Divorce Balance

Negotiation > Recovery > Enhancement

Friday, December 31, 2004
Urgent Apologies, Just in Time for New Year's Eve

With less than half a day to go before 2004 expires, it seems that some people are becoming desperate to check boxes off their to-do lists.

I'm sorry about that.

Just this week, "Brenda" came in for her scheduled appointment with me on a post-divorce mediation. Her Judgment of Divorce was officially entered mid-February 2001 — although this merely capped off a process that had by then been in divorce court for almost two years. She met with a therapist every week during that time.

In the end, the judge signed her divorce form and Brenda concluded her counseling a month or so thereafter. She hadn't seen her therapist since.

Until this past Monday.

"Dell, you're never going to believe who called me last Thursday," she began our session. "Lou Cott," she said without pause. Then she repeated herself: "Lou Cott. Do you remember Lou Cott?"

"Yes, I do." (I have been working with her since 1998; she typically refers to him by his first and last names, as if these are two mandatory syllables of a single word.)

"You know what he wanted? He said he wanted to apologize. He said that he'd been thinking about it all these years and he realized that he hadn't treated me well during my divorce therapy. He said he'd let me down professionally. He said that he'd let his issues with Jim affect our work together." Jim is Brenda's former husband.

"Lou was your marriage counselor before you filed for divorce, then he just worked with you, right?" I reacquainted.

"Right. He knew Jim up-close-and-personal. Jim was messing with him plenty in the end, even after he quit counseling. But that's between the two of them."

"So, what did you say?"

"I said I accepted his apology. I didn't even have to think about it. You'd be proud of me, Dell. I mean, I'm not even angry with Jim anymore, so why should I hold out on forgiving Lou? I don't hold onto crap from any relationship. I've moved on."

"Good for you," I encouraged. "That's incredible progress."

Whatever the real or perceived slights, Brenda's in good company.

People "...who hate are very involved with their enemies.... The opposite of love, by the way, isn't hate. Indifference is the opposite of both love and hate. That's why the healing of hate often involves simply letting go."

Authors such as Sandra D. Wilson, Ph.D., advocate forgiveness as a path to healing against even the most egregious of transgressions. It benefits the forgiver.

I'm further reminded that leading support groups such as Al-Anon endorse apologies for the good of the transgressors. Citing Step 9 of the ubiquitous Twelve Steps, we read: "Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others" (emphasis supplied).

Which brings us back to Brenda's story. Her therapist had pressed for a meeting to perfect his apology.

So she met with him on the first day of this last week of 2004.

And—?

Nothing. Despite Mr. Cott's ominous pitch that there were things that could only be brought to true closure through a face-to-face discussion, their 72-minute tête-à-tête yielded little more than a rehash of ancient history and a single, "official" restatement of the original apology.

Oh, yeah, one more thing: He also pressed for Brenda to "admit" that Jim was an unredeemable lunatic. My client demurred.

Talk about setbacks!

For all I know, this summit has brought all sorts of relief to the man who convened it. Some wound that he'd felt was festering 3½ years now is neatly disinfected and stitched up.

But the woman with whom he'd ostensibly met to set things right was ultimately a mess when she swept into my office yesterday.

Everything about her implied she will be going into New Year's Eve tonight as if the calendar has yet to reach the year 2002. Her wounds have been painfully reopened.

Platitudes aside, who truly benefited from this urgent push to close the books on 2004?

At what price?

—posted by Dell Deaton @5:12 PM EST 12/31/2004 [675]

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