Mediate Michigan

In 2008, we co-founded CoParenting101.org after friends and colleagues repeatedly praised us for being the “poster children” for divorce. We wish we could have been the poster children for successful marriage, but it didn’t work out that way. Because we’ve kept things amicable publicly (we do have some old emails that would make a sailor blush), we’re often asked “How in the world do you do it?”, and CoParenting101.org is our answer. We do it because our children deserve peace and reassurance. Though divorce ended our marriage, our family endures.

Unfortunately, this explanation hasn’t deterred strangers and others from making disbelieving comments, the wildest being that since we socialize and take an annual vacation together with our kids and our respective new spouses, we must be swingers. And this person was not joking.

Regretfully, the reality of our co-parenting relationship isn’t anywhere near that spicy. It reads more like this: Once upon a time, girl met boy in college; began dating the first week of classes; married a year after graduation; had two kids; after a decade-plus, came apart at the seams in pretty much every way imaginable except parenting; separated and committed to a 50-50 shared parenting partnership; weathered a divorce that was 98% non-combative; got individual counseling; gave each other time and space; and then managed to cobble together a friendship that buoys their current co-parenting arrangement.

via Deesha Philyaw: My Ex and I are Swingers, and Other Myths About Cooperative Co-Parenting.