Sometimes Divorce Professionals Should Avoid the Old Marital Dynamic

As divorce professionals, it is common for us to have deep feelings of compassion for our clients. We truly want to help the adults and family create a smooth transition—from couple to single, from married parents to divorced parents.

The strong urge to help can result in our attempt to repair the marital, spousal dynamic (this is separate and distinct from reconciliation). We seek to help the couple take a breath, create a shared understanding, and move toward healing together.

Unfortunately, some couples are not interested in this idea, and may not be able to achieve such a shared understanding—even in mediation, co-parenting, collaborative divorce, or divorce counseling.

When one or both spouses are not interested in emotional healing from the divorce, it is important for the divorce professional to recognize the clients’ goals, in order to avoid working at cross purposes. Such clients may be in mediation or collaborative divorce solely because they seek to finalize a settlement agreement without litigation, rather than repair their relationship with one another.

However, when a couple has young children, an unavoidable fact will need to be addressed. Upon divorce, the relationship of spouses ends; yet, the relationship of parents continues.

Fortunately, we have the opportunity to restructure the former dual relationship into a present singular relationship as parents. Professionals can help the couple address the question of “How do we move from the marital relationship to the parental relationship?” and do so without contaminating the latter with unproductive feelings and experiences from the marital relationship.

This can be achieved by being forward-focused—discussing the parents’ shared values and concepts and how they plan to raise their children in this new context (a divorced family). For this to be successful, it can be important at times to avoid discussing the past marital issues, especially if this leads to a circular dialogue of blame and criticism. Of course, there are instances where healing the injuries in the marital relationship can be important and are truly restorative for a particular family.

The key is accurately determining which clients need a more insightful feelings-based process to assist the transformation and which do not. That way, we can take our desire to help and right-fit it to the clients we are there to serve.

Please contact us if you would like any additional information.

My Divorce Recovery

Jeffrey Zimmerman, Ph.D., ABPP
JeffZimmermanPhD@MyDivorceRecovery.com
212-799-7921

Lauren Behrman, Ph.D.
LaurenBehrmanPhD@MyDivorceRecovery.com
914-288-8428