I don't have good examples of divorce going well for a family. In my family there hasn't been a divorce among my aunt or uncles or grandparents. Nor in hers, so I don't have much of a model - and definitely not a model of a good situation.
On the plus side, then, you don't have any personal examples of it going badly?
Enter Ginger and I. I don't want to spend the rest of my life with my XW. I'm a travel bug and she hates to travel or even hear about travel. She pretended otherwise while we were dating. We can still be friendly, good acquaintances, who listen and value each others' opinion and co-parent well. This can happen as soon as you both let go of hurt feelings over being rejected. Even before we were communicating, like Ginger, my kids loved having two holiday celebrations. There's nothing inherently negative about two sets of presents, two birthday cakes, etc. Note, there is only one party with friends, to make things easy on acquaintances.
As Ginger says, the angst is usually for us--e.g., the kids have a great Christmas eve and Christmas morning with you and are now off to their 2nd Christmas. There's probably a few hours where you're like.. finally.. a chance to rest. But when it's dinner time and you're all alone it can be a challenging evening for the single parent especially when that's new and you haven't made plans in advance.
Your kids still have 2 parents who love them. You just don't love each other that way anymore. You can still care about each other. Your interactions don't have to be awkward.
