By Marcy Crawford
I thought I had dodged this particular bullet. The first husband and I have been split up for ten years and have co-parented smoothly almost since the beginning. I'm cringing now at the thought of how we were downright smug about it - getting along so seamlessly that people who just met us at our son's events thought we were still married.
No bickering and mud-slinging; no poisoning the well around our child. We were considerate of one another, never needed a formal physical custody plan and never needed intervention for
child support. Neither parent went absent. The ex slowly integrated into my new family, sharing birthday celebrations and holidays with us. He was close to our new son from birth to almost three years old. Everyone was impressed, including his new girlfriend.
After being out of state for a year, now he is coming back to town and moving in with her. He called me this week and politely requested half physical custody when he returns - more than he has ever asked. All I felt in the moment was dizziness and nausea. Later came the shock, anger, and pain.
And so it begins when our son is a teenager, after almost a decade of total peace.
I've gotten a do-over in marriage - can I have one with my son, too? Do I get another chance to parent him wisely, to model a good marriage, to demonstrate a willingness to engage his father in healthy conflict? Most of all, I want to know whether my son will be okay. Is this battle for the children like a heat-seeking missile that may have missed me once, but continues on, determined to find its target? I'm so angry that now, after all these years, I have the rage, resentment, and bitterness that I thought I neatly escaped.
I go online to do research. I'm looking for studies of sudden upheaval after years of calm co-parenting. I find nothing on that, but I do find out about "emotional divorce," which I somehow never heard of before. I relate to this. When we split up, we swallowed our anguish and were nice to each other. I thought it was incredibly healthy, but maybe it was the opposite.
The National Center for Health Statistics estimated in 2008 that 50 percent of American children will experience their parents' divorce. Even though 43 percent to 50 percent of marriages still end in divorce in this country, the census bureau statistics show that divorce rates have actually been declining in the U.S. for a few decades now. There are correlations to age and education that show that we are less likely to divorce the older and more educated we are when we marry. I was 26 when I first married. My husband sometimes sweetly professes that he wishes we had met sooner and had more time together, but I assure him I wasn't a fit partner in my 20s.
I have to ask about the consistently reported research results that children from divorced families are worse off than children from intact families: are children from divorced families better off than they would have been if their parents had remained married? I need to believe this, and I find validation in a paper by Robert Hughes, who writes that "some studies have found that children in nonconflictual single parent families are doing better than children in conflictual two-parent families."
I get it. I need to temper my resentment and fear. I wonder if I can process these feelings quickly enough to not make things any harder. I find advice in Hughes' research: "Children report more positive feelings and less painful memories of household transitions when they were given some chance to voice their ideas about visiting or living arrangements."
Our son has been safe to speak about his preferences at home. Now more than ever, my trustworthiness in this area will be put to the test. I have to be available to hear him if he wants to spend more time at his dad's. He is 13. Will I stand up, an imperfect mother with a deeply blemished past, for what I think is right? Am I willing to make a mistake?
I will be afraid and I will pray for courage. I am grateful that I have had this time with my son. I have to believe that it mattered. I am a tiny bit grateful that the pain of this upheaval has brought me a new measure of humility. I have hope that it will all be worth it in the end.