For the love ...

Ours is an every-day run-of-the-mill suburban story: we got married, had children, and created a family. Then the marriage faltered and we faced the usual choice: a) split up the relationship, the assets and the children’s time or b) stay together for the sake of the children.

I suspect most couples try option b) first. I’m glad we did. But come the end of the last three or four dreadful years of our marriage there was no uncertainty: we should not be together. My former wife, Jan, and I blew the whistle after 17 years, by which time the children were aged 10, 13, and 15.

Plan a) split everything up loomed as inevitable.

But hang on. Jan and I saw there was more at stake than appeared to be the case, even if only through a glass darkly. In addition to our self-interest, and the interests of each of the three children, there was another stakeholder at the table: the family itself.

Kids don’t care about the quality of their parent’s marriage, and anyway it’s none of their business. What they do care about, is their family - Mum and Dad, their siblings and themselves, all engaged together in the wonderful and onerous task of surviving together in the big wide world.

And we - Jan and I - wanted exactly the same thing. We didn’t want each other, but we still wanted a family. Everyone does. And we didn’t want any family - we wanted our family, the one we had made. Our family had been our project, our creation, our responsibility, and was our fulfillment in so many ways. Splitting up destroyed our precious family, we both saw, which all five of us still wanted, and wanted very much.

Was it possible to keep the family intact, even though the marriage could not survive? Using standard conflict management practices, where all parties identify shared interests, Jan and I decided to make the family our common ground. This enabled us to put aside our stuff, and develop a shared approach to the future, which took the form of some “policies”:

One family, one set of parents

We immediately agreed - down in the soul, where it counts, as well as on paper - that the children deserved and wanted and needed their folks, the oldies, the parents rather than Mum one day, Dad the next. They wanted to keep - and we wanted to retain - our role as parents who shared, fully and collaboratively, in their care. The phrase we wrote in a document attached to the divorce papers was: “We fully acknowledge, respect and actively encourage each other to be the best parents we can be for our three children, respectively and collaboratively.”

This meant that when there was a school concert, we would go together, in one car, and walk in as a family, and sit together, and share in the pride of their achievement as a family. If there was a new movie that everyone wants to see, we would see it as a family. All decisions about the children - which schools, which subjects, which activities, when to get a mobile phone, whether they can go and stay overnight at a friend’s place - were decisions we would make together, as we always had. And birthday and Christmas gifts would come from us, rather than presents from Mum and presents from Dad.

Keep the home

We decided we would not require our children to engage in shuttle diplomacy between respective houses - Mum’s place; Dad’s place - neither of which would earn the title of home, for them. We were the ones who had stuffed-up, so the children shouldn’t be made to suffer from having two bedrooms, two neighborhoods, two computers, two toothbrushes, with all the respective complications. Kids need routine as much as, and as an expression of, parental love, and we would not massively disrupt their lives.

Rather, we would move around them. We agreed that either of us could stay at home, or establish our own, separate, places and come home to the children, at our discretion.

Maintain family money

When we divorced, we were both working full time, and our respective incomes had all gone straight into “general revenue”. New arrangements were required. We developed a “family budget”, which dealt with the full costs of the children and the home. We agreed that we would contribute in proportion to our respective salaries. Since I was earning 60 per cent of gross income, I was responsible for 60 per cent of the family budget. This later changed, when our salaries changed.

As a part of this - and this is just as important as the dollars - we agreed administrative arrangements. In our case, Jan had always managed the household accounts. In a fit of male “I’m the chief breadwinner” hubris, I insisted that this task be mine. Jan could not have been happier, and I have managed the family’s finances since then.

The house, our main asset, was in joint names. We could have left it like that. We might have transferred the house into the children’s names, insofar as that was consistent with our policy, and some couples do this. In our case, I was expanding my business and needed the house as collateral for business loans. Jan agreed to transfer it into my name, and we secured her interest with a codicil to our divorce.

Whatever the detail, it is the policy which is important. At no stage did we imagine we were dividing things up between her and me. On the contrary, we decided to maintain the family’s assets and income, for the sake of the family. Once our family obligations were met any money left over was ours to do with as we wished.

Decide on living arrangements

We, the parents, could both live in the family home, if we wished. It would be like we were teenagers who still have a bedroom at home. We could come and go as we please, so long as the kids were covered. If I was heading out for a night, then I would consult Jan and ask if she could look after the children. If she was going out too, then we would get in baby sitters. And if that sounds like how things were before the divorce, that is what we intended.

There was one not insignificant change. We needed an extra bedroom. In our case, this entailed our having five bedrooms, instead of four. We replaced the garage door with a sliding door, threw paint on the walls, straw matting on the floor, and we had the extra room we needed.

That’s the broad picture. Our intention was that nothing - or, at least, as little as possible - would change from the kids’ perspective, even though our marriage was at a complete end.

So how have we gone these last seven years?

Reality check

The unravelling of any marriage is horrible. It is awful. It is tears and trauma and grief. Your whole being feels like it’s been blasted by a bunker bomb. Your hold on reality and yourself is shaken to the core. Misery is your companion, loneliness a glacier carving hollows in your heart. Tears on pillows. Tears before breakfast. Tears in the car on the way home from work. The same old stuff that most survivors of divorce know all too well, and we were no exception.

But there was a surprise, for both of us. What helped us - enabled us? - to survive the end of the marriage was the family. The fact the family was intact ensured each of us remained intact. We had an anchor to keep us sane, and a lodestone to guide us. People told us that what we were doing was very grown up, very brave. But it wasn’t. The consistency, security and sheer routine we were so determined to provide for our children did for us too.

The alternative looked far worse, to both of us. For me, it meant avoiding ending up in a flat with second hand furniture, surrounded by empty pizza boxes, watching the sports channel at 2am. I had avoided the perfect storm of losing my marriage and having huge icebergs crashing into my relationships with each of my three children and losing my family. Instead, we had quarantined the pain and grief just to the marriage, and that was bad enough.

Jan had secured the opportunity to live life on her own terms, while remaining an excellent mother. For the children - and of course the impact was various, depending on their unique personalities - things were different but also, in ways most relevant to them, the same too. Overall, it was the strength of the family that carried all five of us through. As a family, we buried the marriage, and effectively supported each other through the consequent grief. And, wonderfully, so surprisingly, in time, it made the family even stronger.

The early days were difficult, crazy, even weird. A lot of tact was required to keep things intact. Practice makes perfect, and it got ever easier as time went on, but there were several hurdles which arose.

The first big hurdle came when Jan and I entered into new relationships. Seeing their mother and father with someone else took a lot of acceptance by the kids. But, actually, it was more of a challenge for our new partners. They had to accept that we were each of us putting our family before them.

For one of the new partners this was almost a relationship breaker. But our reasoning was this: we are only hands-on parents for a short while, and this job had to be done as well as could be, and never more so if there has been a divorce. If forced to a choice between the new partner and the family - in terms of time, residence, financial priorities, and so on - the family wins. Soon enough, we reasoned with our respective new partners, the children will be leaving home - literally or in effect - and then we would be free to relocate and reprioritise. As it happens, our respective partners were themselves divorcees with children, and one of them has built bridges with the ex, following our example, to the benefit of all.

In practice, Jan spends three to four nights with her partner at his place, and the rest at home, and I do the reverse. Within this, Sundays especially are family days and all five of us spend the afternoon together, often going to a movie, and then spend the evening together, watching Australian Idol or whatever. Saturday sports is also a sacred family affair and just last Sunday saw all five of us heading off together to watch our daughter’s soccer grand final.

Another hurdle was the annual Christmas holiday. The collaboration Jan and I share does not extend to any desire to take holidays together! And it is collaboration first, with a friendship built around that, more than a communion between us. We spend Christmas Day as a family, of course, but each of us goes on holidays with our respective partners. So, what about the children? Each Christmas has been different, but basically they end up with two “away” holidays each year, so they’re not complaining!

It all actually works very well. We have not had any “terrible teens” stuff. More positively, the three young people in the family are wonderful human beings (in our unbiased view!) with a profound sense of family, and of themselves as valued and valuable members of it, who are deeply loved by Mum and Dad, and each other.

Moreover, they have witnessed what we hope is a valuable experience in the management of conflict, and have gained a strong sense of their parents as both individuals and as a unit. Whether these things would have happened anyway - just because of who they are - or whether they too are invested in making the family work as much as their parents are, well, we will never know.

Every family is unique, every marriage is complex in its own way, every divorce has its own imperatives, and there is never a one-size-fits-all solution. But, for the sake of a phrase, throwing out the marriage baby and keeping the family bathwater is the second best decision Jan and I have made in our lives. The first, of course, was to have children and create a family.