Pseudo Housing Instability

Nesting is a living arrangement that many divorcing couples with children find useful when they are transitioning from their original cohabitating set up to separate housing. What is nesting you ask? Nesting is when the kiddos stay in the original marital home and the parents switch in and out. This is an alternative to the traditional standard of the children bouncing back and forth between wherever the parent's are staying.

Nesting is a great temporizing measure until a more permanent housing set up can be established, which can often take months to years depending on financials, the housing market, and the amicability of the divorce. The benefits of the nesting arrangement are numerous, first and foremost among them being environmental stability for the children during a time of enormous uncertainty and flux in their lives. I will go more into nesting and childcare scheduling in a later post, but in this post I wanted to broach an aspect that is important to address for the parents doing the nesting; the feeling of 'pseudo housing instability'.

Nesting is usually done in a week on week off, or now more commonly in a 2-2-5-5 schedule. (In a 2-2-5-5 schedule one parent takes the kiddos every Monday and Tuesday forever, the other parent takes the kiddos every Wednesday and Thursday forever, and the parents alternate every other Friday, Saturday, Sunday block. Thus each parent is either on for 2 days in a row or 5 days in a row.) This means that every 2 to 7 days, depending on the schedule you agree to, you are sleeping in a different bed, cooking in a different kitchen, having access to different amenities, commuting from different places, having access to different wardrobes, etc. If you work from home that means only having access to your home office half the time. As most humans are creatures of routine, this can be destabilizing. 

To go even deeper, if you are financially fortunate and you can get your own apartment, then at least you have a stable space to go to that is your own. You can keep your clothes there, stock your fridge the way you want it, be as messy or as fastidious as you please, and even host friends and family. However, affording two apartments (one for each parent that is nesting) AND paying for a marital home in the middle of a divorce is a tremendous amount of financial strain. Using only one apartment between the two divorcing parents can become complicated quickly. Thus, may people will choose to stay with friends and family during their 'off days'. This is often a great set up as it can provide increased social support and strengthens social connections at a time when they are most needed. However, especially if the nesting is ongoing for months, it is common for people to become fatigued and begin feeling like a burden on friends and family. It is also common for parents to get exhausted from moving around so much and packing everything they need for 5 days away from home every other week. I enjoy camping as much as anyone, but there is a reason humans evolved to live in stable housing. 

In acknowledging these feelings of instability and fatigue, I encourage my patients to find solace in the fact that it is them getting exhausted by the pseudo housing instability and not their kiddos. Most can find fortitude in knowing that they are preventing this exact suffering in their children. After all, this is why most parents opt into nesting in the first place.

The feeling of pseudo housing instability is real, predictable, and is very much a part of my conversation with patients when discussing these matters. As with most things, there are trade offs. On the whole most people find nesting to be an acceptable alternative to throwing their kids into the confusion of bumping around multiple locations. Thus, after we discuss the specific circumstances, I usually recommend my patient's that have kids start off with nesting in a 2-2-5-5 format as the default and adjusting from there. I am diligent about discussing the drawbacks of each housing model and formulating strategies to mitigate the downsides while maximizing the upsides.