I Have a Feeling

{4 minutes to read}  Spring in the Northeast brought quite a spate of rainy, cool weather this year. Now the fact of the matter is that spring in the northeast is supposed to be rainy and cool. How we’ve gotten away from that notion is a mystery to me. Once March 21st comes with the official arrival of spring, I guess everyone is just so over it with the winter weather, that there is an automatic expectation of 80 degrees and sun for the next three months.

Because I love to garden, I’m delighted with the wet, cool days. You only have to look around to see how lush, green and beautifully-blooming nature is responding to spring’s rightful climate. The trees, shrubs, and flowers are in their glory — just as they should be. And we should be too, but that doesn’t stop people from bemoaning the weather.

With this in mind, I’ve heard so many people announce the following: “I have a feeling that it’s going to be _____(fill in the blank): dreary, rainy, cool, overcast….this summer.” Really? How do they know this? Oh, they have a feeling. I never hear anyone say this when the weather is to their liking. If we had a very sunny and warm spring, would they have said: “I have a feeling it’s going to be like this all summer!” Probably not.

This tendency to project a negative onto the future is something we human beings all do. I suppose it’s like whistling in the dark. Perhaps if we say something bad is going to happen and then it doesn’t, then we are happily surprised and that makes us feel better. We were wrong — but that’s okay. We were wrong in a good way.

Most couples come to the mediation table with the intention of working things out amicably, but there is a tendency to be skeptical, anxious, and distraught about the future — especially if they have children. For these couples, knowing that they will have to continue to co-parent their children in an uncertain future creates understandable concern. They may or may not articulate it in quite this way, but at some point, this concern will arise as in:

• I have a feeling that he/she is not going to adhere to our parenting arrangement.
• I have a feeling that he/she is not going to deposit the child support on time.
• I have a feeling that he/she is not going to wait for the three months we agreed to, to introduce the children to his/her significant other.
• I have a feeling that he/she is not going to give me enough advanced notice on a vacation he/she intends to take with the children.

All projections of what they feel may or may not happen… based on what? Perhaps past performance. But often enough, past performance is not necessarily an accurate predictor of future performance.

However when this is a concern, we address it in mediation where couples have the opportunity to talk it out, work it out, and put a plan in place to avoid any anxiety about the future yet to come. I’m not saying it’s easy. But this is where an experienced mediator can facilitate the conversation and ultimate agreements.

I don’t have a feeling that things are going to work out — I KNOW they have the best chance of working out in mediation than anywhere else.