In the past 20 years, attorney John Nachlinger has handled more than 2,000 divorces.
A self-described “men’s divorce strategist,” Nachlinger wants dissatisfied husbands to know that calling it quits isn’t a sign of defeat, but of bravery and self-care. In 2020, he even started a podcast and will soon publish a book — both bluntly titled “Get Divorced Without Getting Screwed,” interviewing relationship experts as well as other dudes on their own difficult divorce journeys.
Over the years, he has counseled relationship-addled guys for a multitude of issues, including an age-old one: sticking with a relationship for the kids.
“I have never told someone to stay married for their children … ever. That is the worst reason to stay married,” Nachlinger matter-of-factly told The Post. “I always say that you teach your children what a healthy marriage is, and staying in a bad marriage hurts them more than anything else.”
Nachlinger helped a husband who did not want to split from his wife come to the decision to walk away, despite being in a wild situation: she wouldn’t end a relationship with a Nigerian man — whom she was helping to launder money.
“I reminded him about self-respect and the fact that you only live once,” Nachlinger said of the case. “He saw that he was being used. I encouraged him to look in the mirror and ask a simple question: Is the marriage over? If yes, then let’s get moving on the divorce.”
A current client felt like he had been “roommates” with his wife for six years. He subsequently fell in love with someone overseas and went to see her; his wife found out and served him with divorce papers upon his return. “But he followed his heart when the marriage was already over,” Nachlinger said. “Good for him!”
Yet as he was spreading the gospel of divorce to a growing list of men in need of guidance, Nachlinger was stuck in a 15-year union that had long lost its intimacy and spark.
“I would tell [others] that ‘divorce’ was not a dirty word, that they deserved to be happy, but here I was, living in misery, not even listening to my own damn advice,” he told The Post.
Yet Nachlinger waited until 2021 to admit that he wanted to split — and he is not alone in putting off the inevitable, often for overwhelming reasons.
Couples have increasingly just been sticking it out longer — sometimes much longer — before eventually throwing in the towel, as was made clear by the recent high-profile split of A-listers Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman after 19 years of marriage.
Though divorce is hardly the scandalous event it once was in the U.S., the divorce rate has significantly gone down from its peak in 1980. In the past couple of decades, the rate has dropped further from 4% per 1,000 of the total population in 2000 to just 2.3% in 2023.
But The Post recently noted a rise in “gray divorcées,” middle-aged dames who were finally leaving their long-term marriages.
Relationship coach Dr. Jacquie Del Rosario said that it makes sense that we are seeing more “delayed-onset divorce” happening among people who have been together for over a decade, flatly telling The Post, “People change over time.”
Couples slowly drift apart, and by the time they notice — or decide to finally confront it — it’s often too late to traverse the gulf between them.
“As this evolution takes place, you have to start to renegotiate your relationship,” Del Rosario said. Otherwise, “you’re going to realize you’re with someone that you don’t have very much in common with any longer.”
That happened with Jason Stair, 49, an IT professional in Athens, Georgia, whose 20-year marriage ended this past May.
He had met his ex-wife in 2002, when she knocked on his apartment door looking for a friend of hers who lived in the same building. Two years later, they were married.
“It seemed like we were happy together at first,” Stair told The Post. A decade into their marriage, she went back to school and got a master’s in social work.
She then got a job with late hours — and soon, they were hardly seeing each other.
“That turned us into roommates in a lot of ways,” Stair recalled. “I would go to work at 8 a.m. and come home at 5, and her day started at 11 and she wasn’t home till 10 in the evening. There was not a lot of time for us.”
They tried to have kids, but were never able to.
“I felt like I was living alone,” he said. “We went four years with no intimacy.”
In 2021, she said that she couldn’t handle his depression and anxiety anymore and moved out for almost two years, but then she came back and said she wanted to work on their relationship.
Stair was reluctant, but acquiesced.
“I didn’t want my marriage to fall apart,” Stair said, despite the problems. “I didn’t want to be a failure.”
He added that he had grown up in a devout Christian household that believed in the sanctity of marriage and “’til death do us part.”
“My parents were together for 50-something years, and my grandparents — I thought, if they can do it even if they don’t like each other, I can,” Stair confessed. “But I don’t think that’s possible anymore.”
In late 2022, the pair split for good and finalized their divorce in May of this year.
“Many men are sticking around in relationships or marriages that they know are dead,” said Ralph Brewer, a relationships expert and founder of Help For Mena support group for guys going through break-ups.
He listed three main reasons why: the traumatic trio of kids, money and fear.
“A lot of these men have very poor self-image,” Brewer told The Post. “They don’t think that they’ll be able to start over with somebody else. They think they’ll be alone for the rest of their life. They think, ‘If I divorce, I could lose money, I could lose the kids, and I don’t know what life will look like for me.’
“And it’s sad, because they don’t see [divorce] as this blank slate of possibility for them — they see it just as this awfulness that awaits them.”
Indeed, divorce isn’t always awful.
Paul Aaron Travis was married for 19 years, and though his relationship had started to falter after about a decade, he was blindsided when his wife at the time announced she wanted a divorce in 2012.
“I believed my life’s purpose was to create a happy marriage and break the pattern of divorce that littered my entire family tree,” Travis, 60, told The Post, adding that he wanted to stay together for their two adolescent children.
“Every divorce I’d witnessed was toxic, bitter, destructive — so I was determined to be the one who not only stayed together but actually thrived.”
His delayed awakening turned into a surprising life-changer.
“What I didn’t realize until much later: I was confusing outcome with purpose,” he said. “My actual purpose wasn’t to have a lifelong marriage at all costs — it was to break the pattern of toxic relationships, even if that meant ending ours with grace and honesty.”
Today, Travis is a sex therapist — a career change he credits to his divorce. The founder of relationship organization The School for Lovehe lives just five minutes away from his ex-wife and her husband on Bainbridge Island, outside of Seattle.
No post-divorce drama or unhealthy harangues here: They have family dinners and go camping together with their now-adult children.
Travis has dated more than 100 women in the past 12 years, he confessed, but is now in a long-term relationship with a woman in Portland.
She has, of course, met his ex-wife.
“Our relationship just keeps getting better and better,” he said.
Nachlinger agrees that his life is better post-divorce, too.
“I [was] the biggest hypocrite in the world,” the 45-year-old Princeton resident confessed regarding his relationship with his ex-husband, whom he met in 2005 and married in 2013, adopting a daughter that same year.
By 2017, “our visions of what our future looked like were not aligned,” Nachlinger said, as they argued about money, vacations and much more.
“There was definitely a fear factor,” Nachlinger reasoned about his own hesitancy. “Like, ‘I’m in a marriage, I have a kid, I have a beautiful house, I have a good job, a good career — what if by making this decision I blow up everything?’”
After vowing never to marry again, he ended up meeting another man just two months after telling his ex he wanted a divorce. Four years later, they’re happily married.
Nachlinger’s daughter, Sydney, now 12, adores her new step-dad and keeps her two biological parents from fighting too much.
“My ex still hates me, but coparenting hasn’t been bad,” Nachlinger said. “Our daughter won’t let it be! We don’t get away with much with her, so it all works out.”
