*Names have been changed for privacy.
I was upset when Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck split. When Tisha Campbell-Martin and Duane Martin went their separate ways, I literally felt like I didn't want to live in a world where those two couldn't make it. To be honest, I'm still rooting for Channing Tatum to pull Jenna Dewan back. Lately, it seems like people can sign off on a car lease with more commitment than a marriage, and generations before us love to preach that today's young couples don't have a deep understanding of what “till death do us part" actually means.
If I'm convinced of anything, it's that any good marriage is built on a solid foundation. So when I recently touched base with an old friend named *Brian, I wasn't all that surprised to hear that after telling the world how he handled a heartbreak that went on to become a marriage, he was now dealing with an impending divorce.
The last time I bumped into Brian was in Fall of 2015 when he told me he had recently married his college sweetheart after years of making and breaking up.
The couple now had a five-year-old daughter, but the longest "break" they endured occurred during the first few years of her life. During that time, Brian had ended the relationship over living arrangements that included feeling disrespected by his then-girlfriend's dog and just generally being too immature for a serious relationship. After moving halfway across the country, he made several attempts to heal that included having sex with someone new just days after the break-up and throwing himself into work to try and get through the heartbreak. Ironically, his plan for getting past the pain was interrupted a few months later when family and friends living a few states away in his hometown dropped the bomb on him that his ex was expecting his child (turns out, she wanted the whole world to know before he did).
Finding himself almost smack in the middle of new fatherhood, Brian made the decision to move back home and try to build a life with his ex for the sake of their family.
I've always gotten the impression from Brian that many of his relationships included the tug-of-war of making and breaking up and that many of his relationships didn't really form over falling in love with anyone, but more so from the fear of being alone. Last year, more than being excited over finding the person he would spend the rest of his life with, I suspected he was using marriage as a way settle the drama that can sometimes come with a challenging co-parenting situation. Recently, he revealed that he knew the marriage was over pretty much before it began:
“I knew it probably wouldn't last when I asked her to marry me. I was trying to be the good guy. I wanted it to work for the child."
Not even a year later, Brian now admits that it's not working and recently filed for legal separation. Brian's story is proof that if dealing with heartbreak isn't hard enough for men, then divorce isn't any easier.
Even though your ex might be getting down in several girls' DMs or losing his life savings in Magic City to ease the pain after a break-up, dealing with a divorce tends to make things a little more complicated. Untangling assets, establishing spousal and child support, and a number of other things might just have your ex-husband too busy to worry about which chick he wants to hit up next to help ease his pain. A 2013 Huffington post article broke down exactly how harmful a divorce can be for men not only mentally, but physically as well. A Journal of Men's Health study revealed divorced men are more susceptible to heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke and 39 percent more likely to engage in risky behavior or commit suicide.
So for all of you renewing your membership in the National Creep Squad Association, even science says that being happily married is good for your health.
YourTango relationship expert, Cecil Wong explains that in some ways men deal with divorce much like they deal with break-ups: By avoiding their feelings and diving headfirst into unhealthy behaviors. He warns, a sudden Hennessy and strip club binge might just be covering up a bout of depression and a need to prove that just because his marriage fell apart doesn't mean his whole life has to:
"In general, men seem to focus on externals (no surprise there): financial and legal matters. Many seem to quickly find new partners or simply resolve to not get too close ever again. Seems like there's a lack of attention to what goes on the inside and the result is blindly going into another relationship with all the same baggage or just continue living with a fear of intimacy. In a way, it's another example of guys always wanting to fix things. Jumping into another relationship or avoiding them altogether are quick fixes which occur when we are either ignore or avoid the inner life."
Wong says that unlike women who will bond and get honest about the pain they're going through which helps the healing process, men tend to bury difficult feelings or hope that work or other women will distract them.
So what went wrong in just a few months and just how is Brian dealing with divorce? Brian sheds some light below on how he's coping:
1. Who was the first to realize it was over what do you think went wrong?
"We had so much miscommunication, for the most part about finances. Checks were bouncing for bills she was supposed to be paying. When I wanted to sit and works things out, she wasn't straight with me. It was like she was too proud to ask for help. She'd rather have an eviction notice on our door than admit she was struggling with money and it always fell on me. I couldn't do it anymore."
2. What's been the hardest part about being separated?
“The hardest part is when your kid keeps asking, 'When are you moving back, Daddy? When are we getting a new house?' It really leaves me at a loss for words because I feel like I can't explain the whole situation. So I'm just like, 'I'm getting a place for us soon.'"
3. How is getting a divorce different from any other break-up?
"There's more people involved when you get a divorce: lawyers, family, children. It's not as easy to make a clean break because so many people are affected. And once the law gets involved in your relationship, it's not as easy as just deleting a number from your phone or taking down some Instagram pics. Shit gets real."
4. What have you learned from your situation and what do you think you should change about yourself, if anything?
“I think there's someone out there for me, but I don't think I need to change anything about myself and I know what I want for my next relationship. This one just wasn't right for me. I wish I had figured that out before having kids, but I know next time to trust my gut. The first break-up was probably a foreshadowing of things to come."
Looks like when it comes to dealing with divorce, being “in our feelings" continues to keep women better off in the long run, even if the only thing we're cuddling up with is a carton of Butter Pecan while we do some soul-searching. One thing I've learned from Brian's experience is that although love isn't everything in a relationship, it's pretty important. And if it isn't one of the main reasons you want to spend your rest of your life with someone, you're doing yourself and maybe even your kids a huge disservice in the long run.
Have you ever been divorced or dealt with a break-up? How did you deal and what are some important lessons you learned during your soul-searching?
Featured image by Shutterstock
- Men Dealing with Divorce - It Sucks - YouTube ›
- Men After Divorce: In Touch With Feelings - ABC News ›
- 7 Stages Of Grief For Divorced Men | Cordell & Cordell ›
- How Men Can Move on After Divorce | PairedLife ›
- Emotional Devastation: The Roadblock to Moving On ›
- Stages of Divorce Recovery for Men Article Series ›
- For Men: Mourning the Divorce? ›
- How do men really cope after divorce? ›
- Dating After Divorce: How Men & Women Cope | YourTango ›
- 3 Reasons Divorce Is Harder On Men Than Women | HuffPost ›
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Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and Skylar
Cj Hart @hartbreak
Today, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak