People under heavy stress tend to negotiate with greater rigidity and belligerence. Husbands who are going through disruptive changes in residence, daily routine, and even work style, may have diminished feelings of job competence. Separation distress can arise from less involvement in their children's lives. For the divorcing mother, economic disasters can loom on the horizon because of discrimination in the workplace or perhaps her own lack of prior paid work experience. It can be emotionally debilitating to play dual roles of mother and father, and to be locked into a child's world with relative social isolation. This psychological vulnerability is going to generate feelings to being taken advantage of and having lost social status.

Statistics show that ill health and disabillity rates are almost always higher for separated and divorced individuals than for any other marital status. (One study shows that divorcing persons are at a particularly high risk for automobile accidents in the period from six months before to six months after their divorce). Unfortunately, the psychological impairments are greatest in the earliest states of dissoluton, when the settlement negotiations are most likely to be occurring, and this affects their intellectual and emotional resourcefulness as negotiators.

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