Avoid Dance: How to Have the Difficult Conversations During Divorce

By Jeremi McManus
Avoid-Dance-How-to-Have-the-Difficult-Conversations-During-Divorce
Reflect back on the last time you had to have a difficult conversation with your ex or partner. Let me guess… you busied yourself with everything but that conversation for a couple days, though it kept taking up space in your head. Then you sent the person on the other end of all of these thoughts an email or text about it. This went back and forth for awhile, possibly leaving you steps behind where you started. Then you began talking to friends about how annoying it was that your ex wouldn’t just talk to you about it. The

Avoid Dance aka avoidance. Oh I’ve been there. More than once.

In my experience, a lot of folks in the divorce process will say something about themselves like “I don’t have trouble talking to my ex directly if I need to,” or “Yeah they can talk to me straight if they got something to say,” yet the reality is that most of us are scared pantyless of either of these scenarios and will scale the Great Wall of China to avoid them.

Talking to your ex directly about a point of contention is so difficult because we have notlearned how to fight fair, remain vulnerable during confrontation, or depersonalize the situation as it is happening.

Evolutionarily it makes sense. We think we are being attacked so we begin using the most primordial part of our brain—the brain stem and sympathetic nervous system, which manage our fight or flight response—instead of the rational frontal lobe. When we think we are being attacked, our heart rate goes up, adrenaline floods our system, and numerous other functions go into hyperdrive. Our body is preparing for the caveman or animal (aka your ex) in question to either take our dinner or make us dinner. But in case you haven’t pulled out a calendar in a while, this is not the time we live in anymore.

Trouble is our biological development has not caught up with this fact, and we do not learn basic conflict resolution skills alongside our algebraic equations even though the former is a far more essential life skill.

Disagreeing and fighting with your ex is perfectly normal and healthy given the myriad of perspectives and experiences each of you come from, the key is doing so in a way that preserves enough of the relationship so you can get more of what you want. More conflict, misunderstandings, tension, and battle wounds are not what you want, yet almost always the product of the Avoid Dance. “Can I just take a pill or get a special iDevice that will fix this?” Not exactly. Stepping out of the Avoid Dance and into effective conflict resolution is a muscle that is severely underdeveloped in our society, so beefing it up will take practice, especially given that many of the difficult conversations you are having with your ex or partner touch such personal issues. The good news is there are several places you can begin your workout.

When there is an issue, practice the following three steps, first by yourself then with your ex:

1. Name the problem in a sentence. Resist the urge to accuse them of anything here.

2. Say “I feel…” then put a feeling after it.

3. Say “I need…” then let your ex know what you need from them.

For example, let’s say that your ex offended you recently. Typically our brain stem kicks into gear when we see them and we say something like, “You’re a real jerk for talking details about the divorce proceedings with the kids.” Then they feel attacked and defensive and start using their brain stem to begin hurling accusations and maybe even insults back your way. (Sound like fun? Hell no. So it’s no wonder we don’t work this muscle very often.)

Try this instead:

1. “I was pretty annoyed that the kids found out about the divorce proceeding details.”

2. “I feel hurt and sad.”

3. “I need to us to work out an amount of confidentiality for the kids that works for both of us.”

If you can maintain a sense of vulnerability in this conversation instead of being aggressive, I would guess you will be surprised at how much different the person’s response is than it was in “You’re a real jerk” Scenario 1.. Using these three steps is an incredibly challenging practice that takes exactly that—practice—so don’t be surprised if it feels difficult or weird the first several times.

You might do some practice runs of pretend scenarios with someone you trust or consider joining a group like the Better Relationships Group that I run, that helps members learn among other things, effective conflict resolution skills. One final bee in your bonnet is see if you can depersonalize the conversation, i.e. the person you are talking with did not actually mean to offend you, they were just having a rough day and you caught a stray bullet. Good luck.

Jeremi McManus holds a Masters in Counseling and is the founder of SF Relationship Coaching.