Revenge is a dish best served cold (strategic and rational), so the saying goes, but according to science, revenge isn’t a rational choice when it comes to long-term benefit. This is because revenge has an emotional cost. Even if you manage to settle your emotions enough to strategize how to get back at your ex. And even if your ex “deserves” retribution, revenge has a cost, according to studies. If you decide to take revenge, you are left with the feeling of being “stuck” in the situation. If you let an issue go, researchers suggest, you’re less likely to engage with it, leaving you free to move on.
Self Interest is Natural – Using Game Theory in Mediation
Though revenge may be wrong for you, it’s important to work with the desire for revenge, as it arises from natural self-interest. Game theory assumes an interplay between self-interest and common interest. In mediation, you and your divorcing partner can find a way to safely detonate these desires with a neutral mediator helping you to do so. Game theory can be reassuring to couples who are in conflict, as it tackles these processes with objective mathematical approaches that reduce self-interest to a less volatile quantity. At Boileau Conflict Solutions we use game theory with psychoanalysis to uncover people’s self-interested motivations and to honestly and transparently work with them. According to researchers, revenge is either motivated by a wound to people’s sense of individual freedom, or harm done to a group or community. Divorcing couples can be harmed in both ways. They can feel restricted or violated by their divorcing partner, and they can also feel wronged or ashamed about the harm done to their “community” of two in divorce. California law assumes that people share resources equally in marriage. In our mediation practice, both self-interest and collective interest is addressed, rather than buried. We can help you to understand the roles you played in harming each other’s sense of individual and collective worth, and how you can go about restoring a sense of fairness and mutual benefit. When you choose to work together rather than take revenge on each other, you can find the positive in a break-up. Rather than feeling empty-handed and the victim of your ex you can maximize your community property and prepare for ideal future after divorce.
Game Theory Can Make Distribution of Resources Fairer
As well as being a good way of working out your roles in emotional conflict, game theory easily maps over to practical considerations of how to fairly quantify money and time in divorce property division and child custody determinations. In actual fact, practical and emotional considerations don’t have to be separate at all. In a simple example, one partner may earn the money while the other sacrifices their time and career to look after the kids. Sometimes it’s more acrimonious, like when one partner spends a lot of time and/or money on an affair. However if you can enter into a process that resolves your self-interest and your partner’s self-interest, you can avoid giving your time, energy and money during legal battles.
How We Can Help
We are caring, well-educated mediators who are skilled in applied financial mathematics, the law psychoanalysis, and game theory. We strive to efficiently comprehend your situation and its opportunities for sustainable and agreeable resolution. This may include a review of your parenting plan, spousal support calculations, community property equalization, settlement agreement, and all other aspects of your case. We can either confidentially present you with a private analysis, or mediate the conflict with both of you until resolved. Any resolution you come to will be informed by a deeper analysis of the conflict that can be psychoanalytic and/or more financially-focused. Conflict analysis can result in a more optimized understanding of the net community property, which adds value to the overall estate, benefiting you both. The sooner you can resolve your conflict, the sooner you can begin to craft a sustainable future for you and your children. We can also intervene to break litigation deadlocks. You can visit us at our offices in Boulder, CO, Cambpell, CA, Irvine, CA and Beverly Hills, CA. We can also be reached by Telephone, Zoom or Facetime. We are available 7 days a week and at urgent notice. Please contact us to see how we can help.
See Also: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/5-reasons-divorce-not-revenge-chwm/