It's How You Run the Race

Can you stand one more post about Disney?  Good!  Daughter and I ran the Glass Slipper Challenge, which is a 10k (6.2 miles) on Saturday, followed by the half marathon (13.1 miles) on Sunday.  Yikes!  Of the 3 intrepid racers who made the trip, I was the only one who truly trained for the double header.  Daughter especially, being 21, trained for the 10k, but not the half, and certainly not for both races.  So, only the day of the half marathon, I had some choices to make.   I could run my race, no matter what.  Sure, that would mean I'd probably leave daughter at mile marker 9. Certainly, it might mean daughter wouldn't finish in one piece or at all.  I might hurt my knee again at mile marker 11, but it would be a faster finish.  At least, if she stayed with me, she make it most of the way through, and besides, I trained and she didn't.  We could pace together until mile marker 9 and then I could pick up the pace and leave her, knowing I gave her a good foundation for 3/4 of the race.  Or, I could remember my goal of having fun, not getting hurt, and finishing, and mesh it with daughter's goal of finishing her first two races and runing across the finish line, and we could run and finish together.  You know I picked the latter.  It was a true collaboration, with me keeping her running and her keeping me from running too fast.  We were committed to helping the other realize their goals, and so we both did.

A truly collaborative case is like my race with my daughter.  Very few divorcing spouses share all of the same goals.  If they did, they wouldn't be in the Trenches, would they?   Most of them share some goals, but by and large, their goals differ.  What makes a collaborative case fail or succeed depends on one thing, and one thing alone.  That thing is the degree to which the parties not only want to realize their goals but also their spouse to realize theirs.  If the commitment for their spouse to get what they need is not as strong as their own self interest, then the case will fail.  If it doesn't outright fall out, it will not end satisfactorily.  Why is that?  Because when the couple gets to mile marker 9 in the process, one of them will pull ahead and try to leave their spouse in the dust.  Their spouse, realizing that all of that "collaborating" with them was just a ruse to lull them into a sense of safety and security, will pull out all the stops so even if they don't finish, neither will their spouse.  They will expend all of the resources they have to make sure the other doesn't finish, not that they both do.  What you end up with is a mess at the finish line.  There is always that moment when a party has to decide whether self interest or the greater good of the family wins out.  That is the moment at which you know whether your case is truly collaborative.  Not every case can or should be settled collaboratively.  Still, there's nothing like watching a couple help each other across the finish line in a collaborative case.  Kind of like me and my daughter.  Here in the Trenches.