Joining me today are two distinguished guests. First, we have Luisa Kos, a couples therapist operating out of southeast London. She harbours a profound passion for the evolution of contemporary relationships. Alongside Luisa is Suzanne Todd, a widely recognized family lawyer associated with Withers Law Firm since 1999. Not only does Suzanne lead the premier family law and trust and estate and inheritance teams at Withers, but she has also garnered attention, being tagged as a 'conscious uncoupler' in the prestigious Tatler Address Book.

In the heart of today's discourse is the concept of conscious uncoupling and its growing relevance in today's relationship landscape. We'll delve into what it means for married couples to separate in a considerate, compassionate and dignified manner. The discussion promises a unique insight into the confluence of therapeutic practices and legal procedures.

We look forward to gleaning insights from Suzanne, especially concerning the dynamic and ever-changing terrain of family law. She will share her first-hand experiences and learnings from cases she has helmed. It promises to be an enlightening exploration into the distinct challenges and gratifications of tackling divorce with a conscious approach.

We draw parallels between the realms of therapy and law, especially in navigating couples through the intricacies of separations and divorces. The shared interests of Andrea and Luisa in the modern relationship dynamics intersect with Suzanne's legal lens.

As we wrap up, it's essential to recognize the ever-evolving nature of relationships and the paramount importance of adapting to these shifts. We hope to inspire our listeners to approach matters of love and separation with heightened consciousness, unbridled respect, and deep-seated empathy.

For more information on Suzanne:

https://www.withersworldwide.com/en-gb/people/suzanne-todd

For more information on Luisa:

https://www.dulwichpsychotherapy.co.uk/

To connect with Andrea

Chat with Andrea about how Coaching can help you

If you love what you hear, please leave us a rating and review on iTunes/Apple Podcasts.

Ep. 12 Conscious Uncoupling: Navigating Love and Separation

[00:00:00] Andrea: Welcome to Lush Love the podcast. I'm Andrea Baloni, and as a sex, love and relationships coach, it is my mission to help intelligent, heart-centered, soulful women, find love, keep it, and thrive in it. I'll have special guests along the way as we go on a full spectrum exploration of intimacy. One of the most challenging and beautifully blissful aspects of being human.

Welcome in and enjoy the journey.

[00:00:42] Andrea: and welcome to Lush Love, the podcast. I'm Andrea Baloni, a sex, love, and relationships coach for individuals and couples ready to experience real love, healthy, intimate relationships. And pleasure and passion that lasts over time. I'm here today with couples therapist Louisa Ko and family lawyer, Suzanne Todd Louisa works with individuals and couples two.

She runs a therapy practice in Southeast London, and she, like me, is very interested in the evolution of modern relationships, and so I've asked her to join me today in conversation with family lawyer Suzanne Todd, about conscious uncoupling what that might mean for married couples looking to divorce.

Well consciously. Welcome in, Suzanne.

[00:01:29] Suzanna: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Suzanne's got

[00:01:32] Andrea: her finger on the pulse when it comes to the continually evolving space of family law. She's been a solicitor at Withers Law Firm in the city of London since 1999, where she heads the Withers premier family law and trust, and state and inheritance teams.

And while she is universally recognized in the marketplace as an expert in conflict resolution with more accolades than we've timed to recount, she's also been named in the Tatler address book as a conscious uncoupling. So our assumption is that today we might have a different kind of conversation than one might usually have when discussing standard divorce law with a highly experienced lawyer.

Is that right, Suzanne?

[00:02:15] Suzanna: So thank you. First of all, thank you both very much for asking me to join this conversation. I'm very excited about it. I, I think what I love about being a family lawyer is I have lots of different hats. So one of that is I'm trained as a mediator and as a collaborative lawyer, I can litigate, I can negotiate.

But what has been amazing over the last five years is the movement towards hopefully people wanting to do things in a more.

At the center of everything, and remember that quite often it's the people who are not in the room who are the most important people. So you, the phrase was, was coined by Gwyneth and Chris many, many, many years ago. Um, and there is a, is a way to.

I sort of talk about people going through sniper Row with permits coming in at different sides when people are in that high conflict situation. But in a, in a more gen, it's not, it's not an easy process to consciously uncouple. It's very hard. There are still very hard conversations and things that have to be tackled, but hopefully they can be coupled and then addressed in a.

The moving forwards and everybody moving forwards in mind rather than looking back.

[00:03:40] Luisa: Right. So it's, so, it's a much more conscious approach and trying to do things in a, in a, in a

[00:03:45] Suzanna: calmer way perhaps. Yeah. Sometimes they're shouting and sometimes there's tears, but that's part of life's rollercoaster and emotions.

But I think it's that, what I find in those sort of situations is we are thinking about every single word that we use. And how those words land because if you have three individuals in the room with you together, rather than what we would sort of traditionally have people on opposing sides as it were, you have to think very, very carefully about how you phrase something when you say it and, and how that's what you know, how the people in the room this year gonna respond.

[00:04:22] Luisa: So that in itself is very different. Right. So you work with both the parties at the same time. Is that

[00:04:27] Suzanna: So in that, so my partners, CLA Moore and Diana Parker were the child. Were behind the Withers on couple model and the individuals who go through the process, it's the husband and wife, or maybe it's.

Which I think also is a conscious, you know, a c coupling a way as well, because mediating is trying to look at things in a camera way. So if you're me, if I'm a mediator, I have the, the husband and wife with me. It's just me in the room with them. If I'm doing a collaborative law process, which is the two lawyers and the two clients together in the room, then again, it's.

Me in one room with my clients and then somebody else in one room with their clients. Right. So

[00:05:19] Andrea: does a couple generally decide before beginning any of the discussions with you and your team, um, if they're going to go through the process as a, in the conscious way, or if they're going to go through it in the the other way, and can it change in the middle of the process and has it, what

[00:05:37] Suzanna: So I think the vast majority of people I see in the first meeting want things to be done amicably and sensibly and in the least stress free and the, the least, you know, least expensive way possible. So I think a lot of people start with that idea. Very quickly. Unfortunately, because things happen, that path is not necessarily one that they're going down.

There's a big push at the minute in the family law market for the sort of one couple, uh, one lawyer approach. So there are lots of new things coming onto the market. Um, resolution, which is the Family Lawyers Association, have just started their resolution.

A model. And with that as well, the lawyer works with the, the husband and wife, you know, together to get them through the process. So does

[00:06:33] Andrea: it need to be officially declared before the process begins?

[00:06:37] Suzanna: Yeah, so people will quite often come to us because they've Googled and they've seen the process or they've heard about the process from someone else.

And I think what is important at the start of the process, individuals to think about do they want something? So they want to have control over the outcome. So an an outta court situation, whether that's conscious uncoupling, whether it's mediation, collaborative law, or the other side of the fence is effectively somebody making a decision about you and your, so that's the court process, arbitration and all of those sort of things.

It's perfectly.

So you can be mediating at the same time as you're in a court process. So you, if you think about it as sort of two different trends. But I think for those who want to do collaborative law, the lawyers have to promise to step outta the arena if an agreement cannot be reached. So I can't go to court with you as.

Not to be competitive and, and, you know, be in front of the court. And that's quite a strong negotiating flow if you get very close to an agreement and then someone goes, no, I don't want to do that. It, you know, it can make people sort of take a deep breath and go, do I really want, do need lawyers? Do I wanna tell my story again?

Do I have to, you know, family, clients tell us so many things. And, and the same with both of you with your therapy and coaching hats on. Tell us so many things that they haven't told their parents, their best friends, their sisters, their you. So it's a very, it's a very personal relationship that's established.

And it must be difficult,

[00:08:19] Luisa: I guess as, as, uh, once you, you get to that point of resolution, right? And, and then one, one of, of, sometimes both parties decide this is not what we want anymore. That must be really tough to let all that good work go.

[00:08:32] Suzanna: Indeed, indeed. Thankfully, I. Fallen so far. She says, touching wood.

And can

[00:08:42] Andrea: you see, when you first meet a couple, what path might be best for them? Do you get kind of like a sense for it

[00:08:48] Suzanna: or ab Absolutely. And I think, you know, the more and more I do this job, the, the, the better sense. I, I always wish I had done a psychology course at the beginning.

So much of what we do, we've got the law, we have to apply the law to, to unpack the pieces of the jig, the piece of the jigsaw puzzle. So much of what we do is working out what people's personalities are, how they will respond, where the children fit into the psychology, the emotions, you, all of those sort of things.

Because the reality is the emotions in the.

What might happen as they both go through this journey together. So you, if you think about the fight or flight mode, you know, some people will be like sheer panic and fear and they dunno what is gonna happen. You know, the uncertainty of the future. Other people are already 95. They've gone through all of that process, and so, so our job is to, to get them both to sort of the same place on the meter track so we can get them to reach a resolution.

And so we're not always right to be fair, but you know, we, part of our job is to guide, guide people into what we hope is, is the right process. It's quite a

[00:10:14] Andrea: task. Mm-hmm. It's quite a task. And I know Lou had a question and I I think we discussed it to, uh, Suzanne another time, which was you also work alongside therapists at times.

[00:10:27] Suzanna: Absolutely. I, I am a great believer in when people are going through these journeys. I'm a great believer in people having theirs,

friends.

Be part those support, but therapists and counselors are really important as part of that, those pillars of support that people themselves with. And I think one of the challenges with the modern world is there is so much noise out there. You know, if you start to Google like inundated and, and every single family unit is different.

Every single situation is different. And this might have happened to this person and this might have happened to this person, but, but you have to bring it back to your family, where they live, how they've lived. Do they have one child, three children? You have they been together for one year, 55 years? You know, I've got a 79 year old client, you.

It's, it's very different for everyone and I, I, I firmly believe in bringing in the experts. I'm not trained as a therapist and counselor. Moreover, I'm a very expensive therapist and counselor with no training, so I much prefer for the right people to be do it using their right skillset to support, you know, the client through the process.

[00:11:50] Luisa: Have you ever, or do you, do you ever get to a point sometimes when you realize actually this couple would benefit from a bit of therapy before continuing the process of

[00:11:59] Suzanna: separation? I, I, I, the first one is the first. It's a really good point. One of the first questions I always ask is, do you think this relationship can be rescued?

You know, and if so, You know, here are potential counselors, therapists, sometimes it's family therapy that's needed because it's, you know, children as well as, as well as the adults. Um, you know, sometimes, and you'll know this much better than me, it goes right back to people's childhood and what has happened them even before they've met their husband or wife or partner or whatever it happens to be.

And I think interesting. It

[00:12:34] Luisa: just made me think that sometimes the other way around as well is true that I get couples a comfort therapy. That I realize actually I think this is over. Yes,

[00:12:42] Suzanna: yes, yes. And what is, what is really interesting, isn't it? Because people quite understandably, can be very cautious about pulling that, sticking plaster off and, and, you know, feeling the pain and moving forwards.

But you would be able to empower them and give them the skills. Be alongside them as they make that decision and, and work it out. Because quite often if those decisions are made while they're still able to talk, and yes, there will be pain and animosity and conflict. If, if that safe space have already been created for them, then hopefully they could take those things.

[00:13:29] Andrea: It sounds like the landscape's really shifting and that there are a lot of different options now for couples, whether it's the collaborative law process or it's conscious uncoupling, or it's the traditional route. I'm wondering how can a couple decide what, what are the nuances of difference between collaborative law, conscious uncoupling?

Um, I'm not sure if there was

[00:13:51] Suzanna: mediation. I think it's, I think a lot of it has to deal, has to deal with the feeling of, so if you have someone who feels a bit afraid, then the collaborative works really well because you've got your lawyer, you, the mediation process sometimes doesn't work because one person feels that that other person, you know, it's somebody who's used to being in business all.

And someone who's been at home bringing up the kids and all that sort of stuff, there can be that not correct perception in with someone that that is, that is not the right process. So I think it's, and that goes back to your earlier point of, you know, in those initial discussions, how do you work out what is the best way?

And I think you're absolutely right in terms of the landscape changing, because you know, if we roll back more than 20 years to when I started, that was basically court or voluntary. And that, you know, that was it. And all of these other options, which I appreciate for clients must be overwhelming. So in some ways it's if there's, or option two, and I think the other big thing that has changed in the landscape in the family law world in the last year is no fault divorce, which was brought in last year.

And that has had at the beginning of the process, certainly with the work that we do, We have seen people instead of starting at number 10 on the richer scale because we had to blame this person and allege this and do this, and 99% of the time it had absolutely no bearing whatsoever on why a relationship had broken down and now it's very calm.

You literally say the marriage is broken re So we've got rid of a lot of that at the beginning of the process and what to happen. Spill over the for the children or how we were gonna look at how the money was gonna be divided and all of those sort of things. So for the past 12 months and people can't defend divorce proceeds anymore, they're sort two very specific ways in which they can.

And people used to play games and say, I'm not going to allow you to divorce me, and all these sort of things. So those are now, people might have views about civil rights and all sort of, But that, I think that change has, has been very positive in the family.

[00:16:19] Luisa: And I think since you said playing games, even in deciding who needs to leave the home first.

And if I leave first, does that mean I'm, I'm to blame

[00:16:26] Suzanna: and correct. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:30] Andrea: I remember you speaking about the no fault divorce change and being, yes. This is, uh, so long overdue. Things are long black and white. We

[00:16:37] Suzanna: do not live in a black

[00:16:38] Andrea: and white world by any far stretch of the imagination, so no. Exactly.

Such great progress and really good to to hear shifting

[00:16:46] Suzanna: landscape. And it will keep moving. It'll keep moving. Yeah. As it should. I believe if it's, I agree,

[00:16:54] Andrea: it doesn't mean that it's simpler. Put a stick in the sand, but we are living in a complex world ever.

[00:17:01] Suzanna: More so every day. Well, and and, and I think because there are so many international connections as well, if you think of, you know, the SGA national that we have living in London, people's cultural approaches from home to all of this stuff has to be worked into everything as well.

So it makes a, it makes a big difference. And of course, the joy for family lawyers of social media. Yeah, we didn't have WhatsApp or email or Facebook or any of those things. And, um, you, we always say to clients, please, please remember, anything that you write could end up in front of a third party. Once you press end, you have lost control.

Absolutely. Lost control.

[00:17:47] Luisa: And it, yeah, and it's irretrievable.

[00:17:53] Andrea: So, okay, we are coming close to time. Mm-hmm. So I wanted to ask final parting words. I know you had some words of advice or good

[00:18:02] Suzanna: counsel. I would say good counsel. So I think for me, knowledge is part. So if you find yourself in a situation where you're not quite sure what the way forwards with your relationship, go and get some advice.

You may do nothing with that advice for 20 years. I think, I think being forewarned is forearmed as they say, and that sounds quite competitive where we're having a discussion here about nice way, um, pick a relationship. But I think, and, and again because national angle, you know, quite often England does not necessarily be only place in which, um, a relationship can be dissolved.

So I think just get it, getting yourself, um, fully up to speed with what is possible. And then that helps an individual in terms of that thought process, um, as to how they might want to move forward.

[00:18:57] Luisa: Yeah. And sometimes I imagine, yeah, this advice will help, uh, unblock something about the relationship as well, right?

So even

[00:19:04] Suzanna: indeed. Indeed. Where

[00:19:06] Andrea: and how can people find out more about you, about Withers? I know you have a wonderful podcast that is, this one's wonderful, but you've

[00:19:14] Suzanna: been on another wonderful podcast. So we have a we, we put together a podcast series with Mariella TRO about three years ago on love, life, and Law.

Um, so you can find that on our Modern Relationships website page. And if you Google me, there's also another Suzanne Todd, who's a film producer in California. That's not me, but I'll come up somewhere, somewhere at the top. And I promise I'm not the person who's the, who's the Hollywood film director.

[00:19:43] Andrea: Fantastic. And we'll put all the ways to connect with you in the show notes as well, so people can

[00:19:47] Suzanna: get. Brilliant. Thank you both very much. Thank you.

That was such an interesting

[00:19:54] Andrea: conversation with Suzanne, and thank you so much for joining me, Lou.

[00:19:59] Luisa: It was fun. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for inviting me and Suzanne is really, it was fun. Yeah,

[00:20:04] Andrea: absolutely. And really I think what we were saying was really showed how the landscape is continually evolving and so for couples, there are quite a lot of options.

If you do want to. Consider separation and divorce more gently and maybe more collaboratively. It's really exciting that it's

[00:20:20] Suzanna: changing like this.

[00:20:22] Luisa: It makes me hopeful. I think relationship, when I have couples in the room with relationships, uh, reaching an end point, I feel really sometimes hopeless. But I think Suzanne gave me hope that it, it doesn't need to

[00:20:32] Suzanna: be.

No,

[00:20:34] Andrea: absolutely not. If there are couples who want support, then Lou and I are here. You can find Lou at, at uh,

[00:20:42] Luisa: south London therapy group.com,

[00:20:44] Andrea: and I am@lushcoaching.com as always, so be sure to be in touch. Stay tuned for the next episode, and we look

[00:20:54] Suzanna: forward to welcoming you back.