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"I&amp;#039;m finishing up my prep for the first meeting with the mediator next week, and trying as hard as I can to ignore the knot in my stomach. Peter and I have been going along pretty peacefully for awhile. We&amp;#039;re in agreement on a lot of major issues like custody and division of personal property (he&amp;#039;s gotten everything already that he wanted out of the house), but there are bound to be some things that get asked for that will surprise us both.  In fact, I feel like since this is a mediator, who is paid to find a compromise between us, I&amp;#039;m being put in a position to ask for a lot more than I&amp;#039;ll settle for, just to assure that I get what the kids and I honestly need in the settlement. Which of course leads me to wonder if Peter isn&amp;#039;t going to have to do the same. It&amp;#039;s like we don&amp;#039;t have any choice but to hack each other off in the process. I hate fighting. And I really, really hate fighting with Peter. I haven&amp;#039;t missed the stress and conflict of having him around. And for the next few months, I&amp;#039;m going to be swimming in a sea of it, I think. Did any of you use a mediator? Did you feel like you had to inflate your demands at all to end up with what you got? [Follow Ellie on Twitter and Facebook] "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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