For the love ...

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.