Understanding a Sensible Divorce

 

1. Introduction and Confused Beliefs

In our book, Planning a Sensible Divorce: How to Avoid the Toxic Dance of a Messy Divorce, Ken and Allan make the point that about twenty percent of current divorces are fairly amicable.  About another twenty percent involve spouses with mental disorders or conduct problems, such as violence, or both mental health problems and conduct problems.  This suggests that about sixty percent of divorces are somewhat to very messy, with spouses who do not demonstrate behavior disorders or mental health problems.

However, and most important, we posit that no divorces really need to be messy, except perhaps for those cases involving mental disorders or conduct problems.   So, what is going on that spouses in about sixty percent of the divorces choose agony for themselves and their children, often with damage for a lifetime?

In other words, married couples going through a divorce have a choice. Yet many choose agony rather than an amicable/sensible relationship and a healthy family. Why?

This series of five blogs answers this question:

1. We begin this blog series by taking a look at five confused beliefs shared by many people going through divorce.
2. In the second blog, we discuss the real causes of most marital and divorce conflict.
3. In the third blog, we redefine divorce as two events, not just one- i.e., a legal event and a major life-transition event. Focusing solely on the obvious legal event inevitably causes conflict.  First, the focus should be on the major life transition event.  Only then should the focus move to the legal event.
4. In the fourth blog, we present the importance of skill development for resolving disagreements and their importance, both in marriage and in divorce.
5. In the fifth and final blog, we wind up with a summary of how to move forward and choose a sensible divorce.

 

1. Divorce Inevitably Causes Harm to Children

It had long been believed that divorce inevitably causes harm to children, including very often steering them into very troubled lives themselves.  In fact, children of divorce had high divorce rates themselves (females: 60% and males: 25%), two times the general population.  However, there have been hints that this belief (i.e., that divorce inevitably causes harm to children) might not be true, going as far back as the early 1900’s.

In the early 1900’s, a sociologist, who focused on the effects of divorce on children, discovered that teenagers engaging in delinquent behaviors were almost universally handled differently if they came from a single parent home versus a two parent home.  If from a single parent home, the child was highly likely to be arrested and introduced into the criminal system for children. He or she then received services that assumed they were “troubled kids,” including sometimes being removed from a parent.  If the child was from a home with two parents, police tended to take them home, inform the parents and leave the parents to discipline them.

A home with a single parent was unquestionably known at the time as a “broken home.”  Needless to say, the teens from presumed broken homes were much more likely to end up as adult criminals.

The conclusion of this study was that the stigma of a “broken home” had more to do with how teens turned out, when compared to the fact that normal teens from both type of homes do some acting out.  Teens with parents in an intact marriage “acted out” as much as teens from “broken homes.”  They were simply treated differently by police and authorities.

In 1995, Constance Ahrons, Ph.D. had a similar experience when she studied outcomes for children of divorce.  The result was her book, The Good Divorce.  She was the first to show scientifically that the negative effects of divorce on children were not inevitable, because a small but substantial percent of divorce cases had children doing quite well.  Those were families in which the parents had a sensible divorce.

Her study has been replicated several times.  In fact, about twenty percent of the divorces had children who were doing quite well.  Interestingly, in long-term studies, those children had high success rates in their own marriages and tended to do better in careers.  It is therefore no accident that in that twenty percent of cases, these parents had amicable, cooperative relationships, even though divorced.

In other words, the agony of a divorce is not inevitable.

It is a choice: to have a sensible divorce or to have a messy divorce.

2. A Divorce is a “Failure”

Of course, no divorce is a “good divorce”.  However, a divorce can be a good solution and should be seen as such.  Most people getting married are pretty optimistic.  They are likely aware that marriage can be a real struggle, at least at times, and that the divorce rate has always been frighteningly high.  Yet, from everything they know at the time, marriage seems like the right choice for them, and indeed, it is very often true.

When spouses begin to consider a divorce, they look at it as a source of relief from what has become a situation of suffering during the marriage. At the same time, however, far too many people see divorce as a failure, and as such, as a source of guilt and shame.  To overcome these awful feelings, divorcing spouses often blame one another for the “failure” of their marriage, especially when talking to other people.

Ken and Allan have even heard spouses who had an affair (or even more than one), blame the other spouse to justify their own behavior.  The fantasy (another confused belief) is that by convincing others that the “failure” is the result of the other spouse’s behavior, they can alleviate their shame and guilt.  Another confused belief. Of course, this fails because most people know that a divorce is rarely the fault of just one spouse.

A divorce is not a failure.  Behavior that led to the divorce might have been a failure to keep the marital contract (e.g., an affair).

However, a divorce is a solution, and, in most cases, a reasonable solution to a painful marriage.

3. A Good Divorce Can Be a Solution

There are four types of situations in which a divorce can be a good solution:

2. The first type of situation where divorce can be a good solution is when there is no other solution. Some of these situations are based on choices made by spouses.  For example, two young idealists decide before marrying not to have children.  Two years in, one of the spouses changes his or her mind, but the other does not.  One or both could change their mind, but unless they do, they have a problem with no solution. Another common situation is one in which one, or sometimes both spouses, refuse to give up some of the benefits of being single in order to be married.  That might mean having an affair, engaging in behavior with old friends that disrupts the marriage, and so on.  You cannot be single and married at the same time.  If a spouse tries to do both, a divorce can be a good solution, at least for the other spouse.
3. The second type of situation where divorce can be a good solution is when the couple “grew apart”. This means, in many cases, that values, aspirations, lifestyles and even habits changed enough that the links between two people weaken substantially. Divorce can be a good solution for these types of situations.  A marriage that lasts 18 years can be a complete success, even if it then ends in a divorce.
4. The third type of situation where divorce can be a good solution is when one or both spouses develop conduct disorders, such as alcohol or drug addiction, violent behavior, gambling problems or persisting dishonesty. No healthy marriage can survive conduct problems for long.  A divorce can be a good solution.
5. The fourth type of situation where divorce can be a good solution is when too much harm has been done to the relationship from which to recover. Most people can recover from some problems if resolved, but most people have a tolerance point from which they cannot recover enough to turn a marriage around.  Love can die if there is too much suffering.

 

1. 4. Divorce Discussions Can Be Good

A discussion about whether or not to divorce can be very helpful to a marriage.  A mistake that many people make is that they fear bringing up the “D” word, because that will somehow then become a reality (another confused belief). Researchers in New York some years ago studied successful marriages and found, oddly, that spouses in those marriages who broached the topic of divorce, used it constructively.  It helped identify marital problems that, if left unresolved, could lead to a divorce, but still early enough that the spouses could change directions.  By bringing up the possibility of a divorce, a couple could wake up to a growing problem early enough to solve it.

The “D” word can also be a way of setting a limit.  For example, “If your crush on Frank turns into an affair, I hope that you know that I am out of here.”

Unfortunately, some spouses see divorce as a solution to the suffering in the marriage too soon (another confused belief).   Most often, this is because they do not know how to save a marriage when it is not working well.  Our book, The Road to Marital Success is Unpaved: Seven Skills for Making Marriage Work, not only provides a roadmap for developing a successful marriage from the get-go, but also how to save a marriage that is going poorly.

5. It’s All Your (My) Fault Challenge

When people divorce, they think they know why (another confused belief).  It is almost always involves the Blame-Frame Game. Most common is blaming the other spouse.  This has a background in the marriage itself, because most of the arguments that failed to resolve anything involved blaming each other, even the fact that they failed to resolve what the argument was about.  If this has gone on long enough, the spouses then blame each other for getting a divorce.  Even the person filing for the divorce, when it is over the objection of the other spouse, commonly blames the other spouse for the divorce.

Some people have learned that a way of dealing with interpersonal conflict is to blame themselves.  Saying “It’s my fault,” can end an argument, but without any real solution.  In this form of blame, resolution is a fiction because the self-blaming spouse never changes what he or she admits is the cause of the problem.

Blaming each other, or blaming oneself,

are ineffective strategies for having a happy and sensible divorce. 

Blame does not define the problem to be solved.

In fairness, anger and blame were important survival tools in human history.  For literally millions of years, the humans that survived often did so by getting angry at threats and blaming others.  However, understanding why another tribe attacked you might have been interesting, but not particularly useful.  Getting angry and blaming enemies might have been necessary to survive in more challenging times, but is not helpful when dealing with married couples today.  Blaming assumes that a person knows how and why the other person is causing anguish.  Unfortunately, the other person has also “figured out” how and why the other spouse is causing the anguish and arguments, usually accompanied with long-winded speeches about “It is all your fault – if you would only . . .”

This Blame-Frame Game inevitably leads to an escalation of the agony of a marriage that is not working well.  To take the blame-frame into a divorce, especially with professional blamers (i.e., attorneys), leads to an escalation of agony in the divorce, with long-term and often irreparable damage post-divorce to the spouses, and if there are children, to the entire family.

Summary.  The purpose of this five blog series is to explain why a majority of people going through a divorce choose the agony of a messy divorce, instead of choosing a sensible divorce and a functional post-divorce family life.  In this blog, we first discussed various confused beliefs about marriage and divorce.  In our second blog in this series, we will detail the real causes of marital conflict, which are the same causes of divorce conflict.  In our third blog in this series, we redefine divorce as involving two events, not just one. Focusing only on the obvious legal event inevitably causes conflict. There is also an equally important life-transition event going on at the same time. We explain both of these barriers to a sensible divorce and how to overcome them. In our fourth blog in the series, we explain the importance of skills for resolving disagreements. This discussion includes what can be done about them and why the key to having a sensible post-divorce relationship with the ex-spouse and a healthy family life for the children is founded on understanding and applying important skills for resolving disagreements.  Finally, in the fifth and final blog in this series, we summarize how to choose a sensible divorce.

Our website is jam-packed with useful information, and we will, in this series of blogs, refer to other blogs on our website and to our book, Planning a Sensible Divorce: Avoid the Toxic Dance of a Messy Divorce.

The best use of this series of blogs is for both spouses to read each one in order, before reading the others, and then discuss the one just read before going on to the next blog.  Professionals might also find these blogs and our books very useful in guiding people through a divorce to a functional post-divorce life.  Thus, we give permission to professionals to print these specific blogs (with proper attribution) and distribute them to clients, although referring clients to the resources on our website, marriageanddivorce.org, might also be helpful.

 

Understanding a Sensible Divorce:

2. The Causes Marital and Divorce Conflict?

 

There is, of course, no single cause of marital or divorce conflict.  There are a number of causes that come with mental health disorders, such as clinical anxiety and depression, violence and addictions.  However, as we point out in Blog 1 of this series, we are not addressing those problems in this series.  We are addressing the conflict that arises when neither spouse has a diagnosable mental health disorder.  In other words, we are addressing marriage conflict that arises in a “normal marriage”, but where spouses are weak or lacking in the skills to resolve the conflict.

Marriage is inherently conflictual, because no two people are ever perfectly alike.  Most people have a long list of what they want from a spouse, much of which they might not even realize when they first married.  This is the 60% group of marriages mentioned in Blog 1.  Given that high percentage, we could refer to this as “normal marriage conflict.”

However, disagreements escalating to painful conflict is not inevitable. The problem often is that spouses do not understand the underlying cause, and as a result, are not equipped with the skills required to handle disagreements successfully.  Spouses in the 20% group, who have very successful marriages, have the same amount of disagreements, but handle it successfully.  So, let’s delve into why marriage inevitably includes conflict.

Let’s begin our discussion by understanding and agreeing that spouses have differences.  Unfortunately, this reality is often ignored or misunderstood.  Spouses are raised in different families, perhaps even different cultures.  They have different temperaments, different values, different needs and interests and even a different way of looking at the world. This means there are differences in what they pay attention to, what is important to them, and most importantly, different needs and interests in their marriage.  When these people marry, they hope, and perhaps even expect their spouse will meet many of their needs and interests.  In other words, they think of themselves as enjoying an ideal marriage movie, and hoping, or even expecting, their spouse to play his or her part in that perfect-marriage movie.

The problem is that spouses are not bit players in each other’s movie; they are real people.  As a result, their underlying differences inevitably lead to disagreements.  Those differences might be minor, such as keeping a bathroom sink clean, where the spouses learn to live with some of those disagreements.  Some of those disagreements might be easily solved, by one spouse giving in to make the other spouse happy.  However, some of those differences can lead to disagreements that are very challenging.  Those disagreements are often very emotionally charged and lead to arguments. Common disagreements that are intense are differences in needs for affection and physical love, relationships with extended families, handling money, social habits and parenting differences.

Historically, in almost all cultures, there has been a disagreement resolution system in place for marriages.  Often, the system was that the husband had the final word, although in some cultures, the wife had the final word when it came to disagreements about children.  In some cultures, there was an appointed member of the community, a wise leader or a religious figure, who heard disagreements and made the decisions.

In many western cultures, the social movements in the 1960’s and 1970’s led to an egalitarian model of marriage, in which neither the husband nor the wife was the final decision-maker.  Although social research has shown that this was a major improvement in most marriages, releasing spouses from rigid unsatisfying roles, it also created a new problem: how to make decisions when spouses have important and emotionally-loaded disagreements and neither spouse can make the final decision.

For that 60% group of people with unresolved marital problems, many of whom end up getting divorced, unresolved disagreements lead to arguments.  The arguments soon begin to affect even the way spouses see one another, as they blame their spouse for the problem and increasingly try to control each other.  They hit impasse after impasse, think more and more negatively about one another, reach the point that researchers call “intractable conflict,” and either begin moving towards divorce, or stop talking about anything important and live with a frustrating marriage.

Researchers have documented this process of marriages slowly moving to unhappy situations and divorce.  However, the most important question, which has only recently been researched, is why 20% of marriages, which face the same obstacles and normal conflicts, have successful marriages.  The answer is not a surprise.

In whatever way that they learned them, successful spouses

have skills for resolving disagreements, including important,

 emotionally loaded disagreements.

The result is that they quickly resolve disagreements, doing a minimum of emotional harm to one another, and spend most of their marriage enjoying one another and the life that they have built together.

For people in troubled marriages, with spouses who think that the problem is their spouse, they are simply wrong.  The cause of troubled marriages is the lack of, or weakness in, skills for resolving disagreements.  It is that simple.  What is complicated are the emotional and behavioral reactions to the lagging skills.  In a sense, those spouses are in a situation, a marital relationship, without the skills to handle it well.  As a result, they escalate anger, blame and problem behavior.  Keep that thought in mind.

When spouses weak in resolving-disagreement skills decide to divorce, they bring with them a heart full of difficult feelings.  Often the most obvious is the anger at their spouse, whom they typically blame for the bad marriage, but underneath that, they are often filled with shame, guilt and overwhelming sadness.  They also face the fears involved in moving on in their lives as divorced people.  Those fears include financial well-being, and when there are children, the loss of time and control of their children.  Most people believe, as discussed in the prior blog, that a divorce inevitably harms children, which by itself causes a great deal of fear, shame and guilt.  As a result of these swirling emotions, especially the sadness and fears, most of these people tend to have messy divorces, and when there are children, a dysfunctional family life after the divorce.

In short, differences between spouses cause disagreements. A weakness in disagreement resolution skills leads to an escalation in spousal conflict, and often, is the path to a divorce.  The obvious solution is for spouses in troubled marriages to learn disagreement resolution skills.  Likewise, the alternative to a messy divorce also includes learning disagreement resolution skills in order to make good decisions during their divorce and to conduct a healthy post-divorce life.

In the next blog in this series, we describe obstacles to a sensible divorce and how to overcome them.  Critical to this understanding is being aware of the following:

1. Divorce involves two events- the legal event and the major life transition event: the transition from marriage to divorce.
   1. The legal event can trap people into making major life mistakes.
   2. The emotional issues involve a different set of challenges.
2. Spouses, especially parents, face the challenge of resolving disagreements in the future. They still have a family to run and will have disagreements on how to do that.
3. A messy divorce is a choice for agony, rather than a sensible divorce. The latter is a choice for happiness and success.

 

Divorce Series

Understanding a Sensible Divorce: Two Events: The Legal Divorce and

 The Major Life Transition

The First of Two Events:  The Legal Divorce

Most people approach a divorce as one event: the legal dissolution of a marriage.  However, this mindset traps most people into focusing only on the legal event.  This event is defined by law.  While divorce law has evolved, it has always had the same purpose: the distribution of income, property and children.

In order to dissolve the marriage, spouses must present a plan to the court on how property, future income and children are to be “distributed” (i.e., allocated).  Attorneys are often involved as negotiators on behalf of their clients to develop that plan.  They not only provide spouses with helpful information about the law but also provide helpful information about the skills needed to implement the plan set forth in a written settlement agreement.  Failing to agree on a plan, the spouses present their disagreements to a judge at a trial, and the judge makes the decisions.  If it goes to a trial, attorneys shift roles to being advocates in an attempt to get their clients as close to their advocacy positions as possible.

The plan described has at least two main component parts:

1. Financial
   1. Distributing property between the parties. i.e., allocating assets and debts between them. They will divide the marital estate between them.
   2. Distributing income between the parties. i.e., allocating income between them. They will determine child support, and in some cases, spousal support.
2. Children
   1. If there are minor children, they will determine a physical custody arrangement between them.
   2. In many but unfortunately not in all cases, they will determine applicable procedures for dispute resolution and procedures in the event there are substantial changes in circumstances over time.

We need to add more if there are minor children, including a bit of history.  Children, in law, were originally treated as property.  We might not like to think of children this way, but in fact, historically, children were property.  It is only in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s that law began to treat children as having legal rights independent of their parents’ rights.  Prior to that time, children were awarded to fathers in western culture, because women could not own property. The transition during the early years of the 1900’s led to the awarding of children to mothers and giving fathers minimal visitation rights.

As marriages moved towards being egalitarian institutions, the award of children at divorce also began to change, but still resembling an award or “distribution” of property.

Instead of awarding the children to one parent, time and control of the children are awarded based on  some form of a family schedule.  Equal awards have become more common, but all this means is that each parent is awarded the children for part of their weekly lives on some daily schedule and on another schedule for holidays, vacations and so on.

Both in negotiations and in trials, parents vie for an award

of ownership to each of them (i.e., a distribution)

regarding the children.  Sadly, this can be a highly contentious process.

While the legal event of a divorce is absolutely necessary,

the focus on law and distribution “traps”

divorcing spouses into making terrible decisions.

Here we refer to another series of blogs on this website. In the Divorce Series: People are Rational but Can be Trapped into Making Terrible Choices in the Family Law System,” we describe the potentially disastrous effect of this underlying assumption of distribution on family life.  We strongly recommend that you read those blogs before proceeding further with this series.

By focusing solely on the legal event, parents can become bitter opponents in a battle for the distribution of their children. It is crucial to having a sensible divorce with children that parents understand the “traps” of the legal event regarding their children.  Likewise, these same “traps” often lead to terrible decisions about the distribution of assets and debts.

The result is that when spouses focus almost exclusively on the legal event, they choose agony instead of a sensible divorce.  The blogs on the “Traps” of the legal event explain in detail how distribution raises many intense, but largely irrelevant, emotions.  For example, “fairness” is very important to people but applying “fairness” to how to raise children following a divorce is irrelevant.

Bitter post-divorce reactions to the distribution of money, property

and children are common.  However, this occurs only because

spouses failed to focus on what a divorce actually is:

a major life transition.

The primary focus should be on the second event,

namely the major life transition and how to deal with it effectively.

The Second of Two Events: The Major Life Transition

People almost always encounter major life transitions. Emotions are the driving force.  Many of them are predictable.  Some are almost entirely positive, such as getting married or having children. Some are mixed, like transitioning from home to school and from school to college.  Some transitions are unexpected, but positive, like getting a desired job.  Some are unexpected and largely negative, like a sudden serious medical condition or a sudden loss of a job.  Some are chosen, such as getting married.  Some are unchosen and horrible, like the death of a parent or a child.  What major life transitions have in common, whether positive or negative and whether expected or unexpected, is that they are accompanied by intense, sometimes overwhelming, emotions. It is almost impossible to be objective about the future during the early stages of these events.  This is often the condition of spouses as they enter into the divorce process.

Major life transition events are best handled by first processing

the distracting emotions and then making a good plan.

In the example of losing a child, most professionals caution parents not to make any major life decisions for the first year following such a loss.  One of the reasons is that many spouses who lose a child within the first year after the loss, particularly when the loss was an only child, in most cases, they make impulsive decisions which come from the emotions of loss, rather than by making a good life decision.  When spouses are immersed in the emotions of getting a divorce, they are in poor shape for making major life decisions, which is why they are very vulnerable. They are also prone to make impulsive decisions which come from the emotions of loss, rather than by making a good life decision.

To be sure, divorce is a major life transition.  Of course, the legal

event is necessary, but a successful outcome (and a sensible divorce)

is only possible when the major focus is first on

processing the distracting emotions.  Only then can spouses focus

objectively on addressing the major life transition by making a plan.

This requires the parties to ignore the traps of the legal event, take stock of the current situation and then make a plan to meet long-term goals. Only after the plan is made should the legal event be addressed. At that time, the focus should be on a legal outcome that supports the long-term plan agreed to by the parties.  This is the opposite of what usually happens.  Once a divorce request is filed, spouses are immediately emersed in the legal event, scrambling for what they think would be a good distribution and intensifying their negative feelings for one another and making a poor plan for reaching goals.

For example, imagine a spouse in a marriage suddenly losing a job that was a major source of income for the family.  Imagine too that the position was unique and not easily replaced.  Emotions are likely running high.  Blaming might be a part of that.  The spouse might blame him or herself for the job loss, or the other spouse might blame the spouse who lost the job.  They might both blame the boss or the company.  Immediate fears of how bills will be paid, including activities in which the children are participating or even a private school, will surface.

The task is to come up with a

temporary plan for getting by for a while to handle the emotions,

and only then make a long-term plan for meeting long-term goals.

A divorce is a major life transition, and after the emotions get under control, the next step is to come up with a temporary plan, to put the family in a holding pattern. Then, the spouses can focus on the long-term goals for each them and for the family.  Only then should they make decisions about property, income and care of the children.  For example, a long-term family goal might be for the children to have strong positive relationships with both parents and as little disruption in their lives outside of the homes as possible.  The plan might be for the parents to live near one another, make it clear that the children can go back and forth between homes (with appropriate rules of course), but with a strict rule about where they are to sleep on any particular day.  The only task for the legal event is to create a schedule for where the children sleep.  Instead of the legal event distributing a percentage of the children’s time to each parent, the family plan has both parents involved 100% of the time.[1]

As one example, rather than fighting for the distribution of the children’s time, the spouses might establish a goal for the children by thinking about how they would like their children to describe post-divorce family life when they reach adulthood.  Assume the children would wish to have good strong relationships with both parents and a lot of flexibility to be with the parents.  A strict custody schedule will not accomplish these goals, so the parents would need to design a system for the children to have a lot of involvement and flexibility with the parents, independent of the custody schedule.

Attorneys can be invaluable partners in this process,

by constructing the legal agreements in a way that fit into the

plan for the life transition.

The goals regarding the plan and planning process will be different depending on which of the two events are involved:

• In the legal event, the goal is to distribute property (i.e., assets and debts) as well as time with the children.
• In the life transition event, the goal is for both spouses to address the emotional issues at play and todevelop a plan to reach mutually agreeable financial and family long-term goals.

Fortunately, the legal system may help here. When spouses file for a divorce, a separation agreement (i.e., the temporary handling of financial and child-related issues), is made, putting the family in a holding pattern and giving them time to process the intense and often complicated emotions.  This gives the spouses time to focus on making a good plan to reach long-term financial and family goals.  Only then they can, with the help of attorneys, construct the final agreements for the legal outcome.

Instead of focusing on the legal event and having a messy divorce,

spouses can use this time to work through the distracting emotions

and begin to work on a plan for the life transition event.

Distracting/self-defeating emotions.  A major roadblock and obstacle to a sensible divorce is what we discussed above- namely the intense emotions that the spouses are dealing with, as well as the selfishness that the legal event inadvertently promotes.  Emotions tempt people to make major mistakes, often shooting themselves in the foot (and making comparable mistakes regarding their children).  Selfishness is a temporary affliction that can lead to self-defeating mistakes.

Four key distracting/self-defeating reactions emotions involved in a divorce are at play:

• blaming
• distrusting
• taking things personally
• inferential thinking

Blaming is a mistake because it is irrelevant to the future and does not identify problems that have solutions.  When a person blames, they are facing the wrong way- looking at the past about which nothing can be done, rather than the future.  Blaming is also almost always a cover up for the real emotions that are going on.  There is nothing wrong with being angry with a spouse, but blaming is a terrible way to try to express anger.

For example, “We grew apart” is the second most common reason given for a divorce (affairs is number one).  Being angry at a spouse for “growing apart” makes sense, but blaming them for it does not lead to any resolution.  Trying to figure out what the spouse could have done differently, or even what the spouse being left could have done differently, is also a useless waste of time.  If there is hope, figuring out what the spouses might try in the future makes sense, because the spouses have control over the future.  They have none over the past.

Distrusting is often a reaction at the time of a divorce, especially when a spouse makes a surprise announcement or has an affair.  The distrust might be well deserved, but again, does little for the future.  A sensible divorce requires honesty and establishing honesty for the future, which should be their goal.  The distrust will of course linger, but if complete honesty is observed, distrust should be replaced with trust over time.

Taking things personally is a selfish distraction, although often very difficult to avoid.  Spouses at the time of a divorce are often blaming one another for the demise of the marriage. It is difficult not to take things personally over what feels like a failure.  However, the question, “If only I had . . . (finish the sentence)” is a waste of psychological energy because all of the “if onlys” are in the past, about which people have no control.

Inferential thinking is what people do to fill in the gaps of knowledge.  They are essentially guesses, some of which might be right and some of which might be wrong.  People often use inferential thinking to make decisions, and on the whole people are pretty good at making guesses, but they still are guesses.  One of the problems with a divorce is that there is no way to know if the guesses are right or wrong.  A person can literally end up with a complete fantasy about what happened to a marriage and act as though it is true.

The reason these four emotions are distracting

is that they can come to dominate a spouse’s life,

preventing the spouse from going through the sadness of the loss

and addressing the fear of the future. 

In other words, the distracting emotions can get a spouse “stuck” in a divorce, instead of really moving on.

These feelings will only go away when spouses focus on a plan for both of them to reach long-term goals, especially for their children’s experience.

All four distracting emotions can have a use.  It is not an accident that humans react to tragedies with emotions that drive a “woulda, coulda, shoulda” analysis of the past.  They can be helpful in the future.  For example, “I should have taken your complaints about my work habits more seriously.  I will in the future.”  In this example, the spouse is not wallowing in misery about past mistakes. Instead, he or she is learning from a mistake in order to do better in the future.

In this blog, our focus has been on recognizing that a divorce is two events: a legal event, but more importantly, a major life transition event.  A focus on the legal event exposes and often (though inadvertently) ensnares spouses in the traps of the legal system.

Focusing on the life transition event, such as resolving the feelings involved and avoiding getting distracted by useless emotions, frees spouses up to engage in the major life transition event with energy and clarity.  The task is to identify long-term economic and family goals for both spouses and develop a plan to reach those goals.

In the next blog in this series, we turn to the future.  Both during the divorce, and especially when there are children, for the rest of the spouses’ lives, the parties will still have disagreements.  In order for the plan to go well, they must learn, or improve, their Disagreement Resolution Skills.  This will be the topic of the next blog in this series.

Divorce Series

Understanding a Sensible Divorce:

4. Disagreement Resolution Skills

Having skills for resolving disagreements can make a world of difference, not only in a marriage but also in parenting and in other parts of life.  We can only offer a very brief discussion of these skills here.  For a more thorough understanding of the skills and ideas on how to learn them, please see our book, Planning a Sensible Divorce: Avoid the Toxic Dance of a Messy Divorce.

There are four groups of applicable skills:

1. Having the right mindset
2. Managing feelings and emotions
3. Implementing effective problem-solving and decision-making techniques
4. Keeping the arguments short and clean and recovering quickly

Having the right mindset:

1. Overcoming personal bias. Evolution gave humans a big ego.  People are generally overconfident. In a disagreement, that means that people are biased and believe that they are right, and therefore, the other person is wrong. They are biased and seek information and authorities who support their position, ignoring information and authorities who support the other position.  They are also biased and therefore believe that their motives are good and the people who disagree with them have motives are bad.
2. Bridging the Gap Between Realities. People really live in different worlds.  This is because everyone has a different background, pays attention to different things, has different interests and goals, and so on.  The first step in a disagreement is to get more information from one another regarding how their view of the disagreement fits into reality.

Getting Perspective. After this first step, then it is possible to get the perspective of the other person, especially to understand the goals of the other person in order to reach both spouse’s goals.

1. Managing feelings and emotions:
2. Identifying and processing core feelings. Many of the feelings that people have in a disagreement are defensive emotions.  Blame is the most obvious, but fear of losing an argument is another common example.  Beneath defensive emotions are core feelings, usually involving unresolved insecurities.  To resolve a disagreement effectively, part of the focus must be on the core feelings involved.  For example, the desire to control is almost always a defensive reaction to fear of what will happen if the other person gets what he or she wants.  Arguing because of control issues robs people of both getting what they really want.
3. Developing the ability to be vulnerable in relationships. People feel vulnerable when not in control in a relationship.  Resolving a disagreement effectively means giving up or sharing the control in a relationship.  For many, that loss of control can be very threatening.  Success almost always includes becoming vulnerable in a relationship.
4. Hearing criticism in a healthy way. In a nutshell, never take criticisms personally, but listen closely for useful information.

Implementing effective problem-solving and decision-making techniques

3. Identifying a problem in a way that leads to a solution. A problem can be defined in a way that has no solution or in a way that can lead to a solution.  “You just can’t keep being late,” has no solution.  “We need to have a way that being late doesn’t ruin plans for the other person” has a solution.
4. Resolving a disagreement when both people are right. “It sounds like we both have legitimate goals but differ on how to both reach them.”
5. Making decisions that accomplish both people’s goals. “You seem to feel strongly about what you want to do. What are you trying to accomplish?  Then I will tell you my goals, and we can see if we can come up with a way for both of us to get what is important.”

Recovering from destructive conflict quickly

1. Keep it short and clean. Stay focused on the disagreement and don’t get sidetracked with personal criticisms.
2. Resolve the disagreement to reach both people’s goals. Mutual goals are always the most effective.
3. Recover from arguments quickly. Have ways to repair any harm done as soon as possible during the discussion.

This brief discussion of the skills might sound a little “pie in the sky.”  In our book, we detail the skills in much more depth and provide a variety of real typical situations to demonstrate how they work.  Here, our main point is that there are skills for resolving disagreements to the satisfaction of both people.  A major criticism in many marriages, and in almost all divorces, is that the other spouse is “controlling.”  Disagreement resolution skills put both spouses in control when they are making decisions about their divorce, and after the legal event, when they are making decisions about their children.

This last point, making decisions about children after the divorce, is crucial, and yet totally overlooked and usually dwarfed by the legal event.  The law only “distributes” children until they are 18 years old. However, parents make decisions about their children for the rest of their lives.

Ken learned this firsthand early in his career as a mediator.  Two long-divorced parents came to see him with a problem.  Their adult daughter was getting married and planned two receptions: one for her mom and that “side of the family” and one for her dad and “that side of the family”.  They explained to Ken that they had four children and that only now were they realizing how much harm they had done to their children with their conflictual co-parenting relationship. They described themselves as “too late” for their daughter, but not for the three younger children.

Fortunately, they were not too late for their daughter.  We made a plan for the future of their co-parenting, and their daughter was able to have one reception, at which her parents danced with one another.  Their love for their daughter overcame the lingering problem feelings that they had for one another. Then, making a good plan was easy for them.

Divorce Series

Understanding a Sensible Divorce: How to Move Forward

Regret is the last defense.  People resist change and prefer to stay the same and do the same over and over, even though it doesn’t work.  When people discover past mistakes that had a bad outcome, they feel regret. They wish they could have a do-over so they could do things differently and have a better outcome.  However, like guilt, shame and blame, regret is an empty promise. People are inclined to continue to make the same mistakes, usually with the same results.  Regret is a normal reaction to a tragedy, but people can get stuck facing the past instead of turning around and facing the future.

Rather than regret, people must look forward,

like the co-parents did in the example in the last blog.

The healthy step is to learn about a past mistake

and do something different in the future- i.e., something that works.

Regarding divorce, when wrapping up, two points deserve special attention:

1. As discussed in an earlier blog in this series, spouses can choose to have a sensible divorce, whether they are just beginning the process, are in the middle of negotiations after a separation, or even long after the actual divorce. Spouses who have children at any age have the most to gain at any point, even if the divorce is already final.  For spouses without children, having a sensible divorce can lead to a healthy parting without any “emotional baggage” that negatively affects their futures.
2. When making important decisions going forward, these same spouses can choose to focus on long term financial and family goals at the time of their divorce, to enhance their future economic conditions and quality of family life.

With or without children, and at any stage of a divorce,

it makes sense to choose a sensible divorce

rather than the agony of a messy divorce.

Having a sensible divorce means ignoring the confused beliefs described in the first blog in this series, understanding the real causes of a divorce conflict presented in the second blog,[2] avoiding getting side-tracked by the legal and emotional roadblocks to a sensible divorce considered in the third blog, and learning our Disagreement Resolution Skills discussed in the fourth blog.

Our website, marriageanddivorce.org, introduces our books, which can be ordered from the publisher, online and at many brick-and-mortar bookstores.  The website also has a wealth of free information in the resources (booklets and blogs).  For example, if parents wish to have a high-functioning co-parenting relationship after a divorce, please read the blog on our website which specifically addresses what the research tells us they must do and how to do it.  Our book, Planning a Sensible Divorce: Avoid the Toxic Dance of a Messy Divorce, costs approximately what a divorce attorney might charges for six minutes of time!  If you want to have a sensible divorce, we strongly recommend you get the book.

CAVEAT: Please remember that lawyers can be extremely helpful, but spouses must convince them to focus on the major life transition event first and then on the legal event.

We are two authors on a mission to make marriage and divorce better for people- which hopefully means YOU.  We also hope this brief overview of understanding a sensible divorce is helpful and encouraging.

[1] This will strike some legal professionals as odd.  How could both parents be involved 100% of the time if they live in two houses.  When parents live in one house, they are involved 100% of the time, but they are not with their children all of the time.  A teacher might have much more time than either parent.  Flexibility and cooperation can accomplish the same, even when parents are in separate residences.

[2] As a reminder, we are not talking about divorces in which spouses have serious mental health or conduct problems.  We are focusing on relatively normal people who believe things that are not true, do not fully understand the causes of divorce conflict, focus too much on the legal event and not the major life transition event and who are weak or lacking in disagreement-resolution skills.