Early in our divorce, my ex-wife and I were trying to set up a 50/50 schedule for the kids as we worked out a long-term custody arrangement.
To say that we were both in a really emotional place would be a tremendous understatement. I knew that it would be far better for our kids to be raised in two stable, loving homes rather than in a single conflict filled one. And yet get used to this new way of living was hard on everyone, much harder than I'd anticipated.
It's plenty hard to negotiate and navigate parenting duties when you are in a relationship with someone; it was brutal to end a romantic relationship and then instantly need to deal with logistics, communication, and compromise.
It was in the middle of this tumultuous transitional period that our signals got crossed.
On one of our custody change days, our signals got very crossed. I showed up during what I thought was the designated window to drop off the kids and their mom wasn't there. She, of course, was expecting them at a totally different time.
This was more than an inconvenience or cause for a fight. When you're still legally sorting out custody, errors like this can have long-term repercussions regarding the time you get to spend with your kids in the future. Luckily, I had a very savvy attorney who was able to match my toll receipts and email conversations to prove that I had attempted to drop the kids on time. (That, of course, cost me thousands of dollars in lawyers fees and bottomless anxiety for weeks.)
In the middle of this chaos, I just kept wondering, "Why can't this be easier?"
Emotionally, divorce or separation takes a long time to process. I still work all of the time, 7 years later, to make certain that my kids feel loved, stable, and secure. But there are so many opportunities for the smaller things to be made easier: scheduling, communication, finances.
That situation I just shared with you was one of a dozen mishaps that might have been totally prevented by an app like Fayr. So I built Fayr for you, so that you might not have to go through those extra moments of conflict or strife. I also happen to use it Fayr's messaging and geo-tagging capabilities daily: win-win-win!