Designing Heart‐Based Systems to Encourage Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Divorcing Families

• Date: 01 July 2015
• Published date: 01 July 2015
• Author: Kenneth Cloke
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12163

DESIGNING HEART-BASED SYSTEMS TO ENCOURAGE

FORGIVENESS AND RECONCILIATION IN DIVORCING FAMILIES

Kenneth Cloke

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Conflicts in intimate relationships are often accidental, occasional, and unique; yet they are alsosystemic, repetitive, and alike.

For this reason, they are amenableto systemic analysis and resolution by alteringthem at their chronic sources and applying the

preventative methodology of conflictresolution systems design. The central difficulties with using traditional forms of conflict

resolution systems design in marriages,couples, and families are that they do not effectively address the emotional meaning or

significance of the conflict within the relationship; are not grounded in the heart; and do not address the intimate, relational

aspects of intimate, affective conflicts. Marriages and families are deeplysensitive, highly complex emotional relationships that

require systems design methodologies that are profoundly informed by the heart. This article proposes a heart-based systems

design approach that includes forgiveness and reconciliation for use in marriages and families, including those that end in

divorce.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

Conflicts in intimate relationships are accidental, occasional, and unique; yet they are also systemic, repetitive, and

alike.

Marriages and families are deeply sensitive, highly complex emotional relationships that require systems design

methodologies that are profoundly informed by the heart.

It is possible to create a heart-based systems design approach to marital, family and divorce conflicts that includes

forgiveness and reconciliation.

Keywords: Conflict Resolution Systems Design; Couples; Divorce; Families; Forgiveness; Mediation; Reconciliation;

Transcendence; Transformation.

“Family life! The United Nations is child’s play compared to the tugs and splits and need to understand

and forgive in any family.

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” (May Sarton)

INTRODUCTION

Mediators and other family professionals have enjoyed enormous success in settling and resolving

even the most difficult marital, couple, and family conflicts. But we have yet to develop the methods,

processes, and approaches that will allow us to respond preventatively and proactively—not merely

to individual disputes—but to the chronic and systemic sources of conflict within the intimate rela-

tionships in marriages, couples or families; or to imagine what could be done creatively to avert

them altogether or to bring them to genuine closure through forgiveness and reconciliation.

Nor have we fully appreciated the positive role that repeated, chronic conflicts play in these rela-

tionships or acknowledged their ability to pinpoint precisely the places where they are cracked and

most need mending. Indeed, every chronic conflict represents a developmental crisis that can lead

either to disruption and a severing of relationship or to profound learning and transcendence; deeper

levels of intimacy; improved communication; and closer, more heartfelt relationships.

Conflicts in intimate relationships are often accidental, occasional, and unique; yet they are also

systemic, repetitive, and alike, both in form and content, to conflicts that have occurred countless

times in the past and will occur over and over again in the future until they are resolved. Why?

Because they are initiated, organized, and brought to fruition by deeper, far more important,

Correspondence: kcloke@aol.com

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 53 No. 3, July 2015 418–426

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C2015 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts