The Marine Corps publishes a manual called “Warfighting,” which includes several concise essays on core aspects of Marine outlook and strategy. One of the critical concepts, introduced in the first pages of the text, is the idea of “friction.”
In Corps parlance, “friction” means the force that “resists all action” and “makes the simple difficult and the difficult seemingly impossible.” Warfighting goes on to discuss friction at length, making sure that the Marine understands that friction is a natural part of any effort. Substantial time is spent making sure that the Marine does the mental and emotional work to know that friction is an inevitable and unavoidable companion. Warfighting insists that the effective Marine must be able to deal with friction.
I think about this concept a lot as a family law lawyer. Day in and day out, I encounter examples of friction in my practice. Things as simple as who picks a child up from soccer or who pays for dance lessons turn into huge, emotionally charged battlefields. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to de-escalate clients from a furious or frustrated state as these disputes brought them to the point of eruption. I am talking about people who are red-faced and in tears or screaming.
As a younger lawyer, I used to become really frustrated with friction in family law cases. I would look at these disputes and think, “Why are they making this so complicated? This is easy!”
It took me a few years of hard work and study to figure out the deeper truth behind these battles.
It’s not about the soccer game. Or the dance lessons. Those are all symptoms of very deep underlying problems that have majorly shaped the parties’ lives for years.
A wife isn’t furious because she has to take their son to soccer. She has likely been doing that for most of the child’s life. The fury comes from the fact that it is now being court-ordered in addition to the other staggering responsibilities she has to carry (80% of the parenting, 100% of the educational choices, 95% of the extra-curricular activity support). What she is reacting to is years of frustration at an unfair division of parenting labor. That fundamental injustice was one of the things that pushed the couple’s marriage to the breaking point, and now these burdens have been made hers by court order. And her almost-ex-husband is asking her to do more - an extension of a pattern she has resented for more than a decade.
A father isn’t angry about paying for dance lessons. He is angry because he is barely making enough money to keep the lights on after paying child support and maintenance. After years of financial security, he is both working harder than ever and barely financially surviving between reduced income and legal fees. He is accused of being dismissive of his daughter’s needs, but he views his efforts as financial survival. He feels bone-deep frustration as to why the other party cannot understand priorities. At times, he feels more like an exhausted ATM than a parent. Do they see what he is struggling with? Dance lessons are for people who are not fighting for financial survival. He is trying to be fiscally responsible and being told he doesn’t love his daughter as a result. In his mind, he can't win.
So what is a family law attorney to do with this? Do we joyfully just go to war over all these small things?
Of course not.
Part of our job is to see things from 10,000 feet. Since we did not experience the parent’s injustices ourselves, we can look at the problem more like a judge might. She might view it as a simple problem and one that is easily solved. Given the horrific things she has to deal with in other cases, like drug abuse and domestic violence, using her limited time on a soccer game dispute seems like her finite time used to protect the community is being squandered. We have to warn the client of those things, so they understand that the oceans of emotion they feel will not be shared by everyone else in the process.
Often, the discussion is to have a client focus on important end goals. As odious as being the soccer taxi or putting dance lessons on a credit card might be, they pale in comparison to the bigger issues: Am I getting the custody plan I want? Am I showing my child that I’m there for them, even when it is hard?
A deep truth of this process is that you will have to endure some injustices in order to get to a resolution. The discipline is knowing which injustices to endure and which ones not to.
Sometimes the fight is necessary, even if it seems trivial. I have clients who, at that particular moment, desperately needed to push back against unhealthy systems, even if it had little impact on the case, because it represented a new attitude and direction for the client. For example, for long-time domestic violence survivors, saying “no” to the other party, even if it is over something small like a soccer practice, can be an enormous leap forward because they have to start with it on small things to work up to bigger things.
The discipline for me, when these fights over seemingly trivial things pop up, is to put aside frustration and get curious. I have to understand why something is a big deal, and sometimes help clients do the work so they can figure it out themselves. I encourage clients to do the same. You would be amazed at what people learn about themselves when they really start digging into these "molehills."
You will inevitably encounter friction in your own divorce process. It isn't an anomaly - it is the natural state of things. Make friends with it, try to understand it, and talk to people about it and it can be something that can help you thrive. Developing the ability to learn when to fight is one of those skills that will serve you for the rest of your co-parenting journey.
Comments