JAFARECRecently, I’ve had a few things to work on related to the Report of Divorce. It’s really heartbreaking to see families dismantled after hurting each other senselessly in court. In order to prevent such a situation from happening, I am trying to arrange things in my own way, hoping that the outcome will be such that everyone in the family will be happy, whether they divorce or not….
My basic stance is to prevent conflicts, build mutual understanding and trust, and to promote self-insight into the causes of family problems. In addition, I would like each person to explore a new concept of family.
In the judiciary, this kind of work is not possible. There is no restorative outcome and no real justice, because each side raises the other’s faults and wrongs, and the judiciary’s job is to judge which side is worse and punish the one who is the worse. There is only the arrogance of power, the ignorance of the people, and the profiteers on the outskirts who make a living out of it.
So, in order to help clear up mutual misunderstandings as much as possible and to encourage mutual understanding, I am going to hold a divorce meeting. This is done in the form of couples counseling, and I recommend that the children participate as well.
Some may say that such a situation would be a pity for the children, but I think it would be more pity for the children to be forced to live a life that they don’t understand suddenly, with adults making decisions about their lives without their knowing. Therefore, the children’s own decisions should be respected as to what they understand about their parents’ problems, how they want their parents to be, and what they want to do even if their parents have no choice but to divorce.
In a previous divorce meeting, the second grade child told his parents that he didn’t want to live apart from his mother and father, but if he had to, he would live with his mother, but during long vacations like summer vacation, he would live with his father, then he could accept the divorce. The parents kept their promise to their children and were able to divorce without any major conflict.
In another case, I recently had a post-divorce meeting to discuss how to raise the children, with the separated parent taking care of the burden of the parent living with the children, and the parents gradually moving closer to co-parenting. Since each of them has been connected to JAFAREC’s support from the very beginning of their family problems, their problems have not become too complicated. They have been having couples counseling sessions as needed, and each of them has been gradually gaining confidence and making efforts to rebuild their family relationship.
With this kind of restorative support, it is possible to prevent hurtful family problems as much as possible and rebuild family relationships according to each individual’s personality, but since there is no such support in the world, people tend to argue about their partner’s problems based on their own values, which increases distrust, and furthermore, with the flow of family-destructive support, the family is broken down and burned to the ground.
Unfortunately, there are many such divorces going on every day. In the end, the children are hurt, and the hurt children, still distrustful, marry for the illusion of family, and so the ridiculous and painful divorce drama is repeated again.
In order to prevent such a situation from happening, I would like people involved in family support and domestic violence support to know about restorative support, divorce meetings, post-divorce meetings, and so on. In the meantime, I will be giving a men’s counseling lecture at Hitomachi Koryukan Kyoto this Sunday.
I won’t be talking about that directly, but I think I can give you some hints about restorative support. If you’re interested, I’m looking forward to seeing you there. It’s 4,000 yen for the whole day, from morning till night.
Originally posted on March 4, 2021
English text translated with DeepL (Japanese to English) and checked by Mina.
