How to Divorce Well

My ex’s birth date is a proclamation for how to “march forth” to a strong post-marriage relationship.

This is us. Photo by our waiter.

(This story originally ran on Medium in March 2024.)

My ex-husband’s birthday is March 4.

It’s the only date, to my knowledge, that’s also a proclamation. March forth! the world proclaims on March fourth, and sure, I know it’s a homonym. But that doesn’t make it any less of a banger of a birth date.

This year it fell on a Monday, and so the neighborhood spot he chose for his birthday dinner was pretty empty when my kids and I met him there to celebrate. He’s an extreme introvert to my extrovert, even more so as we age, so a mellow weeknight is just right. I smile, watching our family glow in the table candlelight. He orders an antipasto appetizer and our eldest daughter’s face lights up; they share a love of pink Italian meats that our youngest and I don’t feel. They devour the plate as we chat about school and work, just uneventful stuff, as families do.

We do this every year, for every birthday. Because while he’s my ex-husband, he’s still my co-parenting partner, my dear friend, and my family. It’s not an overstatement to say ours is one of the most pivotal relationships in my life.

It wasn’t always like this. Our marriage ended with some hard betrayals, a bumpy breakup at best. But even then, we managed to keep things amiable, as far as breakups and divorces go. A dozen years have passed since. Together we’ve raised our children from preschoolers to teenagers. I’m relieved to have those early days behind us, and to enjoy the peace of our family time.

Over the years, as friends and acquaintances have divorced, they’ve reached out to me for advice. “You and David get along so well,” they say, “how can we get there?”

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I never intended to be a poster child for how to divorce well.

But I’m infinitely thankful for the ongoing relationship we have, and the family we’ve grown together. I also love to be helpful, so I try to answer this question the best that I can.

The first thing I say is this: you need to ensure you married a kind man with high emotional intelligence, one who will value his ongoing relationship with you over any grievances about the demise of your marriage. If you didn’t, well, my only advice is to go back in a time machine and marry someone else.

Outside of time travel, my advice for how to “get there,” with “there” being a positive, supportive relationship with your ex?

You both need to march forth.

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Know that the early days after the split are the hardest part.

You can’t expect to transition seamlessly from spouses to friends and co-parents straight away. The best you can do is give each other the time and space you need, even as you continue to co-parent or interact in other ways, and especially as you begin to divide your one life and household into two.

March forth, knowing it takes time, it takes emotional distance, and it takes a lot of grace — from both partners, and rarely in equal parts. Be kind as you each learn to transition from spouses to ex-spouses. Hold space for each other to move at your own emotional paces. This isn’t a race, and the heart is a lousy timekeeper.

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Don’t dwell on what went wrong in your marriage.

It can be easy to assign blame your soon-to-be ex for why things fell apart. It’s good to take time the time you need to process what happened. But don’t continue to come to blows with your ex about issues once you’ve ended things. Process with your friends, or a therapist. Go to a rage room and smash stuff, if you must.

March forth, knowing that from now on, you’re forging a new, different relationship with this person, not trying to fix the old one. It may take time, but I’m here from the future to tell you it’s possible.

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Avert your eyes from that fork in the road.

Even if you made the choice to leave, you may doubt your certainty around the decision, to question if you should’ve stay. You may always have lingering doubts. You probably will, to be honest. But don’t gaze wistfully at the other path, trying to envision what could have been. You can’t live a healthy relationship in the present if you’re still steeped in the past. Once you’ve made the decision, what’s done is done.

March forth, as your relationship lives in the present, and grows into the future. You can’t Ctrl Z in real life. Don’t stagnate. Keep on typing and living your stories, onward.

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Try not to get annoyed with your ex.

You two are uniquely positioned to torment one another for all time, each knowing the other’s vulnerabilities, and each undoubtedly finding attributes in the other that are absolutely maddening. There are reasons why your marriage didn’t work. Most of them probably get on your last nerve from time to time. The good news is, those annoyances are no longer your full-time problem. So, put them down.

March forth, and learn how to manage your own emotional responses so you don’t fall back into old, irritable patterns. As much as possible, don’t share these annoyances with your ex. Speak up if they will impact your ability to form a healthy co-parenting or friendly relationship, but even then, don’t snark or fall back into unhealthy habits.

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Let go of control over how your spouse parents.

I had a friend years ago who was in the throes of a contentious divorce. They’d established a parenting plan for their kids with a 50/50 custody split. She vented to me, “when they’re with him, he just feeds them pizza or boxed mac and cheese for dinner.”

“Do they like pizza and boxed mac and cheese?” I asked her.

She confirmed they did. So I replied, “I understand you’d like them to eat a home-cooked meal each night. But eating pizza for dinner is fine. When they’re with their Dad, he gets to decide the rules at his house. And that includes meal-planning.”

March forth, I told her. When you divorce, you agree not to fight over house rules and norms, because you no longer share a home. This means your ex may make different parenting decisions than you would. So long as he’s not doing anything harmful, that has to be okay. Extend to each other the freedom to parent independently.

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Our relationship truly is a best-case scenario.

I recognize many exes have terrible circumstances to navigate. My advice doesn’t help in worst-case scenario situations, like separations involving acrimony or abuse.

I’m a product of a bad divorce, as is my ex. Neither of wanted that kind of turmoil, for ourselves or especially for our kids.

And these kids of ours. They’re amazing. They flit effortlessly between House 1 and House 2, as we call them, each of us accommodating the schedules of the group to keep up with our kids’ active lives.

They’re teenagers now, 16 and nearly 14. We know our years with them at home — our two homes — are winding down. I’d like to think we’ve modeled a positive, supportive, loving relationship for them all these years, even as it ceased to be a marriage when they were quite small. Our existing family model is all they’ve ever known.

We finish up dinner in what feels like a flash. The birthday boy proclaims he’s too full of pasta puttanesca to consider dessert. “Are you sure?” I ask him. I don’t feel like my birthday is really a birthday until I’ve had a candle ablaze in a cake.

He’s sure, he assures me. He’s anti-attention, so a birthday song is out of the question — no matter how much I want to make a fuss on his behalf.

I accept how different we are, and we pass on dessert and head out.

They hug their Dad goodnight in front of the restaurant, and we each go to our respective homes, the kids with me, because it’s Monday and that’s one of my nights. They’re both in mild food comas, dreading the homework that still awaits them and arguing over who gets first shower. You know, really normal teenage stuff — just as their Dad and I always wanted for them.

So, happy belated birthday to my wonderful ex-husband. I’m forever grateful we’re marching forth, together.

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Greetings!

I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m a founder and editor of three publications: Pink Hair & Pronouns, Three Imaginary Girls, and genXy. I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.

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