My ex-husband and I spent a week living together for the first time since separating three years earlier—here’s what happened.

We did not circle around each other like wolves or fall into each other’s arms again.

It was quiet, and it was normal, and our revelations came without fanfare: one by one, slowly and softly, like tentative footsteps.

Three years after our separation, we made the radical decision to keep our children at one house, the so-called “family home.” We committed to doing what our kids had done for the previous three years—live between two places.

It worked well.

My ex and I rented another place we took turns living at when we didn’t have the kids. I even hired a cleaner, so that we wouldn’t argue over who cleaned the family home and to whose standards.

Then, one day, my ex, whom I will call R, stayed at the family home on a night that was “mine”—i.e. a night he normally did not have the kids. His car’s transmission had died. It was easier for him to stay in the family home for a variety of reasons while the car was being fixed. He ended up staying for nearly a week.

Of course, the kids always want daddy around. They were delighted to have us both in the same house. By then, R and I were well past the drama of marital breakdown, and friendly in each other’s company.

Still. It was weird.

Here is what I learned during that one week of living together:

1. I genuinely like the guy. 

People always say, “well you must have once liked your ex or you wouldn’t have married,”— but alas, post-divorce, it’s easy to forget the experience of liking that person. This was the first prolonged period of time my ex and I had spent together in a no-conflict space since we broke up. I had had a new partner for more than a year by then. We were emotionally disentangled, and thus there was no pressure—to be married, to get along, to have expectations of one other beyond parenting. We could just chat about the world, our awesome kids, about our career and creative goals. I gained an appreciation of R the friend, R the person.

2. We had no chemistry.

I mean really, what were we thinking in the first place? We were kind of like good mates and intellectual sparring partners. But chemistry was never a huge part of the equation for us. To feel this, to really feel it and acknowledge it in myself, after the conflict, after years of trying to make it work, was just such a relief. All those years we had each in our own way felt so much pressure to be intimate in that way, and now, in this space, to see that we just didn’t have that, put so much into perspective.

3. We could process our past without any of the emotion.

We talked about what happened between us without any of the past drama, with compassion, and distance, and most importantly, with forgiveness. We have not talked about everything. I know we each have our own personal wounds that we’d rather not share—and that’s okay. Reaching into every dark corner and agreeing on an interpretation of the past is not necessary for healing to take place. Still, the subject was broached over that week, more than once, and to varying degrees of intensity, and each time it felt like a tiny weight had been lifted.

4. We both are crazy about our kids, and we are pretty good parents.

It may sound funny to say it, but we had been parenting on our own for three years! We had not had a lot of days together as a family, so we had really not seen each other in action day in and day out. It was awesome not just to “hear” about my kids’ connection to daddy, but to witness it. To witness the love, the tenderness, and the silliness. It was a joy to see the routines he had with the kids, the games only he played. Each of us said to each other at different points, “you are such a great parent.”

It also enabled us to get more “on the same page” about some parenting issues. We already regularly compared notes, but being under the same roof really boosted that process, and got us even more in alignment on key points, like chores, screen time, and pet care.

5. There is no such thing as “normal.”

The most crucial overall lesson for me was that in fact, there is no normal when it comes to how you construct a relationship in or out of a marriage. We are better off as friends, and we genuinely like and respect each other—but that doesn’t mean we should be married! Friendship alone is not enough to make a marriage work. Yet, what we have arranged, for ourselves and our kids, does work.

Sometimes still, because of work and gym proximity, R stays at the family home when I’m there.

Maybe that will change. Maybe not.

It may not be usual, but it works for us just fine.

 

 

Relephant Read: 

Stay Friends With an Ex or Run Like Hell? 7 Questions to Help You Decide.

 

 

 

Author: Emma Michelle Dixon

Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: Anne Worner at Flickr