Love can end in many different ways.
Sometimes two people sit at a table and admit that they can no longer be together.
Sometimes there are tears.
Sometimes infidelity.
Sometimes months of arguing.
And sometimes what was once the greatest intimacy turns into such deep resentment that two people can no longer look at each other calmly.
That in itself is not yet the hardest part.
It becomes hardest when there is a child between them.
Because then you cannot simply close the door and say:
"I never want to see you again".
You can end the marriage.
You can end the relationship.
You can stop being someone's partner.
But you do not stop being a mom or a dad.
And that is exactly what our next conversation will be about Steve Joobs × Magdalena Feminine Movement.
No searching for the guilty gender.
No automatically taking the mother's or father's side.
No insisting that every child must spend exactly half the time in each home.
The starting point is the child.
Not its use to win a war.
Only the question:
How, after the love between two adults ends, do you avoid ending a child's sense of security?
When a relationship ends, parenthood does not end
Magdalena wrote a very simple thing in her piece that in practice can be extremely difficult:
I do not have to love the person I have a child with in order to respect their role as a parent.
You do not have to be friends.
You do not have to drink coffee together.
You do not have to celebrate birthdays at one table.
You do not have to forgive infidelity, lies, or what happened in the relationship.
But if there is no real danger to the child, you must try to separate the two matters.
What happened between us as a woman and a man.
And who the other person is to our child.
These are not always the same calculation.
A child cannot become a weapon
After a breakup it's very easy to fall into a mechanism that we don't even notice at first.
"Tell dad that..."
"Ask mom why..."
"Your father again didn't..."
"Your mother always does..."
For an adult that's one sentence.
For the child the message is completely different:
I have to take someone's side.
A child should not be a courier between two adults.
They should not pass on information about child support.
They should not organize pick-up times.
They should not answer the question of which parent is better.
They should also not be afraid to tell mom that they had a good time with dad.
Nor should they tell dad that they missed mom.
Bufdir says this very clearly. It is the parents who must be responsible for communication between themselves. A child should not act as a messenger. Bufdir
If you want to see Norwegian guidelines regarding children after a separation, you can find them directly on the Bufdir site. Bufdir: children after parents' separation
Equal parental rights do not mean a mechanical 50/50 split
This is important, because this is exactly where conversations about "equal rights for parents" often go in the wrong direction.
Equal treatment of the mother and father does not mean that every child must spend exactly 7 days with one parent and 7 days with the other.
Norwegian rules state clearly that the child may live permanently with one parent or with both, and the division of time should result from what is best for the specific child.
Delt fast bosted also does not automatically mean a half-and-half time split. Bufdir
This is an important difference.
A fair solution is not always mathematically equal.
For one child, alternating weeks will work very well.
For another, it will be exhausting.
One has parents who live five minutes from each other.
The other would have to travel across half of Norway several times a month.
One is fifteen years old.
The other is three.
That is why we do not start with the question:
"What percentage do I get?"
We start with:
"How is our child supposed to live normally?"
Norway tells parents: try to agree first
This is one of the practical differences that Poles living here notice very quickly.
If parents who share a child under 16 separate, in Norway mekling applies, that is, mediation.
The first hour is mandatory. It is also possible to receive up to six additional hours of mediation. The whole service is free. Bufdir
It is not about saving the relationship at all costs.
It is about parenting after the relationship.
Where will the child live?
What will contact arrangements look like?
Holidays?
Vacations?
Birthdays?
Who will pass on information and how?
How to avoid a situation where every handover of the child ends in another conflict?
You can also create a written foreldresamarbeidsavtale, that is, a parental cooperation agreement. Bufdir provides a ready-made tool to help organize such arrangements. Bufdir
Bufdir: parental agreement after separation
In Poland the principle is similar, but the process looks somewhat different
In Poland it is also not the rule that after separation the child "belongs" to one of the parents.
The Family and Guardianship Code states that parents and the child have the right and the obligation to maintain contact.
If the child lives permanently with one parent, both parents should jointly determine how contacts will take place, guided by the child's best interests and taking into account the child's reasonable wishes.
If they cannot come to an agreement, the decision is made by the court. ELI
The practical difference is that the Norwegian system steers parents much more strongly toward mandatory mediation through family counseling offices already at the beginning of the separation.
In Poland mediation also exists and can concern custody, visitation, alimony or other family matters, but fundamentally it is a voluntary way to resolve conflict. dzialdowo.sr.gov.pl
Does one system guarantee calmer breakups?
No.
No law will force two people to respect each other.
But tools can help before the conflict reaches the court.
The worst begins when the child has to prove who was to blame
After the breakup of a relationship emotions remain.
Anger.
Shame.
A sense of betrayal.
Sometimes an enormous sense of injustice.
Magdalena points out the moment when it is particularly easy to confuse your own suffering with the child's needs.
The ex-partner starts a new life.
A new woman appears.
Or a new man.
The child comes back happy.
And suddenly that hurts more than we expected.
In your head there may appear:
“How can they have fun with him after what he did to me?”
Except the child is not experiencing our relationship.
The child experiences their own relationship with mom and dad.
The child has the right to love a person we no longer love.
The child is not a reward for good behavior
The child is also not a punishment.
The child is not a way to regain control over an ex-partner.
The child is not a tool to extort money.
And the child should not be used to check:
“Was dad’s new partner at the house?”
“Where was mom in the evening?”
“What did she say about me?”
The child should not come back from a weekend feeling like they are about to be interrogated.
They can tell, if they want.
But they should not be given the task of gathering information about the other home.
But the child's welfare does not mean: you must tolerate everything
That is the other side of this conversation.
The slogan “a child needs both parents” cannot be used against a person who is trying to protect the child from a real threat.
There are situations of violence.
Addictions.
Serious neglect.
Instability.
Behaviors that truly endanger the child.
In Norway it is possible, among other things, to arrange supervised contact, and in situations of violence parents can receive separate mediation appointments. Bufdir
In Poland a court can limit the manner of contacting the child, order meetings to take place in the presence of a specified person, and if contact seriously threatens or violates the child’s welfare, it can prohibit it. ELI
This is not a contradiction.
We can say two things at once:
A child must not be used to punish the other parent.
And:
A child must not be put at risk in the name of artificially construed “equality”.
Not every mother obstructs contact. Not every father is wronged
And vice versa.
Not every father makes life difficult for his ex-partner.
Not every mother is the wronged party.
There are women who use children to control their ex-partner.
There are men who do exactly the same.
There are mothers trying to protect the child from a real problem.
There are fathers who, after a separation, remain fantastic, responsible parents.
There are also parents of both sexes who stop taking an interest in the child, and after some time return and expect everything to look as if nothing had happened.
That is why we do not want to settle a war in this program:
women versus men.
We want to talk about responsibility.
A child has the right to their own feelings
They may miss their dad when their mom is angry with him.
They may want to hug their mom even though their dad still feels hurt by her.
They may come to like their father's new partner.
They may not like their mother's new partner.
They may have a different opinion than both parents.
In Norway a child has the right to be heard in matters that concern them. From the age of 12, their opinion should be given considerable weight, but hearing the child does not mean shifting the entire responsibility for the decision onto them. Regjeringen.no
This is especially important.
The question:
„Tell me, who do you want to live with, your mom or your dad?”
may mean for the child:
„Choose which of us you love more.”
An adult should be able to take responsibility for the decision.
A child should have the right to say what they need.
When a conversation with an ex-partner ends in an argument
Then you need to change the way you communicate.
Not every relationship after a breakup can be turned into a friendship.
Sometimes success will be something much more modest:
short, factual messages concerning the child.
Without bringing up the affair from two years ago.
Without comments about the new partner.
Without analyzing private life.
You can reduce the conversation to:
„Can you pick them up on Friday at 5 p.m.?”
„The doctor's appointment is on Monday.”
„Parent-teacher meeting at 6 p.m.”
„We split the holidays like this.”
And sometimes that is what healthy co-parenting is.
Not love.
Not friendship.
Functional respect.
What to do when we can no longer talk to each other?
If you live in Norway, you do not have to wait until the moment when the only option seems to be court.
Familievernet offers parents help even after mandatory mediation.
You can obtain counseling, therapy sessions, support for cooperation and communication, and assistance in implementing arrangements concerning the child. Bufdir
There is even a program Fortsatt foreldre, approximately „Still Parents”, aimed at people who want to learn to cooperate with an ex-partner well enough for the child to have a safe and predictable everyday life. Bufdir
Bufdir: help for parents who do not live together
This is not therapy intended to bring you back together.
It's about learning to be parents separately.
The greatest maturity does not consist in the absence of anger
You can be furious.
You can feel betrayed.
You can hold a grudge.
You can decide you no longer want to build a life with that person.
Maturity is not about pretending nothing happened.
It is about the ability to tell yourself:
My emotions are real.
But my child will not pay the price for them.
You can have boundaries.
You can refuse.
You can demand accountability.
You can document agreements.
You can use mediation.
And when there is a real threat, you can seek legal protection.
But protecting the child is a completely different matter.
And punishing an ex-partner through the child is something else entirely.
Hated Love
Perhaps that is precisely the paradox of this topic.
Love between two people can disappear.
Sometimes indifference remains in its place.
Sometimes regret.
Sometimes even hatred.
But a shared child means that a certain part of responsibility remains.
And then love does not have to mean love for the ex-partner anymore.
It may mean love for the child, which requires something very difficult from the adult:
not using them in one’s own war.
It does not require forgetting.
It does not require forgiveness.
It does not require shared holidays.
It only requires acknowledging one thing:
Our story as a couple is over. The story of our child with a mother and a father continues.
We’ll talk about this on Friday
This is not a topic that can be closed in a single article.
Because where does ordinary conflict end and manipulation begin?
Do you always have to aim for 50/50?
What to do when one person keeps provoking?
Should a new partner participate in parenting?
When is the fight for contact a fight for the child, and when is it a fight against the ex-partner?
Where does a parent's right end and a child's safety begin?
And can we really separate our own hurt from what a son or daughter needs?
On Friday 9 October at 21:00 Steve Joobs and Magdalena Feminine Movement return with another conversation.
Topic:
Hated love. When after a breakup you must learn to be a parent, not an enemy.
We will discuss without dividing it into the good mother and the bad father, or vice versa.
About women.
About men.
About emotions.
About mistakes.
About parents' rights.
And above all about children, who should not be the prize for winning a breakup.
We invite you to the conversation.
Because maybe the question is not:
Which of us will win?
Only:
What can we do so that our child does not lose?
Sources
The material was based on an original text by Magdalena Feminine Movement and current information regarding the situation of families after separation in Norway and Poland.
Bufdir
Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs
bufdir.no
Regjeringen.no
Information from the Barne- og familiedepartementet regarding children, parenting, place of residence and contact
regjeringen.no
Lovdata
Norwegian regulations concerning children and parents
lovdata.no
Electronic system of legal acts of the Republic of Poland
Family and Guardianship Code
eli.gov.pl
Information verified on 4 October 2026.
