Money Triggers in Life Transitions: Navigating Career Relocations, Layoffs, Lockdowns, and Hostile Divorces
Money is a HUGE trigger, even a catalyst for most life transitions…especially some of the EXTREME ones.
Career Relocation
Starting with the positive… a career promotion may cause people to choose relocation. Receiving more money motivates families to uproot everything and move across the country or even around the world. It changes the balance of the whole family or relationship dynamic and must be tended to intentionally. This is not to suggest a relocation is a bad thing, only an EXTREME change that impacts the entire relationship, adults and kids alike.
Assisting clients with corporate relocation, tending to the entire moving party is essential. Spouses, partners, kids. Even the pets too. They are all moving and must be nested gently and respectfully. The person starting the new job, often is so overwhelmed by the relocation details and new job, that they forget to tend to the others. Just the nature of it…
Layoffs, Lockdowns, or Quarantine Situations
The world news is triggering a deep level of anxiety, even fear around these subjects. A job layoff is emotionally shocking and can place extreme financial stress on relationship dynamics. Lockdown type policies change the home/work environment immediately! Not necessarily in a good way.
These stressors destabilize the home and create tensions. A lockdown, quarantines often demand that families are all in one space for extended periods of time. It is often too much to handle 24/7 and is stressful for all involved. Control dynamics often surface…An unfortunate side effect.
People handle being cut off from socializing and being isolated in different ways. Some get depressed. Others act out. It is hard to tell the difference between the kids and the adults when it comes to these extreme responses, as they are often emotional in nature. Humans (even the shy ones) are mostly social creatures and don’t react well to being imprisoned in their own homes. Their compliance of one thing, may create emotional rebellion or even chaos in another area of life. So little is know beyond our recent experiences.
Hostile Divorce or Escalating Abuses
Hostile Divorce or Escalating Abuses are often the heavier hearted results of money stress in relationship. Narcissism, covert or overt, and coercive control can get triggered further and quickly escalate in all the above situations.
Since MAD Realty Solutions specializes in the tricky and extreme life situations, we often walk next to some pretty sad and traumatic stories unfolding. The fact is people are shattered. Their lives are shattered and yet they still need to engage in the business of the courts AND often a resulting real estate sale. They are mostly exhausted, sometimes terrified…trying to hold it together and take their next breath. Their dreams are crushed.
This is not a typical anything!
Money is often at the core of escalating abuses, control dynamics and hostile divorces. The result can turn to coercive and abusive control.
An attorney once told me that most married couples prefer to mediate or use a collaborative approach for ending their marriage. They see it through the rose colored lens of negotiating with a spouse or partner, because they have done it before… Per the attorney, most situations escalate and fail the collaborative legal approach if there is ANY financial or asset negotiation required. They then shift to a more litigious situation.
It seems worth adding an observation… divorce situations often bring out the worst qualities in people and their control dynamics take on new life force. They are hurting in most cases and switch to survival defenses, sometimes worse.
Please consider these tidbits, if you find yourself heading towards a relocation, or divorce situation. These insights may save you some unnecessary heartache. The MAD team is right here if you should find yourself traveling any of these unfortunate, but not uncommon, extreme life transitions. We are dedicated to creating strategy for you to take your next real estate step, when extreme life happens.
