The Holidays are a wonderful and loved filled time of the year, but they can be a particularly difficult time for people struggling with a bad marriage or relationship. Many people tell themselves they can “keep it together” until the new year before deciding to stay in the marriage, or end it. Especially when children are involved, people will try to ignore that nagging feeling that they need to make a drastic change in their life. Unfortunately, all the stress and expectations of the holidays sometimes causes someone to blurt out the very sentiment he or she was trying to suppress. In turn, the statement “I want a divorce” made during a holiday tends to carry additional emotional baggage that sometimes triggers the other spouse to “go to battle” through litigation.
If you’ve already tried marriage counseling without success, or you’ve otherwise realized your marriage has ended, consider using mediation as a more peaceful and compassionate way to reach the decisions you and your spouse will have to make for yourselves and your children as you all end this phase of your lives and enter into a new one.
Mediation can take a hostile situation and turn it into a more peaceful negotiation that can leave people feeling more in control of the divorce. “Battles” can be mitigated, feelings can be spared, and a divorce can be discussed during the holidays without all the additional pain and suffering.
Please feel free to leave a comment on LinkedIn with any topics you may want to learn more about. If there is a part of the process that you don’t understand, or have heard conflicting information from friends and family, let me know and your question may make it into a future post.