We’re on the lip of the cup. With any luck, we should have a settlement reached by Friday. At least that’s the deadline I offered when I tweaked her shockingly reasonable counteroffer. I have to give it my lawyer, he closed the letter with, “If we don’t hear from you by Friday at noon, the court has the following dates available for a full-day trial.” Pretty gangster.

It’s been a painful 9 months. It’s gotten bitter and ugly. She has a sister that’s a former litigator (not family law) that has made the process much worse, and costly, for both of us so that she can play lawyer again. Her own lawyers hated her sister. Constantly coaching them and second guessing everything they did.

I almost felt bad for my STBX during mediation because she’d been lied to for all this time. Her sister had been telling her that she would be able to get everything she wanted. But, when STBX got in a room with an experienced divorce attorney and an experienced divorce mediator,l and was forced to finally listen to them, they told her, “That’s not how this works. A divorce is going to be painful,” and she lost it. I kept hearing, “There’s a lot of tears in that room,” from the mediator. I’m not positive that’s what happened, but I can make an educated guess. Luckily, my lawyers had me prepped for max suckage from the start, so every small victory felt good. We had snacks and were having a good old time during the mediation.

I have to say, I thought mediation would be a waste of time and money, we were just too far apart on everything. But I’ll be damned if it didn’t work. We just ran out of time towards the end of the day.

What I’ve come to realize through all this pain, and the advice I would give to the guys starting the process is this:

It all comes down to a spreadsheet. For a settlement or a trial, a spreadsheet is what you’ll be fighting over. No different than a business transaction. 20 years, 2 kids, houses, vacations, victories, losses, all the love, all the hatred and a life together all come down to a spreadsheet.

Assuming it’s like ours (no abuse, no infidelity, etc.) a judge will want to get both columns in the spreadsheet to add up to 50% per side. The question is simply which numbers move to which cells to get it there. Incredible.

So, my advice to the new guys is that when you get that inventory sheet from your lawyer, take it seriously and make good-faith estimates for everything. You never know when the thing you inflated or devalued on purpose could end up in another column. Also, bring receipts as best you can. “Your value for the house is too high,” her lawyers said. Yet, I had a realtors comp report and she had nothing to prove her number. And I mean nothing. Her number was $20k short of the tax rolls.

Also, realize what you can actually give up because you will have to give things up. The settlement I think I’ll end up with isn’t anything like what I initially proposed, and is vastly different than what a judge would do. But, I’m okay with it. Does it hurt? Of course. But, she wanted immediate gratification and I was willing to play the long game. So, it works for us. I could actually get a better financial deal by letting a judge split the baby, but I’m still okay with it.

Plus, I won’t owe her one red cent in spousal support. That was one of my two lines in the sand. The other was that she couldn’t move with the kids. She initially wanted 5 years of support at $4500/month and has completely backed off of it. So, this settlement doesn’t look anything like she wanted, either.

Divorce is like a knife fight in a phone booth. You’re going to get cut, there’s no way around it. Your only goal is to get out of that booth as soon as you can before bleeding out.