Splitting America
Copyright © 2012 William A. Eddy and Donald T. Saposnek
Published by High Conflict Institute Press
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized, in any manner or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior written permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpt in Chapter 1 reprinted from Ahrons, C. (2004). We’re Still Family: What Grown Children Have to Say About Their Parents’ Divorce. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 2004 by Constance Ahrons. Reprinted by permission of the author and the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.
Excerpt in Chapter 8 reprinted from Polarity Management by Barry Johnson, copyright © 1992, 1996. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, HRD Press, Amherst, MA, (800) 822-2801, www.hrdpress.com.
First printing: August 2012
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ISBN-13: 978-1-936268-53-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012946298
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Elle Phillips Design
There are many men of principles in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle
- Alexis de Toqueville
Chapter 1 What’s Happening to Us?
Chapter 2 How Did Divorce Get So Ugly?
Chapter 3 How “Splitting” Generates Hatred
Chapter 4 How High-Conflict Politicians Turn Peace into War
Chapter 5 Super PACs as Negative Advocates
Chapter 6 How the News Media Mirror Family Court
Chapter 7 A Nation of Alienated Voters and Alienated Children
Chapter 8 Healing a Split Nation
Appendix A High-Conflict Politician Scorecard
Appendix B Sources for Further Information
About The Authors
Acknowledgements
References
Adam@Home (c) 2006 Universal Uclick. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Something nasty is happening in America. Have you noticed the trend? There’s more bullying, more incivility, more disrespect and even more relationship violence between us at home, at work, in our communities and in the news. And, it seems to be increasing rather than decreasing.
We have noticed a pattern to this behavior that is all too familiar. It includes:
• Personal Attacks (calling the other person crazy, stupid, immoral or evil).
• Crisis Emotions (which trigger fear and hatred of each other).
• All-or-Nothing Solutions (which call for the elimination or exclusion of the “other”).
• Narcissistic Behavior (acting superior and not caring about anyone else).
• Negative Advocates (constantly recruiting others to join in this hostility).
We are well-acquainted with this pattern in high-conflict divorces, and it’s not good. This behavior is called “high-conflict” because it increases the conflict, rather than reducing or resolving it. Worst of all, it’s contagious – it spreads when people are exposed to it, like a virus.
This behavior results in a state of mind called “splitting” – the psychological term for truly believing that certain people are absolutely all-bad and others are absolutely all-good, with no gray areas in between (Millon, 1996). This might not seem like a serious problem, except for the fact that the spread of splitting leads people to stop speaking to each other, to hate each other and, sometimes, to be violent with each other. It also distracts us from solving real problems. We are now concerned that this behavior is spreading into politics at all levels.
Recently, political leaders in both parties appear to be adopting and escalating high-conflict behavior, and perhaps, even leading it. Millionaires and billionaires are funding expensive ads as key elements in high-conflict election campaigns. And, the news promotes high-conflict behavior in every broadcast – to children as well as to adults – by relentlessly showing, and thereby teaching, the most dramatic bad behavior of the day.
We believe that the politicians, donors to Super PACs and the news media don’t seem to realize how destructive and self-destructive this escalation of high-conflict behavior can be. We would like to warn them and the rest of the nation about the dead-end nature of this unrestrained behavior that knows no limits.
We have seen splitting destroy too many families, and we don’t want to see it destroy the American family. We want to avoid a Democrat-Republican high-conflict divorce. In approaching these problems, it’s not about pointing fingers and deciding who is more at fault. It’s about everyone taking responsibility for his or her own behavior, and managing collaborative relationships, even when we disagree.
We are a psychologist and a family law attorney, each who has worked with divorcing families for over 30 years. And, we both are family mediators – we meet with divorcing couples and help them calm down and work together for the sake of their children and their own futures.
We are not politicians or political scientists, but we have learned ways of calming high-conflict families and helping them work together peacefully, for the sake of the children and their parents’ future lives.
At a recent conference on high-conflict divorce, we discussed how much the dynamics of the current elections mirror high-conflict divorce. The closer we looked, the more similar these dynamics appeared. In fact, to both of us, the parallels are striking, and the solutions may be too.
We thought it would be worth a try to analyze this and come up with some suggestions for how to change the destructive direction in which we seem to be headed. This book is our small effort to calm this conflict.
Reports from The Wall Street Journal (Thernstrom, 2003) and from family court judges (Brownstone, 2009) indicate that high-conflict divorce is on the rise. But, some of the most powerful reports come from children who grew up in high-conflict divorce situations and who are now adults. Constance Ahrons (2004) interviewed over one hundred children during the divorce, and 20 years later. The following are typical comments reported:
Travis, fourteen and the middle child of three, lived with his mother weekdays and spent several weekends a month with his father.
It’s the old thing – they were playing the kids against each other. You would hear a story from one and then get another story from the other, and you would never know for sure who is closer to the truth than the other. Now, as an adult I have learned to take everything with a grain of salt, and see where it is planted here and there.
His younger sister also felt caught in the cross fire:
It made me really mad. I would have to try to keep my mouth shut to not upset the other. I had to really watch what I said when I was with either one of them, because - for example, if I would mention my father while I was with my mother, that would really set her off.
Unfortunately this resulted in her distancing herself from both parents. “I don’t remember ever having this feeling like, oh, I can’t wait to see my dad or mom now. I really miss them! Instead, it was always a relief to get away from the other” (p. 80).
Did you notice how the children were turned off to both parents, because of their high-conflict behavior? But of course, politicians wouldn’t act this way, would they?
More recently, it seems that they are acting in very similar ways:
On the first floor of the Capitol, there is a private dining room for senators, the “inner sanctum,” where Republicans and Democrats used to have lunch (at separate tables, but in the same room). In the seventies, old bulls such as James Eastland, Hubert Humphrey, and Jacob Javits held court there; later, Daniel Patrick Moynihan did. “You learned, and also you found out what was going on,” Dodd said, adding, “It’s awfully difficult to say crappy things about someone that you just had lunch with.”
These days, the inner sanctum is nearly always empty. Senators eat lunch in their respective caucus rooms with members of their party, or else “downtown,” which means asking donors for money over steak and potatoes at the Monocle or Charlie Palmer. The tradition of the “caucus lunch” was instituted by Republicans in the fifties, when they lost their majority; Democrats, after losing theirs in 1980, followed suit. Caucus lunches work members on both sides into a state of pep-rally fervor. During one recent Republican lunch, Jim Bunning referred to Harry Reid as an idiot. “At least he had the courtesy to do it behind closed doors,” Alexander joked, adding, “We spend most of our time in team meetings deciding what we’re going to do to each other.”
In 2007, Alexander and Lieberman started a series of bipartisan Tuesday breakfasts. “They kind of dwindled off during the health-care debate,” Alexander said. Udall has tried to revive the Wednesday inner-sanctum lunch. For the first few months, only Democrats attended. Then, one Wednesday in May, Susan Collins, the Maine Republican, showed up, joking nervously about being a turncoat; to protect her reputation, her presence was kept secret.
These efforts at resurrecting dead customs are as self-conscious and, probably, as doomed as the get-togethers of lovers who try to stay friends after a breakup. Ira Shapiro, a Washington lawyer and a former aide to Senator Gaylord Nelson, of Wisconsin, put it this way: “Why would they want to have lunch together when they hate each other?” (Packer, 2010).
Who’s in charge here when children, and Senators, feel that they have to keep secrets to protect themselves from their high-conflict families? And, as the boy above said: “You would never know for sure who is closer to the truth than the other.” Doesn’t this fit many of today’s politicians?
It used to be that politicians said whatever it took to get elected. Then, after the elections were over, they became reasonable and worked together for the good of the nation. Today, we are seeing splitting continue after the election, in our 24/7 news cycle.
As a result of this continued polarization, some of the reasonable politicians – the people who could work together – are no longer trying to stay in office, but are divorcing themselves from their professional partners.
Olympia Snowe, Maine’s retiring US senator, announced Friday that her reelection campaign committee has transferred $1.2 million of its remaining funds to an effort to encourage young women to participate in public service. Snowe, who cited partisan polarization in her decision earlier this year not to seek reelection, said the money will go to the Maine Community Foundation to support the Olympia Snowe Women’s Leadership Institute. Snowe, a Republican, will establish that institute after she completes her third term in the Senate. Of the remaining balance, about $800,000 is being used for outstanding campaign obligations and to establish a multicandidate committee whose goals are to diminish what Snowe sees as polarization in today’s political environment. (AP)
Boston Globe, July 14, 2012 (bold added)
With reasonable people dropping out of politics, will high-conflict politicians be all that remain?
The next two chapters focus on what we have learned about the key dynamics of high-conflict divorce – from those of the Fiery Foes to the negative advocates, to the splitting dynamic, and more. Then, the following four chapters examine how politicians, Super PACs and the news are increasingly appearing just like high-conflict parents – with the same alienating effect it is having on voters as on the children.
The last chapter looks at how we might heal, rather than split, our nation. As a little extra, we included a High-Conflict Politician Scorecard in the Appendix. You can use it to analyze your favorite leaders and decide for yourself.
We hope you take this book seriously – but also enjoy the humor, to make sense of the nonsense of those personalities we discuss who seem intent on splitting our American family.
Sipress, David © David Sipress / The New Yorker Collection www.cartoonbank.com
Used by Permission.
When times were simpler, we had to work together to get most things done. There was a sense of cooperation most of the time with the people close to us. The group was more important than the individual. Our goals were shared and long-term plans tied us together. We knew we were connected and needed to get along to survive and thrive.
As family structures and society have grown more complex, it’s harder to see and appreciate the bigger picture of our common goals. We seem to have gone the other direction, as we oversimplify, dismiss, and label negatively anything that’s complex. Now, the leaders who are responsible for dealing with complex problems are blamed for these problems and for not “making things work better.” In families, couples increasingly turn their frustrations on each other, and in politics, politicians increasingly blame each other for all that is wrong. This trend has continued to the point at which relationships in marriage, family, and country all appear to be in peril. However, it is important to make some distinctions regarding how people respond to these changes. In this chapter, we will look at the situation of divorce, and in the rest of the chapters, we will show how the family in divorce (in its high-conflict state) is mirrored by today’s politicians.
A well-known divorce researcher, Constance Ahrons, has identified five different types of parental relationships that develop after a divorce: Perfect Pals; Cooperative Colleagues; Angry Associates; Fiery Foes and Dissolved Duos (Ahrons, 1994; 2004). They are listed below and described in order from least amount of relationship conflict to most conflict. Dissolved Duos is a category of divorced families in which, after the divorce, one parent leaves the area and detaches completely from the previous family, so we will leave that category out of our discussion.
PERFECT PALS are parents who were best friends during the marriage and remain best friends during and after the divorce. They dissolve their legal marriage and part amicably, using self-help books or simple consultations with an attorney, if even needed. They continue to share their children frequently and supportively, attend their child’s school and extracurricular events together and sit together, and they share holidays and vacations together (even together with their new spouses). Their children are among the most well-supported – financially, emotionally, and socially – of any children of divorce.
COOPERATIVE COLLEAGUES are parents who do not like each other as people but remain committed to supporting and respecting each other as parents to their children. They dissolve their legal marriage using mediators or separate attorneys, and often consult with mental health professionals for assistance in developing a Parenting Plan (i.e. custody and visitation plan). Occasionally, they may use litigation to resolve more difficult financial issues. They share their children with mild to moderate degrees of conflict, attending their children’s school and extracurricular events together, but sit separately. They celebrate separate holidays, birthdays and vacations, and mostly have minimal contact with each other.
ANGRY ASSOCIATES are parents who do not like each other as people and do not respect each other as parents. They dissolve their marriage using separate attorneys, mostly in litigation. They do not share their children without a fight over most every detail. They regularly sabotage each other’s parenting time, bad-mouth each other to the children, argue and litigate over financial support issues repeatedly, and frequently have bitter and tension-filled transfers of the children. When attempting to talk on the phone with each other, they often call each other names and frequently hang-up on one another…all in ear-shot of the children. They maintain separate universes of celebrations with the children, and if they show up at the same school event, there are glares at each other, dismissals of the other’s presence, and guilt-tripping of the children for greeting the “other” parent first after a soccer match.
FIERY FOES have been called the “Inveterate Litigators” and the “Holy Warriors of High-Conflict.” They are parents who despise each other and deny any importance of the other as a parent to the child. In fact, they most often see the “other” parent as a destructive force on the children, and they bad-mouth each other regularly to the children and to anyone else who will listen. They regularly take each other to court for any number of minor issues, spending tens of thousands of dollars on attorney and court fees each year. They regularly have restraining orders on each other, slander each other publicly whenever given the opportunity, and often withhold or even abduct the children from each other. They regularly accuse each other of the most heinous acts, including child molest, physical abuse, domestic violence, stealing money, threats of homicide, parental alienation, sabotaging services for their child, poisoning the well among extended family, friends, teachers, doctors, therapists, lawyers, and, of course, judges.
The children of these “Fiery Foes” frequently develop symptoms of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), similar to children living in a war-zone. They are hypervigilant, anxious, depressed, suicidal, aggressive, substance-abusers, school drop-outs, and, if put in the hands of a diagnostician, will come away with labels such as ADHD, Bi-Polar, Conduct Disorders, Depression, Anxiety Disorder, and more. They will often be put on strong medications, as a result. All of this happens while in the care of professionals who may not even know of the difficult divorce through which these children have been living.
High-conflict divorce requires only one party to start it, but two parties to play it out.
When we talk about high-conflict divorce, it usually refers to the Fiery Foes, but also to the Angry Associates. For some years after the divorce, approximately 60% of couples remain in significant conflict with each other. But, by 10 years after the divorce, 18% have become “Dissolved Duos”, and 22% remain “Angry Associates” or “Fiery Foes” (Ahrons, 2004). For those 22% of divorcing couples, the conflict never ends. Ironically, those same kinds of high-conflict dynamics are rampant in contemporary politics.
After we lay out the fundamental ways that high-conflict divorce works, we will show you how these dynamics play out in Congressional and Presidential elections.
High-conflict divorce requires only one party to start it, but two parties to play it out. And, as we will discuss in the next chapter, this high-conflict “game” is contagious and sucks innocent people around it into the middle of the dynamic.
Divorce researcher Janet Johnston describes an interesting characteristic of high-conflict divorce. She calls it “Tribal Warfare” because of its close similarity to the way that many primitive tribes deal with their conflicts (Johnston & Campbell, 1988). It’s defined as the gathering of friends, family, and professionals into “sides” for the child custody “battle” to launch and sustain.
Once the dispute begins (generated by either one or both parties), the “tribes” join in the fight as supporters of their respective sides and keep the fight going. As long as both participants and their tribes continue to threaten each other in back and forth acts of mud-slinging, the custody fight goes on and on and on.
We used to think of child custody fights in family court as always started and maintained by both parents equally.
Now we know that there are at least three kinds of high-conflict divorces:
1. One High-Conflict Person (HCP)