I would like to assist here in dissecting the email/text responses with the goal of understanding how you can influence interactions with H that can result in a more positive flow of communication. I am not saying you're wrong at all. My goal is to get you to see how it looks to an outsider like me who isn't invested in your sitch.
M: Thanks for forwarding the info from your lawyer. I want to make sure we are on the same page with this. What I had in mind was not someone who will tell us what to do with our kids [this sounded critical and adversarial...what an opening!for me, it'd put me on the defensive big time, but who will help us to cut through the BS so that we can have rational, respectful discussions about these things the explict implication is that H is incapable of having a rational, respectful discussions and you think he BSes...wow...how is this helpful in inviting cooperation from H? . I think that would help make this whole process a lot less contentious and less expensive to boot why would you want to choose these explosive words...looks like you had your dukes up FIRST! Why try for a more conciliatory tone/approach. Let me know your thoughts.
H: My request to my lawyer was for a counselor "to try to improve our co-parenting relationship." [NAME] was her recommendation. You've made it clear that all legal issues are to be run through your lawyers so that's how we'll handle that. My goal here is to try to best manage the co-parenting relationship in light of the animosity created by that process.
What's so awful about H's response here? I can see how he is trying his darned best, according to his own expectation, to improve your co-parenting relationship.
Now...with the practice dissection over, what I'd like for you to do is re-work your first response with 20/20 hindsight. How would you have made the below text more conciliatory? What ways do you see that it can be improved on?
Original text:
M: Thanks for forwarding the info from your lawyer. I want to make sure we are on the same page with this. What I had in mind was not someone who will tell us what to do with our kids, but who will help us to cut through the BS so that we can have rational, respectful discussions about these things. I think that would help make this whole process a lot less contentious and less expensive to boot. Let me know your thoughts.
