In the School of Life, a relationship breakup can be one of our greatest teachers. You may find that the decision to end your relationship is more difficult than the decision to start one.

Why?

• When you begin a relationship, you likely are filled with positive feelings about your future together.
• In contrast, the decision to divorce often results in feelings that are painful and emotionally difficult.
• To make things more challenging, sometimes the choice to end the relationship is not even your own.
• Such situations can stir up strong emotions of fear and even anger.
• When anger and fear consume you, they can paralyze your thinking, making it more difficult to make important choices for you and your children.

Decisions made from fear and anger during a divorce often results in fear- and anger-driven responses. Why? When someone sets a negative tone, it actually attracts a similar response. To make things more difficult, fear-driven negotiations limit possibilities and solutions. Fear is a place where people become entrenched in their positions – gridlocked by senseless power struggles.

Such power struggles make it difficult to negotiate with positive results. Unfortunately, this often drives divorcing spouses into a court of law to turn over the decision-making process to a judge.

Who knows what’s best for your child?

You and your child’s other parent do, not a judge who has never met any of you.

This is not meant to demean the court. Family law judges and court mediators work very carefully to be fair. But the people who know your child best are you and the child’s other parent. By keeping the decision-making process between the parents, you will ensure your child’s best interest is at heart.

Points to Ponder

• When the emotions of fear and anger grab hold, they blind us.
• The negative energy of fear and anger are like a vacuum pulling us down a dark and distorted tunnel.
• Being in tune with the emotions that drive you and responding in the positive will make the process easier.