ACCIDENT!

I should never have mentioned that the Master thought I had a car crash yesterday, because today I did.  It was a rainy day, and I was heading home for lunch after settling a case (Hoorah!).  There's one spot that is kind of slick, and my little Honda doesn't handle the road well, so I go a bit slow.  Well, the car started to hydroplane, then to skid, and then I had a choice of whether to try to steer the car toward the right shoulder and the utility pole, or toward the left into oncoming traffic.  I chose the former.  The car is totaled. That's what they say when the front quarter is smashed in, the axle broken and he airbags deployed.   (I'm OK.  Thanks for asking.  Thanks also to the lovely young woman who stopped to see if I was all right and call the police, the volunteer fire fighter who also stopped to check on me, and the police officers who were just great).
As I sit here and the Advil is wearing off, I started thinking about how my car accident is like life here in the Trenches (isn't it always?).  Think about it.  Lots of marriages are like driving my car on a beautiful day:  smooth drive, good handling, enjoyable ride.  Add a little water or snow, maybe a deer running across the road, and some cars will handle really well, and others, like my car, won't.  They'll skid, they'll spin, they'll get out of control.  Then they'll crash.  Add a disabled child, a serious illness, a job loss or economic woes to a marriage, and some will weather the storm and be fine.  Others will spiral out of control and fail.  What's the difference between the ones that succeed and the ones that fail?  For some of them, the spouses really should never have married.  For others that fail, lack of attention and effort weakened them so that when adversity struck, they had no foundation left to support the marriage.  The ones that make it understand that sometimes marriage, like life, is hard and you really have to put forth some effort to make it through the tough times, and more importantly, they want to do the work.
For the ones that fail, the spouses, like the driver of a car, have a choice.  They can turn the car toward the shoulder, and try to avoid the utility pole, knowing that if they don't the only damage is to their car and themselves.  They can turn the car into oncoming traffic, perhaps avoid the cars (but probably not), and not only destroy their car but probably someone else's and maybe hurt other, innocent people in the process.  Divorcing spouses face the same types of choices:  they can minimize the damage to themselves and others by choosing collaborative or cooperative process or mediation, or they can cause far more damage and hurt innocent people (like their children) by choosing litigation.  How may rational people would choose a head on collision over steering toward the shoulder?  Not many.  So why do so many seemingly rational people choose litigation as their first choice for dispute resolution?