Between emotional work and an agreement
Separation and divorce bring emotional, legal, financial and parenting challenges that are closely connected. In his article, Nadav Nishri describes two broad approaches to helping couples through this crisis.
- Legal mediation focuses on reaching a formal agreement that can be submitted to the relevant court. Its emphasis is efficiency, clearly expressed rights and obligations, and a signed settlement.
- Therapeutic mediation draws on psychology and couples therapy. It explores feelings, communication and the history of the relationship, seeking deeper understanding or emotional recovery.
These descriptions outline different emphases rather than rules that apply to every practitioner. A process focused on legal arrangements may leave the emotional drivers of conflict insufficiently addressed. A process focused on emotional understanding may not produce sufficiently clear and practical arrangements. Nishri presents the New Partnership Method as a way of connecting these needs through sensitive, practical mediation directed towards workable outcomes.
What is the New Partnership Method?
Nadav Nishri developed the method through more than a decade of mediating between couples in crisis. Its starting point is that separation, even when it involves legal proceedings, is a profound change in a whole family system. The method combines three strands:
- Tools informed by therapeutic work: identifying emotions, needs and communication patterns.
- Tools for agreements: precise language and practical, stable understandings.
- A parenting conversation: moving from parenting organised around the couple relationship to parenting organised around an ongoing partnership.
How the approach brings these strands together
In Nishri’s comparison, agreement-centred mediation prioritises reaching a settlement, analyses rights and uses legal language. Emotion-centred work prioritises emotional understanding, explores feelings and uses therapeutic language. New Partnership seeks to connect needs, feelings and concrete agreements in the same conversation.
The intended outcome is an agreement adapted to real life and to the relationships that continue after separation. Parenting arrangements therefore need to support a sustainable working relationship, alongside the emotional and practical transition. The moment of agreement becomes the beginning of a new partnership, as well as the conclusion of a dispute.
“The mediation we practise is not only a legal process with an ending, but a human process with a new beginning—a beginning of different parenting, different communication, and a life from which something good can truly be built.” — Nadav Nishri, translated from Hebrew
Who may find it useful?
- Couples seeking a respectful separation, including when their emotional positions are far apart.
- Divorced parents seeking more effective communication about their children.
- People who feel emotional work needs a more practical dimension, while a solely legal discussion feels too narrow.
- People who see a good agreement as a starting point for future life.
The method places people and the relationships they must manage alongside the agreement itself. Nishri’s central proposition is that mediation can help build a new partnership suited to a new stage of life.