It is a year and three days since Cattenberg and I formally announced the splitting up ness of it all

There is a lot of piss taking of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's "conscious uncoupling" announcement, and in fairness it does make it all sound a bit wanky. But here's the thing. Sometimes the acrimony is already done by the time you decide to split up. Sometimes splitting up is a way of actually holding on to the good part of a relationship, by removing the taint of the bad. For Cattenberg and I splitting up was a way of regaining a friendship, by removing the façade of something that wasn't there anyway we were able to be kinder to each other, be supportive of each other, because we were no longer operating under the pressure of pretending to ourselves and to others that we were more than that. It was a way of being the parents that we wanted to be, and creating a happier, albeit geographically wider, home environment for Kittencat. Having parents who live together is surely less important that having parents who can have a civilised conversation, who care about each other and can be in the same room together. We regained that by breaking up. Though there is no residual attraction, we talk a lot, and we still value the others time, company and friendship, and, as well as friendship, a lot of the value we place on each other is based on our relationship as Kittencat's parents. Our break up was probably the most civilised I've ever heard about, it took months to gather the courage to broach the subject in the first place, yet the relief we both felt as we had the conversation was palpable. We bought each other splitting up presents, and we stopped avoiding spending time in which ever room the other was in.

This is how we told our friends. There's never a great way, but we sat down with respective laptops, agreed that I would do bad cop, and then Cattenberg would lighten it, and sent the following messages.



Me:
Dear all, 

[Cattenberg] and I wanted to send you a message to let you know that we are splitting up. It’s entirely amicable, and there’s no ill feeling, so we don’t want anyone to feel awkward about taking sides, or who to invite to what etc. We’ll still be living together for a time whilst we figure out logistics, and no doubt we’ll still like things on each other’s Facebook pages, and, occasionally, babysitting permitting, still go to the same events. We both feel that we’ve been living separately for a long time now and really this is just an acknowledgement of the way things are. We’ve still got family to tell, so we’d appreciate it if reference to this does not go on either of our facebook walls for a time.

Cattenberg:
What [Woodcat] said, basically. Mummy and Daddy love you all very much and this doesn't mean you'll have to go to a new school or split Christmas.



I think it went well, and that as friends we are awesome. As more than that we are significantly less, and I'm glad that we were brave enough, and honest enough, to allow each other to be happy by walking away.