What I want to offer today is a different perspective, and this might feel really uncomfortable.

But I have seen it change the entire trajectory of a divorce for so many women.

It's this. In high conflict dynamics, explanations don't resolve conflict. They extend it.

Because when someone is invested in misunderstanding you,

your explanations become part of the game.

Welcome to the Divorce Survival Guide podcast, where we have open and honest conversations about co-parenting,

separation, divorce, and the hardest question of all, should you stay or should you go?

I'm Kate Anthony, your divorce survival guide, and I'm here to help you navigate some of the roughest waters you've ever swum in

and answer some of your toughest questions. I've been to hell and back, and now it's my

mission in life to help you get to the other side of this process with your sanity and your heart

intact.

Hey everyone, welcome back.

You know, one of the things that I see over and over again with women going through divorce, especially high conflict or abusive divorce, is this instinct

to explain yourself, to clarify, to defend yourself, to make sure the other person understands,

like, what actually happened? And of course, that makes total sense, right? It's such a human

instinct. If someone is accusing you of something

that isn't true or twisting the story or rewriting history, the natural response is, no, no, no,

wait, hold on, no, no, let me explain, right? You want the truth to be clear. You want the other

person to understand you. You want the record corrected. But here's the problem. In a high-conflict divorce, explaining yourself is often the very thing that keeps you stuck in the conflict. It's part of the cycle. And sometimes it makes things a lot worse. So this is like one of

those dynamics that feels completely backwards when you first hear it because most of us were

raised to believe that if we're misunderstood, the solution is to communicate more clearly,

right? We take courses on it. We go to couples therapy and we learn how to communicate better. If there's conflict, you talk through it. If there's confusion, you clarify. If someone believes something untrue about you, you explain the facts. And in a healthy relationship, that works. It works with reasonable people. It works in a system

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