Moving right along, Sun Tzu spends a lot of effort into preparing his student for the fight. Preparing for a battle is equally, if not more important, then battle strategy. Our emotions cannot lead us into battle. Neither can we allow ourselves to venture into any conflict without some kind of intelligence. But the biggest factor that we must first consider, is cost.

Lesson 2: “He who wishes to fight, must first count the cost”

There are several messages here in this lesson. When Sun Tzu mentions “cost”, he is not just referring to the lives of soldiers but he is also referring to time and resources. Soldiers need to be equipped and well fed if they are to embark on any military campaign. These costs, if left unchecked, can run very high. If we do not manage them, then the outcome of any battle is less likely to fall in our favor. If we apply this lesson to a custody battle situation, or any conflict with your SO’s ex, what we deem as cost is rather simple.

The big cost in our fight - is the child.

Or rather, the child’s well-being.

This might sound like I am taking two disparate thoughts and making a connection. However it is necessary to make the connection because in a high conflict situation like a messy divorce, emotions run high and it is easy to forget that it is the child who also has to deal with the consequences too. In no way am I alluding that other costs involved (time, money, stress, etc) are unimportant. I want to focus on what I believe is the “true” cost because if we only focus on the immediate costs to us, we may end up paying more in the long run. I am hoping my examples below will illustrate this point.

I mentioned in my previous blog entry that DW and her ex have a CO. Unfortunately, the CO is not clearly defined. A lot of sections of the CO can be interpreted in many different ways and this is the primary reason why we fight with DW’s ex almost every other month. SS may be lacking in maturity, but he is not a complete idiot. At first, when SS was still a child and wrapped up in his own little fantasy world, SS was completely unaware of the fight his mother and father were engaged in. SS actually thought that we were all one big happy family. He even said, “So when is Draco and my Dad’s new girlfriend gonna get together and have a kid?”.

Yeah, I was shocked at that too, but then I thought “Hey, we did a pretty good job of hiding our fights with his Dad from him!”

Now that SS is a teenager, SS is a little more wise. He knows his mother and his father don’t like each other and he knows they fight constantly. I thought we were successful at keeping SS away from this conflict, but SS, like most children of divorced parents, pick up on it very quickly. Now that SS is aware, I feared that SS will learn to disrespect one or the other parent (i.e. “My Mom doesn’t respect my Dad, so why should I?”).

The other fear I had, has unfortunately come to fruition. SS told us one day that his Dad told him “DW and Draco want to take you away from me!”. DW and I went into damage control mode. “No, we definitely do not want to take you away from your Dad” We said. “In fact we want you to see your father whenever you want!”.

It is interesting to note that Sun Tzu’s first two lessons immediately deal with loss and damage control. I almost get the sense that Sun Tzu is telling us to verify the need to fight.

Sun Tzu: “You want to fight over this?”

Me: “Yes.”

Sun Tzu: “Are you sure?”

Me: “Yes.”

Sun Tzu: “Are you ABSOLUTELY sure?”

Now as I mentioned, there are other costs to fighting. The point is that when we embark on this journey of battling the ex, we are crossing over a bridge of sorts that we may not be able to turn back from.

The cost of fighting can be high, but we must be conscientious of the different factors involved. Children may not understand what is going, or they may get frustrated over the affair. Oftentimes we steps get blamed for this conflict. We cannot predict how a child will react, nor can we predict what PAS poisons the other parent will feed our steps. However, now that we are aware of these possibilities means that we can keep it under control (somewhat). DW and I still send SS to see a child psychologist even though SS seems to have accepted the CO for what it is and has accepted the fact that his mother and father still fight.

Next, Lesson 3: "Know thy enemy, know thyself"