I know a lot of men who have gone through divorce, and while sometimes it’s a smooth transition with little argument and hassle, other times it can be an extraordinarily difficult journey with contentious lawyers and a hostile legal system that remains biased against fathers. When I heard from Mark about their new Men’s Divorce web site, I was curious to learn more about the resource they were building, a question that spawned the following article…
The men’s divorce site.com is a website designed for men going through divorce. We built this site for the purpose of helping men going through this very difficult and challenging time because when we went through divorce there was no such site.
My name is Mark Aylward and my business partner is Steve Lewis. Both of us have been divorced and have very different stories of the experience. The 3 primary things that the men’s divorce site is focused on are pain, money and time.
We started shooting videos, telling stories and writing articles a few months ago and went live just recently in July of 2012. We very much want the site to become a collaborative place where men can go to get answers, to tell their own stories if they so choose and to perhaps take comfort in knowing that they’re not alone.
I often joke that I became an expert in divorce, but that it’s not a title that I would ever wish upon anyone. The attorney that I used at the very beginning of my divorce process said to me one day, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years and this is the worst divorce I’ve ever seen”. That’s not a contest I was looking to win either. All kidding aside, it has put me in a position to have seen virtually every aspect of divorce from almost every angle.
I’ve got 3 kids, I owned a business at the time, had a lovely million-dollar home and had been married for over 12 years. You can’t really get more vulnerable or complicated than that. Add to that that my ex-wife’s primary purpose was to hurt me. To hurt me without concern for what that might do to her children. Anyone who’s been through divorce knows that if one party wants to prolong things or make things difficult, the system allows them to do it. If that person happens to be the woman, it’s even easier to do.
Although Steve is not a father, I am. The most difficult thing for me about my divorce was watching my children suffer and quite often feeling that there was nothing I could do about it. That the system was set up in such a fashion that I was guilty until proven innocent. I know other dads feel this way too and I’m supremely confident that I can help some of these dads navigate through waters that they’ve never been through, but that I have. Steve and I have both said on numerous occasions, that if this site existed when we began our divorces, we would’ve definitely saved time, it would’ve been a lot less painful for everyone and there is no way we wouldn’t have saved money.
In spite of the fact that we can’t make any “guarantees”, nor should we, we’re very excited about the possibility of truly changing some people’s lives.
The purpose of the site is not to listen to me whine or to teach men how to take advantage of the system, use their children as pawns in the game or discover how to hide assets or hurt their ex-wives. There is no value or benefit to any of these things, there is only value and benefit to be had in expediting the process, minimizing the pain and lowering the cost to whatever extent possible. The site has evolved as a result of my business partner Steve and I understanding over time through much discussion, trial and error that our experiences, as difficult as they might have been, put us in a unique position to be of service to other men going through divorce.
We also have no interest in getting involved in the decision to get divorced. We are advocates of marriage and don’t encourage the idea of divorce nor do we have any certifications, education or other formal qualifications in the areas of psychology, counseling or family therapy. We’re also not attorneys nor do we have any legal qualifications. What we have is experience, a unique perspective and a passion for the idea that we can make the lives of people going through divorce better.
The site itself is built primarily using video. We categorize the content topically and we also use articles. We are aggressively encouraging anyone who wants to to write for the site, to be interviewed for the site and or to produce videos for the site. There are comments sections on every page because again, our hope is that the site becomes very collaborative. We’ve also set up a forum that we hope becomes a fascinating and beneficial place for all it’s members.
Another thing worth mentioning is that any man that’s been through divorce and lived to tell the tale will tell you that you can’t go through this without some really funny stuff happening. Ridiculous, unbelievable, crazy stuff that most people wouldn’t believe. It might not be funny at the time, but once the dust settles you’ve got some really good stories to tell. So we also hope that the site will be entertaining, funny, touching and a host of other emotions that come out in this lousy experience.
Steve and I are entrepreneurs and we have a host of other small businesses that we run. We recently incorporated a parent company to sit on top of all these businesses and the name of that company is Worthwhile Things. The idea here is that everything that we do moving forward, everything we write, every video we shoot and every product or service we develop must qualify as worthwhile.”Sufficiently valuable or important to be worth one’s time, effort, or interest. adj. sufficiently important, rewarding …”
We’ve begun the process of aggressively reaching out to other men and women that see the value in this site in the hopes of collaborating with them while we wait for others to find us as well. If you or anyone that you know would be interested in this type of collaboration, we are wide open to suggestion. We’d love to have you write for us, we’d love to interview you and we can accept your contribution and effort in whatever manner makes you most comfortable. Some people wear their emotions on their sleeves like me while others prefer a bit more privacy. We support both positions.
Visit their new Web site at MensDivorceSite.com to learn more.