Episode Details

Best friends for thirty years, leading parallel lives, married within the same stretch and raising kids side by side. Thirteen years in, both of them found out their husbands were cheating, covering for each other, and traveling with their girlfriends. One of those marriages ended in a divorce the two people can still be in a room for. The other did not, and that difference is what this episode is about.

T.H. is one half of ExExperts and the Divorce etc. podcast, which she and her friend Jessica built because the only real resource either of them had during their divorces was the other one. Not just for the legal questions, but for what to do with a weekend without your kids in it. The platform now runs on a stated mission of empowering anyone going through divorce, men and women both, through education and support, and Lisa is one of the experts on it.

The premise this conversation attacks is that two adults will settle down after the separation and start doing what is best for the children. That happens. It happened for Jessica. It did not happen for T.H., whose ex was largely absent for four years and did not know what grade his children were in, and whose communication ran through attorneys. She describes what it is like watching friends with amicable divorces save each other seats, and the particular loneliness of measuring your case against theirs. Her working approach is to treat co-parenting as a business transaction: prepare, know what you are raising, and work from an outline instead of improvising into a trigger.

The rest is the harder material. Learning to be Teflon against the smirks and the energy, and how long that took. The therapist who told her before the divorce started exactly what she was dealing with and that she would be taught how to get through it. The birthday setup, when a cake and balloons arrived days after a phone call blew her marriage open, and her children told her she was the one not being nice. Lisa brings in the advice she got at an Al-Anon meeting, which she credits with keeping her out of that trap: tell your children the truth about why the marriage ended, because if you do not, the other parent will supply a version in which you broke up the family, and your kids will have to rewrite their own history later when they find out. They close on why the question "why didn't you leave sooner" misunderstands how these relationships are built.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why co-parenting advice written for amicable divorces doesn't transfer to your case
• Treating co-parenting as a business transaction: prepare, outline, don't improvise
• What it costs you to measure your situation against a friend's cooperative divorce
• Learning to be Teflon, and how long that actually takes
• The setup: being made to look unreasonable in front of your own children
• Why telling your kids the truth early protects them from rewriting history later
• Why "why didn't you leave sooner" misunderstands how these relationships work

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Meet T.H., and how ExExperts started
5:00 Co-parenting as a business transaction
7:00 A basketball game, and comparing yourself to an amicable divorce
9:00 Learning to be Teflon
11:00 The birthday setup, and being cornered in front of the kids
13:00 Telling your kids the truth, and Lisa's Al-Anon lesson
15:00 Grooming, love bombing, and why people don't leave sooner
17:00 Lonelier inside the relationship than out of it
19:00 Where to find ExExperts

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances