How you go about resolving these issues is extremely important. It determines the type of divorce you have and it sets the stage for how your relationship will be in the future.

Normally we handle these questions in a way that causes tremendous damage. Here's what usually happens:

Two people start out being in love. Then someone gets hurt. Then that person puts up his or her walls of protection and automatically withdraws and becomes critical of the other. Then the other person gets upset and becomes more judgmental toward the first person. Then the first person gets more upset and becomes more hateful toward the other.

Without knowing, the couple creates a cycle of conflict that goes on and on without either person ever noticing his or her role in the problem.

The suffering that comes from this conflict is painful enough, but as soon as you add the threat of losing your children, your financial resources and your well-being, the situation quickly becomes much worse. Now the situation is threatening.

This potential loss of well-being can be a serious threat to a person's survival. It can make a person fight as though his or her life depends on it. The moment this happens, the cycle of conflict escalates dramatically.

Often this conflict escalates into full scale war. People become so full of fear, upset, anger and resentment, that they do horrible things to each other. The hurt and destruction are enormous. Relationships are destroyed and financial resources are lost. The pain and suffering are often so great that people never recover.

The sad part is that none of this conflict and suffering is necessary. We bring it on ourselves.

We think that we need to fight for protection. We believe that if we just fight hard enough, then somehow, everything will get resolved in our favor. Not so. In fact, the opposite is true. The more you fight someone, the more of a threat you become to that person. You force that person to fight you even harder. This in turn puts you at even greater risk.

Everything you do as an adversary creates more adversariness against you.

Besides, when all the fighting is over, the issues that you fought so hard to win rarely get resolved the way you want them to. In most cases, the issues get resolved in some sort of compromise with no one being happy. The final solution is one that you could have worked out between the two of you with a lot less effort and a lot less expense.

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