How Will Divorce Affect My Relationship With My Kids?

Rene Garcia with his two sons. Divorce can change the amount of time you have with your kids, but it does not have to weaken your relationship with them.

I ran a four-year study of 717 divorcing and divorced men to get a real answer.

The biggest, number one concern you’re going to have in your divorce is how it’s going to affect your relationship with your kids. Bottom line. So if you have prepubescent kids—or pubescent kids, for that matter—this is a must-read, because today we’re going to discuss you as a single dad and what to expect. And by that, I mean specifically what to expect because let's face it, you may have a ton of questions, but you never get a straight answer. It’s always, “It depends.” Of course it fucking depends. I get it. There are nuances. That’s stating the obvious. But what does the data actually say?

What Is the Hardest Part of Divorce for Men? | QoL-SALAD Study

Here’s actual data from the QoL-SALAD Study, a four-year observational study of 717 divorcing and divorced men. Among fathers who had been separated for at least a year, 58% reported an improved or significantly improved relationship with their kids after divorce.

Divorce doesn't automatically make you a better dad. But having less time with your kids translate to better quality time, by far. For some dads, it usually gets better. So why do some kids pull away after divorce while others get closer to their dad?

You look at 50% or even 35% custody and immediately think you’re getting screwed out of being a father. You’re looking at everything you’re about to lose. But you’re overlooking something you may not have had as a 100% father: autonomy.

Sure, you’re going to have them less. But the days you do have them, they’re yours. You establish the relationship, the routines, the rules, the conversations, and the environment inside your home. You’re not negotiating every parenting decision with their mom or trying to parent inside a shitty marriage. You lose some time, but you gain ownership of the time you have. And that trade can be fucking enormous.

The hardest pill you’re going to have to swallow in your divorce is this: if your kids are pulling away from you, it’s probably not your ex-wife's fault. It’s not parental alienation, it’s not her new boyfriend, and it’s not the custody calendar. There's a very good chance that it's you.

How you are handling the split right now matters more than anything you've done to this day as their dad. If you are sitting around drowning in anxiety, bitter about the past, or reacting to every single provocation, you are creating a toxic environment. Your kids aren't being poisoned against you by someone else; they are simply reacting to what it feels like to be in the room with you. They don't want to be around a broken, unstable man. If you want them back, you have to fix your internal environment first.

That’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially when you know you’re a good dad and more especially when throughout the years you've been their rock. You love your kids. You’ve provided for them. You’ve coached their teams, helped with homework, driven them all over creation, and probably built a massive part of your identity around simply being "Dad." Then your marriage blows up, and even if it's her "fault", somehow, your kids don't respond the way you wish.

I work with a lot of divorced guys going through some vicious custody battles and know firsthand how difficult it is to fight against parental alienation. It’s real, it's calculated, and a lot of guys think that's the problem when it's not. According to the CDC, parental alienation happens in about 13% of custody cases and it's different than you think because it’s rarely as obvious as her outright sitting the kids down and talking trash about you.

It’s her casually scheduling soccer practice or a friend’s birthday party right in the dead center of your custody weekend. She forces you into a corner where you either look like the asshole who robs them of their fun, or the guy who just gives up his time. It’s her dropping subtle, passive-aggressive sighs when they pack up to leave her house, sending a quiet wave of guilt straight into their heads just for wanting to go see their dad.

She builds a narrative where you aren't explicitly the bad guy but you're more like an inconvenience. She plays the long game, weaponizing scheduling conflicts and emotional undertones until your kids slowly begin to associate being with you as a stressful chore.

717 Divorced Dads Respond to their relationship with kids

I did a study to determine how your relationship with your kids is affected after divorce called the Quality of Life Survey About Life After Divorce (QoL SALAD) wanting to see how the father child relationship is affected during divorce.

In it, 717 divorced dads were asked how their relationship with their kids had changed after the split. 47% said it got better or significantly better with 18% said it got worse leaving 35% to say they either didn't know or it was too soon.

What you don’t know now, and can’t know today, is that more time does not automatically mean a better relationship. God as my witness, I would take 35% of my kids’ time, where I had them to myself and we could build our own life and our own relationship, over 100% of their time while sharing a home with their mother in a relationship where I had to watch how I behaved and parent under her standards. That’s because when you are on your own, you can actually be yourself. You are not parenting with a co-pilot, or worse, someone trying to control the plane. You parent your way and it's ownership.

Having less time with your kids can make you more intentional, calmer, and more present when you do have them. But it can also go the other way. Some fathers never emotionally arrive. They are still trying to get their ex back, replaying every conversation, or withdrawing into themselves. Their kids may be physically with them, but they are not really with their kids. Your kids may not be pulling away because they do not love you. They may be pulling away because being around you is just,,, sad.

I’m gonna begin with 2 contrasting stories and I’ll begin with the bad outcome first. Years before becoming a divorce coach, a buddy of mine who I’ll refer to as Bro reached out to me out of the blue.  We lost contact and it was really good to hear from my old friend. 

As we catch up I ask him, "How the family is doing.” 

"Rene bro... Katie left me.”

"What?"

"Fuck. Bro, I’m sorry."

“Dude, she even got a restraining order against me. I had to leave the house.”

"What?"

Now you have to understand that Bro, he’s one of the most by the book guys I know.  Strong Christian values, borderline boring. I know him known him for decades, He’d never raise his hand to her nor the kids. I know him. A professional, good provider, outstanding father, great and I mean great husband. As for Katie, was never really a fan and always thought she was a bitch but she was his family and you don’t diss family, so I kept that to myself. 

“Restraining order, what the fuck?”

“Nothing Rene”   

“Fuck man, how about the kids? How are they handling it?”

“Dude, they’re taking her side”.

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know.”  

Think about it, she wants a divorce, gets a restraining order, kids reaching out to mom more than dad but she’s doing the leaving. Am I missing something here because the behavior of his ex and kids didn’t fit the good guy pattern?  If it was anyone else, I’d suspect something, but I knew  this guy. There was no chance no fucking chance he fucked around, no chance he would raise his hand to Katie either. 

I didn’t have an answer, so I did what friends do. I listened. The problem was that no matter what we talked about, somehow we ended up talking about Katie. I’d try to move the conversation somewhere else and five minutes later we were right back to his marriage.

He desperately wanted his family back.

As I listened to him, I told him, if that shit ever happened to me, I’d want to die.

The first stage was our relationship before everything started falling apart. The second stage is one we’re all familiar with. The one where she starts pushing you away, but she hasn’t actually left yet. The stage where you fight harder, become more accommodating, tolerating shit you normally wouldn’t tolerate and begin measuring your worth by the level of respect she gives you. The stage where she gives you her scraps, just enough to believe you can still turn this thing around. 

The third stage came when she finally left, and strangely enough, that stage was peaceful. I was hurt, but the thing I had spent all that time terrified of had finally happened. There was nothing left to anticipate, nothing left to prevent and nobody left to convince. Turns out the fear of the loss was worse than the loss itself. 

It was Darwinian and happened fast. You know what happened? You stopped loving yourself and your wife, she became your price. 

When I found out my ex-wife was having a two-year affair with the same guy she lost her virginity to in high school and that changed the equation and reached a level of knowledge I could never unlearn. If I took her back after that, I would be betraying my kids, my family and my friends. I’d be betraying myself.

When I found out, it was incredibly painful. What happened next can only be explained as getting so close to wanting to die that I snapped, and some survival instinct inside me desperately wanted to live again. I stopped trying to save the life I had and started building another one.

I rebuilt my body. studied style, increased my meditation, practiced what I read. traveled. I learned new shit. I took risks and started deliberately doing things that scared me. I wanted to define masculinity by my standards. Physically strong without becoming a meathead. Confident without arrogance. Style without vanity. Vulnerability without weakness. I wanted to become a man I respected. And I got laid, a lot!

The benefits were overwhelming and something very unexpected happened with my boys.

After my divorce, my boys and I started a Friday morning Starbucks tradition. It became one of the small things that helped bring us closer.

They were 9 and 12 when their mother and I separated. We already had a good relationship, but after the divorce we became unbelievably close. My already great relationship got incredibly strong. It didn't just get better, it got the best.

That’s when I started thinking about Bro again.

His kids pulled away after his divorce. Mine moved closer after mine. Two fathers who loved their children. Two fathers whose wives left them. Two completely different outcomes.

Why?

What was I doing that Bro wasn’t? What was Bro doing that I wasn’t? That question stayed with me for more than a decade.

Study Results: How Divorce Affects Fathers’ Relationships With Their Children

There are a lot of theories about how divorce affects your relationship with your kids. Almost all of it is based on indirect data, guesswork, and people telling fathers what they should do. Google ‘what happens to the father-child relationship after divorce’ and you do not get a straight answer. All this time, all these people, and such little data.

I got fed up with how little actual data there is on men going through divorce. Everyone has an opinion about what divorcing men should do, but almost nobody is looking at what separates the guys who recover well from the guys who stay stuck.

In 2021, I started a four-year study of 717 divorcing and divorced men. Their responses were collected when they entered the study, before receiving any coaching from me. I wanted to know how long it takes men to recover from divorce and which parts of post-divorce life are associated with a better quality of life. I called it the Quality of Life Survey About Life After Divorce, or the QoL-SALAD Study.

I looked at exercise, finances, dating, living arrangements, time since separation, acceptance, identity, and father-child relationships. Across the study, the average quality-of-life score was 61. Fathers who said their relationship with their children had gotten worse averaged a QoL of 56. Fathers who said it had improved averaged a QoL of 66. Frankly, not much difference. In other words, your kids don't impact your QoL. Let's flip the question. Rather than ask how your kids impact your QoL, let's look at how your QoL affects their relationship with you.

In the QoL-SALAD Study, fathers whose relationship with their children improved averaged a quality-of-life score of 66, compared with 56 among fathers whose relationship worsened.

I then looked specifically at fathers who had been separated for at least one year because let's be honest, the first year of your split is chaos. You got custody schedules changing, emotions all over the place, and your sad ass not knowing what the fuck. So fathers separated for over a year, 58% said their relationship with their children had somewhat or significantly improved after divorce. 28% said it got worse. The remaining 22% said it had stayed about the same or that they were still not sure.

After one year of separation, 58% of divorced fathers said their relationship with their children had improved.

So dude, your relationship with your kids is about to explode with nearly three times as many dads getting closer to their children despite sharing custody. Why?

I went back through the different variables we collected, and the plot thickened. I looked at how men were handling the divorce, including whether they were still holding out hope of getting their ex back or had finally accepted the divorce and started rebuilding their own lives.

Among fathers who had been separated for at least a year and were still trying to reconcile with their ex, only 23% said their relationship with their children improved. 56% said it was worse.

Then I looked at the fathers who were thriving after divorce. These were the guys who had stopped waiting for their old life to come back and started building a new one. 71% said their relationship with their children improved. 15% said it had gotten worse.

Among fathers separated for at least one year, 71% of men who described themselves as thriving after divorce said their relationship with their children had improved. Among men still trying to get their ex back, only 23% said it had improved and 56% said it had gotten worse.

How you as a father are handling the divorce had the strongest association with whether your relationship with your kids gets better or worse. Let me repeat because the data is clear. If you are a dad who has been separated for at least a year and you are still trying to get your ex back, only 23% of men in your position said their relationship with their children had improved. Fifty-six percent said it got worse. But if you are one of the dads who has accepted the divorce and is actually thriving after it, 71% said their relationship with their children had improved.

The QoL-SALAD Study is observational. I cannot tell you that thriving after divorce causes a father’s relationship with his children to improve. Other factors could be driving both. But I can tell you this: you thrive, they'll want to be with you and follow. That is not proof of cause and effect, but it is too large a difference to ignore.

However, I need to be clear because this study was not powered for statistical significance. There is a difference between statistical significance and practical significance. When 23% of one group reports improvement and 71% of another does, that's a shitload of practical significance and needs to be addressed, further researched and nailed down because the pattern is real.

That's why Bro's kids stayed away. Because he made it uncomfortable for them. Because things got weird for them. As for me? I thrived and the reverse happened.

Your Kids May Not Be Choosing Her

When Bro told me his kids were taking Katie’s side, I immediately looked at the divorce like an adult. Who caused this? Who was right? Who was wrong? Who got screwed? Who deserved the kids’ loyalty?

Kids may not give a shit about any of that. Your children aren’t sitting around reviewing the evidence in your divorce and deciding which parent prevailed on the merits. They’re experiencing two different lives, and one of the questions they may be answering is much simpler:

What does it feel like to be around Dad?

If every conversation eventually comes back to their mother, they notice. If you show hurt every time they return from her house, they notice. If you talk about the past, they notice. If you need them to understand how badly she screwed you, they notice. If they feel guilty talking about having fun with Mom because they know it hurts you, they notice that too. Point is, they notice.

But you know what else they notice? The many times they see you move forward. The times you prepare to go out. The times you, wait for it, prepare for a date. They notice the the days you’re excited.

I’ve had fathers tell me their own children finally said, “Dad, get over her.” The day they hear that, you know you're fucking up. They're saying "I'm not your therapist" They're saying, "I need my dad back."

I’m not saying you can’t show them your setbacks. They can certainly see you cry. What they can't see is you broken.

What Happens When You Start Winning

Your relationship with your kids is decided by how strong you manage and by what you do next. Stop living in the past but build their future as a new family.

After 3 to 6 months of coaching, 78% of MeDiCo clients reported that their relationship with their children had improved. Only 2% said it had gotten worse.

While my client data is not proof that coaching alone caused the change, it still shows a meaningful result: clients reported a stronger relationship with their kids after coaching. That is worth paying attention to. The men who do the work tend to become calmer, more intentional, more present, and more capable of giving their kids a father instead of another person overwhelmed by the divorce.

Ready to stop guessing and start making better decisions? Book a 90- to 120-minute Divorce Strategy Session for $350.

For ongoing guidance through the divorce and recovery process, coaching packages begin at $1,700. Apply for a free consultation to find out whether coaching is the right fit.

Not ready to book yet? Join the free Men’s Divorce Support Group on Facebook or watch the Men’s Divorce Coach YouTube channel.