Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: divorce in cohousing

[Diana Carroll (dianaecarroll]

On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 11:00 AM, Lyle Scheer <wonko [at] monkeyhouse.org> 
wrote:

>
>
> OK... first an admission.  I'm the half of a divorce in Ashland
> cohousing that I think triggered this discussion request from Doug.
> ...
>
> One of the trickiest parts in my personal divorce was around who stayed
> in co-housing... neither of us wanted to leave.  To have a policy that
> automatically forces one to leave just piles more stress on to the whole
> thing.
>
>
Lyle, I'm sorry you are going through this tough thing.  Divorce and its
impact on the family is hard enough, made harder still trying to handle the
impact on a whole community.

I hope you, your (ex)spouse and your fellow Ashland community members are
all able to move through this with a minimum of anger and hurt.  I don't
see how creating a policy against the community involvement of you or your
(ex)spouse is going to insulate the community...if anything, it will surely
make it worse because it forces people not involved in the family to take
sides.

Even if such a policy was advisable in the long run (and I can't see how it
is), trying to push it through while the wounds of a recent divorce are
still fresh is surely the worst time to do it.  I've found that policies
creating during the aftermath of an "issue" are usually reactive instead of
proactive, and make for poor policies that will have unintended
consequences down the road.

Good luck.

Diana