Hi Reader,
Six years ago, sitting across from my divorce attorney, I asked him the question that scared me more than anything else in the process.
Not “how much will this cost.” Not “will I keep the house.” Not “how do we split everything we built.”
The question was: “How am I going to manage the kids?”
That was my biggest doubt. Not a logistical worry. A genuine fear that I was about to break something I could never put back together. My son was nine. My daughter was six. I was about to take responsibility for their daily lives in a way I had never done alone, and a quiet voice kept telling me I was not capable of it.
I want to talk about that voice today, because if you are thinking about leaving, or you have already left, I know you are hearing some version of it too.
The decision I was most afraid of
I filed for divorce on January 6, 2020.
It took everything I had. We had been together more than a decade. I had fought to keep the family together long past the point where staying was helping anyone, because the idea of being the one to end it felt like failure. And underneath the guilt and the grief sat that one practical terror: I did not believe I could do the parenting part.
Then a therapist said something that reorganized how I saw the whole thing.
She told me that kids are not damaged by divorce itself. They are damaged by living inside constant conflict. Two parents who are no longer fighting, even in two separate homes, give children something steadier than two parents at war under one roof. The fighting is the wound. Not the divorce.
That reframe did not erase my fear. But it moved the question. It stopped being “how do I keep the family intact” and became “what environment do my kids actually deserve to grow up in.” And once I asked it that way, the answer was obvious, even though the path forward was terrifying.
Filing was not the end. It was the start of the hard part.
We stayed in the same house through the pandemic, navigating the divorce with two young kids and a world that had shut down. The divorce finalized in 2021.
And then I did what a lot of us do. I ran.
I poured myself into work. I scaled a global company, flew across the Atlantic dozens of times in eighteen months, and from the outside I looked like the divorced dad who had bounced back beautifully. Successful. Composed. Handling it.
I was not handling it. I had left one way of hiding and built a more impressive one.
In 2021 the first real epiphany hit me. The success felt empty, and I started to see that I was building for the wrong reasons. By the time I sat down at a retreat in 2022, and a teacher asked me a single question, “What are you running from,” I could not dress up the answer. Everything. I was running from everything. I had not healed. I had just gotten better at looking like I had.
That was the real turning point. Not the filing. The moment I stopped running and actually showed up.
I gave myself the time before I gave myself to someone else
Here is a part of the story I want to be honest about, because I think a lot of people get it wrong, and I almost did too.
After the divorce, I did not jump into another relationship. I spent 2020, 2021, and 2022 largely on my own. Not because I had no options, but because I knew I had work to do first. I had grief I had never let myself feel. Anger I had buried. A version of myself I had lost somewhere in the years of trying to hold a marriage together. I needed to find him again before I asked anyone else to love him.
So I went to work on myself. A therapist, who I recommend to anyone going through this, was at the center of it. Several coaches helped too. It was slow, unglamorous, and necessary. Getting over a marriage well takes years, not weeks, and I refused to rush it.
By January 2023, for the first time, I felt genuinely ready. And this time I was intentional. I was clear on who I wanted to become and who I wanted beside me. By the end of that year, Doralicia came into my life.
She has been a blessing, and I do not use that word lightly. Her influence on me and on our home has been deeply positive. I was careful and intentional about how I introduced her to the kids, and we did the real work to build something healthy: couples therapy, family and parenting coaching, the kids in their own therapy. I will be honest, I could not parent as well on my own as I do now inside a healthy relationship with her. She helped make our home steadier, and the kids feel that every day.
That is the part I want people to hear. The time alone was not lost time. It was the reason the next relationship could be the right one.
What I can tell you six years later
Last year, life shifted again, and I became the only parent my kids have. One hundred percent responsible. The exact scenario that terrified me across that attorney’s desk.
And here is the truth I did not believe was possible back then: it is working. Not perfectly. Not without hard days. But my kids are steady, they are loved, they are home. The thing I was most certain I could not do is the thing I now do every single day.
The fear was real. The fear was also wrong.
Lessons learned, for anyone in the middle of this
If you are considering divorce, or you are in it, or you are rebuilding on the other side, these are the things I wish someone had handed me at the beginning.
1. Your biggest doubt is usually pointing at your biggest growth. The thing I was most afraid I could not do became the thing I am proudest of. Do not let the fear be the final answer. Let it be the question you are willing to walk toward.
2. The conflict is the damage, not the divorce. If you are staying “for the kids” while the home stays full of tension, look honestly at what they are actually absorbing. Peace in two homes can be a far greater gift than performance in one.
3. Courage is not the absence of uncertainty. It is moving while uncertain. I did not know I could manage the kids. I did it scared. Waiting to feel ready would have meant waiting forever. The readiness came from the doing, not before it.
4. Leaving the marriage is one decision. Becoming the parent is a thousand small ones. Filing was a single hard day. Showing up consistently afterward, the dinners, the bedtimes, the hard conversations, the boring Tuesdays, that is where the real transformation happens. It is built in repetition, not in one dramatic moment.
5. Watch how you escape. After my divorce I escaped into work and called it recovery. Achievement can be just as effective at numbing you as anything else. Notice where you run, because you cannot parent fully from a place you are using to hide.
6. Do not rush into the next relationship. When you are ready, be intentional. I spent years single on purpose. I needed to heal before I dated, not date to avoid healing. When I finally felt ready, I chose with intention instead of out of loneliness, and it changed everything. Give yourself the time. The right relationship is built on the person you become while you are alone first. I will write more about this in a separate piece.
7. Ask for help earlier than your pride wants you to. Therapists. Coaches. Friends who have been through it. The men I see struggle most are the ones who try to white-knuckle it alone. Getting support is not weakness. It is the fastest path through.
8. You are not broken. You are rebuilding. There is a difference, and it changes everything about how you treat yourself while you do the work.
Why I am writing this today
For years I asked myself what was wrong with me. The honest answer, the one it took more than a decade to reach, was that there was nothing wrong with me. I was just disconnected from who I actually was, and from what I was actually capable of.
If you are sitting where I sat six years ago, hearing that voice that says you cannot do this, I want you to hear a different one.
You can become a better parent on the other side of this. You can build a home that is steadier than the one you are leaving. The doubt you are carrying is not a verdict. It is just the beginning of the work.
Happy Father’s Day to everyone doing that work, scared and showing up anyway.
You are more capable than the fear is telling you.
— Mathias
Mathias Ihlenfeld | Entrepreneur | Coach | Advisor
mathias@mathiastx.com | 737-600-6142
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