Strategies for Living Separately but Together

by Virginia L Colin, Ph.D.

During the current covid pandemic, some parents who intended to part ways soon must postpone their separation. Income has decreased a lot, so supporting two households is suddenly not possible. Everyone in the family is likely to be feeling the stress. Being trapped in a house with someone you intend to divorce could be terrible, but with wisdom and effort you can instead make something good come out of dealing with it.

Start with this: Instead of being adversaries who do not care about hurting each other, you and your spouse can be allies as you try to solve the problems your family faces. Your kids need you to do that. They don’t want to be caught in the crossfire of open hostilities or in the ice of cold rage. They need parents who can make their home safe and supportive. They need to be free to be happy kids. 

To get through this period you will need to take good care of yourself: nutrition, sleep, exercise, at least a little fun, and frequent conversations with friends matter. Mediation may be helpful. If you are coping with a lot of anxiety or depression, talk with a therapist at least once or twice a month.

To start building a good foundation for cooperative co-parenting, consider what might raise the tension in your home or even get you started fighting. The create a structure that minimizes the risk of those things happening. Structure includes schedules and rules. 

About spaces: regardless of how small your home is, you need to make sure that each parent has an entirely private space they can return to when they need to rest and recharge their physical, psychological, or spiritual energies. If you also need places where you can do your work by telecommuting, creating ways for both of you to do that will be crucial for the family’s financial and emotional well-being. If your living quarters are crowded, you may need to share an office, taking scheduled turns to use it.

Having rules about use of shared spaces will also be very helpful. Is it important to you or your partner not to have to contend with the other’s presence while cooking or cleaning up? In your family, is it still possible for everyone to sit down together for dinner without putting your kids in an uncomfortable situation? Can you agree about periods when the TV in the living room must stay off?

If one or both of you need to continue working from home, that may automatically decide who is the default parent during work hours — the parent who has to handle squabbles, pleas to play outside, supervising kids’ chores, etc. Each of you should have some scheduled turns as the default parent. To help the kids with the schedule, you can have a sign on your shared office door. One side can say “Mom is at work. Talk to Dad.” The other can say “Dad is at work. Talk to Mom.”

If you and your spouse can agree on consistent rules for your kids that both of you will enforce, that will be helpful for everyone. Coming to agreement about the family’s budget during this period of sheltering at home will also be very helpful.

Some couples will be able to make agreements about finances, use of space, schedules, rules, and activities on their own. Others will have considerable difficulty. If you and your partner are in the latter group, seek help from a professional family mediator. Our work regularly includes helping families with separation, divorce, and co-parenting, and family mediators are available for online meetings all over the U.S.A. and in many other parts of the world.

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An earlier version of this essay appeared in Living Together, Separating, Divorcing: Surviving During a Pandemic, a collection of articles offering advice from over 70 leading family mediators and related professionals from ten countries to help you deal with the loss of income, lack of accommodation, child care, and dealing with each other while enduring a pandemic makes almost everything harder.

For a free consultation about whether family mediation would be helpful for you, contact Dr. Virginia Colin at mediatorQ@gmail.com or 703.864.2101.