The first time you sit on the mediation table is for most people a very strange experience. You realize that the decision to split from your partner is now taking very tangible form. You are participating in a decision making process which will have wide reaching consequences in your life. On the opposite side of the table is a person with whom you have shared thousands of days and nights. For some people it is a confirmation of the irrevocable gap that now separates them, for others the mediation sessions represent the first real communication in years.

What is very clear for you as party is that the mediator directs the process towards the ending of the relationship as partner but a continuation as parent, if there are children. Many are aware of the sense of loss that this represents, an important phase in your life is coming to a close. What gives most people a real feeling of satisfaction though is the awareness that just as you begun the relationship together you are ending it together. You write the final chapter in your book, you do not have it written for you. You will be pleased to know that the vast majority of mediations end with the partners closing this book themselves.