8 Things Men Must Do When A Marriage Ends

00:00 There are few moments in a man's life that hit harder than the end of a relationship or marriage. Men go straight into panic. They stop sleeping. They stop eating. Their mind starts racing and they think the absolute worst is going to happen to them. But the breakup isn't usually the thing that destroys men. It's the panic. Roll theme. Welcome to the Johnny Jensen Show, where modern dads discover how to create the true riches, relationships and results they deserve. Get your high value man blueprint and join our community at highvalumanproject.com.

00:42 Let's go. Hello men, welcome to the Johnny Jensen show. It's great to have you back. If you're a first-time listener, then welcome. How did you find us? And if you're returning, if you're subscribed to the YouTube channel, or you're subscribed on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast, then bloody brilliant. Be sure to leave a review wherever you're at and share it with other men in your life so we can spread the word. Johnny Jensen, as I said, I am the founder and the head coach at the High Value Man Project. We are equipping business owning and career-minded dads, modern men who want to have success as much at home as they do at work, really having it all rather than living a life they feel stuck in.

01:26 If anything we talk about today resonates with you, then of course, like I said, share it with other men in your life. But more importantly for yourself, get over to highvalumanproject.com forward slash group and you can join at the free base camp level and get all the tools and resources we have available for you there. This episode is motivated by multiple conversations I've had this week. I've got a couple of new clients who are going through divorce and lots of conversations in Facebook groups and WhatsApp chats about men facing the early stages of their breakup of their separation of what looks like it will probably be their divorce.

02:04 And it is really, really vital that you understand exactly what needs to happen at that time so you don't make stupid mistakes. Now, of course, some of you are going to be switching off already or haven't even got this far because you think that's not for me. I'm not going through that moment. It was not relevant to me. The thing about this is, is that you either know someone who's going through it and it could be of value to them or unfortunately, just like getting ill or having an accident somewhere, this topic creeps up on too many of us. 50% almost sometimes a bit more, you know, but around 50% of marriages end in divorce and breakup.

02:43 So we need to be aware of exactly what it's going to take. Of course, some of the other work that we do here at the High Value Man Project will help you revive a struggling relationship. And if you're interested in that, then we've got your back. But if you are at this point in time, then it's absolutely vital that you realize what it's going to take to get through it in as quick a time as possible with as fewer mistakes and ideally as much fun. Like it's not the end of the world. And we need to get you through that. So what I've done here is I've put together kind of eight sort of elements of this that are going to help you in the early stages in these first stages.

03:21 Now, it makes sense to carry this across, but as a high value man, like the principles of this, it's all about rising above the crap. It's about being in control of the situation, not dominating or bullying, not patriarchal nonsense. We're talking about having control of yourself, being emotionally stable, being able to duck and dive, take a few punches and keep moving forward. And of course, when you've never been through something like this before, how the hell do you know? And that's what this episode is for. Okay. It is unlikely that your relationship was in a healthy position.

03:58 No one wakes up in one morning and goes, I think I'm done with this. I'm leaving. It's normally at the end of a period of the relationship breaking down. So ultimately, there's something to be responsible for there. And we've covered that in other recent episodes. Like, are you dateable? Are you putting in the required work for your relationship to work out? Are you showing up in a way that she's still attracted to you? Are you on a level footing yourself? Like, are you happy in your life? Like, again, the point being, how dateable are you? In this situation, it is similarly about getting yourself prepared and settled and focused and in control of the situation with clarity, courage and commitment, the three X C's of the high value man system for living, so that you can get through this.

04:48 I'm not a legal expert. I'm not qualified in the area of family law. So this is all for information purposes. I am a dad who's been through it in the UK. I've had multiple conversations over the last 10 years with men in the USA, with men in Australia. Men going through this, this breakup, this panic, this sense of losing everything and life is over that takes them down. It shouldn't be that way. Okay, so number one, stop the panic, right? Your mind will be telling you the worst possible stories right now. It'll be coming up with all sorts of nonsense about how the children are never going to be the same or how could you let this happen?

05:33 You promised this would never, you grew up in a broken family and you said it was never going to happen to you. Like all this sort of panic and doom. And, you know, imagine someone was stood behind you telling you this stuff, like whispering this story in your ear. It would be like, whoa, mate, that is bleak. Like, where are you getting all that from? It's simply not the case. It's this deep sense of loss for what we thought was our future, to what we thought was our whole identity, to what we thought gave us a reason to get up in the morning, i.e. our family, our wives, being a dad, the home, like the routine,

06:15 the whole of it. But you have to realize that many men have walked this path before you so that you don't have to have this level of panic. What one man can do, any man can do. And for all the doom and gloom you might have heard of dads getting screwed over in family court and people not seeing their kids, like, yes, sadly that does happen. But there is, I don't know about equal number, but you'd like, you know, there is a significant percentage of men who get through this with the desired result and get back on with their life and indeed end up with a life that was better than the crap relationship they were in.

06:59 Fitter and stronger than ever, more grounded and balanced in themselves, finding a relationship that is actually the one they wanted, being the better dad for their kids because they're not stressed out and anxious and angry at the way that their marriage is going. You have to realize that somewhere on the other side of this current pain is a better life, a better version of yourself, a better version of this experience. Point number two, okay, is to accept that the relationship was already breaking or broken. As I said earlier on, no one wakes up in the morning, clicks their fingers and just gets up and goes from a happy marriage. You can look at the relationship with rose-tinted glasses.

07:43 Or when I did my counseling and I had counseling after my marriage breakup, it was put to me this thing called fantasy thinking. You come up with this picture in your mind that it would, if we could just make things better, we'd be happy. If we could just get back together and put the family back together, everything will be all right. That is possible. And we do have structures inside the high value man program for resetting your relationship, for creating a fresh start. But if you've done that, or if you've been to marriage counseling already, if you tried to put it together, no amount of fantasy thinking about how it could be good is going to make it good.

08:22 You need to accept that the relationship was over and this is an inevitable outcome of it all. The responsibility that you have now is to bring it to conclusion in a decent and respectful way. So in the realms of decent and respectful, okay, for your own self-respect and emotional control, number three, do not beg, chase or completely fall to pieces. If you lose control of yourself, then you lose influence in the situation. And I see this so often of men and to a degree I did it myself and certainly in relationships in my younger years where like you know it wasn't right and yet you suddenly you still you find yourself oh please don't go off we can fix this or you know like no no

09:07 no the problem when you do that in a breakup divorce situation is if you're on her doorstep banging on the door or shouting down the phone or crying or any kind of pressure it can be turned into accusation of harassment you can find yourself quite easily arrested for doing almost nothing as crazy as that sounds it happens all the time and in terms of the uk and usa like they want you to get in trouble they want to be able to get you arrested so that they can say oh he's a threat to me oh he's violent oh he's unstable and

09:46 then you get a non-molestation order put on you or a restraining order like where you can't come in a certain distance of the of them and possibly even your kids. And then when you get to family court, you're going to get that used against you. Okay. So, and by the way, it's pretty pathetic as well. You know, if the relationship is broken, chasing around begging and crying isn't going to make her miraculously fall back in love with you. If there's any hope or desire of that, which isn't necessarily recommended at this moment in time, you getting stable, grounded, taking responsibility for the way the marriage was, getting fit and healthy, starting to have your own life, like really being the man that she fell in love with or the version of the man that she wants to stay in love with is what might have had that relationship work out.

10:39 And if there's any merit in possibly getting back together, it'll be because of that, not because you ran around like a little baby begging her to come back. Which brings us into number four. Okay. Control yourself, not the situation. You have really in life control over only one thing, and that's yourself. The things that sit in your own domain. In order to obtain influence over something else or another situation, well, you're still going to be about how you show up. And the degree to which you show up grounded, in control, calm, strong, confident, charismatic is the amount of influence you'll have in that situation.

11:24 Someone who's angry or desperate or upset, like you're not going to have any influence in situations external to yourself because you haven't got control over yourself. And men do their own heads in mentally and emotionally by trying to probably physically as well to a degree, by trying to control things that are outside of their control. The classic one for us guys is trying to fix things, trying to fix her, trying to fix the family, trying to fix at work. And obviously to a degree at work, we do, if it's our business in particular, we do have some control over that. But in terms of our relationship and how she's being, most women don't like being fixed.

12:07 So again, it's about mastering yourself in this moment and not falling to pieces. I'm going to throw into this as well a short explanation of the grieving process. There are six steps to the grieving process. And obviously, I'm going to forget what some of them are. But there's anger, euphoria, dismay, optimism, one other, of course. It fits in there, right? I should have put the picture up before I said them. But it's a state of mind, like it's a mental and emotional process that our bodies go through.

12:47 Now, if you think that that is happening to you, or it's something weird and outside of your control, it's uncomfortable, we want to stop it, then it will take us down. It'll have us do irrational things. It'll have us behave compulsively and in an emotionally overcharged way. When you understand that the grieving process is those six things, and some of them quite naturally happen one after the other, but you can be absolutely positive and calm in the morning, have lunch, see some thing on the TV or some song on the radio that was part of, you know, how you fell in love, and you'll suddenly fall back into despair and hopelessness and panic.

13:29 It's not you. It's not going to stay like this. It's just the grieving process. So you let it be, you understand what it came from. Oh, that was the song on the radio. I'm not going to entertain or indulge that. I'm just going to notice it, be okay with it, maybe have a little bit of grace for myself and then carry on with my day. Okay. And by the way, thinking about those last two points and the grieving process, it's quite often in those moments when we'll do things such as rant and rave or send a long email begging or some other kind of emotionally charged action that isn't very helpful.

14:11 It's important to realize that at this moment in time, really your number one focus is the children, what they need and how you're going to get through this effectively. It's business now. Okay, number five, looking after your physical state. This fundamentally is the fire code in play. If you've not listened or watched before, then the fire code is one of the two core parts of the high value man system for living. Focus, that's yourself, your diet, your sleep, your fitness, your mindset, your impact. That is managing your money, being in control of what's going on at work. Relationships. that is the people around you that you're connected to.

14:53 In this situation, it's going to be your friends and family. It's going to be the time you have with your children, hopefully 50%, and your mentors, bosses, business partners and connections. Like having that all handled is going to give you greater control, give you greater peace in this other part of your life that is wild and upsetting and slightly broken at the moment. So the physical state that you're in, the F of the fire code and energy, right? The amount of fun, venture, and peace you have in your life. But knowing at the moment that you are going through an extreme period of stress and emotions, getting enough sleep, eating right so you're fueled properly and energized properly, doing some physical exercise so that you're

15:42 sweating out some of the stress, so that you're relaxed at the end of the work, so that you're fatigued properly through physical stress rather than emotional and mental stress. This is how you get yourself back to feeling okay. When you dwell on and slide into oblivion and don't do any of those things, don't look after your physical well-being, then the feel-good chemicals that our body produces through those activities, the dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, we need those to thrive. So if you're sat on your ass miserable, crying, not doing anything, not sleeping, not eating, all this other stuff, you're going to feel worse.

16:21 It's going to be harder to get back on your feet. It's going to be harder for you to engage in dialogue with your ex about contact or speak to a solicitor or prepare a document for the family court if you are completely drained of everything you need. It is your responsibility to fuel the machine, to put yourself in the pit stop, to put yourself in the best possible state to perform. Okay, number six, remember in all of this that you are still dad, you are still daddy. Now, if you're not seeing your kids right now, that can be horrific.

16:58 But being completely broken, being angry, ranting and raving, banging on the windows, doing whatever it is that you might be doing in a frantic state, that's not supporting your kids. The thing to do as the father is to understand the process, is to be level-headed, is to rise above her crap. Don't get drawn into battles of you did this and you did that and wow, it wouldn't have happened. None of that matters right now. It's business. We're looking forward into the future. Because the time that you do have with your kids, it's really, really important and essential, vital that you have a good time.

17:36 Hopefully it's 50-50. Hopefully it's a sensible amount of time. But whatever the amount of time is, you want to be on your best possible footing to be able to say, hey, guys, how's it going? Now, I've lived this, so I know what it's like to wake up without them. I know what it's like to have to take them back to their mums. I know what it's like when you get back to your place and the house is empty. I know all of that. But I also can stand here 10 years later and say it gets better. And the important, the quicker you realize that when you're with them, be 100% dad. And when you're not with them, be 100% for you. The quicker you can realize that, the quicker you will be able to improve the situation for yourself.

18:21 It's very easy to separate this down the middle, right? Rational side and the emotional side. But it's when those two sides blur into each other that you create problems, that you create this mental mayhem for yourself, like, oh, I'm never going to see them again. And oh, you don't understand. And I can't sleep. And it's a, it's like, no, we've broken up. This is the contact schedule I propose. This is how I'm going to address her. This is, we're coming on to point number seven in a moment about getting smart quickly, but this is what I've got to do in family court. This is how I'm managing my work. I'm in control of all this so that I can be the best version of myself for my kids, so that I can be daddy.

19:04 And by the way, the more you're like that, the more in most situations that I've experienced when the mum isn't playing ball, when she wants to take you down, the more confident, grounded and stable you are, the more it will do her head in. Because from what they've read, from what they've been told, they'll be expecting you to panic and crumble. Because that's how they then get to say, see, the kids should be with me because he can't be counted on. He's unstable. He's all the other things they're going to throw at you. And they will, because you can download it off of NetMums and other forums.

19:40 Like it's a proven checklist of how to screw the dad over. What I'm telling you. you right now is how to not let that playbook, that checklist get executed on you. Which brings us on to number seven, get smart quickly. Speaking about the legal process in the UK, which I know a great deal about, it's quite black and white. You know, what you need to do in terms of the breakup, what's a sensible contact schedule to propose? How are you going to manage the finances? And should you stay in the house or should you leave? All this information is available. And thanks to AI, it's even more accessible than ever before. You put it into AI exactly what the situation is, what country you're in, what age you're at, what age the kids are, any other, all aspects of it.

20:26 Like create a briefing doc that you can upload when you need it to so that the AI is able to speak powerfully into your personal situation. You can carry the conversation on with them. Get into some father's rights groups. Go into ones that are predominantly male, like dad-based. The ones that are men and women will usually have a higher percentage of women. And quite often, perhaps through no intention of the group owners, it will still have a, you know, a mum slant to it. Equally, you don't want to be in a men's group where they're talking about, yeah, get them.

21:06 Yeah, women, this, or yeah, win, like screw them. Like if it's all really negative about women, then it's probably not the group to be in. You want to be in one with a sound, balanced, strong, confident group of men who've been through this before and can help and support you in that. Inside the High Value Man Project, we've got many men who've been through the process. If you find a men's group near you, the likelihood is that most men going to a group like that are experiencing something like this. So get smart quickly. Information reduces fear.

21:43 It also helps you show up, obviously, confidently when you are engaging with your ex and whoever she's being represented by. When you look like you don't know what you're doing, it gives them increasing confidence to screw you over. This isn't about like legal advice from me. It's about awareness. It's also for me to reduce the fear in you that you entering some cauldron of doom. It's not. It's a pretty structured process. And just briefly in the UK, if you're wondering what you need to do, you're going to need to go to mediation before you can go to family court. You have to find a just go online, get an approved mediator. You have to have at least one mediation session, which will give you a MyAMS number.

22:28 You can use the MyAMS number on a C-100. You can pay your £250 or £275, and that will allow you to make an application to the family court. And then when you do that, you're going to follow the Section 7 welfare checklist, which is a structure that the family court will use to assess exactly what should happen with contact arrangement. And that's really about being child-centric. It's about putting forward a structure that says, my work looks like this. My time with the kids will be like this. My proposal for contact is this. I want to suggest 50-50 is in the best interest of everyone. It means we can do handovers around school. That creates less reason for contact, less reason for hostility.

23:09 It's better for the children's emotional state and load. Everyone knows where they stand and we can get on with our lives. Two happy homes, two thriving parents, kids running happily between one home and the other. When you keep saying things like that and she's on the other side going, he's this, he's that, you don't understand. Like one of you looks calm and in control. The other one looks like a raving nutter. Make sure you're the one who's calm and in control. And then finally, number eight, with all that other stuff handled, and like there's no structured order to these eight things, but making sure that your house is in order.

23:48 Making sure that your work and your money, your day-to-day routine, what you're going to do when you've got the kids, what you're going to do when you've not got the kids, get into structure. You don't want stress in your life because obviously you're in a quite a stressful time. And how you manage this is by closing as many emotional loops as possible. An emotional loop is a situation where you have left a subject not taken care of. If it's money, it might be that you don't know how much money you've got saved. You don't know how much money uses in the house. You don't know how much money you might have to give her. You don't know. Like go and find all this information out.

24:30 It's not a secret. It's not hidden from you. You can structure and plan this out in advance. When you're talking to your boss or business partner, you know, know, explain to them where you're at, reassure them, let them know. Like right now, I'm probably going to be working to what I call the minimum viable output. Like I'm going to make sure everything's done. I just don't know how much capacity or how useful I'll be beyond that right now. Can I count on your support over the next, you know, three months? I'm not going to drop the ball, but I, but I, but it's going to be a tricky time. That's far better than looking like this broken person sat at his desk turning up late, not answering calls, and everyone wondering what the hell's happened to him.

25:12 Think also about who you need to be in contact with. The kid's school, her club's hobbies and interests, anyone who's got influence over the children. The likelihood is if you're going through a particularly strained breakup, that she's going to be looking to have dialogue into all those people. She may well be dogging on you and talking about you in disparaging ways, slurring your reputation and what you might have done to her and how it came to this. It's not about you having the same amount of like chit chat back. You're not trying to slate her. You just want to be above it all. Do you know what? She's a good mum.

25:54 The kids were made with love. I'm really hoping we can just move past this. It's a shame how she's being towards me, but I really want to rise above it and create a positive situation for the kids. When someone is hearing you say that, but in their other ear, a few hours before, hearing someone absolutely slate you and tear you to pieces, the two things don't add up. They're looking at you going, wow, he seems like a pretty solid guy. And on the other hand, they're hearing this buy all coming from the other side. I don't want you to panic about this. Not every woman goes mental at the situation. And by the way, the structure, the family court process, the child benefits agency, like what do they call it in America?

26:39 Anyway, you know, child payments. It's a piss take. The system makes money out of it. They, you know, particularly in America, the actual courts that set up the money that the father has to pay get to take a percentage of that money for themselves. In the UK, there's a whole industry of solicitors and law courts, barristers, clerks. Like people's livelihood requires there to be a nasty structure process for people going through divorce. Do not let yourself fall into that unnecessarily. I use this analogy so many times, but it's better to be riding the wave than constantly being taken down and battered by it.