Keep It Civil and Save

Okay, you were expecting a different KISS….and I cheated a bit on that first S.  I hope you’ll forgive the liberty and read on.

Your divorce is not a simple process.  No matter how ready you may be for it to be over, there are decisions that must be made and several of them require considering the needs of several people and various possibilities all at once.  And many of them touch us emotionally.  [There’s a surprise, right?]

And often the emotions that come up will urge you to blame, criticize or even directly insult your soon-to-be-ex.  You may believe you are completely justified in doing so.  Everything you want to say to or about him/her might even be completely factually accurate.  Still, work to keep yourself from doing so.  No matter how much you want this to be ‘over with already’, or even how much you want him/her to ‘pay the price’ for his/her misdeeds, you will SAVE if you Keep It Civil.

What will you ‘Save’?

• Your sanity – It will make you quite crazy when you see that the angry or hurtful things you say and do not only don’t get you closer to where you want to be, but might even take you farther away.  Honestly, it will.
• Your children – At some point your children will resent you for the venom you have spewed at their other parent.  It doesn’t matter that you did it ‘to protect them’.  Children neither want nor need to be kept from either of their parents.  And they really do not do well when their parents don’t work well together.  You don’t have to love each other, but you DO and WILL need to work together when it comes to your children.
• Your assets – Nothing drives up either the duration or the cost of a divorce more than how much a couple fights.  If you can at least treat each other civilly, you can keep a better handle on both.

How do you stay ‘Civil’ when all you want is out, when s/he is such a jerk, when you are afraid of whether you’ll be able to make it…..??? It isn’t easy.  This is why I engage in the Collaborative Practice approach.  It affords the couple who chooses it as much support as they need to maintain their civility so that they can each keep their focus on making decisions and crafting an agreement that will WORK for each of them.  I hope you’ll consider it.

[A colleague of mine has a little book called The Secret to a Friendly Divorce in which he expounds on some of the not always obvious benefits of treating your soon-to-be-ex with respect.  You can check it out here.]

Thoughts?  Comments?  Feel free to contact us directly!