Forget the Drama, Avoid the Trauma: Your How-To (and How-not-to) Guide to Divorce

By Robin C. DesCamp

In this “Divorce-How-To/How-Not-To,” the reader discovers that as much as they may feel alone, they are experiencing the same indignities as many others. The author’s own metamorphosis from a panicked “ex,” to a person who successfully reinvented herself, provides an uplifting and damn funny flip side to a book also

• Language: English
• Publisher: Central Park South Publishing
• Release date: Jan 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781087856964

Robin C. DesCamp

Robin DesCamp graduated from the University of Oregon with a BA in Political Science and earned her law degree from Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College. As a family law attorney, she has researched and written extensively on the topic of divorce law. Her advice column, which tackles a myriad of migraine-inducing problems in the current system, formed the basis for this book.

Book preview

Forget the Drama, Avoid the Trauma, by Robin DesCamp

Advance Praise

"Robin DesCamp writes about your life, our lives, with the insight of a close friend.

"Avoid the Drama is a journey with a seasoned storyteller; through the gut wrenching pain of loss, the author manages to find humor, wisdom, and even inspiration.

It’s a lot to ask for a book about divorce, but DesCamp delivers.

—Chip Franklin, 2004 winner of the National Edward R Murrow award for writing, KGO radio talk host, San Francisco, Author of Conflict; The Power of Story

Robin DesCamp wants you to achieve what seems impossible: Keeping your head and staying civil while going through the emotional meatgrinder of a divorce. But with her lucid writing style and insider experience, she makes a convincing case that you’ll come out much better if you follow her advice.

—Tony Ortega, former editor in chief of the Village Voice, author of ‘The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper’

In a world of the very bland, Robin DesCamp has voice, passion and humor. Enjoy the ride.

—Tom Hallman Jr., 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing

Imagine, a divorce lawyer who wants to do the right thing!! I can’t recommend this terrific and insightful writer highly enough.

—Jack Ohman, 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning

People hire divorce lawyers to separate from their spouses and end up separated from their sanity. DesCamp, however, offers a practical and humane approach to representing her clients. Here she shares advice to divorcing couples, laced with an inimitable wit, making this book an enjoyable read even for the happily married.

–Dean N. Alterman, attorney

Forget the Drama, Avoid the Trauma, by Robin DesCampForget the Drama, Avoid the Trauma, by Robin DesCamp

Forget the Drama, Avoid the Trauma:

Your How-To and How-Not-To Guide to Divorce

© 2019 Robin DesCamp

First Edition

Print ISBN 978-0-578-51351-5

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

For Sprout, a.k.a. Jake, Jakie, Chickenbutt, and When are You Going to Clean Your Goddamn Room?

You are the reason I am still here. There is no mother on Earth prouder of a son than I am of you. Thank you for listening, talking, and encouraging me when I wanted to give up. Wise beyond your years, and always so strong, you drive me to be a better person. I am honored to be your mom. This book is for you.

Contents

Advance Praise

Half Title Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

CHAPTER ONE: The Genesis of This Book

CHAPTER TWO: The Divorce Process from Start to Finish

CHAPTER THREE: Choosing Your Lawyer: Beware the Pit Bull!

CHAPTER FOUR: Beyond Rejection of the Pit Bull:The Importance of Researching Potential Counsel and How to Do It.

CHAPTER FIVE: You’ve Hired Your Attorney, Now Do Your Job: Managing Your Attorney Fees

CHAPTER SIX: Top Four Ways to Screw Up Your Kids

CHAPTER SEVEN: Co-Parenting Done Right

CHAPTER EIGHT: Forgiveness: Divine or Impossible?

CHAPTER NINE: Flexibility and Structure Are Not Incompatible

CHAPTER TEN: Be Friendly (It Won’t Kill You)

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Do as I Say (Not as I Did)

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About The Author

Prologue

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

—Henry David Thoreau

He cowered like a coward in the camellias, scooting backward into the bushes as I came into view, like Sean Spicer used to do when avoiding reporters during a difficult news cycle. So, it’s come to this, I sighed, and cursed silently as both my dogs approached the man who used to raise them with me, but had now moved on to the ugly mutt next door. How in the world did I get here?

How, indeed? How did I get to a place where I was divorced for a second time, something I swore I would never allow to happen? How did I get to a place where I found myself, unbelievably, living immediately next door to my second husband and his new girlfriend and just months after he ended our marriage? To a place where my ex, rather than risk an encounter with me, had taken to hiding in the flower gardens? In the camellias, no less!

How did I get to a place where my son, having lived with the stranger next door for ten years, now had to worry about running into the man he used to call his stepfather, a man now shacking up with the aunt of a good friend of his? How did I get to a place where even my two dogs expressed unease and confusion, when they heard my former husband’s car and voice next door, or saw him walking on the street? He never used to walk us, I could imagine them grumbling, as they wondered how they’d been so easily replaced by another four-legged furry friend.

The question is: how did I get here? And just as importantly: how did you?

I’ve wandered off, please do pardon me. Let’s go backward a bit, shall we?

This book is a long time coming. What I mean by that besides, the world needs this information, is, it took me a long time to write it to completion. I stalled and I procrastinated, and even as I felt it was good, I never believed it was my best. It was missing something but I couldn’t put my finger on what that was.

My managers, readers, family, and friends couldn’t understand the weeks and months that passed without my finishing a final draft, and neither could I. While I’d regularly knocked out over 1,000 words a day for an advice blog I wrote, I just couldn’t finish this damn thing. For perspective, the average book length is 64,000 words, meaning I should have been able to finish this work in 64 days.

But I didn’t.

And then the unthinkable happened: right in the middle of drafting this treatise on divorce, my second husband announced he’d rather not be married to me anymore.

As he was making his announcement, he was very polite about it, stating the various and sundry aspects of my personality that he, his children, and his friends found distasteful. Yes, we had been planning on attending marriage counseling to deal with a few persistent issues that kept coming up. Issues concerning our different approaches to step parenting and our blended family had gnawed at our relationship for years. But before we had even begun, he changed his mind. Why? From what I could understand, it seems the final straw was my anger and dismay at being told my son was unwelcome at my stepson’s wedding rehearsal dinner. A wedding rehearsal dinner we were paying for.

Sorry, it’s for close family and members of the wedding party only, I was blithely informed by the bride, a young woman I had known, loved, and supported in various ways for years. And thus, when I registered a healthy amount of pique at the exclusion of my son, my husband responded, That’s crazy. I suppose you think he should be a member of the wedding party, too?

Well, yeah. God forbid the kid could mind the guest book or something…he’d only known these people for ten years.

Regardless, as it turns out, Mr. Patience and Understanding, as I’d nicknamed my husband in the aforementioned advice blog, was clearly no longer either patient or understanding. Perhaps he never had been. Perhaps I had subconsciously named him that with a certain irony. I like the idea of a sly insult that unintentionally began as a compliment, so let’s go with that.

As I stood witnessing the sudden death of my marriage, I was, in a word: stunned. Gobsmacked. Apoplectic. Aghast. Oh, that’s four words…sorry.

After I picked myself up from the floor, which took some time, I had a decidedly self-serving epiphany: this was supposed to happen.

This event had been in the making for the entirety of the time it took me to write the original draft, and for years before. When I began this book, I did not know that its completion would require the shattering, and eventual rebuilding, of my heart, ego, and family. I didn’t know that in order to end the book, my marriage would have to end. My second divorce, as terrible and painful as it was, also provided me with exactly what I needed to complete this how-to (and how-not-to) volume to the highest standard.

He cowered like a coward in the camellias.…

As you can see, I’m very good at denial and rationalization. When you are faced with the shock of a seemingly sudden split from your spouse, you have to be. The initial grief is too much to handle without healthy doses of denial and rationalization, not to mention vodka, Kleenex®, and Netflix®.

So, what was the problem with the original book? Over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that it didn’t reflect the requisite amount of pain. I am generally regarded as being many things, including an occasional pain in the ass, but certainly as someone who shares my own experiences in order to elevate my writing and my connection to readers. This tendency towards too much information, or TMI, has been praised by many and hated by some, but it’s something I can’t help. I believe when people can relate to a writer and realize they have both shared the same struggles, the writer’s words carry more impact. Plus, I’ve done some really dumb stuff in my life, and it’s quite entertaining to read about.

At the time of Mr. Patience and Understanding’s announcement, the book did contain a number of stories about my divorce from my first husband. However, I had glossed over the pain in those tellings, mainly because I didn’t remember it well enough. Rereading old pages now, my voice sounded casual and a bit condescending to the reader, as if I were lecturing them: Look at me! I did this perfectly and with nary a whit of trouble. You can too—and you must!

He cowered like a coward in the camellias.…

While I’m sure that my first marital split did not generate the severe depression and anxiety of my second, I believe that over time, if we are happy and healthy human beings, we forget the pain of losing love. If we didn’t, we could never love again. A sharp memory, it would seem, is the enemy of happiness. After all, if women could accurately call up the agony of childbirth, there would be nothing but only children running around (or twins, I suppose) and the same holds true for romantic love. This is why everyone says, when they’re facing divorce, I am NEVER getting married again! Everyone says it. And yet so many of us go ahead and give it another try. People like me, who approach a second marriage with the irrational optimism that belies experience.

But I can tell you now, after two failed marriages in my rear-view mirror: I am NEVER getting married again!

Probably.

Love that breaks you apart, and renders you an incoherent, sobbing, wreck, hardly portends well as a recommendation for trying the whole thing again. We don’t immediately return to the darkly-lit restaurant that served us food with a slightly-off odor, resulting in a subsequent trip to the ER with food poisoning. No, we drive by that place and for some time, remember the agony of the diarrhea, vomiting nightmare, and we say, We will never eat there again! But eat there again we do, after a new owner comes in, changes the menu and the décor, promises better things, and we find ourselves drawn back to the lure of delicious tasty tapas that don’t either kill us, or render us severely incapacitated for some time.

Side note: I got a horrible case of food poisoning on my honeymoon with Mr. Patience and Understanding, and ended up in the hospital. Coincidence, or foreshadowing? It hardly matters now.

We human beings are either tremendously optimistic, stupid, forgetful, or a healthy combination of all three. So, we try love again, and sometimes, as in my case, it again fails.

He cowered like a coward in the camellias.…

I journaled during the process of my second divorce, and two weeks after my husband left, I wrote this:

Today, I cannot imagine ever kissing anyone else, or going on a date, or being happy. I cannot eat. I rarely sleep. But yesterday, there was a glimmer of hope between 2:15 and 2:28 AM during which I thought that someday, I might be OK. Not tomorrow. Not next month. Maybe, not even this year. But someday, I will be OK. —July 4th, 2016

In the time since I wrote those words, I have moved three times, started my own successful business, wound down my blog (for explanation, see: started my own business), lost a few people I thought were my friends, found many others who were angels to me and my son in our hardest times, shed 20 pounds, regained most of it, represented myself handily against a divorce litigator who had been practicing for over 30 years, purged my life of everything but the essentials (you never know when you might need to move in a rush again), bought a Vespa, had the best sex of my life, had the worst sex of my life, and finished this damn book. I can prove it: you’re reading it right now!

I’ve conquered some of the most evil divorce lawyers in my state, both in the courtroom and the court of public opinion, and I’ve been a voice for the victims of their reprehensible methods. I’ve taken on the worst of the worst unethical divorce lawyers when nobody else would stand up for what was right, because they fear these ultimately weak and worthless paper dragons.

Most important is this, the one thing that will always make me most proud: I have raised a fine young gentleman: my 18-year-old love and light who is affectionate, respectful, kind, brilliant, and funny. He’s also a bit of a grumpy twit at times, but hey—he’s a teenager.

As a prologue is meant to be a preliminary discourse of a larger work, I’ll try to wrap this up. No sense in giving it all away on the first date, right? I will, however, leave you with this spoiler: what you will take away from this book is not only technical advice on protecting yourself during the divorce process, but also a set of personal stories, either my own or those from people who have contributed theirs, that give this book a living, breathing presence others cannot offer. Divorce for Dummies, isn’t going to tell you about dumb moves by dummies, but I will, including my own. I will, among other things, pick up with the conversation I began the day I found my soon-to be-ex-husband cowering in the camellias.…

And so, dear Reader, as you ponder the last few words of the prologue of my book—a book that was written to help both of us find peace—I welcome you to the unhappy beginning of my journey, and the happy end at which I finally found myself. As I type these words, I know this:

We are all born into this world alone, and alone we will make our final journey out of it. How we cope and recover from the pains we cause each other, or ourselves, will be an indication of how enjoyable our fleeting time on this