Expert advice on keeping a divorce amicable

From Kim Yay’s wedding to Jay-Z cheating rumours 2014. Remember that year the high and low of celebrity love? But one heartbreak really caught us off guard. Came from left of field. And it was the conscious uncoupling of Gwyneth Paltrow Goop and Chris Martin from Coldplay. Well, ten years on, we’re wondering, is it possible to really have a healthy divorce? Relationship expert Melissa Ferrari joins us now. Melissa, good morning. Good morning. OK, talk us through conscious uncoupling. Have we figured out what it is yet 10 years later? So conscious uncoupling is where you make a decision to really take the time to be respectful to each other, put the well-being of the other person first as well as your own. It’s more of a collaborative process around working through all the grief and the trauma and trying to do things as fairly as you both can. So are there some new strategies that we’ve learnt now 10 years on that that people can use in their real divorces without Hollywood lawyers involved? Yeah. Nowadays there’s a term like soft separations, right, Which I really do prefer rather than the uncoupling word. I, I, I never really liked that. Soft separations. Nesting. Nesting is where the children stay in the house and parents rotate so that the children are not disrupted, which is becoming. Yeah, but doesn’t it doesn’t always work? Yeah, well, the reason why it can be difficult is to get expensive because it means you’ve got to have three properties rather than two. But as a concept, I think it’s a really great way of not unsettling children. I mean, healthy divorces, they’re easier said than done, right? But I guess the whole point is to try and make the transition smooth for children. Yeah. Look, you know, we have social contracts in life. And I think this is something that needs to be approached with a social contract around doing things under what we call secure functioning principles, running this in a way that we keep each other secure, the children secure, protect each other from the not so good parts of yourselves that we all have, you know, being able to approach it in that amicable, caring kind of way. Yes, there are a lot of emotions. This does require real astute maturity to be able to do this. But it’s also so very important. How can we do it without? I mean, there’s talked about friends of mine doing it with mediation as opposed to getting lawyers involved. Is that a more affordable way which could take a lot of the heat out of the process? That’s the thing, you know, there it does sometimes to do this well, it does take finances and that can be a problem. But I think medic using mediators is great, but you still have to both turn up at the mediation in your adult selves where you want to work collaborative, collaboratively. You want to say what’s good for me is also good for you. So I think mediators is is a great, you know, having your own personal therapy is important as well to get through this and grabbing everything you can in terms of support around this, because it has to be one of the most unsettling things for sure, and traumatic not only for children, but for the people that are going through it as well. I think also creating some agreements is important. You know, making that agreement where you sit down and you say, we’re going to do this. Well, I’m going to do this in a way where I’m caring for me as well as you only because not because it’s good for you, but it’s good for both of us and particularly for our children. We all laughed at conscious uncoupling, but maybe group was on to something. She’s always is on to something. She’s always, she’s selling it right now on her website. She often is. Thank you, Melissa, great to have you on. Thank.