As I watched the extended family relationships unfold in Marriage Story, they made me think about the complex layered relationships in a marriage. The relationships a couple shares with their extended families are sometimes happy and healthy, sometimes enmeshed, other times at arms’ length, and often somewhere in the middle, but no matter the dynamic, there is an impact on the relationship and to the individuals and how they function (or cease to function). When I speak with clients, I’m cognizant of who’s really in the marriage, third-parties both seen and unseen, and who’s been excluded from it as I’ve found that unpacking those relationships helps to improve the long-term endurance of restructured families.
There are times family businesses exert control in a marriage, or family money gifted to an adult child comes with strings attached. Parents have been known to meddle, sometimes are overly invested in or extremely critical of a child’s spouse. In Marriage Story, Nicole’s mom is portrayed as adoring Charlie (until Nicole has a new boyfriend to whom she pretty quickly transfers her adoration). In any event during their marriage, Charlie, who does not have a close family himself, embraced Nicole’s family and they him, so the loss of their marriage means to him not only losing Nicole but also his relationships with her family. However, in “real life” as in the film it’s important for parents to recognize that despite the fact that they might be losing in-laws, their children will continue to have relationships with their aunts, cousins and grandparents. Honoring and respecting those relationships is important to children.
I think of Divorce Agreements as the “hardware” or the nuts and bolts of a restructured family. In an effort to construct compatible “software” I craft After-Marriage Covenants, something that’s more blessing than contract, and not enforceable in the Probate Court which is why I call them covenants and not contracts. They’re intended to detail the relational pieces couples don’t typically address in Divorce Agreements and focus on shared common values the couple wants to impart to their children as well as how they hope to deliver those messages. What ethics, values, hopes and dreams they share, as well as practical questions like: Can I still play golf with your brother? Will you still be sending my sister’s kids birthday cards? Can your mother and I still have coffee? The positives and the ambiguities, the social pragmatics and the foundational love shared for children are just as worth detailing as responsibility for the mortgage, how a pension plan will be divided and who will pay for college. In my experience, not looking “the software” straight in the eye nor addressing those issues at the time of divorce often results in their coming back to bite in later years.
It is of course an unfortunate paradox that as they create an After-Marriage Covenant couples sometimes recognize that it’s the first time they’ve had constructive conversations about the underlying third-party complexities that may have contributed to the erosion of their marriage. The upside is that by doing so they optimize the outcomes of their restructured family.