In his book about how to avoid human conflict, Don Miguel Ruiz suggests these four agreements that a person makes with himself or herself:
1. I will be impeccable with my word.
2. I will not personalize the anything the other person says, does, feels, thinks or believes.
3. I will make no assumptions.
4. I will do my best each day with the energy I have been given.
This post will focus on the Third Agreement, which can be very difficult to keep, in part because of how we are wired. Our human brains are constantly analyzing our environment and making conscious and subconscious decisions about whether or not a threat exists. Without this vigilance, we would not have survived as a species. Our vigilant human brains are also designed to categorize and sort, and then to recognize patterns. When patterns repeat, we give the patterns a meaning and define this as learning. This is how our brains are designed to work.
However, it can happen that when we recognize patterns, we give them the wrong meaning. We can make an incorrect assumption (which is the definition of a superstition). We get further and further from real meaning if we persist in believing and acting on our assumptions. This can create unnecessary misunderstanding and conflict, and it happens all the time, especially in intimate relationships. Rather than make assumptions, it is important to remain open to alternate interpretations and ask good questions.
One can easily make misguided assumptions even when absolutely sure one is right. When I met my mother-in-law, her home was filled with frog ornaments. For years, family members gave her frog-themed items for her birthday and Christmas, and she found places to display them all. After 10 years, I happened to ask her when she first started to like frogs. She responded, “Oh, I don’t like frogs.” All evidence to the contrary! I said in puzzlement, “But you have such a collection of frogs, I just assumed you liked them.” She smiled and told about receiving frog-decorated towels as a thank you gift from a guest. She put the towels in her guest bathroom, and the next guests assumed she liked frogs and bought her a frog ornament, which she promptly displayed. What was never true about my wonderful mother-in-law was that she liked frogs. What was true was that she proudly displayed the gifts she was given, to honor the givers.
In the relationship crisis of a divorce or break up, it can be especially easy to make negative assumptions about one’s spouse or partner, and express these assumptions directly to other people. A child once told me in tears about hearing one parent say to the other, “This divorce is proof you never really loved your family.” Making the Third Agreement helps ensure that children will be kept at the center and out of the middle.
In his book about how to avoid human conflict, Don Miguel Ruiz suggests these four agreements that a person makes with himself or herself:
1. I will be impeccable with my word.
2. I will not personalize the anything the other person says, does, feels, thinks or believes.
3. I will make no assumptions.
4. I will do my best each day with the energy I have been given.
This post will focus on the Third Agreement, which can be very difficult to keep, in part because of how we are wired. Our human brains are constantly analyzing our environment and making conscious and subconscious decisions about whether or not a threat exists. Without this vigilance, we would not have survived as a species. Our vigilant human brains are also designed to categorize and sort, and then to recognize patterns. When patterns repeat, we give the patterns a meaning and define this as learning. This is how our brains are designed to work.
However, it can happen that when we recognize patterns, we give them the wrong meaning. We can make an incorrect assumption (which is the definition of a superstition). We get further and further from real meaning if we persist in believing and acting on our assumptions. This can create unnecessary misunderstanding and conflict, and it happens all the time, especially in intimate relationships. Rather than make assumptions, it is important to remain open to alternate interpretations and ask good questions.
One can easily make misguided assumptions even when absolutely sure one is right. When I met my mother-in-law, her home was filled with frog ornaments. For years, family members gave her frog-themed items for her birthday and Christmas, and she found places to display them all. After 10 years, I happened to ask her when she first started to like frogs. She responded, “Oh, I don’t like frogs.” All evidence to the contrary! I said in puzzlement, “But you have such a collection of frogs, I just assumed you liked them.” She smiled and told about receiving frog-decorated towels as a thank you gift from a guest. She put the towels in her guest bathroom, and the next guests assumed she liked frogs and bought her a frog ornament, which she promptly displayed. What was never true about my wonderful mother-in-law was that she liked frogs. What was true was that she proudly displayed the gifts she was given, to honor the givers.
In the relationship crisis of a divorce or break up, it can be especially easy to make negative assumptions about one’s spouse or partner, and express these assumptions directly to other people. A child once told me in tears about hearing one parent say to the other, “This divorce is proof you never really loved your family.” Making the Third Agreement helps ensure that children will be kept at the center and out of the middle.
A strategy used by some divorcing spouses and their attorneys is to threaten that they will take the other spouse to court. Threatening court is a negotiation strategy in an effort to get the other side to give up or significantly compromise their position(s).
When attorneys use this tactic, they often will prepare for a trial. The trial preparation ends up being extremely expensive and emotionally exhausting for the involved spouses. Often a hatred for the other spouse develops because of trials and/or the threatened use of court.
The reality is a small fraction of divorces end up in trial. The overwhelming reason those cases do end up in trial is because spouses and their attorneys refuse to negotiate. Sometimes a spouse will tell their attorney to go for the throat or they say I want to make him/her pay. It is the divorcing spouses and unfortunately their children, if any, that end up paying the price financially and emotionally. Seeking revenge does not have a place in any divorce process and accompanied by an unwillingness to negotiate in good faith sets up a strategy to fail.
Divorce is a challenging life experience for children, and parents worry what the impact will be on their children’s lives. Based on my work with families of divorce, I have three specific suggestions for how parents can empathetically support their children during this difficult and often painful transition:
1. Never put your children in the middle of parental conflict.
This cannot be overstated: exposure to parental conflict is toxic for children. Heated arguments around children, even if parents believe their children can’t overhear, negatively charge the environment in the home, and kids will feel it. Critical or disrespectful words about a parent said by the other parent in the hearing range of their children make kids confused, sad and often angry. I have heard many stories from tearful children about trying to get parents to stop arguing and belittling each other. You would never feed your children poisonous food; do not make them absorb poisonous words.
2. Remember that children deserve the best safe parenting they can get from both parents.
Be civil, treat each other with courtesy and remind your children that both parents love them. Despite your hurt, anger or betrayal as a spouse, remember that your child’s relationship with and feelings about your soon-to-be-ex are separate from yours. Resist the urge to try to get your child on your side, or to alienate your child from the other parent. Of course real safety concerns must be addressed and may result in protective measures like supervised parental access. But it is not fair to try to negatively manipulate your child’s feelings about the other parent just because you are angry.
3. Listen to your children and stay attuned to their needs.
The emotional and time demands of a divorce can understandably absorb parents’ time and attention at the exact time their children may need extra reassurance. Because regular routines are usually reassuring to children, try to designate time to spend with your children doing normal family activities. Let them know whatever feelings they have about the divorce are okay, and you will always love and support them. Check in with them to see how they’re doing, but read their cues if they tell you you’re asking too often. 
On lists of life stressors, divorce is usually ranked among the top two or three most emotionally challenging events. The process itself is experienced as highly stressful by many people, and from what we know about recovery from profound loss, it takes at least a year to begin to regain equilibrium. In other words, the stress caused by a divorce does not usually just go away when the decree is signed. Especially in situations in which there has been a high level of tension and acrimony during the divorce process, it can be very difficult to shift from conflict mode to co-parenting mode if there are children in the family.
