TIL DEATH DO US PART
The fairytale of a marriage that lasts forever is sadly not the case for many Australian couples. These therapists, experts and lawyers reveal the steps to a healthy divorce
Driving, plenty say, is the best place to have a tricky conversation but for us it was the worst. Recently separated, my husband and I were returning from a school concert and discussing how a forthcoming family occasion was going to be managed. We had opposing views and as we both tried to prosecute our case, the conversation became increasingly angry and accusatory.
I can’t recall what was said but there was such venom in our words I remember wondering what it would take for voices to crack a windscreen. When we pulled up outside our family home my husband jumped out and stormed down the street back to his rented flat. Furious, I stomped after him, blood boiling. And that’s when I remembered our two daughters, aged 13 and 10, were still in the back of the car.
Most separations have their low point, a moment where pain, fear, frustration or sadness is so intense, so sense-stealing that you’re left wondering who you are. That evening was my turning point. I had loved this man enough to make a life with him, to have two children with him. I needed to honour what we were, who we continued to be and what we might become.
Next month marks 10 years since we separated, just a few weeks after Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin announced their marriage was over with a statement that they were “consciously uncoupling”. Despite their sadness, they were emphatic: “We are, however, and will always be a family.”
While some scorned conscious uncoupling as Californian therapy speak and Twitter sent the hashtag viral with its trademark cynicism, I embraced the sentiment. Was it possible to divorce well? To retain respect and kindness through the unhappiest of times? To put the wellbeing of our children above our own hurting hearts? A decade later, a good divorce is no longer a wistful fantasy or a contrived delusion but an achievable goal.
As lives grow longer and more marriages falter, the concept of conscious uncoupling has moved from the fringes to the mainstream. As couples transition from “partners” to “parents” more and more are opting for a more respectful, collaborative and less expensive path to divorce.
If celebrities are the most visible exponents of the desire for an amicable rather than adversarial split, the real work and delicate manoeuvring is being done in the suburbs where the pandemic decimated once tolerable unions and the cost-of-living crisis has made asset splits and dual homes more challenging.
In September, Hugh Jackman and DeborraLee Furness announced their separation after 27 years with a statement celebrating their “wonderful, loving marriage” but declaring their need “to separate to pursue our individual growth”. They would undertake this next chapter “with gratitude, love and kindness”.
Representative of the growing trend for “grey divorce”, Meryl Streep and her husband Don Gummer recently revealed they had ended their 45-year marriage six years ago. “While they will always care for each other, they have chosen lives apart,” said a spokesperson.
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith also confirmed they’ve been separated for six years but have no plans to divorce. “We’ve just got deep love for each other,” Pinkett Smith said, “and we are going to figure out what that looks like for us.”
We’ve just got deep love for each other, and we are going to figure out what that looks like for us.
This reinterpretation of the old model of
divorce is driven by multiple factors, among them commonsense, a greater awareness of the impact of conflict on children, lifestyle and financial practicalities, and a repositioning of
separation less as failure and more as a life event to be navigated. As a result, couples are not just splitting more amicably, they’re embracing strategies that work for them.
The Project host Sarah Harris recently revealed that three years after separating from her husband Tom Ward, the pair took their two young sons on holiday to Fiji together in July. While they had separate hotel rooms, she pointed out that it was good for the boys to see their parents were still “wonderful friends” who wanted the best for them.
Likewise, singer and actor Natalie Bassingthwaighte says that despite being in a new relationship with a woman she believes her marriage to husband Cam McGlinchey was a success and that they still admired and respected each other. “It was very beautiful. We’ve done amazing things together, achieved a lot and have two incredible children.”
With new practices comes a new vocabulary. “Soft separation” refers to separated couples who by choice or necessity need to cohabit, while “nesting” involves the children remaining in the family home and the parents moving in and out depending on whose turn it is to be the primary carer. During my research I spoke to one woman who referred to her “wusband”. It refers to “was husband”, an infinitely gentler term than the more loaded “ex”.
Emily Parker, 44, and her husband Ryan,
43, embraced “nesting” when they separated a year ago. The pair share three daughters, Lucy, nine, Rose, 11, and Alice, 13, and rotate in and out of the family home on a weekly basis. Whoever is not with the girls stays in a two-bedroom unit they’ve rented 900m away and the couple has just extended the lease for another year.
As Emily explains, Ryan starts work early so she goes to the house every morning when he leaves to get the kids ready for school. As she works later he is there every evening to get them to their after-school activities. Whoever is staying with the children cooks dinner and the family has a weekly family dinner on their swap-over night. Ryan had read about “nesting” and when he pointed it out, Emily, who works as a research manager, investigated the pros and cons.
“I think this is the best possible way we could have done it because both of us see the kids most days still,” Emily says.
As she points out, they may one day be grandparents together. For now, their arrangement, though expensive, also softens that awful sense of rupture and displacement that can characterise divorce.
Communication is paramount and even though she says neither is volatile, they did their early planning via email, both to clearly formulate their own thoughts and allow the other to process them.
“We’re both respectful of each other as parents and we would never use the kids as pawns against each other,” she says. “We’re both capable of doing what’s best for them.”
While the pair have individual and shared bank accounts, they also have clear boundaries. If one parent wants to swap nights, it’s not conditional on the other knowing what they are doing. Likewise, if either re-partners, while they don’t require approval from the other, they would discuss it rather than potentially hearing about it from their children.
When the Parkers decided to split they turned
to The Separation Guide, an online hub of guidance and support which employs a threeminute questionnaire to assess couples’ level of amicability and tailor a pathway for their separation. Checklists help inform them about financial and parenting options while the site – which has seen record high inquiries in 2024 – also connects them with specialists who support the organisation’s goal of de-escalating tension and ensuring the process is affordable.
Wajiha Ahmed is part of The Separation Guide network and as a family lawyer and qualified mediator she has a 360-degree view of divorce from the bitter to the amicable. When couples bring their anger and recriminations to her she is blunt. “The one thing I chat to parties about, especially if I’m working as a lawyer, is that the opportunity cost and the time cost that’s involved in an adversarial process means it’s only going to benefit one person – that’s me.”
It was going through a “horrific” divorce of her own in 2006 that led Ahmed to train as a mediator and, later, divert from commercial to family law. “It was very expensive, very long and it definitely took a toll on me from a mental health perspective,” she says. “I didn’t want anyone else to go through it if I could help it.”
Ahmed began as a mediator with Legal Aid and says her continuing work with the organisation as well as her master’s degree focused on cross-cultural dispute resolution has given her insight into how to help clients from differing socio-economic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. “There is no one-size-fits-all in the mediation space but there is this really lovely toolbox that we get to use of things that work and don’t work which you hone over years in order to help parties reach agreement and where they are in control of the outcome.”
So from where Ahmed sits, what actually makes a good divorce particularly when the emotions which characterise the end of a relationship such as grief, anger and resentment seem counterintuitive to harmony?
She nominates several elements that can aid a calmer split: a slower approach, a genuine commitment to transitioning from partners to co-parents when children are involved, and a recognition that if you’ve been in a relationship with another person they must mean something to you. “You need respect, both for yourself and the other person,” she says.
While divorce, as the second most stressful life event after death, often brings out the worst in human behaviour, Ahmed has seen some of the best. She recalls a couple where one partner had an autism spectrum disorder and the other took care in ensuring there were sufficient breaks for the partner to process information. She noted that they travelled to and from mediation together.
She was also astonished to discover another divorcing couple both had large and identical superannuation balances. The wife had taken time out from work to raise their four children but they had income split the husband’s salary to ensure both were looked after when it came to their retirement.
Divorce does not need to be a negative thing, people don’t need to feel ashamed
While the number of divorces in Australia has
trended downward since the 1990s, figures spiked in 2021 with 56,244 marriages ending in divorce, according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies which says the recent increase may reflect administrative changes. While de facto relationships are not captured in the statistics, close to 50 per cent of marriages falter with a greater number of those aged over 45 separating.
Other key divorce trends, according to new research from The Separation Guide, is that the cost of living is making separation impossible for many while the societal cost – the impact of divorce on workplaces due to missed workdays, higher stress and decreased productivity – is estimated at more than $800,000 a couple. While do-it-yourself divorces are becoming more popular, with 33 per cent of couples reporting they had settled without guidance, the organisation says only seven per cent of those using their triaging Q&A were suitably informed to use a DIY approach. As the report states, “More than 42 per cent of those with primary caregiver responsibilities had reached a 50-50 split of assets without seeking any advice about the unfairness of the arrangement.” This is contributing to women being at greater risk of financial disadvantage.
Yet despite nearly a decade of awareness around “conscious uncoupling” and more resources available to aid a good divorce, The Separation Guide reports a notable rise in acrimonious separations with only 49 per cent of those separating in 2022 saying their split was amicable compared to 70 per cent in 2020.
Katherine Woodward Thomas, the family therapist who coined the term “conscious uncoupling” back in 2009, told me the fact we anticipate rancour, hostility and bitterness indicates that while most aspire to an amicable break-up, in reality we tend to collapse into blame and overwhelming emotions. Yet divorce, she argues, is as much a beginning as an ending. “I really created it (conscious uncoupling) for the person who was suffering with a broken heart and a shattered life and was wrestling with overwhelming emotions like rage or a desire for revenge or this deep heartsickness.”
She says her five-step program takes people through post-traumatic stress to post-traumatic growth. “We become conscious of ourselves and who we are going to be in the face of this devastating experience.” She also believes our values are still aligned to an era when the average lifespan was less than 40 and the expectation was that you would marry for life.
“There’s this belief that if a marriage ends before one or both parties die then that marriage is a failure (yet) it’s inauthentic to the lives that we’re living,” she explains.
“If serial monogamy is the new normal, and statistically it is, we have to learn to do this better.
“We have to learn not to do damage from those primitive parts of ourselves, to protect our children, to protect our own hearts and to protect our future in love. And to use the break-up in a way that’s going to help us love better on the other side.” ■