A recent telephone conversation, with a woman who called to discuss divorce mediation despite her basic fears, prompts this article which I hope will interest anyone who negotiates.  She voiced a list of worries.

One. “I am afraid my interests won’t be represented. I will have no one in the room with me to back me up.”

Two. “Yet when I talked with a lawyer he completely overreacted. He wanted to sue my husband and be very aggressive. We don’t want that at all.”

Three. “Divorce has its own culture of contentiousness. It’s as if all my friends hear that I am getting divorced and they are telling me I have to fight with my husband. We don’t want that at all. We have good will towards one another.”

Four.  “Yet I am afraid that my husband will get mad at me for asking for something and I will back down.”

Five.  “We have been separated for two years and are cooperating well around our children. Yet when I decided to move out I was told that I’m screwed in the divorce because I was the one who left.”

There are many responses available to the listening mediator. How much time does one spend on the phone with one spouse before even meeting them? Do you compromise your neutrality if you spend half an hour with this woman and not talk on the phone with the husband before they come to your office? What if you have already talked to the husband and encouraged him to tell his wife to call? After talking to the husband would you ever telephone or email the wife if she did not call you? How do you reassure her about having left?

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