and matchmaking yes they go hand in hand and you'll see why but you know what we do on the dr joy show first we take it down with three deep breaths are you ready inhale  encore encore encore because these two the original new jersey matchmaker julianne cancer rela and jackie acheson who is a certified the voice code have both been on the dr joy show previous episodes so now i have them here today welcome to talk about the great divorce and then from the gray divorce how we transition into matchmaking so jacki i'm going to start with you tell me a little bit about you and how you got into being a certified divorce coach k thirty five divorce coach certified divorce mediator passionate about helping people for forty years going through the second most stressful thing in your life after death of a loved one when i was going through it when i've observed it there was no help it was a very litigious society everything was adversarial so when you talk about the most amount one of the most emotional things you can go through and tearing apart a family and that's how it's viewed as tearing apart the last thing you need is two attorneys adding to the pot and mixing it up it's like a witches brew and it's really ugly and i always felt there had to be a better way so as time went on i was one of the pioneers in mediation in the ninety's when it was very hard actually to get people to mediate so when they met me the first thing they would say is i wish i had known you them i went through the whole process it was terrible and from there i did a number of other things and landed me here doing small like advocacy work but it really is coaching it's forward thinking getting people through the process getting them out of the emotion and into the thinking and into the business of divorce and how to get healthy and how to move forward and get on with the next piece of their life how did you get into matchmaking sure so actually i have my masters in social work and who worked as a therapist for years with people and their relationships so it was just a natural progression into this realm when it actually presented itself to me and i've been working with as a matchmaker and dating coach i'd like to talk a lot about dating being dating coaching today because it's really critical when someone reenters the dating world i have people who come to me who obviously  through a divorce and they're feeling vulnerable and they're feeling exposed and they're saying where do i start and i always say you know mike one stop shopping for all your dating meaning and i h reenter the dating world my passion my my mission is to power women giving them the tools and skills they need to help create a healthy relationship and i know you know as a therapist i know what it's like when people come to me and they're not feeling confident and the they need the support so i and i support i too have an advocate and i know that there are wonderful people out there for them to meet and i help them create a path to do that as well so both of you have great great passion and great energy and that path to create helping them create the lifestyle that brings them joy right  wanted so now let's start with some facts our own divorce pew research says that there is what forty to fifty percent of first marriages her and then in divorce second marriages are up in the sixty percent  marriages of seventy three percent but big but is a lot lot less divorces now with the young people what is keeping those numbers the same is the grey divorce ok so  wearing gray you are ok but you're happily married happily married thirty one plus years yeah right but how is how is great divorce the fine ok well great a force actually they turned it and they splashed on the cover and that's how we got the term came and it basically means anyone married over twenty years of the assumption is there at least forty fifty sixty years old so we deal with a lot of folks like that unfortunately and they are ready to move on in their life and for some reason their paths change so what are some of the reasons common reasons common reasons are one of them decides they want to be young again because the vulnerability of aging sets in and the other one is still sitting on the sofa connecting they're not connecting they travelled different paths via agra plays into it for the gentlemen because they're losing that and the wife is still not interested and then of course low as well a good reason but you know explain that to somebody who wants to feel young and invigorated right so he's back at the gym and the women are doing the same thing don't get me wrong but that's a piece of it money comes into play they may have had a very nice comfortable life nobody thought about money the bills got paid they ran around and now someone is retiring and they're on a fixed budget and they know one of them no longer likes that feeling but that's that's a transition in the evolution of life writing if everything else is going right you still are partnering together right now add the age factor and somebody wants to be a little more youthful factor and now you couple it with money and then someone starts to have an affair and all of this together  important because at this stage in life you are looking during the putting kids through college and again you're married twenty years or more where's the money coming from when you're splitting the pot so it's a transition so they don't think about the kids well when you're married you have choices you can say we don't have the money little dear sweet children you have to go to community school you have to take out a loan right but the courts can mandate once a divorce starts to step in that one spouse is saying college in the other one saying you have to pay for it and where is the money coming from now that the pot is getting split perfect example airborn now you have a pot you think you're retiring this all this money we're going to have a great life together we're going to travel the money gets diminished and now you have to split it in half and now let's say the wife never worked now she's faced with a lot  to throw something else into the mix yeah what if there's a couple they've been married a thousand years ok a long time in other words there's an inheritance heritance well that factors in in a weird way to we are they call it a book i'm not a lawyer i know you talk about equitable distribution does not mean equal distribution ok so say you when i am married and i get up a large inheritance of right i think a million dollars right now that's my you know unless i comment on that or there's something written specifically to the best of my knowledge but now say all together in the bank we've only had one hundred thousand dollars  don't get to keep the million at the stage in life necessarily oh no not necessarily and split a hundred thousand dollars between us does that seem fair no correct so things change when there's no other income coming in ok a factor so it does become a fact it does i did some googling in that the inheritance really isn't a part it's almost like a tangent line to a certain goal but what you're saying is that it could be if it goes in front of a judge and i recently seen cases again i'm not a judge right a lawyer but i read up on this if that's not going to be decided upon fairly  mediated room they can take it to court and there are judges who make allowances for these things because it is a total imbalance total imbalance not saying they're going to give it all up again i'm not a lawyer right but i've seen things happen so one last question before we turn it over to juliana know her as i know that you're going to have come in about that too what are some of the critical issues that you see with gray divorce then you mean while they're negotiating that they need to watch out for gray divorce they have to try to get along because life is short it is so short so that's what i love about mediation you sit at a table together it's a neutral setting first of all you'll save a lot of money a mediated divorce come here and do it here six to eight months ok labrat of law process right which adds a few more pieces and a little bit more money is and mediation is also the cheapest you can get away with probably less than ten thousand dollars a collaborative law could be upwards of a year because it is a few more people in the pot right litigated is two and a half three years and more and the money so that's what i would say i think mediations great for everybody unless there's an imbalance of power and abuse or anything of that nature but minus that mediation especially at this stage in life is critical ok so now they've gone t mediation maybe they decided to split and now they want to enter the dating scene julianne what do you say i say are they healed are they ready to make take the next step you know a lot of times people can be overwhelmed to be devastating you hear very painful we all bring some sense of pain and no one escapes sorrow and some sort of an negative issue in their life but i always like to make sure that they're ready to take the journey right because the journey isn't easy no turning we take is easy but you know there's a piece of you know could i be rejected could i end up with someone again who is in effect so these are the things that i sit down with my clients and i really talk to them about are you ready how do you know you're ready what does that look like where have you been what were the good things in your relationship what the person you were with were let's look at the things that obviously didn't work and make sure as we're moving forward that we don't repeat that same pattern over and over again because we don't want them to that is saying space so there's fifty four million single s what percentage of them are over fifty oh goodness i think it's something like because the largest demographic right now are the baby boomers ok so that's the area that's really big and the fastest online sites are that that demographic where people over fifty actually over forty eight and older are really utilizing the sites and looking for love so in mentioned healing now in jackie's scenario they were in a committed relationship how do you define commitment when it comes to dating well sure commitment happens over time when they've dated exclusively for the two dates five days like three months i really like my my clients are there's a lot of expectation i have when i'm day coaching and specifically because i typically work with women who've been divorced and i'm helping them relaunch into the dating world and right you use online dating as a see as a tool for my clients to get out so i can coach them in real time so i like them not to a commit to the first person that comes into their life they're not allowed to do that they're not allowed to jump right back into that relationship and i cannot begin to tell you how many people who call me and we start discussing and this is just a phone call right where they're like oh i don't want to date someone who's dating other people and i said well you should be dating other people as well it can't be the first person that comes along it's comfortable it's safe we all want that insta monogamy but it doesn't happen that way only it takes time so i like my clients to date least two to three times a week the same person for at least anywhere from you know eight weeks to ten to twelve weeks before there's even talk of exclusivity because before that you don't know that person and a lot of people jump right into a relationship they ignore the red flag relationship i've seen men a lot of times with women they don't want to be on line they don't want to use a matchmaker they just want to meet someone and start dating slow it down slow and steady always wins the race  is it someone approaches dating and relationships mature early you know they're a good fit i mean all the other things have to line up as well the same goals the same values the same relationship vision which all along i but if someone's coming on hot and heavy that's a humongous red flag so do you help people create their profile or i do that's like total katie using it to utilizing online dating is the marketing people don't realize it they think they can throw up any old picture or write a few lines and that's either too short or way too long there's a sweet spot for that in terms of the writing the profile and the photos of kids your photos determined ninety four percent of your success on my ninety four percent ninety four percent so weight so you know i have a question yes so if someone looks like bars call off that's a scary person and they put up a person and they've put up a photo where you know they've been voted the most sexiest guy alive which we know who that is right and then when they meet them in person i mean that's kind of like deception so how do you go right and so that's exactly what i try to combat so i have three photographers who work for me so all my clients get a photo shoot it's two and a half four hours long forward to changes i go to every photo shoot because they did a full study in body language and i help style the photos so i also help to pick up the clothing day i and the idea is to present the best version of you i don't know my clients coming on you know misrepresenting themselves and having that first states it's always an accurate picture so it's clear the lighting's beautiful the quote rings beautiful so you want to call in what you're looking for it can't just be willy nilly and all i will get in this picture where you really it's grainy i see that all the time because i'm online every day so it's grainy photos have a face just it's not the best representation and you have to present the best version of you and your member who you want to attract and that's what you have to put out there so it's all about the energy so online dating like  limiting beliefs negative patterns of behavior but it also gives me a really great perspective on what their value system is what side i want to put them on so that's really helpful for me and then not every so every client goes on the same site it's really dependent upon who they are where they fit into the world who i think they'll attract and i do compare that to other clients who i've worked with and where they've had success and if those two clients are similar to i see things that reflect that you know what mary and susie are kind of similar and susie had success on this side i'm going to try mary there so that you know there's a greater chance of success so what i'm hearing you say for both so do you work with men and women i do i work my business models that i match men and i date coach women matchmake men date coach women yes a guy but i just opened it up to working with the men for coaching as oh it's i find more and more men are actually saying i really need support and you really need help quite frankly i'm very transparently it's a lower price point for the coaching so people who can't afford a matchmaker they'll still community do not necessarily see my services i'm not sure if they don't they just may not be clear that that's something that i offer oh well you just offered it now there you go everybody knows right now so as we we have a few more minutes want you to share a success story each of you ok so who wants to go first i'll do a fast growing divorce ok story of a woman was married thirty two years her husband found a younger woman  course he didn't admit it if first he left he's in a different home they're having a grandchild in colorado she flies out to be with her son and daughter in law her ex who she's very hurt from it's raw emotion it just happened she just found out the week before that there really was the girlfriend yeah it was very ugly and she said please don't come when i'm here come the next week please i'm begging you i want to enjoy the birth of our granddaughter right syrian section she flies out guess who shows up ran out the husband as promised he would be there so along with my services of coaching i offer in between emergency laser coaching  respond ok go out go to the bathroom call me pause take a walk and i do a ten fifteen minute laser coaching session ok and that's what we did i said your children are there i said i know it's hurtful so let's recognize the pain but how do you want your children to remember you going through this do you want your dignity in place do you want them to see you how do you want to be remembered don't you want your best self to shine through she is a nurse and he was a doctor and he kept telling her i'm going to marry you and then marry i'm going to marry you know and he never did he disappeared on her and she he really appeared like three months later and he was married so she was  out of the water so when she came to me we worked on healing not and i got her out and i got her dating and much like jackie i stay close to my clients as well so i did support and we stayed close because she was feeling very vulnerable very exposed very raw and afraid is this going to happen to me again and i got her on the sites and she's now married and i hope she and her husband are hoping to have a baby  congratulations to both of you on your success stories now as we approach the holidays ok and i'm going to ask you any final advice any tips that's really difficult because again  how do you handle this i'm going to speak specifically regarding when this children right how do you handle the holidays especially when it's a first right my best advice is first try to keep as many traditions as you can in place for the children but there's going to be a moment where they're going to go to your x and you're going to feel alone because you may not be invited to make other traditions for yourself don't sit home and feel sorry for yourself or have a group of people or a therapist or a friend you can call i know for me i was blessed i was separated enough tobar december rolled around my ex husband took the kids far away and i was alone and i had a wonderful friend who invited me for christmas dinner as you said new traditions for yourself and to your children's traditions have back up have good people you can reach out to if you're lonely or scared and what about do you have any advice for people that know of folks that only divorced would you encourage them to say hey you know pull them in yes it happened for me ok yes but don't be afraid to ask yourself if nobody does that's the first thing and  know you mean ask are you doing the holiday ok is it ok if i please someone here i don't want to be alone somebody asked me that this morning they asked me what am i doing for thanksgiving and i told my son i'm chillin i cook and so but i won't go back now because i know all of our situation and say you know if you want to come over and hang bring your pajamas we got red wine we're going to have fun zach leave and you guys my advice would be to don't panic don't be like oh my gosh the holidays are coming and i'm going to be alone again and jump into something that you don't really want to be a part of take a deep breath slow down and know that make a plan make a plan that when  going to really put my love life first and i'm going to make it a priority so this time next year i'm not alone so don't you enter into that flurry of craziness slow down take a deep breath and just make a plan for next year enjoy the holidays with friends and family and much i love jackie's advice of create your own traditions and celebrate you i think that's that would be my best advice where to my viewers four and you guys ok well i can be reached at my web page at better path to divorce dot com my cellphone i'd like to sound like a doctor that's my number and what is that nine one seven three five three one six five five three p nine one my at my office at two a one two nine seven seventy five seven again two aligned two nine seven seventy five seven and your tagline and then your tagline it's just it's a  really it's just here to make it easy i don't even remember the past is the other man has been written thank you and we're here to get a new chapter started to the best life you can have and deserve and yours and mine is i totally help you totally