You Are Not Alone

One the many significant tasks that we as mediators do for our couples, is to try to normalize the current situation they are in. This is not a false notion or a trick. It’s a very helpful and important technique. When one is so absorbed in his or her current circumstances, they truly cannot see the forest for the trees. The feelings of overwhelm that can occur when a marriage is over and the work of separating is at hand, can not only be daunting but isolating as well.

By isolating, I mean that it’s hard to imagine that anyone other than you has, is or will experience the same feelings of devastation, uncertainty and loss. And particularly when it comes to finances, there seems to be what I’ll call “shame” around how money was or was not handled. This has been playing out in my mediations for quite some time, but really came to the fore recently, with one particular couple.

This couple has 3 children. Both parents are working full time jobs and yet:

• Their house was about to go into foreclosure.
• Their credit card debt was through the roof.
• One child was in college and the 2nd child about to attend.
• There was little if anything left in their retirement accounts (either borrowed against or liquidated by now).

They had no safety net whatsoever. They were ashamed. And they shared that shame with me over and over again in many forms over the course of the mediation:

• We should have worked harder and saved more.
• We could have gotten out of the stock market sooner.
• We would have sent our son to a less expensive college but . . .

Yes, we all shoulda, coulda, woulda, but that’s missing an important point here. They did not cause the financial meltdown that triggered the devaluation of their home, credit card interest rates to soar to almost usury proportions, their 401K to bottom out, health care costs to rise beyond anyone’s imagination or college expenses to escalate to unprecedented heights.

How then do you incorporate “normalcy” into the mediation with the express purpose of helping this couple, or any couple, take themselves off the “shame” hook?

We bring to light that they are not alone.

And they truly ARE not alone. They are not alone in their circumstances; they are not alone in their second guessing; they are not alone in their struggle to keep their proverbial heads above water; they are not alone worrying and wondering how and if they will ever be whole again.

Every generation has had its moments when safety and security were threatened. Think World War I, the 1929 stock market crash, the dust bowl of the 1930’s, World War II. For this most recent generation, 2001 and 2008 are the moments that changed how we think and feel about our safety and security.  All of these events altered lives in a myriad of ways but we are resilient and we adjust.

Now we just need to help couples stop the mind-numbing worrying and wondering; worrying about how well they think everyone else is doing as compared to them and wondering if they had done things differently would they be in this situation now.

As mediators who see this scene play out over and over again, we are in the best position to put them at ease just a little bit by letting them know . . . they are truly not alone.