Reflections on Separation

The separation process is complex and difficult, becoming more acute if there are children in common. This article aims to help and reflect on how to best face this moment.

How to make the decision to separate?

Make the decision about the end of the marital relationship It is, without a doubt, one of the most complicated. When you get to this point it is important to take into account several questions:

• The decision is made from reflection, meditation and above all from serenity.
• It is not recommended to make the decision after a fight discussion or confrontation.
• Communication between both parents should be above all sincere in everything concerning the motives and emotions that have led to this decision.
• The ideal is that both spouses They agree with the separation, as well as with the agreements made, especially regarding children (if they have them).

It is necessary to understand that all of the above can help and above all facilitate the transition and subsequent relationship of the “new family” when there are children in common, because although separation dissolves a marriage, it does not dissolve a family or the responsibilities that it entails. A poorly resolved separation (pain, unresolved stages or issues, feelings of betrayal, jealousy, disappointment) is almost an indisputable predictive factor of complications, conflicts and burdens after the separation. This translates into a very significant discomfort in all the members of that family, preventing and/or making it difficult to rebuild the lives of both spouses and the adaptation of the minors to the new situation and the new change of life

How to manage the separation?

More and more separated families come requesting help, affected by this poor management in the end of life as a couple. Adults are responsible for the consequences of our decisions, so the members of the couple must separate your emotions and relationship issues, emotions and issues with children. Separated couples tend to sneak in and make children participants and even instruments of the conflicts, tensions and disagreements of a relationship that was poorly ended and/or carried out by their parents, with the aggravation of helplessness, gullibility and weak personality – which is being forged- of the children.

It cannot be denied that the separation process It is very difficult, but there are mechanisms and tools that can facilitate this transition, such as mediation, in the event that the spouses, on their own, find themselves unable to reach an agreement. This system helps both spouses resolve, negotiate and agree in first person, the future of the family, their lives and that of their children.

These agreement processes They are complex, since this situation is loaded with such powerful tensions and emotions that it is very difficult to have meeting points in the terms of dissolution and agreement on separation. Mediation, in this case, is presented as an effective and restorative alternative.

Unfortunately, we are still far from a “Culture of Mediation.” Citizens need to reinterpret pre-established ideas of what it means a seperation and that resources such as mediation can help the process and above all to end relationships in a transformative way and, in this way, relationships are recovered from a new perspective, always without aggression, from respect and cordiality. This process marks and will mark the relationships that will subsequently be established between the separated couple and form a “new family” with greater adaptive ease. For this reason, mediation seems to be an effective and restorative alternative in separation issues.