Staying Together For the Kids
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Smart, sharp, and slightly unhinged. Late Night's Fresh Perspective. The Last Show with David Cooper. Parents who don't get along great, who might want to break up but end up staying together for the kids. I've heard this one, but is it ever a good idea? That is what we're going to discuss here with Laurel Vandertorn, a licensed therapist. Check her out at Laurel Therapy Collective, which serves California and Florida. Laurel, welcome to the show. Hi. Hi. I had friends growing up whose parents did this split up when the friend was 20 and then elected to tell their friend that they just excuse me, tell my friend that they just stayed together for the kids. And it really messed with my my friend's brain.
Is it ever a good idea to stay together for the kids?
I got to say, I don't know that this is a great idea, but let's jump into the topic. And before we do, I just want to kind of speak to situations where there's abuse involved. Do you want to just set that up for me? The appropriateness of staying together for the kids is very nuanced because every situation is a little bit different. And if there's any safety, then that's not even a question like, you know, your safety, safety of the kids. That's paramount. And keeping the relationship together is absolutely going to cause more harm than good in situations where there's a safety concern. What I want to discuss is really where parents both elect to stay together as a mutual decision. I don't have kids.
How does a couple even get to that point where they're like on the verge of breaking up and then they have this conversation where they decide to do this? Right. Well, splitting up is logistically very complicated and financially complicated, emotionally complicated. And some couples are just like, yeah, that sounds like a lot of work. And the family court system in the U.S. is especially gnarly. And some people just don't want to deal with it. So it's kind of an avoidance strategy. She's like, well, we can just kind of keep, you know, like bumping along. Yeah. because that sounds better than the great unknown of splitting up. I was married. We didn't have kids. We didn't own a house together. We just rented an apartment.
And the unmingling of just the physical belongings was maybe the most emotionally exhausting activity I've ever done in my life. I can't imagine unmingling of a relationship with kids. Is it good for the kids, though? Like, don't the kids kind of know what's going on and something doesn't feel right? Yeah, absolutely. And it becomes an emotionally tense environment. And if your little nervous system is calibrating to the world in the midst of a very tense relationship, that doesn't really set these future adults up for success emotionally and in their relationships. Because what are they going to replicate? And is that a skill parents really want to learn to fake being happy all the time?
What factors should be considered when deciding to stay together for children?
Like that's got to be a bit of a soul crushing skill that you've got to now master or attempt to master for the sake of your kids. No one's good at it. The kids see right through it. Unless you're like a full on sociopath. But yeah, no one is good at it. Yeah. Like when I go to a friend's house and it's a dinner party, I can tell when the couple is in a fight and they're pretending not to be in a fight. And that's just with an hour. Could you imagine like 18 years of that? I know it's it's rough. And it's not that there's no negative impact of splitting up. But I think people overestimate the negative impact of separating and underestimate the negative impact of staying together. Why do you think people do that?
It's just the great unknown, right? Having to figure out what's it going to look like? What would a custody agreement look like? All of that sounds really big and unfamiliar and scary. And so they're like, well, this is what I know. And they just decide to stick with it's kind of like that low level or high level unhappiness. I feel like the narrative of the parents that split up amicably, and clearly you're able to have some level of communication with your partner if you can come to this kind of arrangement where you stay together for the kids.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–0:48
2
Is it ever a good idea to stay together for the kids?
0:48–3:20
3
What factors should be considered when deciding to stay together for children?
3:20–6:42
4
How do parents navigate the complexities of staying together while unhappy?
6:42–9:32
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