Divorce Balance

Negotiation > Recovery > Enhancement

Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Change Your Pace

Last week I was on vacation up in the breathtakingly beautiful Leelanau peninsula here in our own Great State of Michigan.

One of the features of the cottage where we stayed (just outside of Empire, MI) was limited cell phone reception.

I make it a practice never to be unavailable to family, friends, and divorce clients in particular. But “checking in” now required more of a scheduled effort as I exercised my Giant Cypress into Glen Arbor for a signal, thrice daily.

The other remarkable recalibration necessitated by my accommodations came through the television. Three stations, no cable. But it served my sole interest of keeping me in front of Lake Michigan weather.

For others’ needs, it reliably delivered Dr. Phil.

In case you missed it last week, the episode I caught involved a husband who worked as a sales manager, and criticized his wife for inadequate stay-at-home-momming. So the Relationship Cure author-cum-talk show host stepped up to the plate with a not-so-novel response.

Put Dad in charge of the kids for a week.

Send Mom to a five-star spa.

I delayed by just a little bit our departure for a planned kayak trip down Crystal River, to watch this train wreck, er, program. Not that I had any doubt how this TV show was going to play out.

“Role reversal” is a parlor trick I used to see employed quite a bit in my work in organizational change management.

“Wanna criticize the job I’m doing? Okay, then you try it for a while!”

Trouble is, this premise fails to appreciate the learning curve required by any person to do any job — including the one ramped up on by the person who’s now suggesting the swap.

No systems. No trial and error. No momentum.

Sure you’re gonna fail at first when you try to take on what they’re doing, even if they truly are doing it inadequately. They did, too, during their own first weeks.

So the goal here is merely to humiliate the critic.

Oh, yeah: In the tape made before this contrived switch, the husband boldly laid himself out as an insensitive lout. And as a single parent myself, I didn’t need Dr. Phil's contrivance to empathize with this mom’s hard working, round-the-clock “job.”

But trading ridicule for ridicule isn’t the answer. As a domestic relations mediator, let me tell you that it’s just another path to the door of my professional practice.

Why not learn instead to set boundaries as to how you’ll be treated and spoken to in your relationship?

Why not teach Mom these skills?

Based on the television I saw in our cottage, I think the couple missed a great opportunity to change pace and grow closer. Together. For a lot less money than Dr. Phil shelled out on that getaway spa, they could have had a great week in Leelanau — which I highly recommend!

Not as dramatic for TV audiences, of course.

But then, the things that truly enhance couples’ intimacies never are.

—posted by Dell Deaton @11:55 PM EST 6/29/2005 [500]

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