Mediate Michigan

The decision to divorce wasn’t an easy one, but unless there’s abuse or some other horrific situation it really shouldn’t be, especially if you have kids. Still, once you’ve exhausted all other options to salvage a marriage, once you know that divorce is the only path, the best thing you can do is make sure that whatever you do will be in your kids’ best interest beyond, obviously, staying together.

In my case, we decided to mediate — I’d like to say we were mature enough not to get nasty and vindictive, but in all honesty we probably were just cheap. We tackled the custody thing well — 50-50 — as well as holidays, the house, the car, the “stuff.” I thought we had things pretty much under control.

But control is a slippery slope. It’s often a big issue in marriage, and guess who typically “wears the pants”? For more than two out of every three couples “women are the CEOs of their households, and their husbands are more like employees,” according to social psychologist Carin Rubenstein, who interviewed more than 1,500 men and women for her book “The Superior Wife Syndrome”.

Until you split, that is. Just like in any relationship, there’s just so much that falls under your control when you divorce, and quite a few things that don’t.

via Vicki Larson: What You Can’t Control Post-Divorce.