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Last week was an unusual week for me. I coached two couples (from different parts of the U.S.) on how to transform their marriages from a “traditional” to a “Parenting Marriage.” Normally, these calls for help are more spread out. Two in one week is a new record for me.
Both of these couples told me they want to stay together in the legal sense, but not in the romantic sense; they want to continue to provide a stable, co-parenting partnership for their children, and they want to renegotiate the terms of their relationship.
One couple will live apart but close enough for their child to go between the two houses easily; one husband and wife team will remain in the same house but live separate lives. Both couples will tell people close to them about their arrangement but will not share this alternative lifestyle decision with everyone in their social circle for fear of the judgment and stigma they would expose themselves to.
Since 2010, I’ve aided several couples in following this path.
You may be thinking to yourself one of two things: “That’s wrong, what are they modeling to the kids?” or, “What’s the point of staying married if they’re living separate lives?” I know. There was a point in my life when I would have thought the same thing.
But times have changed and, while the decision to co-exist as co-parents is not a new one, the ability to talk about it openly is.
For years, mothers and fathers have stay married in name only—some until the kids fly the coop, others “until death do they part.” (For more on this, read Pamela Haag’s Marriage Confidential: Love in the Post-Romantic Age). These parenting partnerships are now coming out of the closet in much the same way gays and lesbians have.
Making this choice purposefully and consciously is becoming a viable alternative to suffering silently or divorcing. Being able to talk about this option with a professional and get guidance will not only help couples to feel better about their choice, it will help these couples have a higher functioning relationship because everything will be done with intentional agreements.
Speaking openly and honestly with the kids about how “mom and dad’s relationship is changing,” will model to kids that there are creative solutions to problems and that there’s a lot of gray between the black and white we once clung to as “the only way” to do this thing we call marriage.
In writing, The New I Do, Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels, my co-author, Vicki Larson, and I learned that marriage around the world and throughout history is and has been practiced in ways we might consider quite odd. There are cultures that marry off children to dead people. There are societies where cooking for a man meant you were married and not cooking meant you were divorced. There were times in history when all that was needed in order to be legally married was to live together for a year and all that was needed to exit a marriage was a letter. These cultures had different structures around coupling, but they did fine all the same.
Why, then, can’t there be ways for all couples in our modern world (where marriage is arguably becoming more obsolete) to personalize the terms of their unions openly?
We haven’t crossed the line of making these alternative arrangements mainstream yet, but given that I’m getting more and more calls for help with this Parenting Marriage makeover, it makes me think the tipping point is not that far off.
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