The one that isn’t really about Brad and Angelina

I love using celebrity gossip to talk about the marriage work in my office. (All I know about Angelina and Brad I got from People Magazine) There are two stories and those stories are connected but no one is quite sure how.

#1  Brad is under investigation for child abuse by Children and Family services. He is accused of getting verbally abusive and “physical” with one of their kids on a plane when he was drinking.

#2-Angelina filed for divorce, requesting full physical custody, allowing him visitation. In California the presumption is 50/50 and joint custody.

The divorces I see might not be as high-dollar or have as high PR stakes but all divorces are high stakes.

I don’t believe that most people divorce easily. I don’t think most divorces are destructive. I do work damn hard to help people figure out how to either have a healthier marriage or a healthier divorce.

I wish I could have told Bradgelina a few things- I wish I could tell lots of parents a few things before things get so messy.

You should know the laws and presumptions about divorcing couples in your state. In Minnesota, almost as much as in California most couples have joint physical and legal custody and the norm is for kids to spend 50% of their time with each parent. It takes significant stressors to change that and a great deal of very real abuse for the courts to limit a parent’s contact. And those fights are the ugliest, the hardest on kids and the most expensive. They are also where people may be attempting to punish a partner for marital issues that have little to do with the kids.

If you are worried about your partner’s behavior, parenting, anger or drug/alcohol abuse please get help. Bring in professionals. Let people know. If your partner won’t get  help, get help without them. This is your kids’ parent. They are family. Nothing changes that. It is easier and more productive to work on these issues together before the marriage is beyond repair. Divorce is a terrible time for secrets to be revealed. It is also a lousy solution to parenting and anger issues.

Things that almost never matter in divorce court- pot usage, drinking, affairs, swearing, occasional incidents of temper outburst, general “shitty parenting”. Fair or not, courts are not involved in judging who is the better parent. Courts were never meant to manage family relationships. Courts are not the place to teach parenting or argue over what school to go to or bedtime.

Somewhere between 60-70% of divorces are filed by women and mostly they are filed when some invisible line in the sand is crossed, where they are just not willing to wait any longer for things to change- no matter how pretty he is. Anti-divorce campaigns put a ton of stress on women who already are socialized to make concessions and who take a larger share of the responsibility for their kids emotional well being. It is a crushing burden deciding between staying married and unhappy (and often feeling disrespected) or taking the responsibility for “breaking up” a family.

It won’t be a problem for Brad and Angelina’s kids but the most serious negative impact of divorce for most kids is poverty. We have confused divorce as bad for kids with poverty being bad for kids. The research says bad marriages and bad divorces are bad for kids. Grown ups who loved each other enough to have kids need to figure shit out. That can happen best together or best apart.

• Learn to fight. Fight. Pick the important ones and move forward.
• Hold your partner accountable. Let them know that they are being mean or disrespectful or unreliable. Tell them you are worried about their mood or their temper or their use.
• Do not bury your head in the sand. Divorce is not something you avoid by refusing to talk about it. It takes two to get married and only one to get divorced.
• Your marriage may not last forever but your parenting partnership does. That relationship- how you parent together, how you talk about your kids, how you learn to be the best parent you can be- that matters.
• Never threaten divorce but be honest about the risks. Discussions about the future, about the strength of the marriage should not occur during a fight. If you cannot talk about it without destroying each other, it means you need a marriage counselor to show you the way.

It is likely too late for Brad and Angelina.  I hope they can get themselves out of their marriage without destroying their commitment to parenting well. I wonder about before it was too late. I wonder how this could have gone where maybe they lived happily ever after or maybe they just quietly, peaceably decided to find another way to be a family.

Maureen