Staying in the Fight and How Not to Burn Out

Imagine you signed up for a 5km race. You train hard for a few weeks or months. You run three times per week, eat healthy food, and do a few more squats.

Race day arrives, and you are ready. You're going to win this thing! You give it everything you’ve got and run at full speed. At 3km, you start to tire. At 4km, you really feel it, but You know you’ve got some reserve energy to rely on.

When you cross the 5km point, you are ready to pass out. To your surprise, the race doesn’t end. Not only does it keep going, but the track also gets more brutal.

At first, you think, ‘Maybe I made a mistake and signed up for the 10km race?’ But the 10km mark passes, and the race is still going.

Then to your horror, you find out you haven’t even signed up for a 42km marathon. In fact, you are running one of those insane 100km ultra-marathon obstacle courses. The course doesn’t even follow a paved road. You need to scramble over rocks, climb between fallen trees, and swim across an ice-cold lake.

Your legs are aching. Your back starts hurting. All your muscles are sore. You trip and bruise your arms and knees. You are dehydrated, exhausted, and ready to pass out.

Then you trip again and sprain your ankle. You swear, “Fuc*, I didn’t sign up for this!”

Sorry mate. It’s bad news for you. If you are dealing with an ex from hell, it’s going to be a freakin’ ultra-marathon obstacle course, and metaphorically speaking, if you don’t like running, you better start accepting it, or you will die.

You are NOT running a 5km race on a nice paved road. If you approach the situation as such, you will burn out long before the race is over.

You need to train and pace yourself. You need to develop the skills and sharpen the ones you already have. Things will take time. Things will get messy. Just when you think something is sorted, some new BS drama will unfold. You’ll be thinking, “I’m sick of this. Why! why! why!”

You’ll get court orders. You will start seeing your kids, and then your ex will stuff the whole thing up. Again, and again and again.

Do this now; write on a piece of paper in big letters, “It’s a f*** ultra-marathon” Hang it up above the toilet where you will see it several times a day.

You could walk away and quit the race. You can go on in life without your kid/s. Up until recently, one-quarter of babies didn’t live out their first year, and something like half the children died before reaching adulthood. Throw in an unexpected famine, war or plague, and the numbers could be higher. Parents lived with the reality of burying their children. Adults have a coping mechanism to deal with a lost child.

While the pain would tear through you, you could deal with never seeing your kid again. But your kid needs you.

You will stay in the race no matter how hard your ex tries to get you out of your children's lives. Your children deserve to have you in their life. You are their dad. Only you can ever love them like a father loves a child.

However, if you want to survive this ordeal and come out the winner, you must approach it knowing that it will be an ultramarathon littered with obstacles. It is a race designed for the elite warriors.

You have just been signed up for it, involuntarily.

It was two weeks after Bob’s ex Jane left him and absconded with their two kids. Jane had taken out a domestic violence order against him and put in an application with the Family Court for sole parental control. She was seeking an order to allow Bob to see the children once a fortnight with a contact supervisor.

When I first met with Bob, he was convinced that all he had to do was write his now ex a nice email, and she would attend mediation and agree to share the children 50/50, and also let him keep all his money.

I had to crack a smile. It was the same story again and again. Every guy comes in thinking, ‘It’s going to take a few weeks to sort this shit out, and all will soon come good.’

It never does. If it did for you please get in contact with me. I’d like to know what kind of magic you used.

The reality is, it takes more time than you want it to. It will frustrate you. You’ll want to throw in the towel, but you won’t. You are a Warrior Dad, and a Warrior Dad never quits on his kids.

(from the book ‘Surviving the Ex from Hell')