LoveHowTo Blog

From Wedding to Mediation in 20 Short Years

July 3 was my 20th wedding anniversary and I spent it in a meeting with a divorce mediator, a forensic accountant and my soon-to-be ex. The timing was due to illness and other issues that required a couple of reschedulings, and it was unfortunate.

When I agreed to meet on that date, I hadn't expected it to have much meaning for me. But in the car on the way there I got weepy. I thought back to our perfect Malibu wedding, and how much we both believed in what we were doing. I remembered the beautiful parties we'd had to celebrate our 10th and 15th anniversaries, and how when we'd told him we were splitting up our son's first anguished cry was, "No more parties!"

That's for sure. This was no party, and the date hung heavily over the proceedings. It painted an ugly reality in stark contrast to the two decades of mostly happiness that preceded it. We continued our banter, the kind that has our mediator saying he should be paying us. (Sample: Stb ex to me: "I can't believe you said that!" Me: "Don't worry, I only say it because I know you'll get distracted in about five seconds and won't remember it.")

When you're still able to remember fondly your years together, when you can still feel a sense of loss for a partnership that worked for a long time, it makes negotiations hard, but it also makes them easier than they would be without those feelings. When anger takes over it colors everything. Vindictiveness, recriminations, trying to right past wrongs - none of those have any place in a divorce mediation. You can't look back for long. After you get the perspective that reminds you how much you once cared about each other, you can only look forward, to a time when you will be out of each others' lives in all ways but those relating to your children.

The way you treat each other during the period between separation and divorce will affect how you feel about each other forever. It will also affect how your children look at their own future relationships: Sometimes love ends, because there just aren't that many soul mates out there. Must it be in a fiery apocalypse that burns everyone nearby, or can it be with mutual respect?

To me, a guiding principal of divorce is the recognition that you loved this person once, and in some (albeit small) way always will. You can resent that, especially if the other person no longer loves you, or you can accept that people, circumstances, and the world around us change, and we can only truly be responsible for one thing: our own actions.

Now is the time to speak or forever hold your peace.