We're Divorced. No, Really

Los Angeles photographer Mieke Kramer, 34, remained exceptionally good friends with her ex-husband after their divorce in 1998. When he picked up their son and daughter on weekends, the two would hug. She called him often--for advice about work, for comfort when she was upset. They even worked together on free-lance projects. Sometimes the men Kramer dated looked askance at this closeness, but she didn't feel there was a problem until three years ago when she started seeing copywriter Jim Tavares, 35. "Emotionally, you have him," Tavares told her. "You don't need another partner." Kramer disagreed at first. Then she realized he had a point.

For most divorced couples, achieving an amicable, open relationship after the breakup is a much longed-for ideal. Research--and common sense--indicates that children fare better when a divorce is free of acrimony. But if the former couple remain friends for the wrong reasons--emotional dependence or fantasy, for example--they court serious complications that include derailing new relationships and confusing their kids. The problem, say psychologists, is not unusual, especially when children are in the picture.

Tavares, now Kramer's live-in fiancé, treated her ex respectfully as the father of his stepkids-to-be. He also fought to wean his new love from her dependence on her ex's approval. "If you're in a serious relationship," Tavares explains, "you feel you should be the go-to person with good news to share or a problem to solve." With Kramer, that often didn't happen, but he stayed the course because he understood that the divorce had made her fearful of being hurt. "If you're hanging on to your little piece of driftwood and you have to risk letting go to swim to a sturdy boat 20 yards away, it can be scary to let go."

Kramer agrees that her ex was continuing to meet many of her emotional needs and that she was leery of redirecting those needs to someone new. "I didn't need to make myself naked and vulnerable to get certain things," she says. Now planning their wedding, the new couple feel comfortable spending holidays and good times with her ex, his new girlfriend and the kids. The friendliness, they say, was not the problem; the attachment was.

Divorce experts see many couples struggle with this tricky balance. The dilemma often arises because the co-parenting relationship remains after the marital relationship is gone. "You can accidentally slide one set of needs into the other," says Carol Kauffman, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. Frequently, she says, ex-spouses hang on more than they should because they fear dating again and are not ready to mourn the lost marriage. "The danger is creating a phantom relationship. Like a phantom limb, it itches, it tingles, but it won't hold you up."

Diane, 39, a business executive in Boston (who doesn't want to upset her ex by using her last name), thinks it's ironic that several men have broken off relationships with her because she is "very civil" to her ex, a man she describes as a "decent human being who is my son's father." The two e-mail or call each other almost every day, discussing their son and also chatting about their doings, family and friends.

Sounds like a win-win situation. But after five years apart, Diane says, neither she nor her ex has had a serious relationship. "Most men my age," she explains, "don't want to date single moms."