To ask you to tell me about your good relationship with your ex?

[2019already]

Can you get divorced, share children and remain friends? I’m determined to achieve this and prepared to make huge compromises to maintain our friendship. Can you tell me what you’ve done to maintain a good relationship with your ex.

We had a difficult split - I left him. Things have settled now, he has a new partner & we exchanged token gifts at Xmas. God bless his lovely mum who buys Xmas gifts for me & OH!

We're friendly, but not (in my opinion) friends, as such.

We do joint Xmas and birthday presents for ds2, and alternate Christmasses- I and ds1 just spent Christmas Day with him and his parents, next year XH will come to mine for the day. We also jointly host ds2's birthday parties and do school occasions together.

However I firmly put the kibosh on XH joining us for our summer holiday next year! That's a step too far.

I actually have to give XH a lot of the credit tbh- I initiated the split and he has been very magnanimous , as have his parents. In the end we all agreed that ds2's happiness was paramount.

You’re right @youaremyrain that it requires him to be on board with making a friendly coparenting relationship work. DS1’s dad always has been; DS2’s dad is a controlling arsehole and would never achieve it. I’m not actually the same with them though. I’m cold but polite to my recent ex, but friendly and chatty with DS1’s dad. The recent ex was very abusive which makes all the difference. I’m just not willing to invite the man who treated me that way into my house or socialise with him at all.

Weirdly I’m friendly with the ex-PILs. But haven’t had anything to do with DS1’s paternal grandparents for nearly 20 years. Again, this is because the ex-PILs are lovely and kind; the other pair are very odd indeed and always hated me (right from the start because I wasn’t a catholic, I kid you not).

I guess you can only manage to be friendly with people who are willing and capable of being friendly. OP: I hope your ex falls into that broad category.