When betrayal and anger stood in the way of resolution.
David was referred to me by a financial adviser in my business network. His marriage to Rachel was unraveling. She had been unfaithful, initially denied the affair and later acknowledged it. The relationship continued even while they were in marriage counseling.
David was angry, hurt and bewildered. He felt deeply betrayed, and by the time we began working together, the marriage was ending. I introduced him to a divorce attorney I knew and trusted from my own experience.
I met with David regularly over the next several months as the legal process moved forward. When we began, he was all over the place. He was angry, frustrated and having difficulty separating what he felt from the decisions he needed to make.
David found it valuable to have someone to talk to who wasn't a friend or family member, and wasn't his therapist or lawyer. There is a unique relationship that can develop between a client and an advisor in a situation like this - a place for candid and unfiltered conversations. David could be angry, contradictory or uncertain. He could say what he was thinking, change his mind and work through things without worrying about how someone close to him would react.
As David became calmer, he was better able to think about the divorce more deliberately. His lawyers had developed a list of issues that needed to be resolved, and David, who was analytical and financially oriented, put them into a spreadsheet. He assigned a dollar value to each item and sorted the list accordingly.
David became frustrated that so much time was being spent on issues he considered financially insignificant. Looking at the spreadsheet one day, I asked him a different question: “How do you think Rachel thinks about this list?”
At first, he didn't understand what I meant. I suggested adding another column. We called it the “Rachel Score.” Instead of asking what each item was worth financially, I asked David to estimate how important he thought each issue was to Rachel.
Then we sorted the spreadsheet again.
The order changed dramatically. Issues David had considered relatively unimportant moved toward the top. One of the issues that appeared to matter most to Rachel had essentially no financial value at all.
David had been evaluating every issue through his own scorecard. Rachel had a different one. He didn't have to agree with her priorities or even understand why some things mattered so much to her. But if he wanted to resolve the divorce, it was useful to understand what she valued.
That changed the way David looked at the negotiations. Some things that mattered greatly to Rachel cost him relatively little. Other things mattered enough to him that he was prepared to stand firm. Understanding her scorecard gave him another way to think about where there might be room to move.
David had been frustrated that Rachel couldn't see things the way he did. Over time, he became more willing to accept that there were other perspectives, whether or not he agreed with them. That made it easier for him to see options that had been difficult to see when he was consumed by anger and betrayal.
David and Rachel ultimately reached a settlement, and their marriage ended roughly eight months after the legal process began. The spreadsheet didn't settle the divorce. But David was seeing the situation more clearly. The anger and hurt were still there; they just had less control over his decisions.
Rachel's priorities didn't have to make sense to David in order to matter to the negotiation. He didn't have to agree with her scorecard. He needed to understand it. That helped him see more options and make better decisions about how to bring the conflict to an end.
Privacy Note: Names, identifying details, places, and certain circumstances have been changed to protect confidentiality. This case is based on an actual engagement and is presented to illustrate the nature of Resolve Advisory's work.