Why Is A Divorce Coach Or Facilitator A Good Idea?

Often a divorce is so painful that the participants just want to get through it as fast as possible, thinking that will minimize the cost and pain. They therefore sweep their strongest feelings under the rug and think that will assure a minimum of conflict. I've had collaborative participants assure me that a) they never lose their cool b) that they never fight with their spouse and c) that I won't have to worry about them pushing each other's buttons. Not surprisingly, the suppressed feelings surfaced after a few meetings and greatly threatened the process. Ignoring your feelings and the ramifications of how you communicate usual results in your repeating unproductive patterns of interaction with your spouse.

A professional trained in communication, skilled in detecting how you and your spouse interact and experienced in recognizing the emotional ruts and traps you may be in, can lift you out of the muck of repeating the same behaviors and place you and your spouse into new and more productive patterns. My Father was trained as a car mechanic in the Marines when he was 16 years old. By the time he passed away, cars had become so complicated, that despite his background and training there was little that he could do under a car hood. Despite our familiarity with our relationships, few of us have the training, skills, and experience to effectively monkey around under the hoods of our complex relationships. If you're such an expert on your feelings and relationship, then why are you getting a divorce? If we're smart enough to know we need a mechanic to fix our cars shouldn't we be smart enough to know we can benefit from an astute person, with the smarts and dedication to earn an advanced degree, and who has spent many hours being trained to use special techniques in the very areas that are holding us back from moving forward?

Ironically, by thinking that if I just buckle down and ignore my feelings, not react when my spouse pushes my buttons, the result is that you are likely to get sidetracked by the same feelings that kept your marriage from succeeding. We don't want your divorce to just be a repeat of your marriage. We want to minimize the bad patterns from the marriage, be able to focus on the tasks that need our energy and attention in the collaborative process, and learn new behaviors to serve you down the road when you interact with your spouse. Therefore, employing a mental health professional on your collaborative divorce team, despite the additional expense, often ends up being the key ingredient to a faster and cheaper divorce and one that results in a deeper peace and a transformation of yourself and your relationship.

I Want To Kill My Spouse

You would be an unusual married person if you never had strong negative feelings about your spouse at some point during your relationship. Someone said the definition of passion is when you love someone just a little bit more than you hate them. Our society tells us that we should always love our spouses and children but it is entirely natural and normal to have many negative thoughts about the people we love. Why wouldn't you hate the person who at times makes extra work for you, spends money foolishly, and ignores your needs. That doesn't mean you don't also love this person. Therefore, do not chastise yourself for occasionally thinking negative thoughts about someone you love. And don't be surprised if someone who you think loves you also sometimes has very negative thoughts about you.

If we're doomed to have to live with conflicting feelings in our most intimate relationships, expect to occasionally have the negative feelings go out of balance and dominate your more positive thoughts. Even when divorcing, you do not have to let your negative thoughts get amplified out of proportion and distort your perspective of your spouse. Often, lawyers and the legal system encourage you to attack your spouse and foster you to run wild with your negative feelings. There are times when it is important to concentrate on the bad aspects of another person, but keep in mind that there were reasons you loved this person at one time, that those qualities were at one time predominate, and that if you have genetic children with this person - half of your child is carrying this person's genes.

Even if the marriage is over and your relationship with your spouse has to change, consider whether you want to emphasize only the negative aspects of your spouse and attack with all your might. Certainly, you can do that and litigating attorneys make lots of money when you do. You can expect an attacked person to potentially attack back however. You might want to consider whether that is how you want to conduct yourself, whether starting or continuing a fight is productive in the long run and what the impact is on your children, relatives, friends, career, community and wallet when you do escalate a shoving match.

There are consequences to going full speed ahead with litigation. Be aware of the impact of starting a war. There are alternatives to telling the world in a public document all the reasons your spouse is a lousy parent. There are methods of divorcing that recognize you and your spouse both have faults and positives aspects to your personalities and parenting styles. Collaborative Divorce is designed to promote the positive aspects of your relationship, support both of you as you transform into a different relationship and strengthen both of your abilities to support your children. Consider, the costs of running with your homicidal thoughts about your spouse before you choose the way to divorce. Consider Collaborative Divorce. See www.lesshurtdivorce.com