Before the Divorce Decision: Coaching Internal Conflict and Ambivalence

Tracy Callahan: Welcome to Divorce Coaches Academy podcast, where we explore the role of divorce coaching in conflict resolution, decision making, and navigating divorce with clarity and intention. Welcome back to Divorce Coaches Academy Podcast. I am Tracy, and I have to say, I'm really happy to be back recording from my home base here in Florida. I've done quite a bit of podcasting on the run this summer, up and down the East Coast, recording from different places, working around travel schedules. And while I love being able to take these conversations with me wherever I go. There's something I really feel nice and comforting about being back in my own space, sitting behind my own microphone, and having a little room to think. And maybe that's fitting for today's conversation. Because today I want to slow down and talk about a question that on the surface sounds incredibly simple. Should I get a divorce? Five words. It's only five words. But for many people, those five words can represent months or sometimes years of uncertainty, fear, frustration, grief, hope, anger, guilt, and indecision. Should I stay? Should I leave? Have we tried hard enough? Am I giving up too soon? What happens to my children? What happens to me financially? What happens to me in general? What if I leave and regret it? What if I stay and regret that? And underneath all of those questions is often another one. How the hell am I supposed to know? For those of us who work in divorce coaching and conflict resolution, I think there's something particularly important happening here. Because when we talk about conflict and divorce, we almost always talk about conflict. Between people, spouse against spouse, parent against parent, one position against another. But long before there is a mediation table, a parenting plan, a settlement proposal, or a court filing, there may already be a significant conflict underway. And sometimes that first conflict isn't happening between two people at all. It's happening inside one person. That's what I want to explore today. Not whether someone should get divorced, but how a conflict-focused divorce coach can work with the uncertainty, ambivalence, competing interests, fears, narratives, and information gaps that often surround that decision. Because our role is not to answer the question for our clients. Our role is to understand the conflicts surrounding it. And those are two very different things. So one of the first things I think we have to recognize is that divorce rarely begins the day someone files a petition. Legally, yes, the case may begin there. But the experience of divorce often begins much earlier. There can be an entire period when someone is contemplating, evaluating, questioning, researching, imagining, reconsidering, and then reconsidering again. And that process is rarely linear. People do not generally wake up one morning and calmly conclude I've reviewed all the relevant variables and divorce is clearly the best available option. Human beings don't work that way. We don't work that way. Instead, we hear things like, I love this person, but I don't want to live this way anymore. Or I know something needs to change, but I'm terrified of what change is going to mean. Or I'm unhappy, but my children seem happy. I want freedom, but I don't want to lose my family. I can't imagine staying married for another 10 years, but I Also, can imagine not being married at all. And this, my friends, is where the conflict professional in me gets interested. Because those aren't necessarily inconsistencies. Guess what? They're competing interests. Two things can matter at the same time. You can value stability and desperately want change. You can love someone and no longer. Want to be married to them. You can believe leaving may be necessary and still grieve the possibility of leaving. You can want autonomy and still fear losing connection. So rather than viewing the client as indecisive, I think the better question is: what is the ambivalence telling us? Because that distinction matters. Because once we start treating ambivalence as information rather than a problem to fix, guess what? That whole conversation changes. We actually see this recognized in therapeutic models designed specifically for couples who are uncertain about the future of their marriage. Discernment counseling, for example, is a structured therapeutic. Process developed for couples where one or both partners are uncertain about whether they want to stay married. Now, discernment counseling is not divorce coaching, and coaches should be very, very clear about that scope distinction. But there's something useful for us to learn from the concept. When people are overwhelmed by competing emotions, competing interests. Structure helps. The goal isn't necessarily to eliminate uncertainty immediately. It's to help people understand it. And that is such a different objective. So, as a divorce coach, instead of thinking, how do I help this client make a decision? I would encourage you to think, how do I help this client understand the decision they're trying to make? That's where conflict theory becomes incredibly useful. Those of us who work in mediation to dispute resolution talk constantly about the difference between positions and interests. A position might be, I want the house, right? But underneath that position could be the need or the why. I want stability for my children. I'm afraid I won't be financially secure. This home represents the life I thought it was building. And perhaps all three of them are appropriate. So why wouldn't we apply the same thinking to internal conflict? A client says I have to leave. Well, that's a position. I have to stay from my kids. Also a position. I can't do this anymore. Position. I can never afford to get divorced. Position. My spouse is never going change position. And the divorce coach doesn't have to argue with any of those statements. We don't need to convince the client they're wrong. We get curious. When you say I can't do this anymore, what exactly is this? When you say you have to stay for your children, what are you most afraid would happen to them if you separated? When you imagine leaving, what feels most frightening? When you imagine staying, what feels most frightening? What would need to change for staying to feel like a choice rather than an obligation? What information would help you understand your options more clearly? What do you actually know right now? And what are you assuming? Now we are no longer trying to solve the divorce question. We're beginning to understand the conflict and underneath it. Hmm. And once we begin doing that, another very important thing happens. Language. Hmm. So I'd like my divorce coaches to listen closely for certainty language. Words like always, never, can't, have to, no choice impossible. My spouse will never change. My children will never forgive me. I'll never recover financially. No one will ever want me again. I'm going to lose everything. Those words are Should make your conflict coaching ears perk up, not because they are necessarily false. Some concerns may be based on very real circumstances. But absolute language often tells us that a client has moved from possibility into prediction. And prediction deserves exploration. How do you know that to be true? What information is that based on? Is that something you know, something someone told you, something you've experienced before, or something you're afraid might happen? What else might be possible? Notice what we're not doing. We are not telling someone they're irrational. We are not saying, you're catastrophizing. And we're certainly not saying, don't worry, everything will be fine. No, please don't be saying that, okay? So instead, we are helping a client differentiate amongst facts, assumptions. Interpretations, fears, and predictions. Yeah, guess what? That's conflict work. And those interpretations matter because human beings don't simply respond to events. We respond to the meaning we assign to those events. And I've talked before about the stories we tell ourselves in conflict. I keep coming back to that idea because it is fundamental to have. How I understand conflict. Conflict doesn't arise simply because two people experience different events. It also arises because people assign different meaning to those events. And we do exactly the same thing internally. My marriage failed. I failed. I stayed too long. I'm selfish. A good mother wouldn't do this. A good father would tolerate this. Divorce is going to ruin my children. If I leave, I'm giving up. If I stay, I'm weak. Those statements may feel completely true to the person saying them. But they are also narratives. And narratives are incredibly powerful. Because once we accept a story as fact, we start making decisions inside the boundaries of that story. That's why one of my favorite coaching questions is this. What are you making this mean? What are you making divorce mean about you? What are you making staying mean about you? What are you making your spouse's behavior mean? What do you believe your children would make your decision mean? Now we're getting underneath the decision and into the architecture of the conflict. And for parents, nowhere is that more important than when the conversation turns to the children. So, one of the most common statements divorce coaches here is, I have to stay for my kids. Or on the other side, the kids will be better off if we just get divorced. Both deserve more exploration than a quick response. And divorce coaches need to be careful here because this is an area where people love simple answers. Kids are resilient, they'll be fine. Or children always do better when parents stay together. Neither statement reflects the complexity of what we actually know. Research on children in divorce has consistently shown that parental separation can be associated with increased risks across a number of areas of adjustment. But the research also tells us something incredibly important. The quality and intensity of parental conflict matters enormously. Right? So there was this huge analysis involving about, I think, 115 samples, and nearly 25,000 divorced families found meaningful relationships among interparental conflict, parenting, and children's psychosocial adjustment. And broader research on high conflict separated families repeatedly points to chronic, frequent, intense, unresolved. And especially child-centered conflict as particularly problematic for children. That doesn't mean that all conflict is harmful. Children are going to see adults disagree. In fact, watching adults disagree respectfully regulate themselves, problem solve and problem solve, repair, and move forward can actually, actually teach important relational conflict skills. But that's very different from children being placed in the middle of adult conflict. Carrying messages, being in interrogated about the other home, feeling pressure to choose sides, becoming a parent's emotional support system, hearing one parent denigrate the other, feeling responsible for keeping a parent emotionally stable. Those are totally different experiences. So when a parent tells me I have to stay married for my children. I'm not interested in telling them whether they're right or wrong. I'm interested in asking, what are you hoping to protect your children from? Now we can explore the interest underneath the position. And that leads us to an important professional boundary for divorce coaches. We are not pro-divorce. But guess what? We're not anti-divorce either. And I think our profession needs to say that more clearly. We are pro-informed decision making. We are pro-self-determination. We are pro-reducing unnecessary conflict. We are pro-helping people understand their options. We are pro helping parents protect children from being pulled into adult disputes. And we are pro. Helping clients make consequential decisions with greater intention rather than reacting to fear. That distinction matters tremendously, right? Because the person who walks into a divorce coach's office or opens a Zoom screen doesn't necessarily need someone who assumes divorce is inevitable. They need someone who can tolerate uncertainty. Sometimes our job is to sit with a client who doesn't know and not rush to make that discomfort disappear. Because uncertainty itself isn't necessarily the problem. Sometimes the problem is the pressure the client feels to resolve uncertainty immediately. And that's where urgency enters the picture. Divorce decisions often feel incredibly urgent, right? I need to decide right now, I need to file before they do, I need to hire an attorney tomorrow. I have to confront my spouse tonight. I need to know exactly what I'm entitled to before I can even think about leaving. Sometimes there's real urgency, though. There may be safety concerns. There may be financial dissipation concerns. There may be legal deadlines or other circumstances that require immediate professional attention. And those situations need appropriate referrals. But emotional urgency and actual urgency aren't the same. Fear wants certainty. Anxiety wants action. Conflict wants resolution. And action can temporarily feel like control. So, one of the simplest and most useful divorce coaching questions can be: what makes this decision need to be made today? And then be quiet. Sit back. There may be a very good answer. Or the client may realize it doesn't. And guess what? That's useful information. Because once the sense of artificial urgency decreases. The field of options expand. Conflict narrows thinking. We start seeing the world in binaries: stay or leave, marriage or divorce, fight or give in. Tell them, don't tell them, win or lose. But conflict professionals know that one of the most powerful things we can do is expand the field of options. Right? Solution focused. A client who is contemplating divorce may need to learn about things they haven't even considered. Hmm. Individual therapy, maybe. Couples counseling, maybe, discernment counseling, maybe financial consultation, maybe legal education, maybe marital mediation, hmm. A structured trial separation, a consultation with a mediator. Or divorce coaching itself to help the individual organize the questions and prepare for those conversations with greater clarity. And here's an important distinction. Providing options is not directing a decision. We don't have to know which path the client should choose. We can help them identify what they need to understand before they choose one. And very often what looks like an emotional conflict is also an information problem. Think about the statement, right? I can't afford to get divorced. What exactly is that? Is it a financial fact? Is it a legal conclusion? Something their spouse told them? An assumption? A fear? We don't know. And often neither does the client. So instead of debating the statement, A conflict a conflict-focused divorce coach can ask, what would you need to know in order to evaluate that concern? And suddenly the answer becomes much more concrete. I need to know what our assets actually are, or I need to know what our monthly expenses are. I need to understand what two households might cost. I need legal information about support. I need to know what health insurance would cost. I need understand what possible parenting arrangements could look like. Yeah, excellent. Look at what just happened, right? We moved from I can't get divorced to there are six things I don't know yet. That's movement. We haven't advised the client to divorce. We haven't told them to stay. We've moved them from a conclusion based on uncertainty towards a question that can actually be answered. And that also helps us understand when another professional needs to enter the process. A conflict-focused divorce coach should never believe that value comes from having every answer. Sometimes the most valuable intervention is a good referral or an exploration of a referral, right? What happens legally if I leave the marital home? Is that a legal question? What would happen with our business or investment account? There may be additional expertise required. Can this marriage actually be repaired? Again, that may be work for an appropriately qualified mental health professional. I'm afraid my spouse will hurt me if I tell them I'm leaving. Well, that's a safety concern requiring specialized support and appropriate intervention. Good divorce coaching requires us to continuously ask: what is mine? What isn't mine? And what does this client need next? Referring doesn't reduce our value. Knowing when and where to refer is part of our value. But recognizing scope doesn't mean we become passive either. Self-determination is not the same thing as sitting back and saying, whatever you think. Right? We are so much better than that. We can challenge, we can reflect inconsistencies, we can identify patterns, we can invite perspective, we can ask difficult questions. Right? I'm hearing that protecting your children is your highest priority. I'm also hearing that they're regularly exposed to significant conflict between you and your spouse. How do you make sense of those two things together? Again, that's not advising someone to divorce. That's what we do, divorce coaching. Right? Or something like you've said several times that you don't have any options. Would you be willing to explore whether that's actually true? Mm-hmm. Yep, again, that's coaching. Or you've told me you're certain your spouse is going to respond in a particular way. What part of that is based on previous experience and what part is prediction? That's divorce coaching. Self-determination means the decision remains the client's. It does not mean that we stop being curious. And I think this becomes especially important when we consider what happens if internal conflict goes unexplored. Because conflict has a way of externalizing. A person stays stuck, fear becomes frustration, frustration becomes anger, anger becomes blame, blame becomes accusation. Eventually, Someone takes unilateral action, the other person experiences threat, threat produces reaction, reaction produces counter-reaction. And suddenly we are no longer dealing with should I get divorced? We're dealing with how do I protect myself from this person. For those of us working in the field of dispute resolution, whether in mediation, divorce coaching, parenting coordination, or other areas of family conflict. We've all seen some version of this. People arrive in a professional process already highly activated. They are trying to negotiate while simultaneously grieving. They're making financial decisions while terrified about their future. They're discussing parenting schedules while frightened of losing their identity as a parent. They are hearing these proposals through the filters of betrayal, anger, fear, and uncertainty. And then everyone wonders why the negotiation becomes so difficult. This is why I talk so much about preparation. Preparation doesn't guarantee a low conflict divorce. Nothing does. But people are better able to use these processes when they understand what matters to them, what information they need, what assumptions they're making, and what decisions actually have to be made. That is exactly where divorce coaching can make such a difference. So let me pull all of this together into something practical. If you're working with a client who says, I don't know whether I should get divorced, resist the temptation to help them answer the question. Instead, listen for five things. First, what is the position? Second, what is underneath the position? Right? Competing, safety, stability, belonging, financial security. Third, what is fact and what is story? Fourth, what information is missing? Right? And finally, what does this client need in order to make an informed decision? Not the perfect decision. Not the decision you would make. Not even necessarily the decision their family wants them to make. An informed decision, one they've explored, one they understand, and ultimately one they're prepared to own. So let's come back to where we started. Should I get a divorce? If you're listening today because you're asking yourself that question, I'm not going to answer it for you. And frankly, I would be cautious of anyone who does. I don't live inside your marriage. I don't know your history. I don't know your children. I don't know what you've tried. I don't know what matters most to you, and I don't know what you're willing or unwilling to continue to live with. But I do believe you can become better equipped to answer the question. You can understand what you're afraid of. You can separate what you know from what you're predicting. You can identify what information you're missing. You can explore the interests competing beneath the surface. And you can build a team of professionals who can help educate and support you where appropriate. And if you're a divorce coach listening today, this is where I really want to leave you. At Divorce Coaches Academy, we believe divorce coaching is fundamentally about helping clients navigate conflict, improve decision making, prepare for process, and maintain self-determination and agency. That work doesn't begin only after someone has decided to divorce, and it doesn't end when a settlement agreement is signed. Conflict shows up before divorce, during divorce, and after divorce, and sometimes entirely inside the person we're sitting across from. Our responsibility is not to make the decision for the client. It's to help create the conditions in which better decisions become possible, to ask better questions. To recognize the conflict underneath the conflict, to help clients differentiate fear from fact, position from interest, reaction from intention, and urgency from actual need. And to know when education, preparation, coaching, skill development, or a referral to another professional is the next right step. Because sometimes the most important work a divorce coach does happens before there is even. A divorce to coach. Sometimes the client is simply standing at the edge of an enormous decision and trying to understand what comes next. And maybe the better first question isn't, should I get divorced? Maybe it's what do I need to understand before I decide? That is a question we can help clients explore. And I think that's exactly where great divorce coaching begins. I want to thank you so much for joining me today on the Divorce Coaches Academy podcast. If you're a divorce coach, mediator, attorney, mental health professional, financial professional, or anyone working with people navigating separation and divorce, I hope today's conversation gives you another way to think about the conflict that shows up long, long before anyone walks into a courtroom or a mediation room. At Divorce Coaches Academy, our mission is to continue advanced divorce coaching as a skill, informed, conflict-informed professional practice, and to give coaches the education, tools, and frameworks they need to do this work responsibly and effectively. You can learn more about Divorce Coaches Academy, our professional training programs, and their work we're doing to advance the profession at Divorce Coaches Academy.com. Until next time, I'm Tracy. And remember, the goal isn't to make decisions for our clients, it's to help them become better prepared to make decisions for themselves. Thank you for listening to the Divorce Coaches Academy podcast. For more insights and training, visit divorcecoachesacademy.com.