Esther Perel on Co-Parenting After Divorce

The Short Answer

Esther Perel is the most cited relationship therapist alive, best known for her work on infidelity, desire, and long-term relationships in Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs. Her most useful framework for divorced co-parents is this. The marriage that ended and the co-parenting partnership that follows are two different relationships with the same person, governed by different rules. You can be civil without being forgiving. You can co-parent without being friends. And the story you tell about why the marriage ended will shape your co-parenting for the next decade.

Key Takeaways

• Esther Perel is a Belgian American psychotherapist, bestselling author, and host of the podcast Where Should We Begin?
• Her work on betrayal, identity, and relationship reinvention applies directly to post-divorce co-parenting.
• Perel argues we have "two or three marriages in our adult life, and some of us have them with the same person." For divorced parents, the co-parenting partnership is the new relationship.
• Forgiveness is not required for co-parenting to work. Civility is a behavior. Forgiveness is an internal process.
• One piece of Perel's work to leave behind. Her "security versus adventure" framework is for couples deciding their relationship. After divorce, the dialectic is between your healing and your child's stability.

Reviewed and written by Cindy Weathers, LMFT, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and co-founder of Two Paths. Cindy specializes in high conflict divorce, co-parenting after betrayal, and helping separated parents build functional partnerships for the sake of their children.

Esther Perel might be the most quoted relationship therapist alive.

You have probably heard her on a podcast. You have seen the TED talks. You have read or heard about Mating in Captivity or The State of Affairs. She is a Belgian American psychotherapist who has spent decades working with couples, particularly couples navigating betrayal, desire, and the stories they tell about their own relationships.

Most of her work focuses on people who are still together, or trying to figure out whether to be. But some of her most powerful insights apply directly to people who have already left. Especially people now trying to co-parent with someone they used to love.

I want to walk you through the pieces of Perel's work that I find most useful in my practice for divorced and separated parents. And one piece of her work I think you should leave behind.

The First Reframe. You Will Have More Than One Marriage

One of Perel's most repeated lines is this. "We will have two or three marriages in our adult life, and some of us will have them with the same person."

For couples who stay together, she means the relationship reinvents itself across decades. For couples who do not, the framing is just as useful. The marriage you had is over. But the co-parenting relationship is a new relationship with the same person. Different terms, different structure, different stakes.

This matters because most people try to co-parent inside the rules of the relationship they just ended. They expect the same emotional availability, the same level of trust, the same way of communicating. And when that does not happen, they feel betrayed all over again.

It is not the same relationship. It cannot be. You are not married to this person anymore. You are co-parenting with them.

The sooner you accept that this is a new arrangement with its own rules, the sooner the constant disappointment starts to ease.

What Perel Says About Betrayal

Perel's book The State of Affairs is the most clear eyed thing I have read about infidelity. Not because she defends it. She does not. But because she takes seriously the question of what an affair actually means, and how a couple can navigate what comes after.

Most of her readers are couples deciding whether to stay together. But if you are reading this, you may have already made the decision to leave, and you are now in the harder phase. You are still entangled with the person who hurt you, because you share children.

Here is what I take from Perel for co-parenting after betrayal.

The affair was not the only thing that ended the marriage. Affairs rarely happen in healthy relationships, and they are almost never about sex alone. Perel argues that affairs are often about identity. The person who strayed was looking for a version of themselves they had lost. That does not excuse anything. But it does mean the marriage was probably already in trouble.

Forgiveness is not required for co-parenting to work. You do not have to forgive your ex to be civil with them at a school event. You do not have to forgive them to send a brief, neutral text about pickup time. Civility is a behavior. Forgiveness is an internal process. They can be uncoupled, and for most divorced co-parents, they need to be.

The story you tell about why the marriage ended will shape your co-parenting for years. Perel talks about how couples in distress rehearse the story of their pain so often that it becomes the only story they can tell. The same thing happens after divorce. If your entire narrative about your ex is "they ruined our family," every interaction with them confirms that story. You become incapable of receiving any signal from them that does not fit.

You do not have to rewrite the story. You just have to recognize that it is a story, not the story. And the version you carry into co-parenting matters.

What Perel Gets Right About Identity

One of Perel's biggest contributions is the idea that we are not just one self. We are many selves, and different relationships pull different versions of us forward.

This is enormously useful for co-parenting. Because here is what happens to most divorced parents. You spent years being a particular version of yourself in your marriage. Maybe the patient one. Maybe the practical one. Maybe the one who managed the emotional weather of the household. And now you are co-parenting with the person who knew that version of you. And around them, you become that version again, even when you do not want to.

The work, in Perel's framing, is to bring a new version of yourself to this new relationship. Not the wife you used to be. Not the husband you used to be. The co-parent. A new role, a new set of behaviors, a new way of showing up.

This is harder than it sounds. Your ex still treats you like the person you were married to. Your nervous system still responds to them like you are married. You will sometimes catch yourself falling into old dynamics within seconds of seeing them.

But every time you respond as the co-parent rather than as the former spouse, you reinforce the new identity. Over time, it sticks.

Where I Diverge From Perel for Divorced Parents

I want to be honest about something. There is one piece of Perel's work I think you should be careful with after divorce.

Perel writes beautifully about the tension between security and adventure in long term relationships. About how desire fades when partners become too predictable, too safe, too domestic. Her work has helped many couples find their way back to each other.

But that framework can be weaponized after divorce. I see it constantly. People look back at the marriage and decide it ended because their ex was too boring, too predictable, too domestic. Or they decide they themselves were stifled by the relationship and now need to "find themselves." And in the process, the children's stability becomes secondary to the parent's adventure.

This is where Perel's audience differs from the audience for co-parenting work. If you are still in the marriage, the question of how to keep desire alive is a real one. If you are already out, and you have kids, the question is different. It is how to give your children stable parenting from both of their parents while you also rebuild your own life.

Perel's tension between security and adventure is a couples' question. The post divorce question is between your own healing and your child's stability. Both matter. But they are not the same dialectic.

If you find yourself using Perel's framing to justify behavior that is destabilizing your kids, like rushing into new relationships, prioritizing your new identity over their routines, or treating co-parenting as a constraint on your freedom, that is a sign you are taking the wrong lesson from her work.

The Most Useful Line I Have Stolen From Her

Perel says, often, "the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life."

I steal this for my divorced clients constantly. Because here is what most people do not realize. Even after the marriage ends, the quality of your co-parenting relationship is still going to determine the quality of your life for the next 10 or 15 years.

You can have a peaceful, organized, low conflict co-parenting relationship with someone you do not love anymore. And the quality of your life will be much higher.

Or you can have a high conflict, dramatic, constantly escalating co-parenting relationship with someone you do not love anymore. And the quality of your life will be much lower. For the next 10 or 15 years. Until your youngest is grown.

The choice you make about how to relate to your ex now is not just about them. It is about how you want to live for the next decade. Perel's framing makes this clearer than almost anything else I have read.

The Bottom Line

Esther Perel is not writing primarily for divorced co-parents. But the most portable parts of her work apply almost perfectly.

You will have a new relationship with your ex. It is not the marriage. It is the co-parenting partnership, and it follows different rules.

You can be civil without being forgiving.

The story you tell about why the marriage ended will shape every interaction you have with your ex for years. Choose it carefully.

You do not have to bring the same version of yourself to your co-parenting that you brought to your marriage. In fact, you should not.

And the quality of your relationship with your ex, even now, is going to determine a great deal of the quality of your life.

If you are still in the early, raw phase of separation, the most important next step is structure. Our parenting plan template gives you a starting framework, and our custody schedules guide walks you through which schedules actually work for which family situations.

Perel says the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. The relationship you build with your ex from here, even if you do not love them anymore, is one of the relationships that matters most.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Esther Perel?

Esther Perel is a Belgian American psychotherapist who has practiced for over 35 years. She is the author of two bestselling books, Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, and the host of the podcast Where Should We Begin? Her TED talks have been viewed over 40 million times combined. She is widely considered one of the most influential voices in modern couples therapy.

What does Esther Perel say about divorce?

Perel does not advocate for or against divorce. She treats it as one possible outcome of a relationship in crisis. Her most useful framing for divorced people is that we have "two or three marriages in our adult life, and some of us have them with the same person." For people who divorce, this reframes the post-divorce co-parenting relationship as a new relationship with new rules, not a failed continuation of the old one.

Can you co-parent with someone who cheated on you?

Yes, and most divorced parents in this situation eventually find a way to. Esther Perel's work in The State of Affairs helps explain why. Affairs are usually about identity and unmet needs in the marriage, not just about the affair partner. Understanding that does not require forgiveness, but it can help you separate the person who hurt you from the person who is your child's other parent. Civility is a behavior you can perform even without forgiveness.

Does Esther Perel write about co-parenting specifically?

Not directly. Most of her work focuses on couples in long-term relationships and people navigating betrayal or desire issues. But many of her frameworks apply to co-parenting, especially her work on identity, betrayal recovery, and the stories couples tell themselves about their relationships.

What is Esther Perel's most famous quote?

The line that gets quoted most often is "the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life." For divorced co-parents, this is especially relevant. Even after the romantic relationship ends, the quality of the co-parenting relationship will shape your life for the entire time you are raising your children together, which can easily be 15 or 20 more years.

Should I read Mating in Captivity if I'm divorced?

Mating in Captivity is primarily about how to keep desire alive in long-term relationships, which is less relevant if you are no longer in one. For divorced readers, The State of Affairs is more useful. It addresses betrayal, the meaning of infidelity, and how to make sense of a relationship that ended badly. The framework helps many divorced people stop replaying the affair and start building a new chapter.

How do you co-parent with someone you no longer love?

This is the central challenge of post-divorce parenting. Esther Perel's framing is helpful here. The co-parenting partnership is not the marriage. It is a new relationship with new rules. You do not need to love your ex to co-parent well. You need clear boundaries, a functional parenting plan, brief and businesslike communication, and the maturity to keep your kid's wellbeing above your own grievances. Most successful co-parents I work with do not love their ex. They just keep choosing the structure that works.