the work. Today is a little different, and I want to tell you why. Almost every episode I do is aimed at someone who's already in it, in the process, on the other side of it. Dealing with the fallout. Today is for the person standing about two feet in front of that door has not yet decided anything yet and who is quietly terrified of getting the decision wrong in front of their kids. And I didn't bring in a trained expert to talk at that person. I brought in a friend who lived it, who went and studied what divorce taught him. He did the work, and who wrote the manual he wishes someone had handed him while he was still married. Frankly, after reading it, I wish I had it when I was going through my own marital issues. But before we get into it, the standard and important housekeeping. I'm a certified divorce coach. I'm not an attorney, I'm not a therapist, and I'm not your financial advisor. My guest today is an author sharing his own experiences. He's not a licensed professional either. Nothing we say today is legal, financial, tax, or clinical advice. And nothing said here creates a professional relationship. Laws and custody standards vary by state, and your situation is your own. For guidance specific to you, please work with a qualified attorney, financial professional, or licensed therapist. Now let's get into it. My guest today is David Levin, and I have to tell you how we know each other because it's fortuitous. David and I were roommates in New York City a lifetime ago. Two guys splitting rent, enjoying the greatness of New York City. And then life did what life does different cities, different jobs, different worlds. We've reconnected every five or so years, and every single time it turns out we're standing in a similar chapter at roughly the same Careers, kids, and most recently, divorce. David is a Northwestern journalism graduate who spent his career as a digital and AI executive at brands and at agencies like 360i, where he helped write the digital and social playbook before the industry had one. As senior vice president of customer experience and digital transformation at Bob's Discount Furniture, he used digital and AI to drive both revenue growth and real cost savings, growing e-commerce from 70 million to more than 200 million. And cutting operating costs by more than $4 million a year through AI-powered customer service. He's the father of four in a blended household in Connecticut. And two weeks before he turned 50, he found out his marriage was ending. What he did next is the reason why he's here. He watched the divorced people around him and noticed they seemed lighter, not heavier. He figured out why, and then he wrote a book about it called The Divorced Dad's Playbook for the Still Married. which comes out on October 27th. David, welcome to the show. It's genuinely strange and genuinely awesome to be doing this with you. David Levin: Justin, it's so good to see you, man. It's been a while. like you said, we connect every few years. I'm excited about the book. I have a pre-print copy here that is getting ready. We're going through final proofing and we'll have it ready to come out. ready for pre-order now. And just excited to have this conversation with you and hopefully it touches your listeners. Justin Milrad: so the first thing everyone's gonna want to know is why a divorced guy wrote a marriage book. So I want to start at the thing that makes this book strange. And I mean that as a compliment. You got divorced and then you sat down and wrote a manual for staying married. A lot of people would call that disqualifying, which is why I think the entire reason that this book works. So tell me, David, why'd you write this book? David Levin: Well, I think there's the old cliche that you can't learn from success, you can only learn from failure. But I will tell you that when I found out I was getting divorced at fifty, I thought this is what failure looks like. And what I started to realize in sort of that sadness was that the people around me, the divorced people who were a couple of years ahead of me because I was in a journey they had just started, or I was starting a journey they had just been through. they seemed just like as you said, they seemed lighter, right? They had, but they were going out at night. They were starting up hobbies. Some were taking dance lessons or cooking lessons, all these interesting things that those of us who have busy printing lives and married lives weren't thinking about. I expected to continue to feel like a failure and I did for a little bit, but then I started to feel happier. And what I realized was that divorce was handing me these tools almost by accident Because the issue was forced, because I had to go through this transformation as you talked about, sort of the strategic change that I chose to grab onto and make strategic, I started to see that there were tools that I could use and leverage some of it through therapeutic work that I leaned into heavily, that would have made me a better husband, ironically, in my first marriage. They arrived a few years too late to help with that. and I'm sort of taking notes for the next one in writing this my therapist likes to joke it's a little bit of a journaling exercise in putting this down to help others. I actually also get a chance to help myself. what I think is important for your listeners to understand this isn't a book about whether to leave. It's kind of what I wish someone had told me while I was still married. and I hope it will help others while they're still in theirs. Justin Milrad: this tracks for me, as I have my own version of it. As you know, I went through my own divorce that cost more than it needed to, took longer David Levin: Yes. Justin Milrad: than it had to, and I paid in many different currencies. And everything that I experienced, many years out of it is exactly why I became a divorce coach and strategist and why I do this show. There is a way to do divorce right, and there's a way to do divorce wrong. And there's the question of am I going to be a survivor and thrive? Or am I going to become a victim and keep falling down that dark hole? And I will tell you, I listened to your book in early version in August, and I got remarried Labor Day weekend. And I will say, thank you, David Levin: Yes, congrats. Justin Milrad: thank you. I will say a lot of what you wrote really hit home. And I was, asking myself, And doing a lot of internal reflection of how am I going to make sure that this is going to be a wonderful marriage. So want to thank you. A lot of the advice you gave in your book and when I read it was once again fortuitous because I'm gonna apply a lot of what you said into my future marriage. David Levin: thanks for saying that. it means a lot to hear you say that and I think it's writing is a very lonely pursuit as you know. And I think there's a really wonderful thing when you start to put something you created artistically out there and get feedback good and bad, that I think is just helpful in, helping you validate the pursuit at all. Justin Milrad: So I want people to know about who wrote this book. So you have a very exciting and incredible professional background. but you're not a therapist and you're not a psychologist and you're not a marriage expert, but you have the lived experience. So can you talk a little bit more about who you are as a person, as a dad, and then who you are as a business leader and why you felt that you were at a right point for giving good lived experience and advice, to people who are either asking that question of should I stay or should I go, or who are in a similar position to me, reading this in hindsight and saying, okay, how do I make the next one better and how do I get the most out of my life going forward? David Levin: I love this question. the challenge in writing this book is there were often times as I was writing it that I'm like, who who am I to give this advice? And what I decided was as long as I anchored it in my truth, what I experienced, then hopefully it could help someone. And my feeling and my inclination always was: if one person was able to get one tool out of this. Book that made their marriage better, then it was worth the effort. for me, I think there was also some selfish or opportunistic reasons why I wrote the book. One of them is that, and I talk about this in the book, and we'll I think we'll get into this as we talk today, but when you get divorced, you have your children, like in my case, half the time, right? So I had this empty house where I actually had the time. And I realized I could actually put it towards something like this. And I think having that time made it like feel almost like a draw that I had to write it, because I had the time to do it. And so I owed it to myself to put out there the thoughts and the things that I had learned and thought it would be helpful to others. It also was kind of a creative pursuit, It was sort of an autitelic act. Like I wrote it because I wanted to do something creative. I came out of I was a journalism major as you talked about, and I love writing. But I write professionally in marketing and in my digital career. I wasn't writing out of pure enjoyment. And so the idea of to do that was exciting for me and sort of almost a hobby that I could pursue. The difference with this one is unlike other hobbies I might pursue, people get to read this and maybe it will be valuable to others. So hearing your thoughts about it are helpful as as well. Justin Milrad: I think the lived experience gives you the most credibility. I can say that, there are a lot of therapists out there who've never been married, who are dealing with family issues and don't have that lived experience. and I also think your your corporate background of building things and understanding systems and operations and communication, is is really foundational in how do you build, a better next Next step. One thing I really loved about your book were, there were some business lessons from your world experience, and then there were a lot of great metaphors. And then you talk about something called Druisms. Now I know who Drew is, because I've met him, but no one who's listening does. But I know that, Drew shared a lot of, real world insights and wisdom with you over the years. And in some ways it's a North Star that you look to sometimes asking what would Drew do? so can you talk a little bit about who Drew is, what Druisms are, and how you kind of, utilize that in the book and how that helped guide you. David Levin: Yeah. And I appreciate your comments about what you thought was helpful as well. The book is meant to truly be a playbook and not just to give you the memoir of my experiences, but tie it to the research and the opportunities to create actionable tools for people. So I think a lot of that does come from that corporate experience of writing playbooks that are actually repeatable for businesses and for brands and then how to do that for people in our daily lives when we're so busy and just want to get the things that will have the greatest impact. In changing our relationship with our kids, our relationship with our partner, our relationship with ourselves. Drew became a kind of a key part of my sort of growing up experience in the corporate world. He was an early mentor to me. He was one of my first bosses. his name is Drew Raymond. and then he became my business partner. And I'm glad to say a dear friend. I actually spoke to him yesterday, and it was just lovely to catch up with him. it had been a few weeks for us. And we who all worked for him sort of came up with the term druisms affectionately because the way that he would like to teach was through what I would refer to as memory stickers. And I started using memory stickers in the book, but his were based on cliches or learnings, things like be a smooth rock in the running water or the true shall set you free. Or will set you free, which is out of the Bible. And each of those became sort of anchoring points in what I think are the truth of my lived experience. And so I tried to incorporate them in the book, both as an admiration to him, but also because I think they're a helpful way to teach the the tools and bring them and make them accessible and kind of provide that sort of memory sticker so you can remember them in a moment where you might get heated. or emotionally flooded. Justin Milrad: I love the idea of a memory sticker and knowing many people in your world who worked with Drew, he clearly had an incredible impact on so many people. There's one more thing I want to touch on that you talk about in the book because it's a real point of contact for me. You're doing volunteer work on youth mental health, specifically on the gap between kids who need care and care their families can actually afford and get to. And I know that service work is an important part of divorce recovery. I personally, co-founded an outpatient mental health and substance abuse program and ran it for five years. That gap you're working on is one way that we can heal and help others. So can you talk a little more about why you do this work and why it's important to you? And also the importance of mental wellness in a family, both in good times and in troubling times. David Levin: Yeah, this has been another great connection that you and I synergistically ended up sharing through our just knowing each other and reconnecting. And it's a really important one for me. let me just talk about my role and then I'll talk about kind of how I fell into it. I am the cause general manager for youth mental health at what's called the Charity Action Network. It's a new nonprofit. It's spun out of an organization called Prohasco Consulting. And it's an ad tech and data consultancy that had already been doing a lot of pro bono work and decided to operationalize this under a separate nonprofit. I've always wanted to do more nonprofit work and I love and wasn't aware of the connection that you think that that's a great part of healing post-divorce. I had wanted to do it prior to the divorce, but the divorce gave me the time again with the empty house to be able to pursue it as an extracurricular in my life. I hadn't really thought about how it probably fills another hole for me. I saw what COVID was doing to this generation of kids. and I also saw how important mental health was for me. I did go through a lowercase T trauma in a divorce, right? And being able to go through my own therapeutic journey was I saw How it helped with my relationship with my children, it helped with my relationship with my now fiancé. it helped with my relationship with my ex. And I would wish that everyone could afford to be in therapy. don't think of mental health as the same as medical health, even though to me they are part and parcel the same and your medical health can be significantly impacted by your mental health. It's critical to your over well-being as a human being. it sort of hit me as I was going through my divorce that because I've had a successful corporate career. I learned about the Charity Action Network and they were getting ready to roll it out, that I thought this is an area we could make a difference, shine a spotlight on this problem, provide solutions that would touch parents and business leaders directly to help. and support families that need this service. I could quote the stats of one in three adolescents, 12 to 17, will say that they have a mental, emotional, or behavioral issue. at least that was in 2023 in the surveys. Forty percent of high schoolers have felt persistently sad or hopeless. Twenty percent have considered suicide. And some of those numbers have been improving as we move past COVID, but the problem. Is large and fixable, right? It's an access and affordability problem, as I said. And you've done such great work in this area. So I hope that hopefully we'll have a chance to partner on this and I can learn from your experience having worked in this area. But this is a key, that I'm going to be working on over the coming years. And I'm really excited to. just get it rolling and going. Justin Milrad: love that. It's such an important problem, and I look forward to some future conversations. Let's get into the book itself. You open it by telling the reader their marriage is probably fine, and then you immediately take that compliment back. Can you describe what you mean by that and what does a fine marriage look like from the inside? David Levin: Well you talked about the difference earlier between foundational problems and skills problems. If you look at most marriages, dollars to donuts, I would bet that most of them have a skills problem that looks like a foundation problem, as you said. And it's sort of what I would call the logistics only marriage. You're talking about who's picking up which kid to driving them to which practice this week. You're talking about how the bills are getting paid, who's cooking dinner. Who's taking care of Thursday because the other person is going out with friends? You're good at that, right? We're all good at the logistics. You can't remember the last time you had a real conversation, were you emotionally connected and maybe romantically connected? And so my question in the book is not how is your life today in your marriage? But I talk about at the beginning of the book. What kind of day has it been? Which is a TV homage for all, I'll leave it as an Easter egg for all of you TV watchers out there. But the day the line, what kind of day has it been, is really the concept of lately. How is your marriage feeling lately overall? If you were graphing it, is it do you feel like it's things are getting better? Are they holding flat? Are they declining? That's kind of who I wrote the book for. Someone who feels things are just not quite right. And the couple that's got problems but still wants to stay and work on Justin Milrad: looking back, I think of marriage and having kids. You're on a hamster wheel and you're just running on that wheel and you're just moving constantly. I used to say in mental health, when someone tells you everything is fine, that's when you need to dig deeper to find out what that really means. And it's so easy to just get caught in the day to day logistics of life. And not really make the time for one another. And I think that's absolutely critical. And you you gave me that reminder when I read your book. So no one ever opens up with when you ask them how their marriage is, no one opens up with my marriage is in crisis. they open with, don't really know. It's just not what it once was. And then there's this long pause when they're waiting to find out whether or not that counts. So let's give them the tool. This is part of your book, and I would put it on a billboard. Can you walk us through the difference between a skills problem and a foundation problem? And then give us the gut check so that people can really understand where they sit. David Levin: Yes, think of it this way. A skills problem is where one or both of you have stopped being present with each other in your moments together. Maybe you stopped appreciating each other. maybe there's resentment. communication challenges often manufacture that resentment, so we can talk about that. The feeling that you talked about earlier, Justin, of like one person is carrying the load for the family and is resenting the other person for that. you feel like one of you or both of you feel like things are running on autopilot. Those are fixable. Those are skills problems. Where there's a foundation problem though, Justin, is in my mind, where you really feel like there's in your soul you are not the right people for each other. Your core values are misaligned, right? And those are not fixable. They're going to exist and continue to erode. Or one of you both of you have already decided you don't want to be there. I talk about it, I use a visual metaphor in the book that I cribbed from my therapist, which is one of you is you're both in the boat rowing, and then one of you is secretly climbing out. Well, she says jumping out the back for a life raft. I change it to climbing because nobody should jump at my age. be safe, climb into the life raft, don't get hurt. Okay. Justin Milrad: Yeah. David Levin: And but if seriously though, if that's what's happening, those are more foundational. And if the questions start with is: do you actually want to save it? Not should you? Right? Are you the right partners for each other? Right? Do you share the same core values? Are you both willing to fight for it? And the word both matters here, but you can't row alone. If the other person is behind you climbing out, that's a problem. And so Start with asking yourself those true questions. And if you believe the answer is yes, and it may change over time, right? But if you believe the answer is yes, then you likely have a skills problem. And I say it's worth fighting for. Justin Milrad: that's heavy. it only really takes one person to initiate the breakup of a marriage. And you have to really answer the question, is this a marriage I want to save? Or do I need to, you know, jump in the life raft and figure out my next steps? And I think it's also really important that people understand that not all marriages survive, and it's not that They're meant to survive. Some people just have a good marriage for a period of time, life has happened and people have changed and situations, change. And it's okay to move on. we're living a lot longer than we used to. the concept of marriage, when it was originally created, people were living, to their mid-twenties. So things are a little different. And I just want to remind everyone that it's okay to want to move on and that it's not gonna destroy your kids if you handle it properly and amicably, because it's not divorce that damages kids, it's conflict that damages kids. And there is always a way to do this amicably. So I think those questions that David just talked about, if you can answer them honestly, you're gonna have a better idea. of whether or not you want to focus on strengthening what you have or whether you want to consciously uncouple. And I think that's okay. Any thoughts, David? David Levin: I fully agree with everything you just said. In fact, I would remind everyone that whether you get divorced or not, whether you decide or whether your partner decides, as you said, remember this one that we probably should add to the list of drugsms, but I'm gonna coin it here the cliche, it takes two to tango. And I think there's two aspects to that. One is that you can start in lean in and the other person may end up leaning out and that's okay. You will be okay. I know that won't feel like it if you're in that moment that is a hard moment and Justin and I can both talk about our lived experiences with that. But if you lean in and the other person decides to lean in, then that's great because two of you have decided to dance together. But if you end up, unfortunately, deciding to get divorced, you can make changes that will make your life better. Things will improve past the early darkness and sadness of having an empty house. And I talk about these lived experiences in the book and what I think I learned from them. But I would also say that it takes two to tango post. marriage. And what I mean by that is what I think Justin's talking about how you show up for your kids, how you treat each other after your divorce. You can never control how the other person shows up, but you always can control how you show up. So what I highly recommend is that you never throw the other person under the bus. You stand up for what is right and what you believe and the values and integrity that you stand for. And you can show your kids and model a great model of what life looks like post divorce. divorced or post-divorce or inside of marriage, whichever way life takes Justin Milrad: and I just want to reiterate, David and I, we're not advocating for divorce. We're advocating for the solution that works best for you and for your your spouse. if you can save the marriage, you should save the marriage. If you feel like you've hit a brick wall and there's not much growth left, then you you have other things to think about. And what I love about this model, Is you're not deciding anything in the first move. You're really you're running a diagnosis because a skills problem and a foundational problem call for completely opposite responses. And if you get the diagnosis wrong, everything downstream of it is wrong too. David, what's the tell that the problem is genuinely foundational and it's not just a bad 18 months? David Levin: A as you said earlier, Justin, and I probably should have said, and I say a bunch of times in the book coming out pre-order now, but coming out October 27th, Justin Milrad: Yeah. David Levin: shameless plug. I'm not a therapist. So everything I'm about to say is just a layperson's opinion, just my opinion from my lived experience. I think when a licensed therapist tells you or your partner whether you're doing therapy alone or you're doing therapy together and couples therapy. that one of you isn't willing to do the work and is given up, that is for sure the telltale sign that your issue is foundational. At that moment you have to take a hard look at yourself and your marriage and realize where you are then start doing the next stage of work. Another example is just in general, it's really to the same point is when one person doesn't want to fight for it, that is a hundred percent a sure sign that they're running for a life raft, right? Or there's work you need to do to try to earn their trust, but just be careful because you have to hear what your partner is saying with the respect that you would expect them to hear what you're saying. and When you're convinced that you're just not seeing life the same way and there's no way to get past that, and that's not on a small fight about something small in the house, but on the large big issues. If you can't align on those things over and over again and and you try to work on them and hopefully you seek professional help and you still see those challenges, then you know that you've got a challenge. On the flip side, if somebody says to you, you're both fighting for it, then as a person who's a glass half full person, and I talk about that I am that in the book, then I say fight for it. It could just be a skills problem and that resentment needs to be lowered and the temperature needs to be lowered in your relationship, that you can do the skills work together or on yourself sometimes. Cause a lot of skills work is work that only you can do, not changing how the other person shows up, but showing how you show up. And so that's why I kind of wrote this book is I started therapy later in life. And a basically after my divorce in in a meaningful way. And I didn't commit to that work for more than a small fit and start here and there in couples counseling during my marriage. And I wanted to make sure that people could understand what some of that work looks like to demystify some of what you talk about in those sessions and make it more accessible to a lay person so that everyone could understand that it the work is hard. But it actually can be enjoyable in helping you find and navigate through your life. Justin Milrad: just want to reiterate, on the skills problem. if you identify that there's a skills problem, it's something you can work on, it's something your spouse can work on, you give it time. And if it's still not working out, at least you know you've done the work, or you identify that it's not just a skills problem, there's also a foundational problem. there's a scene in your book that I think is very useful. It takes place in a therapist's office. Session two of three. Can you tell us about it? David Levin: Yes, so I talk about this very early in the book in the foreword, which is as we talked about earlier, titled What Kind of Day Has It Been. And in that I talk about that my wife at the time, now my ex-wife, asked for a three session couples counseling work to determine if our marriage was worth saving. And being a glass half-full person, I thought, wow, this is great. I've got, three sessions to figure out the work that we need to do. In hindsight, a three-session money-back guarantee on 15 years of marriage is a sign that we were already well into a foundational problem, right? And what happened in the meeting is that this was the second of three, and the meeting had, I think, just started. And my now ex-wife said to me and the therapist, Hey, I don't think I can be married anymore. And I was dumbstruck because it was only session two. And I turned to the the therapist and I said, What does this mean? And she had to explain it to me. This means you your marriage is basically ending. You're being told it's over by your partner. you have your answer. And within about, I think, a minute, and I realized this as I was writing the book that this happened, I called Dibbs on the therapist and I said, Can you be my therapist then for just me instead of our couples counselor? And I was already dividing the assets before I had even mentally registered the marriage was over. If this wasn't a sign that there was real foundational problems in my marriage that I wasn't being truthful to myself about, nothing was. And that's sort of how I knew. And it really kind of helped me in helping think through what a diagnosis could look like for others. Justin Milrad: When you and I spoke maybe about a month ago, we talked about the fear of the empty house and that there's a real opportunity that when you have time to yourself, that it's a real opportunity for growth. And in the book, you talk about this being one of the best things that ever happened to you. It's not about not being with the kids, but it's about being able to spend some time, with yourself and to grow. obviously there's a lot of grief around this at first, but there's also an opportunity for growth if you actually take that bid. Can you talk a little bit about the empty house and your evolution? David Levin: Yes, I wanna not pay short shrift to this. It is sad. the first time you're in an empty house and your ex spouse has custody. So we have fifty-fifty shared custody of the children. And so half the time the kids are not at my house. And the first time that happened It was sad. there is grief and loss when you look around this house. I had moved to an apartment, so there was a big change there. And as I was thinking about where I and where I was going to move next, and looking around that apartment on the days they weren't there and it was dark and quiet and I was alone and eating by myself was a really new feeling after 15 years of marriage. There was also the trips that their mom took them on that I was no longer a part of. No one to call. I could try to call them while they're they were away, but they were usually in different time zones and cool locations and wanted to just be having fun by the pool or at dinner and didn't want to speak to dad. And then the empty house for me goes further than the kids and the trips and the home. It also goes to friends. And I think this is a key part in of the grief that any divorced parent goes through, you will lose friends in the split. The humorous sort of moment that was also kind of sad was one of my I'll call him a friend. He's he he and his wife are honestly more close to my ex than to me, but I was joking with him about the fact that it was hard to determine who my friends were post divorce. And he made the joke from the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, if you remember. And I talk about it the book in the empty house chapter, where he's talking to I think it's Marty Funkhauser, and Marty says, I'm sorry, we're going with Cheryl, meeting Cheryl, his Larry's ex-wife, and it puts a really great moment. you know that only Larry David could write that because he's lived that experience. but it is this moment of you realize that you're going to have friends who are gonna go with Cheryl and not with you. And I think those things that you discover that are couple friendships, right, that either don't go with either of you because you're now divorced and they don't know what to do with the third wheel, or when they're going out with couples, or the connected tissue was your ex and not you, those are humbling. That all said, There's so much you can do with it. And what I started to realize is what I realized if from watching and talking to divorced friends, and that became this these tools I could use in the book and talk about and teach in the book and share. Is you now have dedicated time. I had dedicated time at 50 years old to figure out who I am, to do my own self-audit and figure out what I how I wanted the back half. Assuming I can make it to a hundred. wanted the back half of my life to go. At least hopefully it'll be a good, ride down the hill. and I could figure out instead of the exotelic things, the things that I have to do, because I have kids and I have to spend every moment taking care of their needs and being a parent and a partner, now I could just focus on being a person. And usually every hour of a modern adulthood is you're on seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Now I had half the time that was mine. What did I want to do with that? And what did it mean to me? And that's where I could add the charity work. That's where I could take the time to write a book. That's where I could get back into golf. Right. And, I had played 14 to 18 rounds a year. I was not a great golfer. I lost some great, but I had this passion for playing with friends and spending time as a type A person relaxing on a golf course. But for 17 years, I played zero rounds except one or two times. And it was so bad that I basically gave it up. But to get back into tennis and golf at 50 years old and the joy of being a beginner again was amazing. And so the opportunity to fill my cup to create and accumulate. positive experiences and have positive emotions fr from that was exciting. It's what they talk about in dialectical behavioral therapy as a positive emotion skill. And if you any of you have read Seven Habits of Highly Affective People, what Stephen Covey refers to as filling your emotional bank account so you can handle the tough times at work and at home. Justin Milrad: I love that you came to that realization. A lot of people don't. I remember when I was going through my own divorce, my therapist said to me, You have to put yourself first. And she used the analogy of being on an airplane and the oxygen mask you put on yourself first and then you put it on on your kid. And it felt selfish David Levin: Love that one. Justin Milrad: to me. and I had never done it before. And then she explained, Well, if you don't take care of yourself, you can't be a good father, you can't be a good Provider for your kids, you can't be a good partner for someone that you're gonna date with, you can't be a good kid co-parent. So I tried it and it made a world of difference. The other thing is we, we talked about being on a a hamster wheel. Now we get off and we get to look around. And what you said at 50 and we happened to both get divorced around the same I had just turned 50. is we have another half of our life that we can now set with intention. And we have a lot more flexibility and we have a lot more domain in choosing what that looks like. And I think a really important part of this is being a very strong and effective co parent. And only wishing the best for you know your former spouse. and also focusing on yourself and your kids so that you can have a strong future. And I know you talk about that in the book. And I've I found this part very useful. You talked about the unromantic machinery and creating systems like a shared Google calendar with your, you know, ex wife. can you talk a little bit about how creating these systems, really help you have an effective co-parenting relationship, how it benefits the both of you, what you do to resolve issues when they do come up, and how that kind of translates into happy times for your kids and for yourselves. David Levin: Yes, it's it's really interesting, right? We are used to as parents having our spouse in the same house with us. We can do hallway conversations, kitchen conversations. We're pouring our morning cup of coffee. we talk, how many times a day do you talk to your spouse? I talk to my fiance countless times a day and we text countless times a day to make sure we're organizing things. But in divorce, you don't have that sort of osmosis and that regular really Natural cadence happening. So you have to write things down. You have to codify things in a way you don't when you're married and can run on that sort of tribal knowledge of the two parents sort of just running the household in the day-to-day. And I think writing things down is actually the tool that when you think about it and applying it to marriage could save a thousand small resentments that pile up and can become a major skills problem or challenge in getting to working on skills and having a strong relationship in a marriage. When your spouse blows up about the trash, right, that you didn't take out. I it's taken me a while to learn, and I've been learning this with my fiance and the work that I do there. The fight's never about the trash, right? It's about for me, it's about my fiance remembering that she's the only one remembering that the trash existed and needing to go out. And I was the one that was supposed to take it out and failed in my piece. And so being able to run, there's a few tools I talk about in the book that I think are helpful for people. So maybe I can put in a few here and give you a sense of what the book is trying to do is the one that you alluded to is what I call the one true calendar. So building one true calendar, and I don't think you need to go out and buy one of those apps unless you really, really need one, or go buy a marker board and put it on the fridge or a cork board, unless that works for you and your family. Use the one that everybody already has in their phones, especially as your kids get older and we finally have to acquiesce as parents and give them phones. Like use the calendar, right, in your phone and put on whose responsibility is what? Whose night is it to take the trash out? Calendar taking the trash out with the assigned owner. And actually another one that I recommend, and it's tied to this and kind of the the sibling to this is do a 15-minute weekly huddle with your spouse. I recommend Sundays if that works within the cadence of your family, but whatever one night a week that works, and actually run the week. It's not about making sure that all the chores and all the responsibilities are split fifty fifty. It's making sure that none of them are in anyone's heads and that you each had time to share what needs to get covered and somebody covers it and takes ownership and it ends up in the calendar so it gets done. Justin Milrad: You you talk about working with your ex and scheduling updates and money reconciliations. Can you talk a little bit more about the different systems that you have in place and how they've worked and kind of what you've learned along the way? David Levin: Yeah, maybe your question probably points to a lot of different areas. And I think one place we could start first is just on money specifically. So I have a chapter in the book called Money Talks, and it's sort of has a double meaning, it's a pun. Obviously, it's about two areas that I think is really comes to light in divorce. And I think if we can reframe the lessons that those of us who have been divorced have learned to help. Those of you who are fighting for your marriages and those of us who are getting ready to start our second marriages or third marriages for some out there who might be listening, I think could be really helpful. So when you think about money in particular, I think there's two areas that money talks the title is is meant to speak to and why I titled the chapter this. One is that how you spend money is actually speaks and talks about how you as a couple value. what you value because money is finite, just like a lots of things, your time and others, but money is so finite that your children can actually see your values. And what you and your partner to decide to spend money on speaks volumes about what you value. Whether you're saving up so it's about that one great family vacation every year. Or if you give your children an allowance and let them decide how they spend on their wants. Instead of bothering you and you just acquiescing all the time when they badger you about the different clothes they want to buy or concerts they want to spend on. I think these are values decisions that you and your partner need to align on. And when you're in when you're divorced, you're forced to have those conversations, specifically if you are sharing in the expenses. So my ex and I actually share 50-50 in our children's core expenses. Which means we have to have that conversation on a regular basis. So the next tool that I talk about is a tool that is basically the I call it the quarterly true-up. it also could be a monthly true-up, but it's really the financial true-up. So what we do is I set up a Google spreadsheet. You can use whatever tool you like. I happen to like Google because it's shared and it's always available to either of us in real time. And we put in all of our expenses, which kid it is for, what was it, how much was it, and any notes about it for the other. What's amazing is the first time I ever looked at that sheet, it's all the things that didn't exist while I was married. All the expenses for all of our kids for the last three months. Itemized line by line in a spreadsheet so it could be totaled, analyzed, talked about, debated. And I think that clarity took away either of our negative perceptions of the other because it became about data and fact over resentment and opinions, like you spend too much here or this or that. And I think finding a way to Have those true conversations with your partner, whether it's putting all your expenses on one credit card, or one shared credit card, or just compiling the expenses using an AI tool to pull them together and show you both them, and doing it on a monthly or quarterly basis. I would not recommend annual. I think it's too long of a cadence. You can do a budgeting process annually, but that's not gonna solve. It just allows for too much resentment to grow if you wait a year to have these conversations. It needs to be on a regular cadence, quarterly or monthly, where can really work on it together. I think those conversations that we're all scared to have because they are emotionally fraught and we walk away from them. What I learned and what I talk about in the book is if you walk away from those conversations, you give up your right to resent your. partner for the decisions they're making because you haven't confronted them and had an honest and hopefully non-emotional dialogue about the data and the spend. Justin Milrad: you once again confirm and prove that if you have systems in place, you reduce the actual chances of flare-ups, and you create a smoother experience for everyone and most importantly, your kids. In your book, you talk about kind of turning the mirror on yourself so you can do your own work. this is behavioral work, not theory work. You say you have a black belt in stonewalling. What have you genuinely changed and what have you only gotten better at describing? David Levin: Okay, so first, this comes from a great thinker by the name of John Gottman, who writes what's called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And what these are is in studying couples over years and years and years, he identified what he believes are the four negative habits that we can get in that can define whether a relationship is gonna end. And I think these can affect your relationships with your children, your relationships with your partner, your relationships with your work colleagues, your boss. they're extensible to lots of areas. So I highly recommend thinking about them. For me, as you said, I have a black belt in stonewalling, which is I get emotionally flooded, I find As we all can, emotions are not bad, right? As I've learned, we have to accept our that our emotional response is our emotional response, right? It's never gonna go away. And pushing the emotions down is just gonna make it worse, right? So what will happen is I will get emotionally flooded sometimes when especially when attacked in a way that feels disrespectful to me or dismissive. And what I will then do. Is become either silent or say, okay, I've heard you, we can move on, and again try to shut it down. Or I'll say, I think we need time to think about this. Why don't we just turn on the TV and use the I talk about in the book, the the blue halo from the television, the glow to you know calm everybody down. The problem is whether I walk away from the conversation. Yell and shut down the conversation, go quiet. It's all stonewalling because what matters is not that in that moment you respond when you're emotional. You probably can't, right? Because your mind isn't clear enough. But with stonewalling, the antidote to stonewalling is to say to the other person, I can't speak about this right now. I am feeling emotional about it. Can we take an hour, 15 minutes, and then do something to Calm your nervous system and tell that person with a specific time when you can have that conversation. And it might be that you're working and you're flooded and you're stressed and you want to do it at 5 p.m. at the end of the day, but you gotta be specific and it needs to be not two weeks from now, right? An hour from now, five hours from now, 15 minutes from now. Give that person that time. So that's something I'm working on as a as a black belt in stonewalling. And I would recommend if that's your Go to maneuver when stressed to work on that because it is just really painful for the person sitting on the other side trying to resolve a conversation. Justin Milrad: You talk about boundaries and how your definition of boundaries was backwards and that your therapist kind of took your concept and flipped it on its head. Can you talk about how you see boundaries now and how you explain them in the book? David Levin: Yes. So boundaries are fascinating. We all want to set limits on our children, right? if you have teenagers, you can't go to that party because you haven't finished your homework, or you ha can't do this, or you can't do that. What I realized was, and this is I think one of the hardest things other than stonewalling for me to work on is that the limit Isn't what you said on others because you can't control how another person reacts. You can say to your kids, you can't watch TV till you finish your homework. They may still go and watch TV. The limit in the flip is, and this is so hard to explain. So let me try it, see if I do it well here. You can you can grade me when I'm done here, Justin. Is the limit is not what you hold the other person to. It's what you hold yourself to. So let me give you an example. It's what you're gonna hold in the moment. So if I say to my kids, you can't my kids have phones. most of my kids have phones because they're teenagers and are at school. And so I lost that battle. And they call me from school or text me from school. I say to them, I will likely not take your call during work hours. Unless it's an emergency. And that is a boundary that I'm setting with them. I'm telling them, but the boundary is what I have to hold to myself. So it's not you can't text me, because they will, even if I say it, they do it all the time. They decide the Olivia Rodrigo concert is the most important thing and they'll call and Justin Milrad: Yeah. David Levin: they'll text, right? Because all of a sudden she's lowered prices on her tickets. The boundary isn't that. I told them that. I did. It's what I do when they text and it's how I react and how I hold myself accountable to keeping that boundary and whether I text back or not. Justin Milrad: Super helpful. All right. I want to turn to the other side of divorce. And many of us are familiar with Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey. And I always say, and I actually have an exercise I do with my clients about writing out their own version of the hero's journey. many people picture, on the other side of divorce, they're in an apartment, they're eating cereal, standing over the sink, and this is the image that they have waiting for them. And you and I both know that that's wrong. Can you tell us about what your life looks like now? David Levin: Yes. First of all, I did eat some honey nut Cheerios. So I don't wanna Justin Milrad: Yeah. David Levin: again skip that grief stage, but that's a gr that's a stage, as I was talking about earlier. And I and I joke about it mainly because I feel like I'm on the other side of it, but I also often will use humor to self-deprecate myself and mock what we all went through in lowercase T trauma as I like to refer to it. I had no idea, Justin, that I could be this happy at, fifty plus. At one point I almost made a near miss in this, right? I was trying to overcorrect when I first found out I was getting divorced. And I'm like, wow. I live in, Connecticut in a suburb where it's all families. There aren't a lot of divorced and single people. I'm gonna go move like 20 minutes out to where all the young people and single people live and get an apartment there so I can go and meet them at the bars and do all the things. And that was a near Miss for me because what I realized was I was prioritizing the wrong thing. I could always go out and find dates if I needed to. I realized because there were apps and there were people that could friends that could introduce me. What I needed to be near were my kids, right? And so that had to be the number one. So I stayed near to them even when I moved into an apartment. Now, fast forwarding into meeting my new partner, we've been engaged for the last three years and we just set a date to be married two weeks ago. So I'm right behind you, Justin. So you can teach me about how to make the next marriage as special and more exciting than the first, knowing that you found your partner as I feel I found my partner for my life and with all the things I've learned. I now have f instead of three kids, I have four kids in this blended house, as you mentioned. I have this wonderful partner. I've been we aligned our custody schedules when we first started dating so that with our exes so that we both had whole weekends together. And it's another thing I talk about in the book is finding time when you and your partner cannot have the kids in the morning so that you can actually go out and have a night and not feel like you can't recover because if the kids aren't there, you can recover. And you realize at 50, you can go out dancing till two in the morning. I but was part of the inspiration of the book was when I realized the things I The lies I kind of told myself, and I'm not saying that at 50 I can recover like I did at 25, but the idea that you can go out and have fun and go dancing or go to a jazz show and stay out late, those things can exist if in the morning you don't have to be a parent. So whether you set up some solo nights for you and your partner where each of you can go out and enjoy yourselves and set up time for you two to do it together. I think both of those are healthy and are the right as you talked about earlier. They're kind of the right things you need to do to be a whole person for your partner and for your kids as a parent. And so now I bought a an 1870s farmhouse with my fiance a few years back and one project at a time or restoring it. And it's all around showing my kids how things go and We get to do all these wonderful things. We've created new traditions together, like every thing every other Thanksgiving when we don't have our kids. We go to a southern city and celebrate and enjoy the city and eat in a restaurant versus not having our kids alone in our home in Connecticut. All these things are amazing. And I think I would tell any of your listeners who have are facing divorce, who have been through divorce and are still in that. part of the grief stage that there is a light on the other side. You just have to, as you said at the beginning, be strategic about how you put your life back together and what you want it to look like in this next stage, in this next transformation. Justin Milrad: I think, whether you stay married and you work on your marriage or whether you go through divorce and build your next phase, there is joy available to you. And it's really, it's surrounding you everywhere. And it's your job to figure out how and where do I find this joy. As we close up this episode, I have one last question for you. If someone takes only two or three things out of this book, what do you want them to be? David Levin: it's a great question. There's so many that I would love to point you to. There's about, I think, 71 tools in the book through the various chapters. Each chapter has its own end of chapter kit. But I think I had to pick two. One of them, and I think it kind of goes to the theme of what we're talking about today. So it's probably good for a lot of your listeners, is what I learned post-divorce was when you go into the dating apps and all these things that didn't exist when I was dating before I met my ex-wife. as I started to do that, they require the sort of this what is actually, I think, a self-audit, because it asks you all these prompts and questions. So one thing I included in the book is how to think about a self-audit today and an audit of your partner. And can you answer these questions about your partner if you're choosing to stay in your relationship? And I think using that self-audit and that audit of your partner helps you reassess where you are today. As you talked about earlier, Justin. We've all been through life changes in within our marriage or post our marriage. And understanding where you are now and where you want to go next, either in the relationship you're in or by yourself, those are so helpful in framing everything that you're gonna look at next when it comes to how do you think about how you parent going forward? How do you think about how you partner going forward? And all the choices can come from doing that self-audit. So that is very key. And it's in a chapter that's ironically titled, Have We Met. So I highly recommend that people, if they pick up a book, and it is available on Amazon and elsewhere, hopefully starting a couple of days ago, so you for pre-order and out October twenty-seventh. Please get a copy, read that chapter. I think that would be a good place to start. start with the forward and then jump to that chapter. Another one I think that's key and we've talked about it today is the idea just of scarcity versus abundance and recognizing that the scarcity you have with your children, no matter whether you're staying in your marriage and have them seven days a week, twenty four hours a day or not, it is scarce. At some point they are hopefully knock on wood gonna move out. That day is fast approaching. Every person I'm sure we've all talked to says the same thing. It happened too fast. Remember that your time with your children is finite. Be present, be there, find an hour. Man I call it the manufactured scarcity. Find an hour, one kid at a time is another tool, and build something. I took my kid out for a vanilla frosty. It's a core memory for us. As silly as that sounds, because we went and got vanilla frosties and we were gonna go Eat them in the parking lot or at a park, and then it started pouring and we were stuck in the car, but we were both there for an hour eating vanilla frosties. And I'm telling you, a vanilla frosty is better than a chocolate frosty. That's my hot take for this that I hope everyone Justin Milrad: Yeah. David Levin: remembers. they are amazing. way too much vanilla. Goodness. But that moment, that silly moment of eating that is something she asks about all the time, one of my children. And I hope that you can find those moments with your kids because I think they are priceless. And something that your kids will hopefully then repeat as a tradition with their kids. Justin Milrad: The frosty story is something that really stuck with me. and I just want to remind people you will spend ninety to ninety-five percent of the time with your kids by the time they turn 18. So even though you may not have them 50% of the time, make sure you double down your time and create these frosty stories with them when you have them. David Levin: Yeah, I talk about rituals in the book and how to build those rituals intentionally so that you can make traditions that will show your kids how important they are and how important the family is and how important each of them are, and a way to make sure that they don't get eaten by the busyness of our daily lives. Justin Milrad: Which which is so easy to do. Here are four things I want you to carry from this episode. Number one, run the diagnosis before you run anything else. A skills problem and a foundation problem need completely opposite responses. And most people get that backwards and then spend years paying for it. Number two, put your own life back on the calendar. A refilled parent is the one your kids were missing, and the guilt you feel about that is the main thing standing in the way. Number three, stop asking anybody to read your mind. One shared calendar, 15 minutes a week, every job with a name on it. Number four, whichever way this goes for you, the skills come with you. They make a marriage better. And they make a divorce cleaner. There's no version of this where learning them is wasted. If you go to David's website, a divorced dadsplaybook.com, he has a special quiz that can help you determine where you are. David Levin: Yeah, the quiz is called Is Your Marriage Worth Saving? And it's a short quiz. It's all private. And you can answer the questions for yourself and try to, use that self-assessment to determine where you are and then hopefully help you make next choice, whether that's reading the book because you think it's a skills problem or or talking to a professional or both. Justin Milrad: Everything I referenced today is in the episode description, including my books, U Two Po, Divorce a Better Way Forward, which is the framework this entire show runs on. The U two point workbook is for when you're ready to do the work rather than just read about it. And the co-parenting playbook, which I wrote with Jill Kaufman, is for raising kids well across two houses. And if you'd rather talk it through with me directly, book a free 30 minute consultation at www.reclaimandreboot.me. Bring the things you're stuck on, and we'll help you find your next move. David's book is a divorced dad's playbook for the still married, and it's out October 27th and available at www.a divorced dadsbook. playbook.com as well as Amazon.com and you can pre-order it today. David, thanks so much. A lifetime ago we were splitting rents in New York City and neither of us saw this conversation coming. I'm so glad we got to have it and I'm so glad you were able to write it down to help other people. David Levin: Thanks for having me on. It feels like you're still just down the hall and we haven't grown at all, but hopefully we have and hopefully this was helpful. I really enjoyed talking with you. Justin Milrad: That's the show. If this was useful, send it to the person you thought of while you were listening. You know exactly who it is. And if you've got 30 seconds, follow the show, hit like, and leave a quick review. It sounds small, but it's how the show reaches the people who need it most. The ones sitting in the driveway, not quite ready to walk inside. I'm Justin Milrad This is a conscious divorce podcast and I'll see you next time.