If you’re a mom going through a divorce, it’s pretty unlikely that you’re able to completely cut ties with your soon to be ex-spouse. It can be a real challenge to figure out what your new relationship should look like as you move forward through the divorce process. With emotions running high and feeling overwhelmed with so many decisions to make, it’s completely normal for you to be questioning what behaviors and interactions are appropriate.

The truth is that if you don’t set new boundaries within your relationship, not only can your post-married life be more stressful, but your divorce process can also drag on because you’re stuck in those old habits of how to interact with one another. It’s not easy to ignore all the verbal and non-verbal cues that you’ve grown accustomed to during your marriage, and it’s impossible to erase years of memories.

However, the whole point of the divorce process is to work together to solve the real world problems of separating your financial lives, creating coparenting plans, and moving forward with your new life. So, what can you do?

The CoWorker Rule

When you’re going through your divorce, you’re really starting to see that continuing to treat your soon to be ex-spouse in the same ways that you did when you were married is not serving you, and possibly not serving your children, as well. You still need to interact to make mutually agreeable decisions and to coparent your children as you move forward. This is a great time to put the CoWorker Rule into action.

Treat your soon to be ex-spouse the same way you’d treat a coworker.

Nope, you don’t hurl uncontrolled anger at your coworker. You don’t overshare intimate details about your life with your coworker. You don’t engage in reaction-seeking behaviors or needlessly make your coworker angry.

You do act like a professional who remains calm and composed. Ask yourself if what you’d like to say or do is something you’d say or do to a coworker. If the answer is no, then it’s unlikely that you should say or do that to your soon to be ex-spouse.

By exercising restraint, you’ll be ale to keep personal conflicts minimized while focusing your energy on productive decision making and on maintaining a healthy co-parenting relationship as you move ahead.

This is an extremely powerful too for you to use through your divorce process and in your post-married life. If you’re having troubles putting this into action and you’d like some support to get you feeling more confident, I’d love to get a on a free strategy call with you. Click here to schedule your free call.