Welcome to divorce dialogues. I'm Catherine Miller. Divorce dialogues brings expert guests to the airways to talk through your divorce questions and fill in the gray areas about separating. From thinking about divorce to how to behave during divorce to what to do after, this is divorce dialogues.
Welcome to divorce dialogues. I'm Catherine Miller. I'm the founder at the Miller Law Group and a director at the Center for Understanding and Conflict. And I am on a mission to change how people divorce and help them divorce with dignity.
And I'm really excited today because today I have two experts who knew each other, were really good friends and went through a divorce together and then formed a company, the X Expert. So let me introduce you to them. First we have Jessica Klingbao. She's the mom of two and she's living life happily after divorce.
She spent 22 years as an Emmy-nominated network news television producer, working her way up through the business until she was launching and running her own shows. And T.H. Irwin, who's a mom of three, also happily divorced and living her best life. Her fields of expertise are experiential marketing strategy and a new business development for traditional media companies.
Welcome, Jessica and T.H. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you.
We are excited to talk to you today. And you know, it's really interesting because sometimes really good friends get pregnant at the same time, get married at the same time. In fact, that happened to me with my best friend, you know, going through a lot of the planning and a lot of the excitement all together. But the two of you ended up getting divorced at the same time.
So how did that help you and how were your divorces alike and how were they different? Tell us about that. Who'd like to go first? Well, I did say one thing.
It's actually the trifecta. We got married a month apart. We had our boys a week apart and then we separated a week apart. So yeah, that's really interesting.
Amazing. Yeah, we've been on the same path for quite a long time. Yeah, so what's that been like? And what were the similarities and what were the differences?
I think that this is Jessica. I think that the similarities were really probably only the timeline. Our husbands were very, very different. But we had known each other basically since college because my first cousin and T.H.
was best friends from high school. And he and I met in college. So I had met her at a party in college where she had come up to visit. And then when I graduated, they had already been living in the city.
So I moved into the city for grad school. And we just all started hanging out together. We came back friends. Our husbands were best friends.
We were best friends. And as she said, we did all those things together. We traveled together as couples, all indications together. But I feel like, and we have somewhat similar personalities.
But in terms of our marriages, they were very, very different because we were married. We could totally different people. But I don't think that we even realized that at the time because we were super young and we got married out of 23, T.H. was 25.
And we just didn't, I think, talk about, you know, kind of like the things that were going wrong. I don't know how to explain others, then I think for patients, you can tell yourself. I think that she was trying to figure it all out. I mean, so we spent a lot of time together.
As couples, as families, I like just that our husbands were very, very different. And our separation is when we realized how very different our marriages were. Because I, it was, she saved my life today. I got a phone call.
She was cheating on me with. And I told her she saved my life that day. Because the infidelity was just what set me free. That wasn't what ended my marriage.
My marriage had been over for years. And I just couldn't find my way out. And that was to get to freedom. And for Jessica, like she said, like her husband had been, she was harder for growing up.
He would always down in Jessica, down in Jessica. And she was in a high pressure job. And she was not really feeling that her marriage was not in a good place because she was occupied with so many things. And probably also not really wanting to face it.
So when she got a phone call, so that's also a parallel. We both got phone calls within a week of each other from the women that they were having affairs with. And she was very sad. She was very, very sad to her marriage and to her relationship with him and the supporter.
So it was, it was very different. And my took four years. I was heading towards court. Everything was about litigation.
Every expert, every, everything. He was dragging me through the system. And also in all fairness, my lawyer certainly didn't help me resolve things any faster. And Jessica and Aaron, I think that the lawyers twice worked out their agreement together.
And other than the process taking two years, their divorce took a hot minute. Right. So it's been different for both of us. But what we have learned is, and I'm sure you know, with all of your experience helping so many people, the business as divorce is a small part of the whole experience.
The emotional turmoil and questioning and uncertainty and being overwhelmed and not knowing can keep people in a bad place for many, many years afterwards. So we had each other. But if I could just say, you had each other once you realized you had each other. But before then, both of you were in your marriages going through the motions.
And for you, T.H., it sounds like pretty unhappily, but not knowing what else to do. And I just want to say that for so many people who call my office, they have this question, is my marriage really bad enough to call it quits? And they're looking. Sometimes people say, I wish you would hit me.
I wish you would, because then I would know. And so if that's such a big question, I wonder if the two of you have an answer. How do you know if your marriage is bad enough to call it quits? If you haven't gotten that call yet.
Well, that's not too interesting because now I've been divorced twice. And I remember with my first divorce as like shocking and sad as it was for me, there was like a little bit of a sense of relief. Like clearly things hadn't been good for a while. There was like, you know, some eggshell feelings.
And I kind of felt like, okay, well, this was sort of not the thing that that the teacher felt. But like, this is my way of getting out without being the bad guy. And I used to think to myself, like, I wonder how people who don't have infidelity or some, you know, or abuse, like how do they come to that decision? That's what you're saying people ask you.
And in my second marriage, there was no infidelity. There was no abuse. It was simply a matter of, I felt inside, deep inside that I was not happy. And I am a very optimistic, happy person all the time.
And I felt like I was dying. I'm happy. I felt like I woke up every morning and started having heart palpitations of like being so worried about, you know, how today was going to be. And like, what was going to go wrong?
What were we going to argue about? Like, I don't, it isn't tangible. But I think that the answer to me, the answer to people is if you are inherently unhappy, the overwhelming majority of the time, if you feel the least, when you're not around them, when they either traveling for business or when they're out or when you're out, you know, you guys are separate, when it's easier for you to be doing things and dealing with things when they're not around, that can be a huge red flag. Yeah.
You know, for people who've been listening to the show for a while, I've heard me say before that I realized in my first marriage that the idea of growing old with my first husband, filled me with dread. The idea that my parents would pass away, my children would leave home and I'd be left alone. I thought, Oh my God, that sounds like the loneliest thing in the world. Like a lonely marriage.
And to me, yeah. How are you feeling? And I knew that my kids were going to be leaving for school in a few years. And that exact thought is what was going through my mind.
Like, Oh my God, if you hear it, because they're going to be gone and it's going to be just me and him. And I don't think I can do that. And I had to get out. Yeah.
So I want to remind people that I'm Catherine Miller and you're listening to divorce dialogues. We're here on WVOX 1460AM every other Wednesday from five to five 30 or perhaps you're listening to a podcast and we're available as a podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. And I'm talking today with the X experts, Jessica Klingbaum and T H Erwin about their code of horse and getting divorced at the same time. And how they use that experience to form a business, the X experts and Jessica and T H, I want to give you a chance to talk about what the X experts is and how it works.
So when Jeff and I separated and you had said it before, like we didn't, we almost didn't know we needed each other and we certainly didn't know what was going on in our marriages because we weren't willing to face it ourselves. So it's verbalized. It makes it real. But when we separated it, when we had separated from them, we had each other.
Again, divorce is very different. Separation experience, very different kids, life, all of it. But we would share stories about what my lawyer was telling me to plan ahead. Think about college.
Think about wedding. Think about buying a car, sell some. My kids were eight, six and four and just ahead two kids under five. So we had babies at the time.
So to plan that for our head, we're not really, you know, something we're thinking about right away. But more, even more importantly, honestly, money aside and all that other stuff, we need to where we have plans together. So each other on the weekends, we both belong to this country club and we meet there on the weekends with our kids. We plan to spend our first years in need together, no matter where we were personally.
She would come to me from other day like holidays. We always had each other's backs. As we were going through this, we were both like, we really need to create something for women because if we didn't have each other, this would be horrible for us. Like we'd be so alone and lost, but we really did have one another to support.
And it had to get bench for a year because like I said, my divorce took four years and I just couldn't have it be my 24 seven. So probably about seven months before COVID, I started tooling around online and now as opposed to there being no very few resources or no resources other than your lawyer when we separated. Now there is so much information out there and identity that's been hacking and I mean, I was like, we have to do this now. There's still nothing like this.
A vetted online support resource and community specifically for women, but apparently we're helping men as well and all are welcome to support women. We've got your back. We've lived and so we get it. We tell our stories.
We have vetted industry experts like yourself. We interview, we ask the questions you don't know to ask. Overall, the purpose is to empower, connect, and educate women going through divorce so they can have the best outcome in their circumstances and not. So that's the ultimate purpose.
You know, it's such a great idea because I think you're completely right that having a buddy, right? Having somebody who wants to spend time with you, who's going through a similar thing, you can trade advice, you know, trade thoughts that that is amazing and it's also it's such a support through the lonely and difficult times someone to always talk to. It's like, I often feel like that my clients who are in Alcoholics Anonymous or programs like that are so lucky to have that support. You can it's free, you know, you can know as much as you want.
People want to talk to you and all right. So you're trying to say sober, but you're also going through whatever pain you're going through in your life is such an amazing opportunity. So I really appreciate what the two of you did for each other and what you're doing for other women as well. And so what do you think that like the most of somebody's listening to this program and is considering divorce or in the early stages, what's your best advice for that person given what you've been through?
I would say talk to a therapist about how you really are feeling, you need to dig deep. You need to dig deep and figure out what kind of a foundation you have in your relationship and whether or not it's, I hate to say it, like worth salvaging. I mean, in my first marriage, there was no way that I was really interested in trying to salvage it. He had cheated on me.
I'm now. That was quite a pretty easy decision for me. With my second marriage, we did go to therapy for almost a year. And at the end of the day, but it was, we had only the marriage paper a few years.
So at the end of the day, in my part of heart, I really felt like we didn't have children together. We didn't have the foundation together that to me warranted more of an effort than what I had already put in. I put in a significant effort in a short with marriage. And I kind of felt like there really wasn't any hope left for what I was wanting that marriage to be.
So I really feel like the first step should be that someone really needs to come to terms with themselves, I have a friend with the other day I was having a whole conversation with and she and her husband are separated and they're considering divorce. And he had been in a terrible car accident last year. And then the day after I spoke to her, there was a little bit of a scare the next morning. He had overslept and so he's fine.
But he had overslept and she had all of these horrible thoughts and was like, on her knees crying about the idea that something could have happened to him. And she had a total epiphany that in actuality, she really wants to make it work. And she'll do anything for them to stay together. And they're both now very committed to the idea of staying together.
Not even going to have that type of nuclear aha moment, but just because things aren't going well doesn't necessarily mean that your first step should be like one foot out the door. Yeah, I agree that in the first fight or even the first ten fights does not a reason to decide on divorce. That's a completely different question than how much you're fighting. I think it is.
You know, it's really interesting because I a few years ago, I saw two women on the same day, who similar story to yours. Each of them were somewhere with their kids, got a call on their phone from their husband's girlfriend or their husband's girlfriend's husband and saying, you know, informing them that their husband was having an affair. And those two divorces, both of them got divorced, were very, very different in tone and in length and in result. And clearly, you have both a very similar story to that and to each other.
And yet your divorce has turned out to look really different. What do you think the difference was? And why did TSU ended up four years heading towards litigation and Jessica, you settling pretty much on your own with a little bit of guidance? What was the difference there?
I think it's a big factor, honestly, with our husband and of course, now we have our husband and our independent relationship with our husband. My husband was very remorseful when I found out about the affair and he really wanted to go to therapy and try to make it work. And in my head, I was like, I just don't know how do you think this is possibly going to work when you've been having an affair. But we really show this to you.
I mean, even today, for years now, I still have people in my life that are like, I do not understand how you guys have the relationship that you have. We still genuinely like each other. And while I think he made a huge mistake and with a total idiot, obviously, I feel like we had a really good run, we were together for 18 years in total. And even though the last two years were not great, I never felt like it negated all of the first 15, 16 years that really were great.
And I had a vision in my head of what I wanted our relationship to always be, even if we were not going to be living together to marry a couple parenting our children. And so I made a very concerted effort and I had a very willing partner in that regard. I think that he knows that it could have gone totally sideways with what my reaction could have been. And I think that he was grateful and appreciative of my perspective and with 100% willing to follow my needs with the kind of divorce that I thought was going to be best for us to be able to maintain a close friendship.
What do you think? It's definitely who you're part of and what kind of relationship you have. Mine was absent for four years. So it was easy for me to close because I didn't have to walk on next shelf because he was literally never home.
So I was just, it was like ground house day for me every day. Get up, make sure the kids are ready to meet, get to work, have them come home. Everybody's instead everyone's safe. Go to sleep.
Start again. Start again. I had to build so much armor to engage with him. The ironic thing is I used to think if I just don't hear it, he can't hurt me except the back hurts worse because the denial of it and the sucking it up and the lying to yourself is severely damaging.
So he was not remorseful. He actually the very first thing he said to me was who told her that I was so married? That's the difference right there. And then it turned around and he was trying to explain to me that it's actually my fault.
If I had just done X, Y, and Z, it never would have gotten to you to this point. He was leading another life in California for four years. So I don't know. There's a lot to go for that for somebody who's able to manage that.
I want to go back to your question before about how you know and I can only speak for myself but maybe to resonate with other people. Just like the fact that I was denying everything, I was like sick to my stomach. And like I was saying just saying, I had withdrawn from friends and I was lying to myself and I was lying to my family at person and I was starting to not recognize me at the time. But looking back, going through my divorce for whatever reason, then he would let me go.
And he was with this other woman. She was already living in our town and coming to Disney day, he had to every day. But he wouldn't let me go and I wanted to be out. And you know that if you have been pulling you through the process towards litigation, there's nothing the other person can do.
You are again like hell hostage and kind of trapped. There was nothing else I could do. Three judges, multiple mediation. I mean every officer and deputy in the courthouse.
It was horrible. But it was out of my control. And I also had three little children who were not having the family that they thought that even though I was excited to see out. So to know if you're out, have to trust or have to get the court, listen to the voice in your head that's super quiet.
It should be really loud. It's only quiet because you're keeping it quiet. And our divorces were so different because Darren and Maya are completely different in terms of taking responsibility, being compassionate, respecting communication. All those super important things that we all need to keep an eye on.
Yeah. I want to make sure before we're out of time that people know that they're listening to divorce dialogues. I'm Katherine Miller. How can people find the ex-experts that they're interested in learning more about you guys?
Our website is xxperts.com. I'll spell it out. e-x-p-e-x-t-e-r-t-s.com. Our podcast is called Divorce Etcetera.
It's on every podcast platform. And we're also at xxperts on social media, TikTok and Instagram and Facebook. And it really is a one-stop platform at our website. But people can definitely go to those other social media accounts or just listen to the podcast to be able to hear all of our interviews and all of our own tips and information and resources.
I think that's really great information from both of you. I do want to respond to this idea about remorse, affairs and remorse in my experience. And I'm kind of giving you a look under the hood or the listener that look under the hood is that oftentimes people who have affairs and traditionally men, although women definitely also have affairs, but men feel very remorseful often at the beginning, maybe TH that wasn't your experience. But that remorse turns to rage at some point.
And it can be a mistake to think that the person who had an affair is going to feel remorseful forever, even if they initially do. And oftentimes my experience, and I'm curious what your thoughts are, is that when that remorse turns to rage, there's a lot of blame that happens of the cheated on spouse, not the cheating spouse. And I'm wondering if that resonates for the two of you or if you see it differently. I will say there's definitely, it's just amazing when I look back at like the roller coaster of it all.
But when he realized that there was not going to live with him again, it was like a divorce honeymoon. You want to move into this new house? You want me to put in speakers and new TV's? Let's celebrate your birthday that I was a total jerk about seven days ago.
Like all of a sudden, he's like super cusset. And really I had to call it a screening battle for him to realize like really getting in his head. It's not my fault. I know it's not my fault.
And we're done. We're done. It's not my fault for the affair. That's it.
So it was like, it was actually very interesting. And I was like, great, I'll take speakers. I'll take the beautiful new house for me and the kids. I'll take it, give it a little hand it over.
And then also in setting up the precedent for what we came our divorce agreement was super generous. Also part of like, you know, I don't know what he was feeling. I'm pretty sure it's the love and surprise we're more. But whatever it was, maybe it was the shock of thing and the reality, because he was living not, he was not living in reality.
So I don't know if that's completely answers your question, but that was my experience as a least. So in our last 40 seconds or so, what if someone's contemplating divorce and is thinking about whether or not to leave or not, what boys had just made the decision to divorce? What's the first thing you think they should do? I see.
I think that the knee-jose reaction of an equally fine lawyer is not the right decision. I think that they should talk to people, meet with multiple lawyers, maybe potentially a divorce coach, if it's going to be a litigated, apermonious divorce, and just empower themselves and educate themselves on what their options are. I think that's great advice. Thank you so much, Jessica Klingbaum and T.H.
Irwin for being our guest on divorce dial. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.