Defying this conventional wisdom might actually make me a better co-parent
What if looking back is the key to moving forward?
If you had told me two years ago that my ex-husband and I would agree to talk to a reporter about how education and politics impacted our marriage, I would've laughed you out of the room because there was absolutely no way that would ever happen.
Fresh off the heels of our divorce, communication was.... tense. Typical, I know. Like most, if not all, divorcing couples, we’d spent years settling into a way of communicating that while not always healthy or effective, was at least predictable. And like most couples, that predictability evaporated once we began to build lives independently of each other, or at least as independently as you can when you share a child.
Before you say but of course divorce changes everything, I knew that. I knew that custody swaps would be hard, that dating would awkward, and that there would be endless possibilities for introducing weird and frustrating situations. What I didn’t expect was a complete upending of how we communicated and the impacts that would have.
I suspect this is true for most couples who go through the divorce process relatively amicably and without much fanfare. In the overwhelm that is the logistical side of dividing up a life, it’s easy to bury all but the most intense emotions and focus on getting to the other side.
I’d also wager this is the case for both women and men; women because we spend a lifetime being socialized to keep the peace and to tiptoe around men’s emotions, and men because they spend a lifetime being socialized to swallow their emotions no matter the personal cost.
The problem is that those buried emotions have to come up sometime, and that sometime is usually in the months following divorce, a time when both people are growing and evolving into new (and hopefully improved) versions of themselves and who, quite simply, don’t communicate the same way, anymore.
It’s not intentional, it just is.
Plus, divorce doesn’t magically fix the issues that societal norms and expectations have infused into relationships and parenting. Divorced women still usually end up carrying more of the mental load of parenting. They are still the ones expected to rearrange work schedules for sick days, to keep track of doctor’s appointments and school events, to stay up until midnight to sign up for summer camp.
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Which brings me back to “The New Marriage of Unequals” by
for The Atlantic. The article itself is about the rising trend in women marrying men with less education, why this might be, and what it means for a marriage.And me? I’m one of the women referenced in the article.
Before agreeing to speak with her about my take on this, I opted to check in with my ex-husband on his thoughts and to gauge his comfort level, given this was veering into “us” territory rather than the “centering my own experiences after divorce” territory I feel more comfortable with.1 He agreed (obviously) and even went on to share his own perspective which, quite frankly, clicked some things into place that I had not quite understood before.
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Conventional wisdom tells us to never look back, to let go, to move on. This is fine(ish) if you never have to see each other again, but what conventional wisdom fails to tell us is that when the person you’re supposed to let go of shows up on your doorstep for drop-off on a regular basis because you are still parents to the same child, looking back may be precisely what is needed to shake off the armor you put on in divorce, to see things in a fresh light, and to reach a new level of understanding that can nudge open the door to empathy.
It doesn't mean that you don’t still stand firm in your choices, nor does it mean that your experiences, both past and present, are not valid. It doesn’t require forgiveness or platitudes. It doesn’t mean things won’t still be hard and frustrating. But what it does do is serve as a reminder that healing is not linear, that it's OK to open up the book you thought you had closed, to add a few footnotes for context, to be open to seeing things differently and, as a result, approach co-parenting more compassionately2.
But that's the point, right? We all walk away from relationships with our own stories and experiences and perspectives, carrying with us our own grief and anger, despite it stemming from the same actions, the same relationship. We don’t, by default, (re)start those discussions just for the hell of it.
But if you’re open to it, you might one day stumble into a conversation you didn’t know you needed to have and learn something you didn’t know you needed to learn. Granted, it may not land in The Atlantic for all to see, but the resulting conversations may surprise you.
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While I don't feel the need to ask for permission to write about my own life from my perspective, I am also mindful that my son might read this one day. It’s why I often gloss over specifics and focus more on the broader issues at play.
I am referring to marriages that ended without abuse or violence. There are many reasons why someone does not and should not do any of what I’m writing about here.