Podcast: Divorce Doesn’t Have to Define You

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Bridget: So, what on earth is equitable mediation? That is what we’re going to dive into today. Joe Dillon, an equitable mediator — can you please enlighten us? What is equitable mediation?

Joe: Well, thanks for having me first of all. As a divorce mediator, I help couples reach mutually beneficial agreements — peacefully, amicably, out of court — so it’s a lot more efficient time-wise and cost-effective. Our whole goal is to really focus on building agreements that are, as right there in the name implies, fair and equitable for both parties, not where one side wins at the expense of the other. That’s always our focus and that’s where our name originally comes from.

Bridget: And this is something that you have been providing — and correct me if I’m wrong — to families, because it’s not just the two people splitting up. There are other people impacted. And you’ve been doing this for 18 years.

Joe: That’s a great point. People forget that yes, it’s the spouses that are getting divorced, but there’s a whole bunch of people who are impacted — obviously children number one, but even friends, other family members, neighbors, and things like that. We find that when couples get through the divorce process in a more amicable and peaceful way, they can still maintain some cordial relationship with each other, with their mutual friends, with each other’s families. Because guess what — you’re going to be seeing each other for pretty much the rest of your natural-born lives if you have children. So you might as well get through it as best you can rather than burning the entire bridge down.

Bridget: You know, Joe, I think that is commendable that you’re able to give people divorcing a different self-perception — where they understand that they can be part of something that is not as devastating as a traditional, nasty divorce. I believe that’s been rewarding for you and in turn rewarding for your family. However, here’s the big news and one of the reasons I was so excited to talk to you today: what you’ve learned from your work helping divorcing couples — you’ve now flipped the script. You have written a book for people that are married, to help protect and enhance their marriages so they don’t end up needing the services of Equitable Mediation.

Joe: Yeah. Coming out later this year is the goal. The working title is Every Marriage Is a Negotiation. What I’ve learned as a negotiator — I’ve been a professional negotiator for about 30 years now, in private practice doing divorce mediation for 18 — and all the patterns I’ve seen and witnessed over and over… I sat down one day and was just banging it out in Word, actually using my headset and spitting out these scenarios. And I’m like, man, people fall into these buckets. You don’t want to discount what they’re going through or say, “I can’t believe they didn’t see that coming,” because we’re just not trained for that. But when I looked at all the clients I’ve had and all the patterns, you can bucket them into about 5 to 10 different categories. And what I really boiled it down to is the inability to effectively negotiate.

As a professional negotiator, I love reading the books — Getting to Yes, Never Split the Difference, all the classics, these treatises on business negotiations. But you don’t want to crush your enemy in a marriage. That’s not a good idea. That’s the person you’re sharing a bed with — you’re going to be watching Netflix together on the couch tonight. On the other end, you get those more therapeutic books — love languages and things like that. And while I’m a huge fan of therapy, in the practical world of negotiating what to watch, where to have dinner, where to go on vacation, those books don’t really apply either. I noticed there’s this gap. How do you manage those things practically?

What I’ve noticed is you build up what I’m calling the “bank of goodwill.” If somebody agrees with you a couple of times, you remember that, and you’re more likely to say, “I don’t want to go to Las Vegas on vacation, but my spouse let me buy that guitar and let me go on vacation with my friends — so I’m going to say yes to this, because I realize you have to give to get.” That’s really what I’m trying to teach people: a process and methodology by which they can have these conversations productively and avoid winding up in my office.

Bridget: I think that is just really fantastic — you identified the gap and you’re filling it. Is this something that will only work if both people read it?

Joe: It’ll work if both people are willing to participate. That’s the key in negotiation. Most people think of negotiation as two people, and you need two willing participants. Even if you’ve got somebody who is difficult, you can always get to what in Getting to Yes we call the position behind the position. Sometimes when people are saying no, it’s not for the reason you think it is. It’s our job as the other person in a negotiation to look behind that reason and get to it. That’s a common failing in marriages.

I was having this conversation literally with my wife Cheryl last night. She was talking about her relationship with her mom, and she said, “Every time I talk to my mom and it doesn’t go well, she’s upset and snippy with me.” And she said, “But I know it’s not really about what she’s complaining about — her neighbor cheating at cards. It’s really because she’s upset that her brother hasn’t called her.” It’s that other thing that’s not really the thing. And we are so quick to react to the first thing presented to us — “Well, who cares if they cheated at cards?” — instead of going, “Are you sure that’s really what it’s about? What’s really going on here?” It’s the willingness to listen and ask the right questions that elicits the conversation, engages the negotiation, gets to the heart of the issue, and helps you come to resolution. But it does take practice — it’s not something we’re normally trained to do. That’s what I’m hoping to give people the skills to do.

Bridget: That sounds fascinating. It also sounds like it may have applications outside of just a spousal relationship. Could this improve your communication skills overall with other key relationships?

Joe: Absolutely. When I first wrote the outline — I have a publisher and a consultant helping me — they looked at me and said, “You’re going to be better off if you can really niche down and define this audience and where do you have credibility?” It was actually a friend who was kind of looking at me, waiting for the obvious answer. Because I was writing it for the guy who wants to go on the Vegas boys trip, or the person who wants to get another dog, plus the marriage stuff. And he said, “What do you see all day? Where does your authority lie?” And I said, “Wow — marriages. I’ve seen thousands of couples and the patterns that develop.” So I’ve now started niching it down, which has created a bit of a rewrite. But I’ve got plenty of material to draw from anonymously — we want to keep confidentialities. These are archetypes, personas that fall into certain patterns. It’s easy to write about fictitious characters without naming names because I’ve had 200 clients that fit a single pattern.

Bridget: I think the niche is really going to serve you well because there’s such a need for it. Do you believe this book would be most beneficial for people in a relationship that is still fairly strong wanting to make it stronger, or could it help people who are already in tension and at odds?

Joe: I think it’s more the former. How many people do you know who go to therapy because things are going great? Nobody just sits around one day and says, “Hey, I think I’ll go to therapy — life is awesome.” So when you get to that place, we don’t want to say it’s too late, because therapy is a wonderful step and people can really benefit from it. However, what we see in a lot of relationships is when people are working on themselves, they suddenly get in alignment with their higher self — as my wife-coach Cheryl would say — and they realize their goals are no longer aligned with their spouse’s. And that’s what leads to divorce. I very rarely see people who say, “We went to counseling, it worked for a while, but our kids got older and we just mutually decided.” It’s usually that they couldn’t fix it.

We really want to emphasize that people should make an investment in the most important relationship of their life. They spend all this money on the wedding, all this time having kids, decorating, picking out the best neighborhood — spend a little time building those skills. And our ultimate goal — you heard it here first — my wife and I would love to have seminars for newlyweds, teaching them how to do this.

I’m Catholic, so you know with Catholicism you have Pre-Cana, where you sit with the priest. My wife is not Catholic, so she was like, “We have to do what? We have to talk to who?” We had a very nice priest — it was just an hour, very lovely and spiritual. But it’s not tactical. It doesn’t address what are you going to do when something hits the fan? How do you get through it as a married couple? Because guess what — that will be more of your life: when the dog throws up on the carpet, the kid touches the hot stove, and your spouse announces, “By the way, I just bought a new guitar.”

Bridget: What I hear you saying is the fan is going to turn on at some point, and something will be heading in its direction.

Joe: Correct. One hundred percent.

Bridget: If you and Cheryl create these seminars for newlyweds — what a great wedding gift that could be. And I’m pretty confident that’s not something that’s widespread or readily available out there.

Joe: Yeah. In a nonsecular way, just in the practical way. We all know from getting through life that life is hard and it’s gotten harder, and you really need practical, tactical skills. As much as people say “how romantic” — it’s not that. You just need to realize that life is a series of constant decisions and landmines you need to navigate through. As much as you might want to get swept up in the romance, more of life is less romance and more tactical, right-now things that happen.

Bridget: You mentioned that part of the goal — not just in the book but in the work that you do — is allowing people to live in alignment with their highest self, clearing their vision where they can see themselves in that light. Could you explain a little more about how you’re hoping it will come about in the book and how you’ve seen it come about in your current work?

Joe: Certainly. My wife Cheryl is my partner in Equitable Mediation. I’m the divorce mediator; she is the divorce coach. Working with me is required if you’re going through the divorce process. Working with Cheryl is purely voluntary, and there are folks she really helps move through this process. She works with clients one-on-one, confidentially — we don’t know what each other does with our respective clients. But broadly, what Cheryl tries to help people understand is that divorce is not a failure. She herself was divorced, and rather than looking at it as a failure, she helps people ask: what lessons, what learnings can I take from this? What did I learn about myself? That this relationship did not put me in alignment with who I am or what I want as a person.

Getting people to understand that — as painful and difficult as that might be when you’re in the middle of a divorce — planting that seed gives people the ability to say, “Okay, that was a wonderful period of time. I had a wonderful spouse. Maybe I raised wonderful kids. I had a nice home. I did all those things. That’s a great chapter. I’m going to close that chapter and write a new one.” It’s okay if you’ve outgrown that relationship. If you’ve moved on. Not that we want people to casually throw relationships away, but if you get to the place where you’re really thinking about who you are as a person, what your values are, what you want your life to look like — “Does this relationship serve me in doing that?” — that’s what I mean.

Our clients for the most part are people who still love each other, respect each other, care for each other. I’ve ended sessions and walked out of my office thinking, “Why are they getting divorced?” There was something they couldn’t move past, and my job is not to repair the relationship — it’s to help them end it. But it’s really getting into that space where you realize there’s something else perhaps out there, a different part of yourself calling you to go explore that.

Bridget: What do you do as the CEO of your own life and leader of yourself? What are you doing to live in alignment with your own highest self?

Joe: One of the things about what we do professionally is it’s very easy to get wrapped up in the drama. People are in a place of pain and they’re lashing out, looking for an audience. Couples will sometimes want to argue in front of you like you’re mom or dad — “See what a bad person they are? We didn’t go to my family on Thanksgiving.” Part of what I’ve said to myself is: I’m going to remain a neutral peacemaker. I’ll stand outside the box, float above it — my higher self saying I am here to serve a greater purpose. These folks might not realize that yet, but I want to remove that trauma from both themselves and their family and their circle of influence. By remaining true to myself and how I practice — what I’m willing to do or not do — that really helps me maintain professional distance while still caring as a person and a human. That’s what allows me to continue doing this for 18 years.

Knowing what you want out of a practice, what you’re willing to do, what you know is best for clients, and staying true to that — that’s really the key. And it is hard. There are people who really want to pull you in, and sometimes you just have to understand this is part of the process and stay true to yourself.

Bridget: I believe that you draw on strength from your own childhood and your own personal experiences, and that that has inspired you in Equitable Mediation and in your life passion. If you feel yourself wanting to click the end-Zoom button, do you have a mechanism to stop, reconnect, and remember why you’re so passionate about this?

Joe: One of the things I always start our mediations off with is some “rules of the road.” I share with clients upfront what mediation is and what it is not. By laying that down, I’m not scolding them or being parental or lecturing. I’m simply explaining what we went through and what this is and is not — let’s proceed as adults.

And I always go back to this: my parents litigated their divorce. I’m an only child, so I was in the crosshairs of that. It was one of the most terrible experiences — I never saw my father again after court. It was a disaster. I continue to draw on that experience, knowing that there is another way this thing can go. These folks might not know it because they’re not in it. But if I don’t help get them through this, that’s the path they’ll be on — and that will, whether they know it or not, ruin their lives and more importantly their kids’ lives. That’s what draws me back. I could have been a veterinarian, a professional baseball player, a fireman. But this is where life put me. This was the path the powers that be put me on, and I’m going to take that gift and use it.

Bridget: You’re being a steward of the gifts that were given to you. You’ve enhanced them and attached them to an emotional commitment — that if you can help even one child, that will make you feel successful.

Joe: And that’s perfect. Early on in my career — my very first year in practice — we were building some traction and I was getting a lot of clients, and I felt terrible. After sessions I’d sit in a room quietly. My wife was like, “Is everything okay? Leave me alone, you know…” And then finally she asked what was going on. I said, “Every time I finish with a client, I think: good job, Joe — another marriage you ruined.” And she said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s reframe this. Not another marriage you ruined — that’s another family you saved.”

As soon as she said that, I thought, wow. Wisdom from the mountaintop. And that became my mantra. That ripple effect — those kids are going to have a shot at having a healthy marriage, and they’ll have a shot, and so on and so forth. Like that Buddhist stone thrown in a pond and the ripples that spread out. That’s what really drives me and keeps me going through all these clients and relationships I’ve helped peacefully end.

Bridget: On a completely random side note — from doing this podcast and having some fantastic veterinarians as guests — if you look at overall mental health and happiness, divorce attorneys are actually happier and have stronger mental health than veterinarians.

Joe: It’s actually sad that there’s a mental health crisis among veterinarians. I did not know that.

Bridget: I learned it through the beauty of the podcast. But what a brilliant moment where Cheryl was able to stop you early on and reframe it for you.

Joe: And that’s really what it is. Language is so powerful, and there are many ways to look at things. One of the things I try to impart to clients is that sometimes people ask, “Why did this happen to me?” And it’s — no. This just happened. This didn’t happen to you, this happened. Now what? That’s it.

What I unfortunately saw growing up: my mom was 45 when she got divorced and her life essentially stopped. She’s still alive, but she never dated, never had friends, never went anywhere, never went on vacation — because she was so wrapped up in her identity as a wife. When that relationship ended, that was it for her. And I think, you’re going to live a long time. You need to rebuild and go on. It was like time froze for her. I can understand the trauma — it was a nasty divorce. But you need to work through trauma. That’s where counselors and therapists are invaluable. Unprocessed grief and trauma stay with you and define you. What we try to impart is: don’t let this define you. You still have a life ahead.

Sometimes in session, I’ll even bring some levity. I have a bit of a character. When we’re doing a parenting plan, I’ll say, “Okay, we’ve done the nights, weekends, and holidays. Now — you’re remarried, and it’s Christmas. How are we going to resolve that?” And they look at me like, “What did you just say?” I go, “You guys are 37. You’re not going to get remarried?” “God, no.” I say, “Okay, no problem. Let me grab my data chart…” But you try to give people that vision down the road — “I can’t see it now, but let’s plan for it.”

Bridget: You’re planting the seed of what is highly probable, and letting them address it while they’re still in the safe environment that’s been created by Equitable Mediation.

Joe: Exactly — because now’s the time to have this conversation, not five years from now when somebody announces they’re engaged and the other person is angry about it. Let’s talk now.

Bridget: You and Cheryl co-own the company — you’re the mediation services and she’s the divorce coach. When you were talking about the trauma your mother went through, it made me think: what if there’s someone out there who is stuck post-divorce — maybe it was three years ago, they’ve tried therapy, it’s not working? Could they seek out services from the divorce coach after the fact?

Joe: Certainly. Absolutely. There’s a difference between coaching and therapy. Therapy focuses a lot on the past — what happened? Coaching doesn’t ignore that, but it focuses on where do you want to go? That’s a subtle but powerful mind shift. When we keep talking about the past, we get stuck in our victim story.

I’ll use a silly simple example: we have a dog, and every time I sit down she wants to go outside. Then when I finally get back to my bowl of cereal, she’s barking at the door to come back in. And I just start to spiral — “Why can’t I just get a break? I always do everything around here.” And then Cheryl says, “Calm yourself.” It’s 100% language. We all have that victim story. We want to make sure we think: this didn’t happen to me, this happened. Where do I want to go?

Cheryl has helped people post-divorce think about what’s possible. One of the things you run into — and I am totally guilty of this as an only child perfectionist — I will only do something if I’m already good at it. And my wife says, “How are you going to play the guitar if you don’t start out bad and practice?” I’m like, “Then I don’t want to play the guitar.” She goes, “This makes no sense.” Coaching can help you by saying your life might not look like that now, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get on the path, trip, stumble, fall, climb, get up, dust yourself off, and keep marching forward. Having that coach to plant the seed for you when you’re unable to plant it yourself — that’s really the power of coaching.

Bridget: When you think about the future — you’ve already shared the big goal of developing seminars for newlyweds, there’s probably going to be another book after this one — what else is on the horizon? As you look at living in alignment with your highest self, what else is coming?

Joe: For me, it’s teaching. I’ve enjoyed teaching in the past in a limited capacity — I’ve done some instruction as an assistant for people who teach divorce mediation trainings at Northwestern University. I used to live in Chicago, and in other mediation organizations. I really enjoy having knowledge and imparting it on another generation, not letting that knowledge die with you. We’ve amassed a lot of experience. My wife and I have built businesses together — we even had a cooking school for children as a side venture. She had an executive recruiting business before I met her. We’re very entrepreneurial by nature.

I would love to teach this next generation how to start and run their own business. Even in mediation, what gives me joy is seeing clients come to an agreement themselves. I didn’t tell them what to do, didn’t hoist a settlement on them like a judge or lawyer might — I guided them. That’s what I love. I love guiding people toward a resolution, toward a positive place. And for me, that would definitely be teaching. I’m currently in the process of applying and feeling my way through the academic world, which I’ve learned is radically different from the entrepreneurial and corporate world — it’s a very slow process. Starting now in the hopes that I’ll be teaching in a year or two.

Bridget: You’re looking to do this at the university level.

Joe: Yes. I’ve done it at university levels through training and continuing education rather than at the degree level. I have a master’s in finance and my background in entrepreneurship spans the past 20-some odd years. I run into a lot of young people who are entrepreneurial and want to start their own business, and there are so many things you can read in a book, but unless you have somebody sitting across from you explaining not only what you need to do but how you’ll need to behave and feel when, for example, your website crashes right in the middle of a major advertising campaign — there is no book on that. But I’ve been there. You need to tell people, “Okay, this is going to happen, and this is how we get through it.” Those are the things I really hope to impart. That’s where my passion and my goals will be.

Bridget: I can see where that ties in with living in alignment with your highest self, because you value impacting people and creating a path forward in a variety of ways — not just in dissolving a marriage.

Joe: Mediation itself is educational. You teach people what is a parenting plan, what is child support — you’re constantly educating people. If you’ve seen our website, you’ll know we have this whole resource center. I’ve been writing articles and publishing ebooks and courses for 17 years, always about educating the public. And truthfully, where that came from was my mom.

I remember growing up — she had questions but couldn’t really afford her lawyer. She’d been home most of my life and had just gotten a job when she got an inkling that my dad might leave. I remember her having to save money to buy an hour of the lawyer’s time. She had this pad on the kitchen counter where she’d write down her questions, so that when she had enough saved for that hour, she’d go in and go through them. I remember that and thought, well, that’s wrong. Knowledge should be free. Of course, if you want customized, tailored information you need to pay a professional — but broad general information that answers frequently asked questions? That’s something I wanted to build as a resource. We’ve had a million visitors to our blog over 18 years, and I’m just hoping that somewhere along the way somebody read something that changed the trajectory they were on, and gave them answers they couldn’t otherwise afford.

Bridget: How prevalent are familial estrangements within the immediate family in today’s society, and what kind of impact does that have on your work?

Joe: In the mediation space, it’s less common than perhaps in the litigation space. In what I’ve seen, even in cases where there has been an estrangement, it typically happens with teenage kids — they’ve got a lot of emotions pent up and they’re directing those emotions toward one parent they think is at fault. And really it becomes a function of time.

What I learned over time with my own situation is that there are really three sides to every story. I was raised as an only child with my mom, and from her worldview, my dad was the enemy and she was the saint. I don’t doubt that for a minute. But I’m certain there were also things she did that made my father say, “It’s not worth having to engage with her in order to see my son, so I’m just going to back off.” As you become an adult and you process all of this in your 20s, 30s, and 40s, you realize — huh, there was another side to this story. I just was never told it as a teenager.

So we try to explain to people: this sometimes is a function of time. It can also be a function of going to counseling with your child by yourself as the adult, understanding how you can support them. And here’s the kicker — even if you’re going through the divorce, still go to counseling. Not marriage counseling — it’s no longer about repairing the marriage. It’s how do we be good co-parents? How do we continue to thrive as what I call a “detached family unit” — total oxymoron, I know, like jumbo shrimp. But you want people to understand they’re going to need to co-parent, and therapists and counselors can give you very valuable advice on how to do that.

If you’ve got a parental alienation or estrangement situation, if mom and dad can behave as a unified front — and I know it must be terrible for the parent who’s on the short end of that — it may not be something you’ve done. It may just be the intense emotions this child is experiencing. Just continue to be there for them.

I have a friend who went through this — I won’t say his name out of confidence — but finally, after many years, the tides turned. One day his child looked at him and said, “Huh, you were right.” Talk about the long game — this was decades in the making. But it took forever, and not from any pressure on his part. This adult person had finally evolved to the place where the light bulb went on, and they came to him and said, “You know, you were right.” So there is hope for those parents who are listening.

Bridget: You mentioned the way you and Cheryl both approach the idea that divorce does not mean you’re a failure, that it is not something that happened to you — it is something that happened. Do you also empower people who are in an estrangement situation with that same message?

Joe: Absolutely. And also letting them know that — for example, when we think about parenting plans, we have to outline overnights. People get really hung up on that. They want 50% of the time. We practice in New York City and New Jersey, so anyone who’s ever lived on the East Coast knows that traffic in and out of Manhattan is terrible. When somebody who works on Wall Street and lives in Princeton, New Jersey says “I want 50% custody,” I ask: you’re going to leave your office at — if you’re lucky — 5:00. You’re not home till 7:30. You have a five-year-old sitting out front of daycare. Who’s picking that kid up?

We try to explain to parents that it’s not about the physical proximity of parenting time. It’s about being there — asking questions, showing up at the dance recital, being on the sideline at the soccer game. It can even boil down to child support. Some states like New Jersey and California use an income shares model where the number of overnights directly impacts the calculation. Don’t sweat that. That’s really you being supportive. That’s your way of helping your kids through this process, even if you’re not physically there. My hope is that one day they’ll look back and say, “Hey, I was still able to play soccer, get a cell phone, have a roof over my head and live in that house.” As an adult, they’ll look back and say, “Mom — you did that. Dad — you did that.” And you’ll have that moment. It might not be today, tomorrow, next week, or next year. But my hope is you’ll have that moment, because they will ultimately recognize the sacrifices you made.

Bridget: Well, this has been fascinating, Joe. I’m so excited about your book coming out, and the minute you mentioned the seminars for newlyweds — chef’s kiss. That is a phenomenal idea. I hope you and Cheryl continue to develop that. I would also love to extend an invitation for Cheryl to join us on the Interstate Podcast — I think that would be fantastic.

Joe: I’m sure she’d love it.

Bridget: Equitable Mediation. Joe Dillon, thank you for being our guest and sharing everything you did today.

Joe: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. It’s been a great conversation.

Bridget: And if you’re listening to this episode of the Interstate, I hope you’ll join us again. Have a great day.