What to Do if your Spouse wants to Mediate and you do Not...

(followed by: What to Do if You want to Mediate and your Spouse does Not)

It takes two willing participants to make mediation work. If you refuse to mediate, your spouse can’t make you. But your spouse can still hire a lawyer and file for divorce and get a divorce with or without your consent. However, it is almost certain that if you take your case to court, the court will order at least one mandatory mediation session with a court-appointed mediator. If there is no progress at that session, then your two lawyers will present their cases – each lawyer trying to paint the other spouse as the irresponsible, callous malefactor – and then a total stranger will decide all the important issues surrounding your finances, home and family. This process will have cost you, on average, between three and six times as much money and time as mediation would have. In mediation, you get to make all the decisions about money, home and kids, and keep more of the money in your own pockets.

So, pragmatic concerns alone should compel you to take a second look at mediation and examine your reasons for refusing the process. Divorce is almost always painful, but mediation can make it less so.

Listed below are seven of the most common reasons given for not wanting to go into mediation. Read through them and see if your concerns are addressed there.

What to Do if You want to Mediate and your Spouse does Not

The willingness to mediate takes courage. You can hire a lawyer to fight for your financial interests and thus avoid – for a time -- the pain of self-reflection. But in mediation one comes to resolution through emotional honesty, and that is very challenging.

There are many reasons why your spouse may not want to take on such a challenge. Here are the most common ones and what you might want to do:

1.      Your spouse has said that he/she doesn’t feel that you really want to do what is fair and that mediation is your attempt to gain the upper hand.

Response: Assure your spouse that mediators are trained to keep an even playing field and will not allow things to proceed if one person is being bullied.  Also, any agreement arrived at through mediation has to be approved by a judge to become legally binding and provisions that are clearly unfair will raise red flags.

2.      You have initiated the divorce and your spouse is still in denial or deep grief.

Response: No matter how eager you are for a divorce it is necessary for both people to arrive at a place where they are willing to agree that the marriage is over.  I have a specially designed session that helps couples do an assessment to determine the state of the marriage and, if your relationship is very clearly over, this “viewing of the body” may help your spouse arrive at an acceptance of the fact.

3.      Your spouse has initiated the divorce and is feeling guilty and simply doesn’t want to confront his/her own feelings of remorse and your feelings of anger and grief.

Response: You have to let your spouse know that you have come to accept the fact that the marriage is over and that you are strong enough emotionally to carry on a dialogue. If the expression of strong emotion has been an issue in the marriage,  the reluctance to face emotions now may be even deeper. Let your spouse know you can survive this and will not play emotional blackmail with him/her.

4.      There are a lot of emotional issues that have not been dealt with in the marriage or through therapy and this would feel dangerous – like opening Pandora’s Box – to do so now.

Response: You may suggest that some counseling alongside of mediation may be the help you both need to get through this gracefully. You can also be assured that as a minister-mediator, I am alert to emotional signals and will take the time needed to process those emotions that are productive to the task at hand.

5.      You have succumbed to rage, open hostility and possibly made threats and your spouse has expressed fear of what might happen during mediation.

Response: Let’s be honest. Do you need a course in anger management? Is your spouse right to be concerned? Has there been actual physical violence between you? Mediation requires that both partners have a lot of impulse control and are able to take a deep breath and count to three or three-hundred! If you have any doubts, seek help now! On the other hand, shouting and slamming doors are not signs of impending violence among most couples and if you have never been abusive, you can remind your spouse of this fact and assure him/her that mediation calls upon reason and restraint as a modus operandi and that there will always be a third person present to help keep things on course.

6.      Your spouse insists that you’ve tried reasoning with one another and can’t make any headway, so hiring lawyers is the only solution.

Response: If you can think of at least one example in your marriage where the two of you rationally discussed an issue and arrived at a mutually satisfactory solution then you are candidates for mediation. It is terribly hard to think rationally when you are in emotional turmoil. That is why mediators are trained to tease out the underlying fears, desires and concerns in the process of conversation, to be sure that everything that needs to come to the table has been put out there. It is also part of the magic of mediation that the existence of this third set of listening ears and watching eyes can open new possibilities that were not imaginable when it was just the two of you arguing. That is why so many people use mediation – it works!

7.      You have no idea why your spouse won’t mediate because you’re not speaking to each other.

Response: Send your spouse a link to this website.

THERE ARE THREE VALID REASONS FOR NOT CHOOSING MEDIATION:

1.      You have long standing proof that your spouse consistently lies to you about money and other important issues.

2.      Your spouse is physically or verbally abusive and it is not safe to be in the same room with him/her.

3.      Your spouse is currently incapacitated by addiction to drugs or alcohol and has taken no steps to get this under control.

Since successful mediation relies upon two people having the capacity to make reasoned and informed decisions, the presence of any of these three conditions is cause enough to doubt the probability of fruitful outcome. You should be advised to seek legal counsel.

Rev. Rebecca Armstrong