Yes, I think as long as you’re honest and authentic with your children in an age-appropriate way, they can adjust perfectly well to the idea that you are good friends now instead of a couple. It all hangs on whether what they see happening matches up to what they’re being told (I mean, it’s no good assuring them you’re friends if there is palpable tension between you). If it does match up, and everyone is kind and respectful and stuff, it can totally work.
Our kids know we used to be a couple, in love, boyfriend/girlfriend etc., for a long time - but that over time, our relationship changed. They had already been aware of other families (of school friends or classmates etc.) where the parents split up, so they had an understanding that this sometimes happens, and that often in those situations, one of the parents moves out.
We explained that, just like in those families, we have stopped being a couple, because sometimes that kind of relationship does not last forever - but that we are lucky enough to still like each other a lot and to feel happy about both sharing a home with them, so nobody was going to move out.
We have committed to sharing a home until they are grown up enough to want to move out into their own places, and at that stage we’ll see how things look and decide what to do next.
Sorry, this is all really obvious-sounding and probably not that useful. I don’t normally post about it on here under my usual name. Trying to think what else to say that might help...
I do really recommend talking to a therapist with experience in this area if you can afford to. It helped me so much. Even though our breakup was amicable, it still took a LOT of soul-searching to get to the point where we felt we were sure we could do this. Obviously you don’t want to tell the kids that you’re doing it, and then have it all break down and crumble after six months. And buying a bigger home together was a big deal.
That period of deciding what would happen - the period between us acknowledging to each other that our relationship had ended, and breaking the news to the children - that was really hard. We didn’t want to tell them we had split until we knew what was happening next, because we wanted to be able to answer their questions about who was living where and how their lives would be affected.
When we finally were ready to “come out” to them it was a huge, huge relief to be able to be honest.
We did then have about 18 more months of XDP sleeping on the sofabed though, before we could find a local house we could afford with 4 bedrooms. That really wasn’t great! But we felt like it would have been too confusing, muddling the message, if we’d shared a bedroom.
And after I met my current DP it also took lots of time to get to the stage of introducing him into the picture. It’s all been slow, slow, slow and careful.