right.

These are going to be the things that no one warns you about after

divorce, and that's just not me, right?

I'm Sam, and I give you the ugly truth.

So let's get into it.

Everyone thinks that once their divorce is final, life will become calm.

Attorneys tell you, "Sam, after the ink dries, all the problems

go away, and you'll find a way to get along with your ex."

But if you're dealing with a high-conflict co-parent, that is usually when

everything really starts to become a challenge is you went into it with

the falsehood of thinking that the divorce is final, the problems stop,

and then you're slapped with reality, and it's just not that way, right?

And so we have to make sure that we see all these things coming up, that this is

your bingo card for post-divorce life.

These are going to be the things that I want to tell you about so

that they're not a shock for you, and we're gonna break down seven.

Okay?

So number one, the conflict doesn't just end.

Court orders don't change behaviors.

They really, really don't.

High-conflict people don't suddenly bump their head and all

of a sudden decide to cooperate.

You may still deal with the same patterns, the same problems,

just in two separate homes.

But all the problems of your marriage still exist: the lack of

respect, the miscommunications, the laziness, the resentment.

It's all there.

It's just now in two separate homes.

And I think for a lot of us, when we leave a marriage or we leave our spouse,

we're from this mindset of like, " I wanna be away from the arguments.

I wanna be away from the fighting.

I wanna be away from them." And with a lot of the ways your parenting plans

are written by Larry the lawyer, you're still in that conflict because that

parenting plan doesn't protect you.

It allows them to still get ahold of you whenever they want with communication.

It allows them to still micromanage your home from afar.

And so a lot of this can be fixed in a parenting plan, but the conflict

doesn't just dissolve into thin air.

I wish it did, but it does not, right?

Number two, the parenting plan gets tested immediately.

Mine, it took about four months.

For you guys, it could be the next day.

It could be the same day.

So this is really bad if your parenting plan is written with gray

area, vagueness, loopholes, all of that because it will be exposed.

Vague language will create conflict immediately.

You'll think it means something, their ex will think it means something else,

and then now what are we left to do?

Either call Larry back, our lawyer, or we're gonna allow our ex to

have their way, or we argue, and the only person that wins there is

the high-conflict person because now your kids are being affected.

So examples of immediate usage is you're gonna immediately use your parenting

plan to talk about holidays- Probably exchanges, but more commonly, your

communication rules or decision-making.

Those will pop up within days, if not weeks, of your

parenting plan being finalized.

And so it's really important for you to go watch that master class that I teach.

It's three hours long, $127.

A workbook comes with it.

It is so valuable to not only get education with, but a perspective

of what will be the problem areas.

Let's make sure we nail down as many of those as we possibly can

inside of our parenting plan.

So the parenting plan will be used immediately.

Be prepared to understand it, to use it, to follow it, and I hope that it's good.

If my team wrote it, it's pretty stellar.

Number three, to-- that you will still have to interact with your ex. And again,

I think this is a misconception where a lot of people think, "Okay, we're split.

We're no longer in the same home.

We're divorced.

It's done.

I don't talk to you." Well, that's not necessarily true, okay?

You still will have to discuss some things, emergencies with health,

emergencies with transportation, and anything not mentioned in your parenting

plan So if your parenting plan is written vaguely, you will have to engage

with your ex because you will err on the side of caution because you're a

rule follower, and you'll simply say things like, " Well, I don't wanna

do that without their permission.

Well, I don't know that I can do that, so I'm gonna ask them.

I don't know if I, should do that." And so there's a lot of things that'll come

up that aren't mentioned in your parenting plan because it was written poorly

that you will then have to go engage.

And we all know what happens when we engage with our ex.

High conflict just automatically ensues.

And so these are occasions where parenting plan is vital, but you will

be interacting with your ex at school functions, at extracurricular functions,

maybe at doctor's appointments.

But there will be things like scheduling swaps that will pop up.

So you don't fully get to separate from your ex. and here's where

high-conflict people are one of two ways.

Either, one, they ice you out, ghost you, and they act like you don't exist,

and they never respond back to you.

Okay, well, that's not gonna work because our parenting plan isn't

written to where we can do that.

And number two, they'll over-insert themselves into absolutely everything.

Now, my, hope and wish and prayer for you is that there's a compromise

of happy medium, you know, where we only talk about what we have to talk

about, and we don't really hang out any other time than when we absolutely

have to and discuss what we have to.

But usually in high-conflict dynamics, you're dealing with the ghoster or you're

dealing with the person that's gonna just come for you about every little thing.

I used to joke that my ex-husband would come for me if I crossed the

street wrong in the wrong socks.

That wasn't really a joke.

There's not a lot of sarcasm there.

That's the truth.

And if you know, you know.

So divorce doesn't remove your ex. It just restructures it with how you deal with it.

Okay?

So it's, it will still be there.

Again, these are the things I wish people would've told me, that divorce wasn't

like a cut and dry, poof, they're gone.

They're still there, especially if that parenting plan's written poorly.

Number four, emotional triggers, they don't disappear overnight.

So you may still feel your anger, your frustrations, or your anxiety, and certain

messages and situations will trigger the living shit out of you So it's important

that you get on your healing journey immediately when this divorce is final.

Now, people ask me all the time, "Sam, can I work on my healing

journey during?" Well, it depends.

I mean, if your divorce is going pretty fast, then, you know, I'd

probably wait till we were done.

But if it's going pretty slow, then yeah, I'm gonna probably have to

start my healing journey because if your divorce is dragging on and on

and on, here's what I'm gonna tell you, one of two things is happening.

Either you're not healed and you're trying to emotionally attack this

person still, and it's costing you money because attorneys are allowing you to,

and if you know that that's you, you need to start on your healing journey.

Or you just have somebody like an attorney that's taking advantage

that they know you're not healed, and they know that they can take

advantage of you and drag this out.

So either you're causing it or an attorney's causing it, but you need

to start your healing journey if it's dragging on and on and on, or

your ex is using it to come for you because they're obviously not healed.

But you have to try to heal yourself so that those emotional

triggers dissipate over time.

You know, I think now if I took who I am now today in 2026 and

put her back in 2008 Good lord.

You know?

Like, I would've cut down on 80, if not 90% of the high-conflict

shit that was going on because I just wouldn't stand for it.

I have hindsight.

I pick my battles better.

I know what hills to die on.

I know what hills to let go of.

I'd not give a shit.

I'd have boundaries.

I would have self-love.

I'd have self-assurance.

I wouldn't give a fuck.

Like, "Who's that?

Who this?

I don't care.

I don't know.

Don't wanna know." Like, there would be such a different perspective because I'm

healed, and I'm away from all of that, and I have the hindsight and the perspective

and the tools and the abilities, and I wish more of us knew those in the process.

I wish more of us knew those immediately as soon as the divorce was over so that

that trauma and drama and abuse doesn't keep happening into co-parenting.

Okay?

But the emotional triggers will be there unless you heal them.

So when they start dating, that may trigger you.

Where some of us look at it like, " Perfect.

Distraction.

Love that.

Easier to deal with.

Keep going." It all depends on how you feel about it, so your emotions

are really important to get a hold of.

Number five, that you will still need boundaries, probably more

than you had in the marriage.

Now, we just did a podcast about boundaries, so go

back and listen to that one.

But you have to make sure that you have very strict communication boundaries.

We talked about in that previous episode about having co-parenting hours.

When are you checking your phone?

When are you giving time back to them?

You know, how are you talking to them?

what time of day is appropriate?

Are you following the parenting plan strictly?

Are you not letting them bother you to where, you know, if they show up

to that soccer game, are you losing your mind because they brought

their mom or a significant other?

Or are you just like, "Whatever. they came and supported the child.

Good." How are you handling that?

And so really needing to understand that boundaries with you, that

if you know something bothers you, then maybe you don't go.

If you know something… reading something late at night bothers

you, then maybe you don't read that.

I was a big one that if I opened the snail mail that came about the divorce,

because again, my divorce was a long, long time ago, but if those manila

envelopes arrived in my mailbox, I was not disciplined to have a boundary to not open

it, and then I would, and then I would spiral, and then I'm not showing up for

myself or my children in the right way.

I didn't have a boundary.

I had to learn a boundary.

I had to learn the boundary that I couldn't tell him to

stop, you know, bad-mouthing me.

That doesn't work.

I'd have to say, "If you keep bad-mouthing me, I'm gonna remove myself. I'm not gonna

tolerate. I'm not gonna help you." Right?

But I kept putting boundaries on him, and so there's a whole episode

on how to have better boundaries with your ex in the situation.

But the boundaries are something that you do, not something

we force upon the other side.

Number six Your kids still need support navigating two homes.

And I think a lot of people who don't understand high conflict or a lot of

people don't understand the dynamics of divorce think the kids will be fine.

And you know what?

I will say in the majority of the situations, kids will be fine.

But that's if you give them the tools to survive their life.

It's not every day that a kid is okay with having two bedrooms and two

different pillows and two different comfort sets and two different beds.

That could be very uncomfortable to their body physically.

Not to mention, is there a nightlight or not a nightlight?

Not to mention, do they take a shower at one house before bed and not the other?

Do they go to bed dirty?

Do they go to bed brushing their teeth at one house and not the other?

There's so many different things, and so helping your child navigate that

there's differences between the home.

And I just gave examples of physical.

We don't even have time to get into all the psychological and emotional

differences between the two home.

But you are gonna have to help your child with the navigation of transitions.

That mom isn't at this house, and dad isn't at this house,

and how does that look?

That there's maybe different rules.

A big tagline that I said a lot with my kids is, you know, there'd be

ruckus and loudness, and maybe somebody yelled, and maybe somebody hit somebody,

maybe somebody dropped something.

But I would say, "Hey, you're okay.

But remember, if you do that at the other house, you're probably gonna get scolded.

So let's be more careful, but look where you're at." 'Cause sometimes I even

had to tell my kids, "Hey, it's okay.

Look where your feet are.

That's okay.

It's okay that you dropped something.

It's okay that you spilled something." If my kids were to spill something or make

a mess at my house, they'd be frantic.

Like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." I'm like, " It took me a

long time to figure this out Like you didn't intentionally do it, correct?

No.

Then what the hell's the big deal?

But it was the way the other household was being ran.

And so that was an eye-opener to me of how emotionally dysregulated they

felt under that environment and then how they felt at my house, right?

And it wasn't always rainbows and unicorns at my house.

I had to learn that, wow, we are parenting different.

We have different rules.

We have different expectations.

And I struggle with that a little bit as an adult.

I can't imagine a child.

But there is the hindsight of this, you know?

And the counter to this is, is I will tell you is I want you to think about your

child going to school every single day.

And every day your child has the bus ladies that let them on and off the bus

and direct them up the sidewalk, then they have a classroom teacher, and then

they have cafeteria people, and then they have their art teacher, and they

have their PE teacher, and they have their librarian, and maybe they have a

different substitute on a different day.

And guess what?

Your kid does fine, right?

Your kid does fine kind of changing who they show up as in

the library versus the PE room.

And so your kid will adapt and will learn that people are different.

And I will say this, here's where I think kids struggle.

It's okay for a kid to go from PE teacher to classroom teacher, out to recess, into

the cafeteria, and they're around all these different adults who have different

rules and different expectations, and they adapt, and they adapt, and they adapt.

And there's a difference between going from mom to dad, mom to dad,

and they don't sometimes adapt.

And here's the things that are different, ' cause it's a great

analogy that we hope is true and works.

But with school, it's consistent, and there's not a strong emotional

attachment to those teachers.

Sometimes there is But it's consistent.

That teacher's always like that.

That teacher's always like that.

At the houses, you may get a version of mom one day that you don't get

for three more days, and the same thing could be true at dad's house.

He's different every time.

And so there's emotional instability maybe from home to home when parents don't know

what they're doing yet as a single parent.

They haven't quite figured it out yet.

And so kids struggle with that inconsistencies, and some kids will

take advantage of that and start manipulating the system, right?

Just like kids do sometimes with a substitute teacher.

Well, we don't normally have to do that.

No, we, we totally get to work together on those things.

You know, they manipulate when they know they can.

And so it's hard for kids to navigate two homes when they're not consistent homes.

So consistency is a real big push here when you're starting

out as a single parent.

Who are you?

What's your bedtime routine?

What's the morning wake up?

When do we listen to music?

How do we play?

am I allowed to be loud?

Can I run in this house?

What… Can I holler?

You know, like, what are the things that are you now that you're on

your own as a single parent, right?

You get to navigate now being on your own.

So kids don't experience the divorce as a date.

They experience when the lifestyle changes, that we're never in

the same house anymore together.

We're in two separate homes, and what does that feel like?

It needs to be conversations.

We have to talk to our kids about this.

There are tons of books about this as well that you can get on Amazon, and help

and start reading to your kids books.

And I have a little inside scoop that I know an author that's writing a bunch

of books about high-conflict divorce.

So stay tuned.

Make sure you're liking and subscribing so you guys are some of the first

people to get a hold of those books.

You have to build your own sense of stability, and we talked

about this a little bit here and there in previous episodes.

But I will say Once you get yourself figured out and you have a strong sense

of who you are, all of a sudden your home becomes this anchor to your children.

Once they know that your house is picked up, there's a routine, they can always

rely upon their iPad being charged, the snacks are in there, there's always

toilet paper on the roll, the nightlight's always on, and they become so comfortable

that they know your house is the anchor.

But what starts that is you as the parent.

You are anchored.

You have your bookends every day.

You start your day for you, you end your day for you, and nobody else.

You're a little selfish in the morning, and you're a little selfish

at night, but you make your life about you first thing and last thing.

But in between those two bookends, it's about your job, it's about your

kid, it's about providing, and your kid feels that and understands that.

So you have to have a routine.

So all of you out there that have a messy home, and it's cluttered, and you're like,

"Well, I'm a type B, Sam," you can be a type B with a picked-up house, a clean

house, a house that has function, right?

We can't have kids growing up in chaos and clutter and shit

everywhere and disorganization.

We need to have a picked-up house.

Now, I'm not saying spotless.

I'm not saying that at all.

You can walk out in my house right now, it's not spotless, but it's picked up.

It feels warm.

It's comfortable.

It's livable.

So your kids need you to be stable first so that they have a stable

place to come with stable people.

And this was the biggest one that was a game changer for me.

I thought, well, you know, I'm providing this, I'm providing that, I'm

providing… But I was like frantic.

My nervous system was shot And I was trying to control both homes.

"Well, if he would just do this, things would get better. If he would just

do this, things would get better."

Whoa, sister, how about you get your own shit under control first before you ever

start looking at somebody else's house?

And I thought I did, but it wasn't under control because I wasn't.

I was frantic.

I was disheveled.

I was walking on eggshells around myself, right?

You have to make sure your house, when they walk in, their shoulders

drop, their heart rate slows down.

They're comfortable.

They feel okay to go get a snack.

They feel comfortable taking their shoes off and laying on the couch.

They know they can walk into your bedroom and ask you a question.

How comfortable are your kids will be based on how comfortable are you?

I see this all the time in public.

I see frantic kids, frantic kids, kids that are misbehaving in public,

kids that are throwing fits and tantrums and just escalating things.

And then I watch to see where they walk, and I watch to see what

group of parent they go up to.

And without fail, I can tell that that parent is dysregulated, tense,

maybe borderline abusive at home, overly just running their mouth too

much, screaming and hollering because of how dysregulated that child is,

because that parent's dysregulated.

And I know it's all the rave right now to talk about, you know, regulation,

but it matters on how your kid feels and acts So you have to get yourself…

So if you're somebody like, "Sam, I, I, I'm, I'm anxious. I have anxiety."

Okay, well, what are we doing about that?

What are we doing about that?

Are we finding ways to calm ourselves?

Are we finding ways to get ahold of the anxiety?

What are the triggers?

Start there.

What are the triggers to your anxiety?

And you're gonna say, "Oh, it's my ex, and I can't get rid of them." No, but you

can learn how to better deal with them.

You can learn workarounds.

You can learn boundaries.

We can teach you a whole bunch of things.

But what we can't do is keep showing up dysregulated to our children, 'cause

that's not working, because now my kid's going to school dysregulated and

acting like a fool, and then they're calling saying, "Hey, why is your kid

bouncing off the walls? Why isn't your kid listening? Why does your kid seem

like he's just screaming at everybody?"

Oh, it's because I'm screaming at home.

I watch this all the time out in public.

Kid just acting a fool.

We were at a restaurant.

A kid was standing on a windowsill at a restaurant, and then I looked over to see

where that kid walked to, and he walked over to parents that were both on their

phones not paying a lick of attention.

And then when they finally looked up and the kid was doing something,

they screamed at this child.

And it's like, well, maybe if you'd be a little bit more regulated and

involved and paying attention and a little bit calmer, that kid wouldn't

be out looking for attention standing on a windowsill in a restaurant.

So I think it all comes down to how you are is how your kids will show up.

But some of you all are dealing with heavy transitions from a house

of dysregulation, and so your kids are coming back dysregulated, which

sometimes triggers us to be dysregulated.

Then we're like, "Oh, gosh, now I'm upset because my kid came home upset."

And this is a power struggle to where you have to really hone in

to finding your peace so that you can give your kids a home that they

wanna call home and come home to.