Litigation

Fight or Flight

Fight or flight. These are our two primal responses to conflict. Indeed, fight or flight is the choice that every animal faces when confronted by danger. Whereas humans today need no longer fear the approach of a saber-tooth tiger — the kind of situation in which our ancestors began to hone these instincts — fight or flight remains our primary response to conflict.

When divorce, family, and relational conflicts arise, for example, we either avoid the conflict altogether (flight) or we engage in the conflict (fight). The latter often begins with aggressive posturing and the issuance of threats. It then typically escalates into litigation whereby both parties retain attorneys to contest the dispute on their behalf.

Litigation might be a fine idea if it truly insulated us from the emotional costs of conflict. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. The decision to contest a dispute through litigation only exacerbates these costs, rendering litigation among the most painful experiences a person will ever encounter. It can also be one of the most expensive, sometimes depleting the parties’ life savings in professional fees.

A New Relationship to Conflict

More than an alternative to litigation, mediation is an entirely different approach to conflict resolution. First practiced in Ancient Babylon, it developed further in Ancient Greece and was later recognized in Roman law. A distinctly man-made process, mediation is quite unlike the instinctual responses of fight or flight. It asks the parties to adopt a new relationship to their conflict (while demanding no change in their relationship to one another). Instead of framing the conflict as a contest to be fought, mediation reframes the conflict as a problem to be solved.

In the 10,000 years since the saber-tooth tiger last roamed the frozen tundra, the process of conflict resolution has evolved. You can now choose mediation. As you learn more about mediation and litigation, we think you’ll agree: mediation is the better way to resolve divorce, family, and relational conflicts.