***

We don’t really decide ahead of time. It’s been strange and lucky – somehow, we’ve never both wanted to take the children at the same time. Christmas has been hard for me. He has his entire family come into town every year. They all stay at his place, like 18 relatives and cousins! My family is very segmented and nobody ever comes here, so it’s very quiet for me.

I think now the kids are older and they enjoy their cousins more, they realize I could go away and then we could have Thanksgiving together. I’m still available if they want to come over and get away from the house full of people but there’s not a lot of tugging or pulling. It’s all fallen into place.

I’ve changed the way I perceive holidays. They’re more of a retreat for me these days – a meditative time because it is very silent for me. I was serving wine in the Catholic church up until about seven years ago and I was steeped in Christianity. Now I’m not at all. Zero. I love my roots and I love what Jesus represents but I’ve made a complete break and changed so radically. His family, they’re all going to church so I think it’s more important for my children to celebrate Christmas with their father on Christmas Day.

***

I have what I think is a more typical parenting plan – it does spell out which holidays are spent with which parent and what happens during summer vacation and so on. I’ve liked having that spelled out because I think it has saved some disagreements. It’s a fall back, a safety net. I don’t think having an open parenting plan would have worked for me, at least not at first.

Now, after three years, I think we’re getting to where we can be more flexible. We did a little bit of weekend swapping so I could go to the Blissdom conference, for example. Our plan calls for the children to be with one parent for Christmas Eve and with the other for Christmas Day and then the rest of their school vacation is split 50/50. That arrangement makes it challenging to go away and I’m hoping we could be flexible on that in the future.

A friend of mine has a parenting agreement that calls for her children to spend her birthday with her. Birthdays aren’t covered in my agreement. For the children’s birthdays, my ex and I start with asking our children what they’d like to do (remember my kids are now 16 and 14) and then we take it from there, making sure that both he and I get to have a birthday celebration with the child. It doesn’t matter to me if my children aren’t with me for my birthday but it does matter that we celebrate it together at some point. My ex grew up in a house were birthdays were just like any other day so it’s not a big deal for him. Me? I like to make birthdays special.

I think that flexibility my ex and I now have has come as we’ve adjusted to our new roles. We’ve learned to trust that we’re supporting each other in our parenting roles and we recognize that we each have a valuable role to play in our children’s lives. It’s like Holly said, Parenting after divorce gets easier with time. Well .. maybe what I meant by that headline is that partnering with your ex on parenting issues gets easier with time – the parenting itself definitely gets harder as the children get older … but that’s another story.

Photo Credit:

***

On my side, everything is great. I have a really good relationship with my ex-husband. I actually like him. He’s a great guy. He and I were just really young when we met and I don’t think I knew myself as an adult yet. Once I started to figure myself out, it wasn’t the right fit for me.

We are both happier being divorced. We never had a miserable marriage so it was kind of hard to split at first but once we both got our lives started, it was easier. Now we like each other.

We get together on holidays. We’ll bend over backwards to help the other out in terms of “can you watch him on my day because I have this going on?” We get together at our son’s events and we throw his birthday parties jointly. We’re friends and I am actually friends with my ex’s girlfriend too.

She and I have a monthly day out with my son where we’ll take him to do something fun. We’ll go get a bite to eat and see a movie and he really enjoys it.

My son absolutely adores my boyfriend. There’s no confusion. He doesn’t see him as a father figure because his dad is still in his life. My son understands what everyone’s role is. He calls my boyfriend his best friend – it’s adorable. My boyfriend taught him how to spell his name one weekend because he turned it into a song. My son went to school on Monday and spell his name for his teacher. When I picked him up that afternoon she told me he’d said, “Yeah, my best friend is grown up. He taught me how to spell my name.” It was so cute.

Obviously, my boyfriend really likes my son . And now, my boyfriend and my ex are friends from the parties we’ve had. They’ll have a beer together, watch the Bears’ game and laugh. It’s almost disgusting. I’m sure it makes people want to throw up but really we all get along nicely and we’re a fun group.

The part that’s not so good is we have difficulty on my boyfriend’s side. He and his ex don’t get along well. She lives an hour and a half away with his kids and it’s in the opposite direction to me which is unfortunate. I don’t have a relationship with his kids but we’re hoping that will come in the future.

***

You have agree that what Lauren has here is pretty unusual. With their son being just four years old, Lauren and her ex have many years of co-parenting in front of them and getting along like this, should make life much easier for everyone.

When I was in the process of splitting up with my ex, I went with him to his therapist. My ex was struggling to accept that I wanted to end the marriage and I thought it might help if I talked to his therapist. His therapist had been divorced and had the same sort of relationship with his ex as Lauren has with hers. Even with adult children, the therapist still had ski days with his ex.

My ex and I do not have that relationship and honestly, I don’t think I would be comfortable with such a close relationship. Maybe that’s why we don’t. However, we are able to agree on most parenting issues, we do support each other on discipline issues and I’ll take that any day.

Before then, I want to finish up the Leap and the Net Will Appear series that features Carolyn. You’ll remember that Carolyn and her ex have two young children and share custody. That means although she and her ex are divorced, they are going to be tied by their children for quite some time to come. Carolyn sees that as a cloud looming over her future, even when everything else is falling into place. Here’s how she describes it.

***

When I first moved out, I tried to move to New Mexico because my mother and good friend lived there. I thought moving there would help me get through the break up.  I had never been alone before and I thought staying with my mother would make it much easier. My ex objected and so I took him to court. They said no. At the time, I was really upset but now I agree with the court’s decision.

I think it would be different if he was a deadbeat dad who didn’t want to see them all that much or was a bad influence on them, but he wants to see them, he loves them and they love him. So I understand why the court decided it was in their best interest for me to stay in the state.

Now, given how I’ve seen his relationship with the children develop, I wouldn’t go out of state even if I had the right simply because I didn’t have a dad and my children have a pretty good one. His interactions with them are really good and loving and I wouldn’t want to take that away from them.

My boyfriend and I are talking about getting married but it’s a big undertaking. He lives an hour south of me and that’s where his work is. But knowing my ex as I know him, I’m pretty sure he would take me to court to stop me from moving with the children. Even though the children would be gaining financial support, living in a house where they could each have their own bedroom, have better health insurance, I still think he would fight me and that makes me angry.

I really wish sometimes that my ex-husband and my ex-best friend would make some grand gesture towards making things right because I’m a very forgiving person. I could probably forgive them enough to have a pretty co-operative friendship with them as co-parents. But they’re not there and I’m not sure they ever will be.

Maybe, I never really knew them all that well because I feel the least they could do is relocate an hour south to facilitate me being able to have a stable, happy life after they completely derailed my life. If she can’t do that, I can’t ever forgive her and that’s really tough because she and I were so close.

I feel that if he really knew how much he hurt me and what he did to me, how could he begrudge me wanting to move 25 miles south so I could get remarried and have another shot at having a happy life? I don’t think he sees it all and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to take him to court. The thought of that is stressful but I try to remind myself that there’s nothing I can do about it. All I can do is proceed and hope that the stars will align so everything will work out for the best somehow.

***

What this story captures for me is that even though divorce ends a marriage, your parenting relationship with your ex continues and honestly, I’m not sure when it ends. I’m assuming certainly not until college over. If you have a special needs child, then it could be much, much longer. And what do you do when you want to relocate somewhere and your ex says no?

I’m a transplant from England – I’ve been here for over 20 years. When my ex and I got married, we never really talked objectively about the possibility of moving back to England. His mom was not well and I accepted that that tied us to the U.S. I also thought we’d just be able to figure it out as we went along. Now, I’m no longer married, I have no family here in the U.S. and the thought of moving back to England has crossed my mind – the two ladies I consider to be my closest friends in the world are there as well as my sister.

However, aside from the likely (and reasonable) objections from their dad, I can’t see my teenage kids wanting to uproot themselves from their schools now. Even when they do go to college, I don’t want to be living on a different continent to them – I keep saying to them, “Please don’t do to me what I did to my parents.” So on some days, I feel stuck here. Other days, maybe when I’m being more objective, I question how realistic I’m being about being able to adapt to life in England after so long away. For now, my master plan is beginning to look like, once I’m an empty nester,  trying to manage my life so I could at least spend a couple of months there each year.

Carolyn’s has just to posted about the ‘deep breath‘ – the conversation she’s started to have with her ex about her possibly moving. Hope you’ll visit her blog and give her some support as that conversation progresses.

Photo Credit:

]]> http://sincemydivorce.com/storm-clouds-over-the-future-after-divorce/feed/ 10 http://sincemydivorce.com/separation-what-does-it-mean-for-co-parenting/ http://sincemydivorce.com/separation-what-does-it-mean-for-co-parenting/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:00:48 +0000 Mandy http://sincemydivorce.com/?p=2301 The poll about does age matter is my first poll – I was excited to get the widget working and I’m even more excited to see that readers are participating. So far, the response is overwhelming that knowing how old the storyteller was at the time of her divorce is important. Point taken!

Bearing that in [...]]]> The poll about does age matter is my first poll – I was excited to get the widget working and I’m even more excited to see that readers are participating. So far, the response is overwhelming that knowing how old the storyteller was at the time of her divorce is important. Point taken!

Bearing that in mind, Student Mama, is in her mid-twenties, has been married for about five and a half years, separated for about six months and has a five-year-old daughter. With the break-up still fairly recent, there remain lots of unanswered questions about how the future as a co-parent might work out.  Here are a few of Student Mama’s current concerns.

***

When a child is small, there’s comfort in knowing that they’re not conceptualizing everything that’s going on. At the same time though, there’s so much emotion they’re feeling from the changes that they can’t really express. You can’t really communicate with them.

I went through a whole period of questioning my motives – am I doing the right thing by breaking up the family? Am I handling my ex appropriately? Are we, is she going to come out ahead on the other side?

We’ve been honest with her about what was going on and she’s been angry with both of us. I think she would like to fix things – she’ll say, “Daddy, all you have to do is go get a ring and marry mommy again.” So I know she’s trying to grasp what’s going on. I’m very in touch with her preschool teacher and about how she’s doing there. For the most part, it seems she feels safe expressing herself because she just tells people if she’s having a hard time. At home there’s more of a wall between us and I’m trying to work on that. The hardest thing is seeing how much it affects her and feeling kind of helpless.

My ex is still involved. We don’t have a set schedule yet but we’re trying to keep it consistent for her. She goes and stays with him probably twice a week and he comes over after work sometimes and hangs with her. My ex and I went Christmas shopping together and we’ve gone to our daughter’s soccer games – not in the same car but we’ve met and sat together.

What gets difficult for my ex and I is whether or not we’re going to continue with the divorce. I’ve put my foot down and said “I’m not going back to our marriage” but I don’t think he’s at that final closure stage yet.  I don’t know if that’s rejection to him but there’s definitely been more strain on our relationship. There’s more arguing and more tension, especially around my decision to date.

I can’t say what’s going to happen in the future for us but I really would like to have a good co-parenting relationship. Doesn’t everyone want that? But for now I’m trying to stay in the present and not get too caught up in what I want because then I’ll start trying to push in that direction and that won’t be helpful until he’s ready to go there with me.

***

My husband and I didn’t have a separation although we debated the question of divorce for almost a year while living under the same roof, living increasing separate lives. It’s hard to know whether it would have been helpful or not. However, I do think there’s a lot to be said for a period of separation when the decision to end the marriage isn’t accepted by both spouses.

I think such a period can help bring clarity to the situation and if the end result is divorce, I think there’s great potential for less contentious settlement negotiations because emotions may not be running so high. I love what Student Mama says about living in the moment and waiting until her ex is at the same point she is – undoubtedly easier said than done but I think she may be laying the foundation for a solid, cooperative co-parenting relationship. Another story that might be helpful to read is the Kathleen Christensen’s series in which she talks about Collaborative Divorce.

Student Mama blogs about the daily trials and tribulations of adjusting to singledom over at Little Skool Girl – yesterday she was coming to grips with a broken car, soccer practice, doctor’s appointments, midterms and no help from her ex. Hope you’ll hop over there and give her some moral support.

Photo Credit:

***

We still see our psychologist once a month pretty much on a proactive basis. We’re mostly relaxed and friendly but we can still get triggered. If something seems like it’s going to be harder to talk about, we bring it here. For example, I wanted my ex to have a land line phone at his home and he wanted to use just his cell phone. I prefer that my daughter not talk on a cell phone – she’s not a big telephone talker anyway but I don’t think the safety of cell phones for developing brains has really been established. My ex and I finally worked out that I’d split the cost of a land line and I had an old phone. Even something like this can be hard for us to resolve.

Other topics we’ve talked about – bedtimes. She’s a real night owl, I’m a night owl and he’s not. So how do we get her enough sleep? We’re still working on that one. We’ve talked about media time like should we have rules about how much time she should have on the computer. She used to go online occasionally but then she got Webkinz and wanted to be on the computer lots.

We’ve talked about housework. Conventional wisdom would say different houses are like different cultures and you just respect that. He’d been asking her to do some housework stuff and she was saying, ‘I don’t have to do that at Mom’s.’ So we were thinking we would work on that together. Housework is not one of my strong points but I came up with an idea based on FlyLady . She has this habit of the month so I thought we could choose one task, like throw your laundry in the basket, and work on doing that for a month and then adding another task.

Another tension between us is food and feeding say artificial colors or eating junk foods. I tend to want to keep things as organic and healthy as possible and he’s more casual. I would like us to come up with some basic rules and we could share strategies to get her to eat fruits and vegetables. We’re still in conversation about this.

Seeing the psychologist helps because we can deal with disagreements as they come up. It works better not to wait until things have gotten out of hand and then see someone.

***

That’s the thing about being a parent – it’s constantly evolving and just when you think you’ve got the upper hand, it changes. I think Kathleen is fortunate that her ex agrees to meet jointly with the psychologist. It does at least give her an opportunity to decide whether or not a particular battle is worth fighting. Fortunately, my ex and I have been able to agree on the points that we both feel are important but what happens when you don’t agree or when you can’t have a civil discussion?

Leave a comment and be entered in the drawing for a copy of Karen Salmansohn’s book, Prince Harming Syndrome. And if you’d like to know more about Kathleen, then head over to her blog, Head In the Clouds and follow her on Twitter, @kathwriter.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/compujeramey/ / CC BY 2.0

***

We worked really hard on the marriage but I think we had too many strikes against us. My ex had severe abuse of all kinds growing up and PTSD as a result of that and I’ve got the ADD thing which I just figured out seven years ago. So we used to joke about our marriage being PTSD meets ADD. We truly did try hard but it was a pretty dysfunctional relationship even thought there weren’t affairs or physical violence.

We saw a couple of therapists and when we were seeing the second one, things just went downhill. They spiraled down. I think part of that was she missed some of the big picture and added gasoline to the fire.

It wasn’t my decision to get divorced although I might have come to the same decision because I knew things were pretty bad. When he first said he wanted to get divorced I was horrified because I thought, ‘Oh my God, we have a child. What a terrible thing to do to a child.’ And given where our relationship was, I thought it could get even worse because that’s the way it is with a lot of people. I could see us going into the future with this terrible relationship having to make decisions about our daughter.

We did try to keep things under wraps and away from our daughter but she sensed the tension and sometimes it would boil over when she was around. When we told her we were getting divorced she said, ‘At least I won’t have to listen to you guys fighting anymore.’ So we obviously didn’t keep it hidden from her.

So now, after all we’ve been through, we can actually be relaxed and friendly with each other, make decisions together, and be flexible about decisions we’ve made. I never would have said this before, but it’s even better for our daughter than when we were married. I didn’t think we’d get here. It feels like a miracle that we can actually have this kind of co-parenting relationship.

***

Kathleen credits a collaborative divorce and counseling for the miracle of her co-parenting relationship and in this series of posts Kathleen will share more about what a collaborative divorce is and how it benefited her. Kathleen is a fellow blogger – she writes about the challenges of daily life with ADD at her Head in the Clouds blog so do hop over there and visit with Kathleen. You can also follow her on Twitter – @kathwriter.

***

We get that a lot. Basically the standard line is, ‘What happens at your Dad’s house is his decision. What happens at my house is my and your stepfather’s decision. We will always listen to you and if you have a concern, I can certainly talk to your dad.’

My ex and I have decided that email is the best way to communicate. If there’s an issue one of us wants to discuss we’re pretty safe doing that without things getting too heated. I can say, ‘This is what I’ve heard. Is it true?’ I’ve learned there’s a little embellishment that will go on sometimes so I don’t react to what I hear right away. My tendency at first is to get really defensive or upset about something I hear but I’ve learned that I need to check it out to see if it’s accurate first.

The children are expected to do chores at both places. They gripe about that – ‘We have to twice the work of any other kids but they also get twice the allowance and twice the birthday. So we try to say, ‘Hey, you’ve got some good things too.’ I think in general they’re pretty happy with the set up and they love us both.

My youngest does feel torn. When he’s with his dad he feels guilty he’s not with me. When he’s with me, he worries about his dad. His dad has not remarried and so I think they worry about their dad a little more. They know I’m with somebody and life is good. They feel angst about that so we try to talk about it.

We’ve had some instances when they’ll sort of act up when they know they’re getting ready to make the transition to their dad because they know there’s going to be no consequences. If something’s severe enough I will make rules on my end such as because you didn’t do this, the next time you’re back here, you don’t get to play the Wii or you’re not having a sleepover. For major things I’ve done what I needed to correct on this end and also involved his dad. He’s very supportive. There are times when I’ve said they’ve been absolutely out of control and I’ve implemented this rule, can you follow through on it and he will. It’s not ideal but they have to know they can’t get away with it. My issue is when I’m tired, I give in. That’s my issue and I have to work on that.

***

Like Kim, I often end up saying to my kids that they need to accept that I have different house rules than their father and that’s just the way it is. My ex has also been supportive of my disciplining efforts. For example, my daughter is not the best at getting up in the morning and getting to school on time. Since she’s with me during the week, the burden of getting her out the door falls on me. During the past year she’s been learning to drive so I decided that if she was tardy then she would lose the driving privilege for a week. When she realized she wasn’t going to be able to end run me by getting her dad to drive with her, she told me it was very unfair, it would mean she’d have to wait to get her license and that I would have to continue to drive her. My response? ‘Sweetheart, I’ve been driving you for more than 16 years. Another few months won’t make any difference.’ It worked like a dream – she got to school on time and she got her license. Now she leaves for school early so she can avoid the rush of traffic in the school parking lot.

My ex and I do most of our communication in person but I’ve seen a number of recommendations supporting email – here are some tips for divorced parents from Shirley Cress Dudley at Blended Family Advice – emailing is one of them. No tips on how to overcome giving in because you’re tired and that’s one I can empathize with. So if you have any suggestions to help with that, do leave a comment.

***

We have to talk to each other. There are parent teacher conferences, there’s homework, there’s guitar, there’s transporting things back and forth, summer schedules, school, sleepovers and all kinds of stuff. But communicating with him is difficult. It’s a struggle when I want to do something that’s outside our divorce decree, like take my son to a concert or get him a cell phone. Sometimes that gets so frustrating for me that I will go see the therapist I saw after the divorce. She was really key for me standing up for myself, trying to do it in a healthy way, staying clean about it and not getting caught up in the anger and resentment.

We used to be so strict like ‘if you’re keeping him for three extra hours, I’m keeping him for three extra hours.’ It was a tedious job of keeping track of the days and who got him for what kind of time. I think we’ve mellowed on that and realized ‘if you want him for an extra day, go for it, take it.’ Or if he wants to trick or treat in your neighborhood even though it’s my year, he’s 13 let him do what he wants because he’s old enough to have some preferences.

Our son was only three or four when we got divorced and he would alternate between my ex and I every two or three days. He had stomach problems and we couldn’t figure out why. Finally, he said, ‘I want to go back and forth but why can’t I just stay longer? I feel like as soon as I get there I have to turn around and go back.’ We said we could do a week at a time and I remember saying, ‘Aren’t you going to miss the other parent?’ He said, ‘Mom, we have phones.’ So we switched him to a week at each parent’s house and his stomach problems went away. That’s the way it’s been for 10 years now.

The parenting has gotten easier I think because we’re both 10 years older and we’ve mellowed. I think there was something in the back of our minds that was like ‘he’s going to take my son away from me’ or ‘she’s going to take my son away from me’ and here we are with a teenager realizing neither one of us is going to take him away. We can’t take him away. He loves both of us and he needs a dad. I realize that. He needs a mom and his dad realizes that. So we’ve mellowed and that’s gotten easier.

***

My children were 14 and 11 when I got divorced and so had preferences about parenting time from the very beginning. I always felt it was better that if they didn’t want to go to their dad’s on the day they were supposed to, then they needed to speak directly to him about it and then, if needed, he and I would discuss it.  At first they needed some coaching on how to do that – I think they didn’t want to upset either one of us – but both my ex and I tried to be flexible when we could and these days the kids are quite comfortable – they know what the basic schedule is but will take the lead when that won’t work with their plans.

How have you found co-parenting? Has it gotten easier as your children (and you!) have matured? Any communication tips that have worked well for you?