Chapter 1: 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.
Chapter 2: 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?
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Chapter 3: 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.
If your relationship's healthy enough to at least come to that kind of arrangement, wouldn't it follow that your relationship's likely healthy enough to have a divorce where the split is handled well? And we don't ever hear like positive narratives about kids whose parents split up, but it's a healthy environment. And maybe that's part of the problem. Yeah.
Yeah, there are very few narratives of it done well. But if you keep your nervous system as grounded as you can, and you just keep like your North Star is, I need to do what is best for these little kids. And do your own work, be in therapy, whatever you need to do to not be super reactive in a process that is kind of designed to make people reactive.
You can really model for kids like this is how we go through hard things and like keep our ish together, you know. I want to see like a deep Hollywood drama, like a deep, you know, family narrative that's really compelling where the parents split up. They deal with it amicably and the kids are happy. Like that's a movie like, you know, the show Shrinking on Apple.
Like I feel like a show like that. We don't see these depictions and they exist. I know them to exist. I have friends who split up and they do it well. I don't think it would be good entertainment because it would just be everyone making good choices that are not narratively compelling. True, true.
So if a couple is hearing us talk right now and sort of made the decision to stay together, what would you tell a couple that made this decision? I don't know, five years ago, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Would you advise them to look at it again? I don't want to be judgmental. I'm
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Chapter 4: How do parents navigate the complexities of staying together while unhappy?
But most of the time, that's not the case. For parents that are in this situation, should they be telling their kids that they're in this situation? You know, like let's say you're adopted. Most parents choose to tell the kids young and they should. You shouldn't keep things from kids.
But for this one, like even just holding the secret, is it okay to tell your child that mommy and daddy don't get along so great, but we're in a household together and our family's together because we love the family or something like that? Yeah. No, that's way too much pressure on the kid.
And then the kid feels like, oh, well, I better do a good job and I better be OK because my parents made this sacrifice. A family is generally as sick as its secrets. Right. So just make sure the secret you're keeping isn't one that is festering. Right. The truth tends to come to light, particularly in that example in this day of genetic testing being available to anyone with 100 bucks, right?
And, you know, maybe the secret isn't one like an adoption or, you know, kind of a... The structure of the family or the creation of the family not being the typical mommy and daddy fell in love because that is not the story of every family's creation. But don't give your kid a job that they didn't opt into. Kids that have jobs tend to feel like they failed at that job. Interesting.
Now, what about when the kids like when you actually decide to split when the kids leave the nest? Do you tell them then like my friend got told and it messed up? You got to take that one to the grave. No, I think maybe you're right. I think it's fundamentally different than like telling a kid they were adopted or something like that. Yes, it is. It's almost like selfish.
Like you're using your kid to confess something because it's been on your shoulders when you made this decision to keep it from them. You should keep it that way. It also alters the power dynamic in the relationship. Like the kid is always the kid. And I know that some people go on to have kind of like friendship relationships with their parents in adulthood.
Only in adulthood is that somewhat acceptable. Because when it happens when a kid is little, that's... absolutely not okay and I see that starting to happen when people are going through a really gnarly separation and like your kid is not your friend your kid is your kid keep them the kid let them be a child and I think 30 is the minimum age for friend parent probably yeah yeah Yes, absolutely.
Again, just every kid I know that was born with a job, like keeping the parents together, trying to revitalize the marriage, has this deep sense of being a failure. And we don't want to put that on the kid. Well, Laurel, I've enjoyed the chat. Thanks for coming on the show and tackling this one with me. Always happy to. Laurel Vander Torn. Check her out at Laurel Therapy Collective.
And that serves California and Florida.
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