My husband (42m) and I (36f) have been married 13 years, together for 16, and we have an 8 y.o. and 1 y.o. together. We’ve struggled for years, seen 3 different couples counselors for about a year each… we’ve tried. About a month ago we agreed we were done as a couple, but we’re open to trying a parenting marriage (still living as a family, coparenting, but no romantic relationship and we could date— neither of us has yet, though).

We want to see if this could work since it would benefit the kids to have regular access to us instead of splitting homes and we generally have a good division of household/parenting duties, both of us work full time. With the real estate market and current mortgage rates what they are, it would be a big financial/standard of living hit for either of us to move out. We figure it’s worth a try, and if it’s not working after a year we’ll call it and split assets, work out joint custody, all that.

So, what to tell our older kid? (Younger one isn’t speaking much yet so we’re focused on the older for this.) We’ve had separate bedrooms for years and nothing is really changing in his world — for now at least, there’s a chance this won’t work out — but I want to be able to talk to friends about it, since it’s a major shift for me. Our counselor has said, and we agree, that we need to tell our kid before anyone else knows, since people talk and the worst case scenario would be him learning about it from someone other than us. The counselor is encouraging us to work out a schedule where one parent is out of the house certain days, and that’s something we can point to as changing in our kid’s life. But it seems silly to create a schedule just for the sake of having something concrete to show our kid, when really what we want is to continue on as before but not a couple, more like coparenting roommates. I think husband is hesitant to be open about it because he hopes we’ll eventually get back together (even though he agrees it hasn’t been a good marriage for a while, he says he’s going to work on his ‘stuff’). I’m definitely done, so I’m not worried about telling people we’re not a couple anymore and then having to walk it back later.

Has anyone tried an arrangement like this, or tried to explain to an 8/9/10 year old about an unusual family arrangement? I don’t want to introduce unnecessary uncertainty/stress into his life, but don’t want it to be a “secret”. He’s a pretty savvy kid and is certainly aware that his parents argue and don’t get along at times.