It took 33 minutes. They are now divorced.

 sSara 00:43

They are actually divorced. Wow. Okay. So no, that’s, they must have had a great prenup, I’m sure. So what’s interesting about them is not, it’s not just a lot of the celebrity factor, but it’s this bigger idea of a couple coming together, building a life plan together, building a life vision together. And we’ve talked about vision building and marriage and partnership on the show.

sShawna 00:47

That doesn’t happen.

sSara 01:12

And it’s such a beautiful thing. And it, so many of our clients actually face or dealing with what they’re going through or what they were going through, which is, okay, I am going to build this business. You support me. You take care of the kids while I’m building the business. And then when the business gets to this point, I’ll retire. We’ll travel the world together with the kids or something like I’m going to go off to medical school.

Why don’t you work a job while I go through medical school? You support me through medical school and then when I get out, you you can take it more easy and I’ll be a doctor. I there are so many different ways these family visions are built. These plans are built, which we don’t know for sure. We’re imagining that there was a conversation at some point between Tom Brady and Gisele where they built a life plan together.

I’m going to be in the NFL for this long and then I’m going to get this many wins and then I’m going to retire and I’m going to take it easy and I’m going to be with you and the kids and we’re going to travel the world. Just making all that up. But it’s for the purpose of this conversation. Somewhere along the line, somebody defects on that plan. They either stop taking care of the kids the way they had promised they were going to take care of the kids and they get sidetracked with a side hustle that they’re going to get really into or

They drop out of a school program that they were in when they were supposed to finish that through, or their business sucks out all of their time and they become obsessed with their business and they’re never home. And they even get to the financial point they said that once I get to this point, I’ll back out. And the other person feels slighted, feels, put in, I was sitting with you through this 10 year plan.

I made all these sacrifices because I believed you. I believed our vision. And I showed up. And you didn’t sit through your end of this deal. You defected on the plan. You want to?

sShawna 03:21

There are so many prime examples. Yes. And I’m thinking of a very common one where You have a plan that one person’s going to be the primary breadwinner and the other person is going to stay home with the kids while they’re small. But once they’re in elementary school age or maybe even junior high age, the person who stayed home is supposed to go back into the workforce. And for whatever reason, the person who stayed home has decided that’s not for me.

Maybe they don’t think that the kids can be away from them that long, or maybe they don’t feel like they have the skill set to be back into the workforce. And then the breadwinner is kind of left feeling like, I’m out here alone, right? We had a plan that you were going to help me with these finances, that we were going to build this together. Now what? And this is a very common cause of separation.

sSara 04:11

Or

sShawna 04:17

Is that they have defecting on the plan. There’s always a different idea of what that plan actually was.

sSara 04:26

True.

 That is 100 % true. Is two stories to what the plan was.

sShawna 04:33

Yes. And so in this kind of, in this scenario, right, and we see both sides of it, there’s nothing written down typically. There’s nothing that said this was our plan of action unless they do have a prenuptial agreement, which I strongly recommend. But when they don’t, you know, you don’t sit there and record your conversations with your spouse about what is our future plan. You don’t write them down as you’re probably making them at the beach.

Or you know, some other vacation, you don’t do these things. So you have these ideas in your head. And we all know that even talking about what does that lamp look like, you and I are going to have two different ideas, different meanings to it. So I think for the plan of action, you really need to be very clear with each other. What exactly is this plan of action?

sSara 05:15

Attach different meanings to.

sShawna 05:28

And if one of us wants to change it, what does that look like?

sSara 05:32

How do we make an amendment here? Do we amend this constitution?

sShawna 05:37

How do we amend that? Another one I see is the school, right? I’m going to support you while you go off to school and all of a sudden this person’s graduated and perhaps they have rightfully so drifted apart and they no longer want to be married, but the person has supported them, right? With the idea of now it’s my turn to go to school or perhaps it’s my turn to stay home, you know, and take care of the children while you’re the breadwinner.

sSara 05:56

Yes.

sShawna 06:07

Either scenario there, the person who supported the person going to school is feeling very slighted, almost as if it was a business deal gone wrong.

sSara 06:13

Yes.

So you said something here that’s very important to go for us to dive into, which is they grow apart. Sometimes these plans actually grows the couple apart because as one person’s kind of holding down the fort so that the other person can go and execute on their part, that journey can take them down completely different growth paths. It’s very common with entrepreneurs.

When they are going out to build their business and they’re asking their spouse to make sure you take care of the kids and make sure you’re the one that’s taking care of a steady income while I’m the one making this risk into growing this business, they go through a lot of personal development. And I see this a lot with the personal development world that I’ve engaged with in order to grow Atlanta Divorce Law Group. And the spouse who is going through all that development

To understand how to be a leader, understand how to make sales, understand how to be vulnerable in their marketing, understand more about their own limitations to develop themselves in order to take bigger risks and think bigger and create a vision plan for their business. It’s a massive amount of growth. It’s a massive amount of growth. And it puts this wider and wider gap between where their mindset is and how they’re thinking about the world.

And this lens that they’re seeing the world from now, versus the view of the spouse that’s at home, dealing with day to day things like taking care of the kids, getting the kids to school, feeding the kids, going to the grocery store, while the other spouse is thinking about how the world is my oyster and you know, what else can I achieve? We’re talking about complete separate growth paths. This also happens when one person, especially when they’re in a graduate program like law school.

Or medical school, it is such a bubble to go through those kinds of programs and you are constantly associated with classmates that are understanding how hard you’re working, understanding how scared you are, understanding the late nights that you’re putting in when the spouse is at home living a whole different world. And this also makes you feel like, well, you know, he or she doesn’t understand me anymore. All my classmates do.

And you’re now finding yourself sharing the things that you would typically share with your life partner with the whole nother group, your circle of trust changes, right? And this really grows the couple apart.

sShawna 08:52

How many of your classmates got divorced in the last?

sSara 08:55

It quite a bit. Yeah, same. A bit.

sShawna 08:58

I remember the phenomenon and it was definitely what we’re talking about here is because we have small groups and your small groups would be late at night and you’re up studying and everybody, the camaraderie and the growth together is really one of those very bonding moments. Sara, what’s solution?

sSara 09:20

Think the solution is when you’re on this journey of achieving something and the other person is holding the fort down for you or playing a supportive role to the achievements you’re looking to make. Part of the plan needs to be how do we do the personal development growth together? How do I bring you as much as I can on this journey that I’m going through so that our worlds are not completely separated? And it’s not easy.

It’s hard to tell a spouse who’s taking care of the kids, feeding the kids, and making sure everything else is working to come see the ins and outs of your law school and how many hours you’re putting in. But as much as possible, being aware of this, being aware that the very plan that the two of you have partnered up in can have a huge source of success and joy in the end and this huge achievement for both of you.

But it can also has this massive risk of growing apart because of it. If you’re aware of it, I think you can do more to strategically be ahead of the fact that you can grow apart with this. And I think the spouse that is holding the fork down and playing the supportive role can be more aware of what this other person’s going through in order to make this achievement. And I need to be there for that as well.

That could be really, really huge.

sShawna 10:48

I absolutely agree with you. In the situations where you have one partner who’s staying home and raising a kid and another partner or children and another partner going out and being the breadwinner in those particular situations, I think it’s really important for the person who is staying home to actively involve themselves in the other person’s life outside the home. Their focus isn’t

sSara 11:15

Absolutely.

sShawna 11:18

Always all about children and home, it has to be about that partnership as well.

sSara 11:25

And I’m really interested to have known what was the conversation between Tom and Gisele. Because at the end of the day, this man was not able to change his wiring. That’s what I’m assuming is here. This is a natural born quote unquote killer, right? And he just could not, he could not stop.

Where the dot communication fall apart would be really interesting to know, but we’ll never know.

sShawna 11:59

Never know. And I think it brings up an interesting idea of, I have to change myself to stay in this relationship? And am I willing to?