The Emotional Divorce

I recently read that divorce is 75% emotional and only 25% legal and financial. In fact I suspect the emotional component is often what makes it difficult to resolve the legal and financial part. However, in a litigated divorce, the focus of the attorney is on the law; emotions do not play a part in the settlement process and are in fact often frowned upon in a system that is not equipped to deal with them.

Unfortunately, the emotional part is often what makes the settlement of the legal and financial part so difficult to achieve. Guilt, blame, hurt and anger often interfere with your judgment and make it difficult to reach any type of agreement with your spouse.
So if the process of ending your marriage is “75% emotional”, and this is often what makes resolving the legal and financial part so difficult, how can you prevent the emotional part from sabotaging your ability to reach a settlement?

One way to do this is to engage the services of a therapist. He or she can help you with the emotional issues you are dealing with and often can also help each of you better understand why your marriage did not work. Unfortunately, the work of the therapist is often undone by the legal system which creates an adversarial relationship between you.

To avoid this adversarial system, I believe the best approach is to combine the services of a trained therapist with those of trained divorce mediator. This will allow you to work toward an agreement that works for both of you in a setting that takes into consideration the emotional as well as the legal and financial issues that must be resolved so that each of you can move on with your lives.

Don’t get me wrong. Mediation is not couples therapy nor is it meant to be. But it does give you a safe place to air out some of the more emotional aspects of the break up. And this is especially important if the emotional issues are preventing you from resolving the legal and financial issues that must be addressed before you can move on with your lives. Because really, how much of your life do you want to spend dealing with the past when the future is the only thing you can control?

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