More or less half of folks who marry end up divorced. In divorce as in marriage, friendly trumps fighting for creating positive outcomes for everyone. A collaborative divorce process speeds up the inevitable grief at loss of what was and sets the stage for a better future.
Divorce and relationship endings of all types tend to create emotional distress. The process is often a painful one. Negative emotions like anger, resentment, disappointment, shame, guilt, and anxiety can tempt folks to want to dump blame on the other and to resort to punishment. Yet blame and impulses to punish or get revenge back will not heal anyone's emotional pain, relieve shame, or ease resentments. They just add to the emotional damage of everyone involved.
The alternative to going to war with fighting, accusations, blame and attempts to use the courts to get even begins with building an honest understanding of what each of you did that led to your divorce.
While coming to this kind of understanding on your own, reviewing your marriage together to build a blame-free narrative is ideal. A legal mediation specialist, a trusted friend, family member, religious counselor or therapy professional may be able to help you. Look back at the history of how your marriage slipped from loving to anger and distance, identifying especially the key factors that undermined the love bond for each of you.
A good divorce mediator will pay close attention to the power balance between the spouses and uses specific techniques to address the imbalances. If one spouse persists in dominating behavior, the mediator will call a stop to the mediation rather than allowing it to continue. One caveat: Even the best mediator can be unaware of a power imbalance if it only goes on outside of the mediation sessions and the spouses don't let their mediator know about these conflicts.
Within mediation, the spouses discover they can stand up for themselves and what they really want. They don't have lawyers speaking for them and telling them what to do. As a result, people who mediate often come out of their divorce with enhanced communication skills and self-confidence, as well as agreements they can really live with.
Using mediation almost always takes less time than litigating a divorce. Unless the spouses have worked everything out ahead of time, hiring lawyers to handle the divorce will almost always take as long or longer than mediating, even if the lawyers are able to settle out of court.
Keep in mind that at At WHYmediate?, we work to give you the tools you need to help resolve your conflicts in a positive learning environment.
WHYmediate? Mediation Services
4500 South Lakeshore Drive Suite 300
Tempe, AZ 85282
(480) 777-5500
http://whymediate.solutions
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