Being Heard vs. Being Attacked During Divorce Mediation

For those of you who have been reading the Equitable Mediation Services blog for some time, you know that part of my job as a NJ divorce mediator is to ensure that both parties are being heard and we come to a fair and balanced settlement in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU.  After all, that’s what divorce mediation is really about: working together to resolve the issues surrounding your divorce in a peaceful, efficient and financially sensible manner.

But what happens when “being heard” turns into what one party may perceive as being attacked?  There is a reason couples come to see me and it’s not because they are interested in reconciling and getting back together so emotions can run high, feelings can get hurt and tempers can flare.  These emotions are all natural reactions to the stress surrounding divorcing couples and ones we try to manage in our mediation sessions.  A little bit of venting is healthy, a lot of it is not.

Often times in the case of divorcing couples, there is one party that is further along in the process than the other.  That is, one party wants the divorce more than the other or in some cases, one party wants to divorce and one party does not want to divorce at all  The hurt that resides with the party that is “being divorced” can often overshadow the conversation during mediation sessions and can come out in the form of anger, frustration and sometimes, tears.  And while we do want people to feel heard and have the opportunity to vent a little, we work very hard to keep the conversation on track and ensure we’re working towards an agreement and not just engaging in a therapy session as that’s not what mediation is all about.

Take for example the what I like to call “question with no answer.”  You’ve probably seen this in your day to day interactions with your spouse.  It starts off with them asking you for something as simple as “where did you put the copy of Time magazine?” and spirals into “if you weren’ such a bad spouse, you would always do the dishes!”  Really – what does Time magazine have to do with doing the dishes?  I’ll never know and you probably won’t either.  Mediation works to get at these root causes of frustration so that they can be resolved and we can continue to work together in a productive manner.  It’s not really about the magazine, is it?  It’s about feeling unappreciated and perhaps that’s leading to one of the parties asking for a divorce.  Sometimes one of you just wants the other to hear something to that effect “for once in your life” (we hear this phrase a lot) and mediation can be an opportunity to do that.

At the end of the day, as sad as this is, it takes two people to get married but only one to get divorced in the State of New Jersey so as much as one party may try to plead and bargain their way into reconciling with the spouse, if one of you has their mind made up, then both of you are going down the path of divorce.   So knowing that, the best we can do is allow for some constructive venting, get to the root causes of that venting and work to resolve the issues of your divorce.  By doing so, we hope to help you both move on to a place where you can begin to heal.

If you have any questions about divorce mediation or how mediation can benefit you, please feel free to contact us and arrange for a free, no-obligation consultation in one of our six central NJ office locations or if you like, in your martial home.  We’ll get to know a little bit more about your particular situation and help you understand a bit more about how mediation works, how it’s different than hiring an attorney and why we think that once you learn more, you agree it’s the smarter way to divorce.