Episodes 105 & 106 – Love, Respect, & Divorce in Dentistry

“When I look back on my life, I wouldn’t say I would change anything, but I wish I could have prevented a lot of things from happening.”

This is probably the biggest thing that leads to loss of revenue and the ability to retire when you want to. It’s divorce in dentistry.

This is a tough one to talk about. I know we have a pandemic going on right now, but dentistry has its own divorce epidemic. So in this 2 part episode, I’m going to share my story, my experience with divorce as a dentist.

This is very personal, but I hope this can help someone in the future.

It’s a hard conversation. I know hundreds of dentists who have gone through this. And I can only share my side of the story. So today, I’m going to start my story with:

• The pressures I felt as a provider
• Love and respect; what fills your bucket?
• The devastating effects of divorce

“I was under so much pressure that I forgot about the things that were most important in my life, my family.”

In Part 1, I shared a little bit about my experience with divorce and dentistry. This is a topic that is hard, but it’s prevalent in our industry. Early in my career, I was sitting in an educational session and the gentleman sitting next to me pointed out the panel on stage and said, “Bruce, every single one of those men is divorced. Don’t let that happen to you.” I told him I wouldn’t. Ten years later, I was divorced. Ten years after that, I was divorced a second time.

I heard the message, but didn’t know how to handle it. I wish I had known I didn’t have to exhaust myself with 15 hours days. I wish I had known you could be more productive in fewer hours. I wish I had known you can have time with family and time in the office with patients.

Like I said before, life is better now than it’s ever been so I wouldn’t change anything. But if I had gotten more productive and balanced my life better, I think I could have helped more people. And I think my girls would have liked to have me around more.

It’s not easy being a dentist. But it’s also not easy for your spouse and family to be home all day when you’re working 15 hours and stressed out.

So I challenge you to listen to this podcast and think about:

• Looking at life through the filter of authenticity
• Examine what pressure is doing to your priorities
• Learn from my experience

PART 1 TRANSCRIPT

Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird, with the Productive Dentist Podcast. Today we’re going to talk about something that I get, oh, I’ve been exposed to and, and I get calls. And I’ve talked to friends. And it’s probably the biggest thing that leads to, I don’t know, loss of heart muscle loss, loss of stomach lining, loss of revenue loss of you know, the ability to be able to retire when you want to. And it comes down to divorce and dentistry. 

And this is a this is a tough one to talk about. Because it’s something that affects it’s, I know we have a pandemic going on. But but it’s an epidemic in dentistry is you know, people getting divorced and, and I want to share this with you, and it’s very personal. But hopefully it can help somebody in the future and, and if I can do that, then, you know, then I’m and that that I think I’ve done, you know, what God put me on earth to do is to help folks and and, you know, in whatever way they that we can. 

It’s a hard conversation and like I say, I know, hundreds of dentists out there personally, that have gone through divorce, I’ve gone through this and, and what I want to share is kind of share a little bit about my story. And this might take a couple episodes. And I’d love to get some feedback from you. And I’d love for you to share this with your friends, your and it doesn’t they don’t have to be in dentistry. And I can only speak from from my side of the story which would be being a man and I can’t really speak you know from being a female dentist, but I have a feeling it it works the same in many ways. 

When I first started practice, and I’ve told told you guys, I’m I was a workaholic. I felt the need as a man to provide, you know, provide for my family. And and we began a family. I had three small daughters kind of back to back to back and I say three small daughters. They weren’t so small. I heard a story last night, during the the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. Jimmie Johnson, you know, was had tears in his eyes, he was talking to his boys and he said, You know, he was he was apologizing that he wasn’t there for them. He is both of his boys played football. He never saw them play one down football because he was so committed. And the thought process for him was I’m going to provide I’m going to be a provider. 

And I believe you know when that when he said that? How many people we get so engrossed in our need to provide for our family and to be successful in whatever manner that is for you. That many times we forget, forget the family. I was very fortunate. I coach my little dribblers coach, my girls and little dribblers basketball and I was able to be there. But I’m not sure I was there. I mean, I was there but in the back of my mind, it was always thought of as a sacrifice. I need to go do this. But I really need to be working. I really need to, you know to be at the office working on this and working on that. 

And the thing that stands out to me more than anything I’ve read a wonderful book, oh, gosh, it’s been 25 years ago, or man, I mean, not that long, maybe 15 years ago. And it was about love and respect. And men, you know, really require respect to kind of fill their bucket. And women really need love to fill their bucket. And it’s two different things. And I see, I see this, where you’re working all the time at, at, at the office. And you you really kind of get in great relationships with people in your office, that show you amazing respect. You’re the best dentist, you’re an amazing dentist, you’re you know, it’s not just being a dentist, you know, you’re different when you’re there. And then you come home, and you’re tired, and you worn out. And you don’t much feel like, you know, you do what you have to do. 

And I have so much respect for dentists who’ve been married for 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, because they got the message I didn’t. And when I would come home, you know, it would be like, oh, I’ve got I’m going to help with this. I’m going to help with chores, I’m going to help do these things. But the love I showed you my wife, yeah, this is my first wife. Because obviously, I’m telling the story. But I don’t think I was there for her. You know, because there was so much pressure and so much stress at the office. And what I can tell you is as a man, if you’re not showing respect, and the wife has been with the kids all day long, and they’re kind of we walk in and go, Hey, here, you take her and I’ll take this one and whatever. 

And you’re like, oh, gosh, Okay, I will. And unfortunately, I think, you know, we went to church all the time, we did all that stuff, but I just wasn’t providing that feeling of love. Let me help. Let me let me help you with this, I have heard the term for play as is not what we think or play is taking the trash out and, and hugging someone and doing the things that make them feel loved. And I missed that chapter in the book. And, and one thing about it is the dentists and well, they get a lot of respect to the office, I can’t tell you how many affairs that go on in dental offices today. But it’s the numbers are massive. I mean, it’s something you you can’t even believe in the reason is the team, the people around you are giving you as a man, they’re giving you respect. And that’s really what you what you boys wanted. 

And, and so from the from the wife side, you know, when the husband comes in the show of respect is something that they really need, you know, I’m so proud of how hard you work. I’m so proud of that. And on the flip side, the from the guy’s standpoint, man standpoint, when he comes home, she really needs love, and she needs respect. And what I will tell you is, if people don’t get that, they will find it somewhere else. You know, if you’re not coming home and doing the things, and I’m saying they will, I mean, there’s some some obviously that will, will stick it out for years and years and years. 

But I don’t think it’s the life we were meant to leave. I don’t think it’s the, the maximum thing that we can do in our lives. And so if I look at this, and I say, you know, how can I help you in your journey through dentistry and through life. It’s, if I’m talking to your female listening, your your spouse, your significant other needs, you know, really needs respect. And if you’re, if you’re the male, you really need to have foreplay all day long. You know, you need to, you know, do the little things that show love. And there’s some people that are that way and that Gosh, I you know, I would give anything if, like I say if I had read that chapter in the book, but I didn’t. 

And so I ended up you know, going through divorce, having an affair and and, and it broke up broke up an amazing marriage broke up the what could have been the potential for an amazing marriage. Financially, you know, divorce is devastating heart muscle, stomach lining, divorces, devastating from a perspective of feeling good about yourself.

It’s devastating, you know, if your wife at home, I mean, I can’t tell you how many times and this transcends dentistry. But how many times if they’re the wife’s not getting love at home, they find somewhere where they will get it, they find somewhere where they’ll get attention, they’ll find somewhere where they can, you know, feel that, that that basic instinct that that instinct that somebody loves me, they’ll find it somewhere. 

And so I went through a divorce. And, again, it was very difficult. And a lot of guys think, you know, well, look you and I’m going to talk about at the time of divorce, you know, they’re thinking, Well, you know, she doesn’t understand me, she didn’t get me, you know, she obviously doesn’t appreciate all the hard work I’m doing to I’m going to get divorced, and I’m going to, I’m going to find someone else, that it’s going to be great. And, you know, it can certainly happen. But what you what you end up finding out is, and this is a little too late, but you find out that now you want joint custody of your kids, you know, yes, and you’re going to start spending time with your kids, you’re forced to spend time with your kids, because they’re with you. every other weekend, you now we’re going to the movies with them, you’re taking them out to Chucky cheese, you’re going and doing things that you were too busy to do before. 

But now you’re forced to do if you want to have a relationship with your children. It’s a shame that many, many dentists don’t even get to spend that time until they’re get divorced. And all of this freedom that they wanted now, they’re they’re planning things for the weekends for the kids, how are we going to transfer the kids? How are we going to do these things. And to be honest, it’s just a tragedy. I did that. I mean, I can speak from experience I spent, I spent, I don’t know, 15 years, with my youngest daughter was three years old at the time, and I spent 15 years going, you know, taking him places on weekends doing things. 

When is if I would have just had a better, better way of thinking early on, then I probably would still be married. And I could have had an amazing relationship was married to my high school sweetheart. And you know, we had dated five years before we had our first child. And we were married almost 20 years. But I didn’t read that chapter in the book. And, and so things things fell apart. And what when I challenge you know, what I challenge you to do is to challenge you to read that book, love and respect as a female read that book as a male read that book. 

If you don’t know what it is, send me an email at bruce@productivedentist.com and just look it up on Amazon, you’ll see it, it’ll pop right up, read that book. Because what I think it’s going to do is it’s going to give you I hope, a different perspective, on respect and love. And I do think they can coexist. And you don’t have to say I love you all day long to stay married, you don’t have to hear I respect you so much all day long to stay married. But what I believe is, it’s a giving and taking it’s a it’s a you know, we must give to receive. 

And I went through, you know, again, years of a lot of pain after divorce. I got remarried that that was a that turned out to be you would think it was a disaster. But I had another little girl during that timeframe. So on the one part of me says, gosh, you know, wish had never done this. And then then she popped popped up and you know what, now I look back at my life and I say, you know, I, I I wouldn’t change anything. But I wish I could have prevented a lot of things from happening, you know, in my life, you know, I wouldn’t change them because of where we are. But I’m going to share kind of part two of this podcast.

Next, and I want to continue on this conversation. And I just pray that it helps help somebody that helps one person out there have a phenomenal life and and just have an amazing time here on the planet with people they love and with people that respect them and then it would be it would be so Something that I would, I wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t be happy to have had some effect there. So anyway, I know this is a tough conversation for these two podcasts. But it’s something that just been on my heart. And I’ve talked to several friends recently that are going through it now after 20, 20 years? 15, 25. And I, it’s just been, and they’ve asked my advice. And so I said, You know what, I’m going to do a podcast on this. So I hope, I hope this message either reaches you or maybe one of your friends. And I would love for you to share it. And I will, I will be back and talk to you a little bit.

PART 2 TRANSCRIPT

Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird with the Productive Dentist Podcast and this is episode 106. In the previous episode I was talking about well, some of the more difficult conversations that are had in, in dentistry. And it’s not in dentistry, but in life. And it was about dentistry and divorce. I shared a little bit about, you know my story and how divorces, divorce has changed. changed the direction of my life in a couple of different times I’ve been through, I’ve been through divorce twice. And you know, for any of you out there that and there’s so many out there that you get into as a dentist, you start for instance lecturing, or teaching, you’re teaching other dentists and I was told this years ago, if you want to be a great teacher, find something you love to do become the best at it various, and then teach others to do it the way you’ve done it. 

And that’s really been what I’ve tried to accomplish and what I’ve tried to do over the last really 35 years and and I shared with with you a little bit about some of the things that happened, you know, I would come home, I’d be so tired. I would just be like, okay, you know, as far as intimate intimacy, okay, yeah, but I was tired. And I mean, I’d be completely exhausted after a 15 hour day, 18 hour day. And you feel like, and again, I can only speak from the man’s side of this, if you’re female dentist, you know, I I’m sure someone out there is going to grab the mail here. And, and, and help dentists from that perspective, too. 

I just can’t do that, because I don’t have that experience. But what I will say is, I wish I would have known today what i what i would known known then what I know today, what I mean by that is you can be productive. In fewer hours, you can have it all you can have time with family and time in the dental chair, working on patients, and they’re not mutually exclusive. And so, you know, that’s what we teach a productive dentist Academy, we teach you how to increase your productivity. And if you choose to decrease the amount of time you work, then what you’ll find is you do have time for family. 

I mentioned love and respect. You know, women need love and men need respect. And it’s something there’s a great book on I challenge you to download it love and respect on Amazon. And, and just read it because it made a big difference in my life after reading it because I went Wow. Didn’t didn’t read this one. When I first got married when I was 21 years old, and was married for 20 years. I got married a second time to a team member that was part of the team. Why? Because they showed me amazing respect more than I got at home. So I thought well, this is great. I mean, they get me unfortunately, within a very short period of time, I knew I had made a major mistake. 

And even though I cared about the person, I just knew that it was just not the direction I wanted to go and seven, seven years later, after being married 20 years, seven years later and being divorced for five years in between times. I I knew I was going to be divorced again. And it was going to it was going to eat my heart muscle my stomach lining and and you know, you want respect but you start to lose respect for yourself at some point. And that that drives you further and deeper into into a in a place where I just really don’t want you to go if at all possible. Like I say if you don’t show love. Somewhere, they don’t show you respect you’ll, you’ll find respect somewhere. But I challenge you to do something different. And I challenge you to be productive, learn to be productive. 

And I see this a lot with the millennials, the new new students that I’ve been teaching, you know, when given a choice of working more and making more money, or having more time and making more money, they almost always take the time and money. And I respect that a lot from a lot of my new students, but this is still a tough conversation. 

And, you know, if, if, so what I want you to do is I want you to think, think about your marriage, if you’re married or think about your significant other and make a concerted effort. I have a friend, a really good friend who is out, you know, talking about, you know, all these things that you can do to make your life better. But yet, yesterday, I’d heard that, you know, that individual never goes to the ad of the kids ballgames. Never does any of that stuff. Well, you know, you can’t speak one way. You can’t teach one way and live another way. 

You know, that’s, that’s not authentic. And I, I’m very authentic when it comes to this. Because I’ve now been married 10 years to my third wife, who is absolutely the love of my life. And I have every day, I don’t just say I love you. But I try to do things that, that she knows I love, I love her. And no matter what that is, let me run to the bank for you. Let me go do that. And I also learned to be productive in less time, more productive and less time, how to really increase my productivity to massive levels, and have three days free three regular work days a week off, I work two days a week for 15 years. I am so proud to say that today. I have an amazing relationship with all of my daughters. I also have an amazing relationship with my stepson and stepdaughter. I love to see him there. I just and now I have 13 grandkids. And I’m spending time tonight I’m going to go caddy for my oldest grandson. So I’m doing the things that I should have done. 

I tried to do early on, but I was under so much pressure to make a living and to be the provider. And I forgot about the things that are the most important in my life. And that was my family. You know, I didn’t necessary we can all go back to how we grew up and all those things. And we’ve we’ve seen, oh, lots of difficult stories about growing up. You know, my dad taught me a lot he taught me about hard work, he taught me about you know, to do things, you know, the best you can do and be the best you can and do it right the first time and so many things. But maybe on the other side of the house showing love, maybe wasn’t one of those to my mom, and I saw my mom, you know, and you just you are part of your history. 

Okay, but you don’t have to repeat that history. And so I challenge you to kind of change your thought process just for a little bit as you listen to this podcast. Because I am I’m very confident in what I’m talking about now. You know, you would have Could I wish I could have done a different I don’t wish it was different today. Because life is better than it’s ever been. But I think I could have helped a lot more people. I think my own girls my family would have loved it if I would have been there more and and that’s through two marriages. And then one cheers, divorce. Remember again, now you become dad that you are required. If you want to have anything to do with your family, previous family, you’re required or you want to see them on weekends. 

And so now you’re planning the Chucky cheese parties you’re planning the you know the things that your your kids are doing. And I have so much love and respect for some of my friends that have been married for 30 years. 35 years. But you know what? I see that I see that male I see that man I see him doing things with the kids taking them on vacations, going places and doing things and I see them showing love to their wife in a way that I didn’t do. So if you’re if you’re struggling if you’re going through difficult times and early impression As I can tell you, it’s difficult. It’s not easy to be a dentist. But it’s not easy to be a mother at home with kids. When, when the husband’s gone all day long, and then you come home and you’re in love, but you want to give him a hug, and you want to kiss him and whatever. 

And the kids want to see Daddy, I remember my girls running out when I got home pretty much anytime before it was bedtime. And you know, Hey, Dad, you know, and it was it was a, I had a great life. I just didn’t know how to sustain that life. And there were things that I needed to do that I didn’t do. And, and so if you’re in that situation, now, I just really challenge you. And it’s not too late. And I don’t think it’s ever too late. I really don’t.

But I’ve learned through my marriage now that she shows me such respect. She, you know, she, she tells me how, you know what an amazing Dad I yeah, gosh, you know, I love that. You know what an amazing dentists. What an amazing friend, what an amazing, it doesn’t matter, you know, that respect. And I’m showing her love, like I didn’t show and my previous marriages. And so if if you can do it in your first marriage, you’re going to have a good heart, and you’re going to have good stomach lining, and you’re going to have good self respect, you’re going to feel like you’re somebody who is doing really what God wants us to do. 

You know, I don’t think that it wants us to get divorced and go through these things. But it does happen. And I was on the phone yesterday with a really close friend who’s going through this. But I can tell you, of all the lectures and teachers I know out there. I was at a I was at a talk years ago. And there was a guy there and the top speakers in the country were up in front of us talking about implants. And he gave me a little little note of wisdom. He said, Look up there, Bruce, he said, Every single one of those men up there have been divorced. Don’t be that person. And I said, Oh, I won’t. And 10 years later, I was divorced. 10 years after that I was divorced again. I heard the message. 

But I just didn’t know how to how to deal with it. So just from this one aspect, love and respect. You know, if you’re at home, just show that respect. You know, show that respect to the man when he comes home from work, or vice versa. You know, when when she comes home, and again, I’m talking about a man out of my league out of my lane, but show how much love you have for how amazing it is. And if you’re the theme of coming home show how much you respect what they do. 

Because I promise you there are opportunities here that can change the direction of your life. Again, I wouldn’t change anything that’s happened in my life. Looking back, because I’ve got four amazing daughters, and I’ve got 13 amazing grandkids. I wouldn’t change anything. But I wish I would have I wish it would have been different. I wish I would have known things and why don’t we aren’t we all that way? Wish we would have known then what we know now that this is one thing is a tough conversation. I wanted to have to put it out there. Because when you find someone else, there’s no guarantee. It’s you’re still the same person. And you still if you’re a dentist and you’re not showing love at home, the next one’s not going to work either. It’s not going to work into you to learn what that is. 

And so, anyway, this was a tough this was too tough podcast for me to share. But I felt just felt wrong to share it with you because I go through this conversation with brands probably once a month. You know, what should I do? Bruce, I know you were divorced. I know how do you do it? Well, I’d love to tell people before they got to that point. And so anyway, I love you guys. And I, you know, I really pray that these two podcasts have been something that speaks to you. I really you know, I love marriage. I love being married. But I love being married. When it’s working the way it’s supposed to be working. 

And if you if yours isn’t and read books, get counseling, go. Go learn from other people do everything you can because I promise you it’s worth it. I promise you it’ll be worth it for you. So I’m signing off for today. Please tell your friends tell. tell people about our podcast. Obviously It’s not just dentistry. I’m going to continue to go in and delve into the teams and all the things that we always talk about. But this was one that I just felt the need to share so let me know Bruce@ProductiveDentist.com if you have any questions, if something pops up, I’ll give you any resources that I have that could help you in the future. So, alright, love you guys. See you next week.