
Staying so close to an ex, physically and emotionally, might not work for everyone — and Paris acknowledges that at times it is difficult. But she likes that Alexander can easily run back and forth between his parents’ homes. “It’s sort of like a stretched-out house with several blocks in between us,” says Paris, author of “Splitopia: Dispatches From Today’s Good Divorce and How to Part Well.”
“I have been largely staying this close, because I’m not comfortable with my son having a parent I’m estranged from,” she says, adding that people often think a divorce means the parents don’t trust each other. “That means your child is at someone else’s house and you’re not part of it, and I think it’s alienating and scary.” So Paris and her ex devised another model that works for them.