Guidelines for an effective communication - Many men and many women have very limited communication skills and almost all feel uncomfortable when they negotiate emotionally charged conflicts in their personal relationships.



Couples during divorce, faces an extremely demanding task. They must be able to communicate and resolve their conflicts over the most important things in their lives – their children – with someone that they do not have any confidence, someone they are afraid of or someone they hate.

However, the parents need to cooperate and communicate with one other on the numerous issues related to children. Who will take children from school? When they go to the summer camp? How and when will participate in the meetings with parents? Who will go shopping for things they need at school?

Divorced parents are constantly faced with the need of taking decisions in the common daily activities related to children, and discuss about the values to educate children. There are no easy answers to such a serious task but they have guides on hand for the difficult negotiations structure and organization, which they are located in front of the divorced people.

The following list presents 10 of the basic principles for an effective communication:
1. Set a waved signal to end a conversation that could escalate into conflict. Do not continue argue when the other sends the signal to cease the conversation for 5 minutes.
2. Do not deviate from the issue that you are discussion. Do not bring to the surface earlier discussions and do not expand the current conflict on other issues.
3. Keep the conflict limits between you. Do not bring friends or family in question which would agree with you. For example, refrain yourself from saying: “Even my mother says...”.
4. Treat your ex-husband or your ex-wife with respect and refrain yourself from challenges. Do not cry, do not insult, and do not go for offending the other. Offending the other person will create nothing but problems.
5. Get involved physical and emotional into the discussion until the end of it. Do not leave the room to avoid conflict without announcing the other first. The withdrawal is often a manipulative strategy. If you choose to leave, before you do this, give the other person a chance to change the subject.  For example “I invoke the signal now and you don’t answer”. “If you do not stop the discussion now, I will leave”, etc.
6. You both determine which are the right moments for discussion. Do not negotiate under the influence of the alcohol or drugs.
7. Focus only on solving the problems. Do not try to intimidate your ex-wife or your ex-husband.
8. Listen carefully to other’s point. Do not pretend that you listen when in fact  you yell and formulate your own contradiction.
9. Discuss about specific behaviors without using pejorative labels.  For example: “You were 20 minutes late to take the kids from school”, this is more effective than saying: “ All the times you are late...”. Do not use generalizations like “you never”, “you always”.

10. Accept the responsibility for what you did wrong. Do not pass blame, hold the point of view of the ex-husband/wife and do not insist that your opinion is the only version of the truth.
Applying these rules, the couples that are in divorce will avoid the common pitfalls of the conflict negotiation. Of course, the success of these rules depends on the condition that both, husband and wife, to agree submitting to them as much as possible.