Separation
Matters
Reduce the emotional cost of your divorce.
You may already be thinking about getting
a divorce and perhaps you’re just waiting
for the moment to raise the subject; or you
may have just learned that your partner no
longer wants to be with you, and you are
coming to terms with what that means.
created by Gillian Rock and Kim Crewe,
to provide the expertise needed to
help mobilise couples who struggle to
communicate and to ensure that each
feels their point of view has been heard
and understood.
Whatever your circumstances, at a time
of separation, it can be very difficult to
imagine what lies ahead for both you and
your family:
Gillian and Kim are experienced
relationship therapists and have been
specifically trained as family consultants
in collaborative law by Resolution, the
Solicitors Family Law Association, to
support and facilitate couples as they
work through their conflicts and transition
to the end of their relationships.
“Where do I begin?”
“How will I say what I need to say?”
“Whatever I say I’ll just make things worse.”
“If we’re hardly talking now, how will we
ever be able to get through this?”
“If I say nothing, maybe it will all just go away.”
When a relationship is in trouble, one
of the hardest things to do is to talk
together about it. Yet for many couples
pre-separation is when communication
reaches rock bottom and co-operation is
not only difficult, but often feels like it is
in reverse.
Communication and cooperation, however,
is critically important particularly when
there are children involved. Divorce can
have a very significant and negative impact
on them, with recent research highlighting
how the quality of your relationship as
divorcing parents is very influential in
enabling your children to make healthy
adjustments to the many changes ahead.
Your thoughtful conversations during your
divorce will help them emerge from it
feeling loved, confident and strong.
To suggest that it is possible to have
a ‘healthy divorce’ might seem like
an oxymoron, but the solution lies in
collaborating together, to tolerate the
tension of conflicting needs and making
things as good as they can be.
Separation Matters, a Brighton based
independent consultancy, has been
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The services that Separation Matters
offer, fully dovetail into the legal
system. Invited by family lawyers to
attend the formal four way couple
meetings from the outset, Gillian’s,
or Kim’s, expertise helps to ease the
emotional tensions and impasses
that often arise throughout the legal
negotiations.
It’s not uncommon for discussions
about financial settlements, the care of
the children, or the future of the family
home, to spark heated and emotionally
charged exchanges. These emotional
outbursts can all too readily create
sticking points that halt progress. Other
blocks might be more subtle, but equally
debilitating, and can easily be missed
without the expertise of Separation
Matters at the meeting.
Lawyers readily acknowledge that they
aren’t equipped to help couples in this
way, which is why Gillian, or Kim are
there to help diffuse and untangle the
underlying tensions, and so reduce the
emotional wear and tear that inevitably
accompanies this life-changing event.
to arrange to have meetings together
with just Gillian, or Kim, and away
from the lawyers, as a cost-effective
way of identifying and resolving their
conflicts, before re-engaging with the
legal discussions. An option very much
designed to be kinder to the budget.
Gillian and Kim see their experience as
therapists as crucial in the work they do
with couples and families, but add:
“Our family consultant work isn’t
therapy. Our input is much more
direct and proactive. We facilitate
conversat ions, so that couples can
establish and maintain much better
communication prior to, during and after
their separation and divorce. In this way
we help prevent families from paying the
emotional costs long after the legal bill
has been settled.”
Their expertise can be particularly
helpful for:
• Empowering couples to be at their
best, rather than their worst, during a
challenging time in their lives;
• Decreasing the time and money
spent in complex formal meetings,
by identifying and attending to the
emotional issues separately;
• Enabling each partner to speak frankly
and feely, so they take an active role
in their separation and access better
solutions.
Separation Matters can make a significant
difference to any stage you’ve reached in
the breakdown of your relationship either
before, or after, you have appointed your
legal representatives.
By Gillian Rock
Within the collaborative law approach,
when a block occurs at any stage in
the separation, the couple are able
separationmatters.co.uk
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