The Conflict Before the Conflict: The Role of Divorce Coaching When Conflict Is Internal

Aug 14
10 min read

When we talk about conflict in divorce, we almost always imagine two people. Two spouses with different perspectives. Two parents who cannot agree about their children. Two parties negotiating finances, property, support, or parenting time. We talk about positions and interests, communication breakdowns, escalation, negotiation, and ultimately, we hope, resolution.

But after spending many years working with people experiencing divorce and family conflict, I have come to believe that some of the earliest and most consequential conflict surrounding divorce happens before there are two opposing parties at all. Sometimes, the first conflict is internal.

Should I stay or should I leave? Have I tried hard enough? What will this do to my children? Can I afford to live on my own? What if I leave and regret it? What if I stay and regret that?

For the person experiencing it, this can feel like indecision. They go back and forth. One day they are certain the marriage is over and the next they are questioning everything. They may even become frustrated with themselves because they cannot seem to make a decision that they believe they should somehow be able to make.

From a conflict perspective, however, I see something different. I see competing interests.

When Both Sides of the Conflict Belong to the Same Person

Those of us who work in conflict resolution are very comfortable with the idea that two seemingly opposing positions can be supported by legitimate underlying interests. We see it every day. One parent wants one parenting schedule, another wants something completely different, and our work is often to move beyond what each person says they want so we can better understand why it matters.

Internal conflict can work in much the same way. The difference is that both sides of the conflict belong to the same person.

Someone can desperately want change while also valuing stability. They can love their spouse and no longer want to remain married. They can want greater independence while being frightened of losing the security of the life they know. They can believe that leaving may ultimately be the right choice and simultaneously grieve everything that leaving represents.

Those feelings do not necessarily make someone indecisive. They tell us that more than one thing matters.

That is why I think one of the most important shifts a conflict-focused divorce coach can make is to stop treating ambivalence as a problem that needs to be solved. Instead, we can become curious about what the ambivalence is telling us. Rather than asking ourselves, How do I help this client make a decision?, perhaps the better question is, How do I help this client understand the decision they are trying to make?

There is an important distinction between the two.

Moving Beneath the Position

In mediation and other areas of dispute resolution, we spend a great deal of time distinguishing positions from interests. A position tells us what someone says they want. An interest helps us understand what sits underneath that position and why it matters.

I believe the same framework is incredibly useful when coaching internal conflict.

A client may say, "I have to leave." Another may say, "I have to stay for my children." We hear statements like, "I can't do this anymore," "I could never afford to get divorced," "My spouse will never change," or "I don't have a choice."

It is tempting to hear those statements as conclusions. As a conflict professional, I hear them as invitations to become more curious.

When you say you can't do this anymore, what exactly is this? When you say you have to stay for your children, what are you hoping to protect them from? When you imagine leaving, what concerns you most? What concerns you most when you imagine staying? What would need to change for staying to feel like a choice rather than an obligation? What would you need to understand for leaving to feel like a choice rather than an escape?

None of those questions requires the coach to have an opinion about whether the client should divorce. In fact, I believe one of the most important things we can understand about this work is that the divorce coach should not have an investment in the outcome.

Our role is not to move someone toward divorce. It is not to convince someone to remain married. Our role is to help clients understand what is underneath their conflict so they are better equipped to exercise their own self-determination.

When Fear Begins to Sound Like Fact

Another thing I have learned to listen for in conflict is certainty language. Words like always, never, can't, have to, impossible, and no choice get my attention.

"I'll lose everything." "My children will hate me." "I'll never be financially secure." "My spouse will take the kids." "No one will ever want me again." "This will destroy our family."

Some of those concerns may have a very real basis. The mistake would be for a divorce coach to dismiss them as irrational or immediately reassure the client that everything will work out. Neither response helps the client think more clearly.

Instead, I want to understand what the client actually knows and what they are predicting. Is this something they have been told by an appropriate professional? Is it based on previous experience? Is it an assumption? Is it something their spouse has told them? Or is it something they are afraid could happen?

One of the things conflict does remarkably well is collapse the distinction between what we know and what we fear. Once that happens, our fears begin influencing our decisions as though they are established facts.

Helping clients separate facts, assumptions, interpretations, fears, and predictions is not about convincing them that their concerns are unfounded. It is about helping them determine which questions still need answers.

And very often, that is where internal conflict begins to become more manageable.

Sometimes the Problem Is Missing Information

Consider a client who says, "I can't afford to get divorced." That sounds like a financial conclusion, but we really do not know what it represents. It may be true. It may be something the spouse has repeatedly told the client. It may be based on incomplete financial information. It may be fear about maintaining two households. It may be a misunderstanding about support or property division.

The divorce coach does not need to determine whether the statement is financially or legally accurate. In fact, unless the coach holds the appropriate additional professional credentials, we should not be answering those questions.

What we can ask is, "What would you need to know in order to evaluate whether that's true?"

That question changes the conversation.

Perhaps the client needs to understand the household expenses. Maybe they do not have a clear picture of the assets and liabilities. They may need legal information about support, a better understanding of housing costs, information about health insurance, or an explanation of what different parenting arrangements might look like.

Suddenly, "I can't afford to get divorced" becomes, "There are several things I need to understand before I can evaluate my options."

That is meaningful movement, and the divorce coach has not influenced the ultimate decision at all. Instead, we have helped the client identify the information they need and the appropriate professionals who can provide it.

This is also why I believe a good divorce coach needs to become very comfortable saying, in effect, That isn't my question to answer, but I can help you determine who should answer it.

Our value does not come from being the expert on everything. Our value comes in part from understanding the boundaries of our expertise.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves Matter Too

Information is only part of internal conflict. There is another piece that I find equally important: the stories we tell ourselves.

I have written and spoken often about my belief that conflict does not arise simply because people experience different events. Conflict develops because people assign meaning to those events. The meaning we create influences how we interpret what happened, how we view the other person, and ultimately how we respond.

We do the same thing internally.

"My marriage failed, so I failed." "I stayed too long." "A good parent wouldn't break up the family." "Leaving means I'm selfish." "Staying means I'm weak." "If I couldn't make this marriage work, I have failed my children."

These statements can become so deeply embedded that the client no longer experiences them as interpretations. They experience them as facts. Once that happens, decisions begin getting made inside the boundaries of the story.

This is why one of my favorite questions in conflict work is deceptively simple: What are you making this mean?

What are you making divorce mean about you? What are you making staying mean? What does changing your mind mean? What are you making your spouse's behavior mean? What do you believe your children will make your decision mean?

For divorce coaches, this is not an invitation to move into therapy. We are not diagnosing where the client's beliefs originated or treating the psychological conditions that may underlie them. We are exploring how the client's current perception of the conflict is affecting their ability to identify interests, gather information, recognize options, and make decisions.

That is very much conflict work.

And Then There Are the Children

For parents contemplating divorce, the children are often at the center of the internal conflict. I cannot tell you how often some variation of "I have to stay for my children" becomes part of the conversation.

I don't think the appropriate response is to tell a parent that children are resilient and will be fine. Nor do I believe we should reinforce the idea that parents should always remain married for their children. Both responses dramatically oversimplify something we know to be far more complicated.

Research on children and divorce has long demonstrated that separation and divorce can be associated with increased risks for children across several areas of adjustment. But an equally important body of family-conflict research tells us that the nature of the conflict children experience matters tremendously. Chronic, intense, unresolved conflict, particularly conflict that places children in the middle, can itself create significant problems for children.

That distinction is important because it changes the divorce coaching question.

When a parent tells me, "I have to stay for my children," I don't need to decide whether that position is right or wrong. I want to understand the interest underneath it. What are you hoping to protect your children from?

Maybe it is instability. Maybe it is financial change. Maybe it is reduced time with a parent. Maybe it is the loss of the family home. Maybe it is the parent's own childhood experience of divorce. Maybe it is fear that the children will blame them.

Once we understand what the parent is actually trying to protect, we have a much richer conversation than simply debating whether staying or leaving is "better for the kids."

Good Divorce Coaching Requires Us to Tolerate Uncertainty

There is another skill involved here that I think is sometimes underestimated: the ability of the professional to tolerate the client's uncertainty.

People facing divorce understandably want certainty. The decisions they are considering may affect where they live, how they parent, their finances, their relationships, their identity, and the future they believed they were going to have. Of course they want someone to tell them what to do.

And professionals can feel pressure to provide that answer.

But sometimes good coaching means being willing to sit with a client who says, "I don't know," without rushing to make that discomfort disappear.

Our job is not to manufacture certainty where certainty does not exist. Instead, we can say, in effect, Let's understand what you don't know.

That does not mean divorce coaching becomes passive. Respecting self-determination does not require us to sit quietly and validate every statement a client makes. We can challenge inconsistencies. We can reflect patterns. We can invite clients to consider perspectives they have not considered. We can ask hard questions.

If a client tells me that protecting the children is their highest priority while also describing children who are regularly exposed to significant parental conflict, I can ask how they reconcile those two things. If a client repeatedly says there are no options, I can ask whether they are willing to explore whether that is actually true. If a client is certain about how a spouse will respond, we can explore which part of that certainty comes from experience and which part is prediction.

Self-determination means the decision belongs to the client. It does not mean the coach stops being curious.

Divorce Coaching Before There Is a Divorce

This is where I think we need to expand the way we talk about divorce coaching.

Divorce coaching is often positioned as a service for someone who is already getting divorced. Certainly, that is a significant part of our work. Professionally trained divorce coaches help clients prepare for mediation, organize information, communicate more effectively, navigate difficult negotiations, work through co-parenting conflict, and make better use of the other professionals involved in their case.

But the role actually begins earlier.

A client does not necessarily need to have decided to divorce before working with a divorce coach. There can be tremendous value in helping someone understand the conflict surrounding that decision before the conflict externalizes.

Because internal conflict has a way of becoming interpersonal conflict.

Fear can become frustration. Frustration can become anger. Anger becomes blame. One person acts, the other experiences that action as a threat, and threat produces reaction. Before long, the couple is no longer navigating uncertainty about the marriage. They are protecting themselves from one another.

Those of us who work in mediation, parenting coordination, divorce coaching, and family conflict see the result all the time. People enter professional processes while simultaneously grieving, frightened about money, worried about their children, uncertain about the future, and interpreting every proposal through the history of their relationship.

Then we ask them to negotiate.

This is one reason I have become increasingly focused on preparation for process.

Preparation cannot guarantee a low-conflict divorce, but it can help people enter difficult processes with a clearer understanding of what matters to them, what information they need, where they are making assumptions, and which decisions actually need to be made.

Divorce coaching can be an important part of that preparation even when the ultimate decision about divorce has not yet been made.

The Conflict Before the Conflict

The longer I work in this field, the less I think of divorce coaching as simply helping someone "get through a divorce."

Conflict-focused divorce coaching is about helping people navigate the decisions, conversations, relationships, and processes surrounding divorce. Sometimes that work happens during the legal process. Sometimes it happens long after the divorce when parents are learning to function within a changed family system. And sometimes it happens before anyone knows whether there will be a divorce at all.

When a client asks, "Should I get divorced?" I don't believe our professional question should be, What should this person do?

I think our questions are much more interesting than that.

What interests are competing here? What is this client trying to protect? What fears are influencing the decision? What stories are shaping their perception? What does the client know, and what are they predicting? What information is missing? Which questions belong in coaching, and which require another professional? What options has the client not yet considered? And what does this person need in order to exercise meaningful self-determination?

Those are conflict questions. And they belong squarely within the work of a well-trained, conflict-focused divorce coach.

Sometimes the first conflict surrounding divorce isn't between two spouses. It is the conflict between two very real truths within the same person: I want to stay, and I want to leave. I am ready, and I am terrified. I know what I want, and I have absolutely no idea what I want.

Our job is not to decide which side wins.

Our job is to help the client understand what each side is trying to tell them.

Maybe, then, "Should I get divorced?" isn't the most useful first question.

Perhaps the better place to begin is:

What do I need to understand before I decide?

And that is exactly the kind of question a professionally trained divorce coach can help a client explore.