The Motivation to Mediate (or Collaborate)

Are you sure that you want to mediate or engage in the collaborative process? Is this a process that makes sense for you and your partner? If so, why?

People come to mediation for many different reasons. Some want to keep things private, and avoid as much of a public record of their divorce as possible.

Others want a chance to tell their whole story, which they know they would not get to do in court or in a process of legal negotiations. To them, it is most important to be heard.

To some, keeping control of the decision-making is important. They don’t want outsiders (judges or lawyers) imposing judgments or determinations on them. They feel that they know themselves, their children and their situation best, and are therefore in the best place to make decisions.

Some people see the adversary system as just making things worse between the parties. They want to protect themselves and their children from the inherent tensions in separating, and want to minimize the hostility between them.

Others simply want to save money, and see both mediation and the collaborative process as an efficient way to keep costs down. Or they think they could get a better deal if they avoided going to court.

What makes you want to give this a try? What do you think appeals to your partner/ex? Whatever the reason, it is best to be up front about it – with yourself, with the other person, with the mediator. That gives you something to judge the process against as you go along. Is this helping you achieve that goal?

The Willingness to Disagree

One of my mentors, Gary Friedman, lists four criteria that you need to mediate:

- the motivation to mediate
- self-responsibility
- the willingness to agree
- the willingness to disagree

(A Guide to Divorce Mediation: How to Reach a Fair Legal Settlement at a Fraction of the Cost. NY: Workman Publishing, 1993)

These criteria apply to the collaborative practice, too.

In my next few posts, I will explore the four criteria, starting with the last one.

"The willingness to disagree in a divorce?" you might think. "That sounds crazy!!" What's a divorce without a disagreement? If there is one thing people who are divorcing are really good at, it's disagreeing!! But the truth is, there's a difference between being angry at someone and stating your position. It's often easier to tell your friends and relations and maybe even the people at work how angry they are at your ex, than it is to sit down with the ex face-to-face.

Conflict is very difficult for people to live with. Many of us are inclined to walk away, or to give in, or to clam up rather than sit with the discomfort of conflict. But that is not being true to oneself. Nor is it really being honest and fair to your ex. Many times the best way to resolve a disagreement is to work it through. This involves a hard examination of your own thoughts and feelings as well as listening to those of your ex.

Mediation and collaborative process are not the place to sweep things under the rug. Nor is it the place to agree to something that will be detrimental later on, because there might not be another opportunity to come back and fix it.

And so I am reminded of this life advice offered by Shakespeare in Hamlet, in the voice of Polonius, speaking to his son Laertes:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.