Divorce is hard enough as it is. Figuring out how to untangle yourself from a spouse whom you’ve spent years or even decades building a life with can be difficult, to say the least, and the emotional implications can certainly be overwhelming. As if that’s not enough, you’ll have legal challenges that you’ll have to navigate, too. If you don’t do so appropriately, you could put yourself at a disadvantage in the years to come.
Even though that all seems pretty bad, the difficulties that you face can be magnified exponentially when you’re dealing with a spouse who is an incessant liar. Even addressing minor details of your marriage can become seemingly impossible under these circumstances. But not all hope is lost here. There are things that you can do to make the process of divorcing a liar a little bit easier while protecting your interests at the same time.
Tips for divorcing a liar
Even when it seems like there’s no hope of getting through your divorce in an effective and efficient fashion, there are steps that you can take to improve your odds. This includes each of the following:
- Gather contradictory evidence: If your spouse is a liar, you’re going to find yourself in a “he-said, she-said” situation. This can be enormously frustrating and can stall the process. But if you can secure extrinsic evidence that contradicts your spouse’s lies, you’ll be in a better position to advocate for what you want. So, carefully consider what your spouse is actually saying and how you can go about disproving it.
- Record your interactions: One way to dispel the myths told by your spouse is to document everything. That way, if lies are told later on, you can refer back to your account to refresh your recollection of what actually happened. This can help prevent your perception of past events from being muddled by your spouse’s lies.
- Minimize contact: To restrict your spouse’s ability to fabricate information about interactions that you had with them, you might be better off just avoiding contact altogether or at least minimizing it. This can reduce the tension in your divorce and protect your position.
- Stay firm in your position: While you’ll want to have the flexibility needed to successfully negotiate your divorce, you’ll also have to stand firm if you want to achieve the outcome that you need. In other words, don’t let yourself stray from what you want and need simply because your spouse’s lies have tricked you in some way or because you just want to get the process over with as quickly as possible.
- Find ways to let your spouse win: This may seem contrary to the last point, but if you can find issues that are unimportant to you that you can let your spouse win, then they may feel like they’ve accomplished something impressive, which, in turn, may shut them down a bit. You’ll want to be strategic here to ensure that you’re not negatively impacting your interests.
Competently navigate your divorce
With so much on the line in your divorce, you have to know how to protect yourself and your interest. That can be difficult to do when you’re going up against someone who lies about everything. But that’s just one reason why you might want to seek out assistance from a legal professional who is able to advocate on your behalf throughout the process.
Hopefully, with an advocate on your side, you’ll be able to secure the strong post-divorce future that you deserve.
