Bethenny on Divorce

Bethenny opens up about her previous marriage and divorce

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
So I'm going to tell a difficult story. Part of
a story would be impossible to tell the full story
in this brief period of time. But I'm going to
start sharing a story with you about a topic that's
been really challenging. It's been my experience with divorce, which
has been nine years plus on a two year marriage.
I have spent millions of dollars, millions of tears. I

(00:37):
have had a horrific I have had a horrific Hall
of Fame nightmare divorce, and I have been I've been
struggling with talking about this for years. A because it
didn't have a finish point, B because I have a daughter,

(00:59):
and because as it's private. And I've just struggled because
when do you when do you share something so it
can help someone else. I've gotten so many messages, and
I hear so many horror stories about people going through
challenging experiences with divorce, and I feel that it's irresponsible

(01:23):
to not give. All I do is give advice on business.
I'm being an entrepreneur on things that are so inconsequential
in my life compared to what I went through. So
that's what I'm trying to explain. My business has been
such a big part of my life, and I have
been so successful, and I've done something that many people
have never done before. And I've shared so much about it,
and I've talked about it, and I've written about it,

(01:44):
and I've written so many books and articles. There's nothing
in my life that has affected me as a mother,
a woman, a human being emotionally, physically, mentally. Uh my, my,
my face is different. I mean, nothing has affected me
in the same way as my divorce. There's nothing that

(02:06):
I'm more of an expert on in the world than
than divorced. Nothing. I'm literally what I have overcome and accomplished,
and divorce is so much more enormous than what I
overcame and accomplished in philanthropy or business. Divorce has been
my greatest struggle and ultimately my greatest matter to survive,

(02:30):
and it was torture. So I just would I've battled
with this, and I feel like I must share slowly
but surely portions of what I've been through to help
other women. There's just no way to get around it.
I want to be sensitive. I hope you'll help me
be sensitive. I want to not do this, um, this
isn't to be headline e or splashy or salacious. It's

(02:55):
not gotcha, it's not click bait. It's literally delict lea
trying to help you to navigate one of the most
challenging struggles you'll ever go through in your life that
not enough people discuss in a tactical, literal, granular, prescriptive way.

(03:23):
Many people, particularly women, have reached out to me to
ask me advice, how they survive it, how they get through,
have told me their stories varied but all connected in
some way and similar in some way. And many millions
of women are struggling with their journey to divorce. And

(03:43):
there are some horror stories. Uh, divorce is a business.
People make millions of dollars off of it. Divorce is
hundreds and hundreds of hours in court, and it's a
legal bottleneck. Divorce is a necessary evil, just like a
prenup is a necessary evil. But I want to talk

(04:07):
about touchy topics related to marriage, pre nup, post and up, divorce,
how to protect yourself, how to prepare, and how to repair.
So I was married in my twenties. Oh, and I
also want to say that I don't talk about this
specifically as it pertains to my daughter, because I don't

(04:30):
want to talk about my daughter as it pertains to
this matter specifically. I mean, I'll get into certain things
because it'll be unavoidable in describing things to you to
not mention my daughter. But I haven't really talked about
it in great detail. A because it wasn't over fully
fully over. I didn't have a finite ending be because

(04:52):
of her. And see, because I felt that I've always
been bound and gagged and shackled. And while that's fine,
and that's to protect children and a circumstance, whether it's
me to a physical or emotional abuse, whatever it is,
people have to speak up in order for other people

(05:13):
to learn. And I've been through an ordeal. I've been
through hell. I've been to hell and back. I can't
mean I'm going to explain, but I can't express to
you how bad my experience has been. I was married
in my twenties to a nice man who I loved.
His family, we were very close, and I was kind
of marrying him, and then because I didn't have my

(05:34):
own family, and uh, it didn't work out. And I
remember sending back to him the ring and a pair
of earrings his parents had parents had got me. Uh,
and I believe he sent me a watch that I
bought him. And I did not know anything and we
didn't have I didn't have anything, and it was just

(05:56):
we're divorced and there's no money that needs to change hands,
and no one needs to give me anything ng um
and by I was twenty six years old and he
came from a wealthy family. And you know, there was
never a conversation that I would take anything from him
after six Sorry if they're being together two almost three

(06:17):
years but married for seven months, there's no way that
I would take keep a ring we were married, but
it's my engagement ring because we did get married. But
still it just it just was like right and wrong.
That was it. You know, I've never taken anything from anyone, Okay,
never um and So I am always very trusting, I

(06:40):
really am. I will focus on the minutia and the
small details with the things that really could matter. Um,
I'm not like this anymore. And and I've learned, but
you don't want to be bitter, but the things that
really could matter you kind of just don't want to
deal with. Like you close your eyes and say if
I can't see them, then they're not real and act.
And when I got married years ago, I wanted to

(07:02):
marry someone who could sort of um who was I
ended up marrying someone who was just a regular person, UM,
who seemed like they could handle all of what's going
on with me and being in reality television and UM.
I was sort of proud of myself for just marrying
someone who had a simple life and they didn't come

(07:23):
from much, and so they would never want anything from me,
because this is just not the way that it goes.
People who don't come from a lot just are happy
with that sort of small town life and and that
that would never really be a whole issue. And I
had a lawyer that said to me about my prenup,

(07:45):
it's terrible and I wouldn't let you sign this, And
of course I said, no, no one's taking anything for me,
and and you know, I'm trusting and I just don't
want to deal with this. And it was embarrassing. The
word prenup is embarrassing to me. It's uncomfortable. It's awkward.
A contract when you get married, it's an uncomfortable, awkward concept.

(08:07):
You're literally I was watching Yellowstone and Beth and Rip
are gonna get married, and he doesn't have any papers,
and so she said, getting married isn't being in having
a contract. We're not. I'm not going into business together.
So if I had known that getting into marriage is
the same thing as getting into business together with a
business partner, I mean my eyes would have been more open.
So for those of you listening, no, everybody, I think

(08:30):
it's Tyson. I'm sure I have the quote wrong, so
I've got to look it up once and for all.
Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face.
So let's just start from the beginning. I don't care
if it's a small business. I don't care if you're
starting a philanthropic organization. I don't care if it's a
bake sale okay, or if it's a cute little macromay
business with your your camp bunkmate. Be organized, because ship

(08:51):
doesn't happen when it's nothing. Shit happens when it's something.
So be a big girl and a big boy and
be or organized in the beginning. Have the uncomfortable conversations.
I don't say to my business partnerys, I don't want
to talk about that. That's weird. They would never do that.
I don't say when I get into business with major
multibilion dollar corporations, they would never do that. They don't

(09:11):
want my money, they're not interested in that. I mean,
it's just preposterous. So just don't be so trusting. Okay,
moving right along, don't get into something if you don't

(09:33):
feel that it's absolutely right. That's business, that's relationships. Don't
move forward and do something because it's what everyone else
is telling you that you should do, because it's what
you feel that you should do, because it's what your
parents want, but because of what everybody else is doing.
If it's uncomfortable to break something off, it's uncomfortable to
do something challenging and unpopular. But trust me, continuing to

(09:56):
go down a road that you you think and your
gut that might be wrong is a recipe for a
lifetime of heartache. So please, if there's nothing else you
learn from me, it is that just understand cracks become creators.
Problems you see in the beginning will become massive canyons later.
So think about how things look in the beginning. Um,

(10:20):
and these aren't supposed to be number one too, because
I'll forget what number my mom. But anyway, UM, next,
I I was wrong. I misjudged. I was totally totally wrong.
And I started out and thought that I would consciously
on couple. I thought that I would be a great
co parenting. It's amazing in the movies. It's so great

(10:42):
when people can just support each other and understand that
you want your partner to have another boyfriend or girlfriend
or fiance or or wife or husband because you want
more people to love your child. That's a good thing. Um.
You want schedules to be flexible, meaning if it's best
for the child, you have to put the child first.

(11:05):
You have to find a way, no matter how angry
you are, you have to find a way to make
your child's well being more important than your anger for
the other person. I'm trying to choose my words wisely.
I've been the victim of the opposite experience. I've been
the victim of anger trumping the benefits of a child.

(11:25):
And this could be even in a situation where both
parents love the child so much, parents are tempted to
win the favor of the child to buy them. There's
a great thing. People get divorced and all of a
sudden it could be the mother or the father that
wasn't really involved, and then they become super parent. They're
so involved. Then every time the kid goes back to
one parent, they're buying them a thousand gifts and trying

(11:48):
to guess what. Kids are smart, they know everything it's
going on. No kid's going to not take a gift,
but they get what's going on. Kids will go where
it's good, where it's emotionally healthy. They are. They are
living there, breathe, They're growing. They're literally growing right before
your eyes, and they are growing emotionally. We think about
them literally, we don't think about them how that they're
emotional beings that are going through changes. And every moment

(12:11):
in a child's life is like, uh, you know, a
year for somebody else. So they're just becoming different. And
I always thought about Brian. I have never talked bad
about I would never talk bad about anyone in Britain's
life negatively that affects children. And I remember the first

(12:31):
time we were getting divorced and I remember going to
see the judge. I want a primary custody of Brian
because I have a challenging schedule. Sometimes after travel most
of the time I'm at home, but in the event
that I had to go, which only happened one time
in a decade, to Australia for eight nights. I don't
want to be away from my daughter. I want there
to be some flexibility. So in asking for primary custody,

(12:53):
I wanted to be able to have more time so
I could give it back, be flexible, but have flexibility
with my schedule. And I had the gut instinct in
the intuition that my X would be very rigid about
that and would just hold it to the letter of
the law. And then I would just if I would
miss out, I'd either have to miss out on an
opportunity or a financial opportunity. And I was supporting my

(13:18):
daughter and my ex or you know, and I don't.
I didn't want to be away from her ever, So
I just wanted there to be some flexibility. But some
people you will find and you need to know this
when you're getting divorced. Understand that when you're getting divorced,
if unfortunately you're getting divorced, that you have to be
very thorough in what you agree upon and you have
to fight for what you want, and it will be
uncomfortable and you want to give up, but you have

(13:40):
to really get what you want and what you need.
So custody agreements, divorce agreements, things like that. There there
there pieces of paper, their documents. No judge, no lawyer,
no person can know any that's going to happen, any

(14:01):
accidents going to happen, any kind of natural disaster that's
going to happen. I don't mean in the world, I
mean within your own life. People get sick, people have
emotional issues, people have issues at school, children have um
drama with friends. You have to know that it's a
document just for structure. It's not supposed to be used
as a weapon against the other person and to control

(14:22):
a situation, because it's used often as a weapon, and
a judge only looks at you know, writing on a
paper and a signature, So some people want to use
that and and weaponize a document. Not so it's in
the best interests of a child, but so it's to
do a gotcha and count every day and there's no flexibility.

(14:43):
That's debilitating. It's not good for a child, it's not
good for you, it's not good for your partner. I
was part of a very extreme example of circumstances. I
had a situation where I had an apartment that I
paid for with my money that was in my name,
and one day my lawyer said to me, it's not
in your name. I had no idea how that could

(15:03):
possibly happen. I used to be in my apartment and
documents would be handed to me the and I remembered
there was the final page of a document and it
was described to me differently. And then I later found
out that the document was forged and illegally notarized, and
that my apartment was in my own apartment. So I
had to spend millions and millions of dollars and months
and months and appeals to the court to get my apartment.

(15:24):
That was one dreadful thing. I was followed, I was hacked,
I had my email broken into, I had my every
move watched without my knowing, and until I realized, because
I couldn't figure out why I was being tormented, I
was threatened. I was harassed. I was emailed hundreds and
hundreds of times in a very short period of time.

(15:45):
And everyone that I went to a professional said you're
not being physically abused, and I said, I know, this
isn't right. I know this isn't right, and this was
about me at the time. I knew it wasn't right
for my daughter. I wasn't able to commut unicate with her.
I wasn't able to talk to her. I wasn't able
to face time her when it wasn't my time. I
was taunted, I was tormented, and I wasn't able to

(16:07):
communicate with her. It was absolute torture. You have a
little kid who's being shown candy and being lured into
another room and they can't talk to you. It's it's
it's exasperating because then if you do have to go
on a work trip and your away for five or
six days, you just don't get to speak to your child,
and your panic that they're going to forget you. And
you know you've all if you've been divorced or you're

(16:28):
getting divorced, you know you have this fear. It was
my worst fear come true. I had to live. Lawyers
tell you that you can't move out of your house.
You have to stay in the house. The price what
is it called the the spousal the marital residence. You
have to stay in the house. How could you stay
in the house with someone you're going through issues like
like fraud and being recorded, and you know you're now

(16:51):
in a house with someone because you need to spend
time with your child. I had to make individual decisions
that I wasn't allowed to do. I bought another apartment,
moved out of the apartment that I owned because I
didn't want my daughter to be in this den of hell.
I wasn't allowed to do that. My lawyer said, do
not allowed to do that. It's a financial it's a
financial choice and decision, and you haven't figured out your

(17:11):
finances yet. And I said, I have to be a
parent first. I can't keep my daughter in a in
a horrible circumstance. So for the years that my lawyers
told me I wasn't allowed to buy something, Brent and
I were staying in corporate apartments, temporary apartments, and hotels.
We were in a hotel or a friend's apartment every
week because we weren't allowed to buy something. But we

(17:33):
couldn't handle being in the main house. The judge who
said having a custody battle is like watching your child
drown asking you for help. That's what Judge Gasmer said
nine years ago, and I remembered it. I cried and
I thought, Okay, we're gonna figure this out. And now
I'm a victim of a nine year situation because I
had to fight for what was right. So we'd stayed

(17:55):
in hotels, corporate apartments. We couldn't stay in my main
apartment where we had had a pad lock on my
door um to protect myself, and it was not excepted
when my daughter still remembers even though she didn't know
what the point was, but she knew that my that
the bedroom doors were locked, which is not in her
best interest. So then after a year or so, I said,
I have to buy my own places is not stable

(18:16):
for her. That's how I ended up with a house
in the Hamptons, so there was a stable place in
the in in the summers to go, it was exhausting.
I used to pick her up from school and I
was terrified to go home. So I would take her
in my heels from my talk show, my full face
and makeup my lashes, and I would take her anywhere.
I would take her anywhere from Barnes and Noble to
any kids club, to any play date, to anything to

(18:37):
to Mommy and me Margarita's with friends, to have Mexican
and the kids would run around anything to to reduce
the time at home. I'd try to get her home,
and then I tried to just have her in a bath,
and I was taunted within my own home. I had
I've had someone crawled into my bed and look me
in the eyes and say, is everything okay. I've had

(18:57):
someone follow me when I'm trying to read a book
to my daughter in her ad. I've been absolutely tortured.
And I'm telling you this because you need to understand
that crazy things can happen and you need to protect yourself.
I want you to know that the legal process is brutal.

(19:17):
It takes a long amount of time and a lot
of money. I'm sure it exists for people who don't
have money, and I would like to get into that
as a charity. I don't know exactly how people who
don't have money get a leg up and get ahead
of this. Because I have money. I've spent millions of
dollars on this. That's the oh. And I had to
keep persevering, UM, keep going back to trial for what's right. Um.

(19:40):
But I did it myself. When I tell you that
lawyers can't do this for you, no one else can
do this for you. I did it myself. I went
I remember Dennis who passed away. He told me that
what I ended up doing with my assistance would be
would cost like a hundred thousand dollars in late and
legal secretaries to do. I basically went through all of
the abusive emails, text, things written about me, experiences. I

(20:03):
had them in binders. I have twenty binders that have
tabs with different categories, from taunting to obsessing over the
men that I dated to her, to all kinds of
harassment categorized. Because not until I had it so organized
and until an incident happened, could I take legal action.
And finally, the first time I ever felt like a

(20:25):
can exhale in years was when legal action was taken
against what is emotional abuse. So I had to take
matters into my own hands and methodically and slowly capture
the recordings, the emails, the text, all of it together
in an organized manner, as if it was a thesis
to have action taken. I think it's important for me

(21:01):
to talk about the whole industry, concept and trauma of
the topic of divorce. I realized something staggering the other
day and I can't unrealize it. This is crazy. I
am having a hard time even uttering this next sentence

(21:22):
because it will make me start crying. Twenty of my
entire life has been spent going through this divorce. How
insane is that statement? A fifth of my life I've
spent dealing with this divorce. It's unbelievable. Think about how

(21:44):
we spend our time. So I consider myself an expert
on the topic. I consider it my responsibility to share
with people what I've been through so they don't go
through it as well. And I need to in a
very detailed and granular manner her gradually describe many different

(22:04):
things that I encounter, because there are very few things
that I did not encounter during the process of my divorce,
even still after that. So I had to fight for
what was just in being emotionally abused. I had to
fight for what was my legal property. I had to
fight for contact with my daughter and for her to
not live in a den of hell. I had to

(22:26):
fight the whole entire way. And recently, after nine and
a half years, after slowly and methodically going through a process,
it was over. It started to be over because after
legal action was taken and my ex was arrested, UH
and a couple of other things happened. I was I

(22:46):
went back to trial for the um teenth time and
was given decision making for my daughter's medical and education.
And decision making is very important because God forbiddess. People
always think about just the time. It's not the calendar,
God forbid. There's an emotional issue, there's something that goes on.
A real decision needs to be made about medical or emotional.
You need someone needs to be the tiebreaker, So think

(23:08):
about that. So that was great. And then in the
beginning of the pandemic, because this has been such a
traumatic time for so many people and emotions are running
high and we don't think enough about how it affects
kids and their emotions, and just their world is different,
their schools different, the masks is different, the pods are different,
the friends are different. Everything is different, vaccines, it's just
a different world. My daughter didn't want to transfer and

(23:32):
do custody transfers, and my lawyers said to me, you
must transfer her. She's eleven, you're in charge. You tell
her to go. And it became emotionally traumatic for her
and she wouldn't go, and she experienced a lot which
I don't want to get into great detail, but a
lot of trauma. And I said to my lawyers, just
like I said years ago, about the fact that I
wasn't going to make myself and bring stay with an

(23:54):
X in a marital residence just because lawyers and judges
say you have to. You have to do what's best
as a parent, I said, you have to be organ
eyes though you can't be wild and rogue. I said,
I'm not going to drag my child out of a car.
She history, it's it was. I won't get into detail,
but I wasn't going to do that. So I was
then threatened to be arrested and held in contempt of court,

(24:17):
and Brent was awarded her own attorney so she could
have a voice and she could have rights for what's
best for her, not what's best for me, not what's
best for my ex, what's best for her. And it
started a whole legal process that I fought for and
stayed the course and did always always, if you always
do what's right for your child, you'll always be doing

(24:39):
what's right in the situation. And it's challenging during divorce
to do what's right for your child, because you're also
supposed to be doing what you're supposed to be doing,
what you signed on some contract. What someone's going to
tell some judge. But real life is not on a
piece of paper. Real life is okay, she's transferring on
Tuesday at four thirty. Great, my child is having traumatic

(25:00):
experience and will not transfer. That's real life. A contract
says you have to live in a house that is
a torture chamber, and real life means you have to
do what's best for your child. So that's not an
easy balance. It's not gonna be an easy balance for
you emotionally. But if you've been through a challenging situation
or you're about to enter one, I always thought of
it as something to survive, something to survive. That was

(25:22):
that I thought would kill me many times that I
fought for that I survived. I tried to trust the process.
I listened to anybody who would give me advice, and
tried to figure out go with your gut instinct. You
know best everything that happened, and that everything that happens
because I made it happen. Lawyers don't make things happen.
Lawyers execute what you need to happen, and uh, my

(25:44):
lawyers were amazing, But I drove the entire process. I
drove the research, I drove the the decisions. What was
just And you need to think of it like eighteen
holes of golf. Okay, you know when you're at one
and you just know you're gonna get to eighteen, you
don't know how, and you think it's going to kill you.

(26:05):
And I will say, don't sweat the small stuff, meaning
the minutia doesn't matter. Don't rack up bills and time
and stress over bullshit, small bullshit that doesn't matter. It
only matters if you let it bother you. Then there's
really big things that do matter, real issues. Um, and
I've been through every single one of them. So on

(26:26):
December eighth, my nine plus year custody divorce battle ended.
And it is the greatest relief and the biggest struggle, obstacle, fight,
emotionally tormenting experience I've ever been through in my entire life.
And if I can help other people to make that

(26:48):
journey easier, that's what I'm here to do. So I've
never spoken about this, and I really also if there's
media that ever listened to this podcast, I really uh,
implore them to be respectful because the reason that I'm
doing this is for the people listening, the women in particular,
who are not in control. They haven't made the best

(27:09):
financial decisions. Somehow they got on a road and now
they're being dealt a shitty hand and they don't know
how they're going to survive. They're being emotionally tormented, financially controlled,
and they can't see a way out. And for me,
as a wealthy person who's successful, who's powerful and strong
and has great lawyers, I have thought that I would

(27:29):
never see the way out nine and a half years,
one foot in front of another, like a hike, like
a sixt mile, like one foot in front of another,
making good decisions, never taking the bait, always doing what
was best for my child, always thinking rationally, always saying
to myself, please, this will end at some point, and
you'll have a story to tell. You'll be able to

(27:50):
help other people. You will survive something, you will learn something.
You'll be able to use this as a teaching tool.
I don't know what this is, but I know this
is important. I've been I've seen enough messages from women.
I've been agg ordered long enough. It's doing everyone a
disservice if I don't truthfully explain that I've been through
fucking torture and hell, emotionally abused, tormented, stolen from, defrauded, tricked, recorded, hacked,

(28:15):
you name it, it's happened to me in nine years.
And I came out on the other side and it
ended because I fought for what was right and justice came.
It came late, it was long, and the divorce business
is a shitty one, but justice was served.