Before You Hit Send: The Communication Habits That Can Hurt Your Credibility During Divorce

Most people aren’t thinking about credibility when they’re standing in the kitchen at 10:47 at night responding to a text from their ex.

They’re thinking, Are you freaking kidding me right now?

Then they type.

And maybe the message feels completely justified in that moment because there is history behind it that nobody else can see. You know what happened before this text arrived. You know what they’ve done repeatedly. You know why that one seemingly innocent sentence made you want to throw your phone across the room.

The problem is your text doesn’t carry any of that context with it. It just carries your words.

During divorce, that matters more than most people realize.

Your Communication Starts Telling a Story About You

We tend to think credibility is something that gets established in a courtroom or mediation room. You sit across from somebody, answer questions, tell your story, and hopefully they understand who you are.

But your communication has already been telling a story. Every text and email is a tiny snapshot of how you behave when things get difficult.

Can you stay focused when somebody provokes you? Do you communicate clearly when you’re pissed off? Can you disagree without turning the conversation into a character assassination?

Nobody handles every interaction perfectly, especially during one of the most stressful periods of their life. One angry text doesn’t define you. Patterns, however, start to matter. And our phones have made it ridiculously easy to create those patterns.

Years ago, you could be furious with somebody and there was often some natural space before you communicated with them. Maybe you had to wait until you got home. Maybe you had to actually see them.

Now the thing that made you furious is sitting in your hand along with the ability to respond instantly. That emotional spike may last fifteen minutes. The message can last forever.

Read It Like You Don’t Know Either Person

This is one of my favorite ways to look at communication during divorce because it immediately changes your perspective. Pretend you know nothing about these two people. You don’t know who cheated. You don’t know who lied. You don’t know who has been impossible for the last decade. You don’t know that this exact argument has happened 47 times. You’re simply reading the messages.

What do you see?

That can be uncomfortable because sometimes we rely heavily on context to justify how we’re communicating.

“You don’t understand what they did before this.”

You’re right. The person reading the screenshot six months from now might not understand either.

That doesn’t mean you become passive or start writing like an attorney. You can still say no. You can disagree. You can correct something important and be incredibly clear when something isn’t acceptable.

You just want the message itself to carry the point instead of burying it underneath your anger.

Don’t Let a Temporary Emotion Create a Permanent Message

If you’re activated, give yourself a buffer. Write what you want to write. Get it out. Then go back and look at what you actually need to send.

There is a difference between what you need to express and what the other person needs to receive.

That distinction has saved a lot of people from sending something they would have regretted later.

AnchorIt™ can also act as that buffer. I created it specifically because I kept seeing how much damage could happen in the tiny space between receiving something upsetting and hitting send. You can put your draft into AnchorIt and it will help identify the emotional charge that may be obscuring what you’re actually trying to communicate, while keeping the substance and intention of your message intact.

Your voice should still sound like your voice.

The goal is simply to make sure it’s you communicating, rather than the most pissed-off version of you who happened to have possession of the phone for thirty seconds.

Because your words may stick around long after that version of you has calmed down.

Jeanine Tripodi is an Emotional Reactivity Consultant, founder of The Composure Codes™, and creator of AnchorIt™. She is also a Collaborative Divorce Communication Coach and Family Law Mediator. She has built her entire body of work around how you communicate during divorce and conflict, because how you show up in those exchanges affects every outcome that follows. She works with individuals who are done reacting and are ready to protect what matters. Start your 3-day AnchorIt™ trial at ww.UseAnchorit.com.