Yahoo Movies 'We love each other very much.' Busy Philipps and husband separate, share parenting plan
Busy Philipps and her husband the screenwriter Marc Silverstein have separated after 15 years of marriage, she shared on her podcast Friday.
Philipps says on the reactions she has received have been less about the split and more about how she and Silverstein are navigating it with their children. The couple separated about a year ago and are using the nesting method with their children. Nesting is where children stay in the family home and parents rotate staying in the home.
"Look, I've had some people be real (expletive) judgy with me about how we’re doing this," she says to her co-host on Friday's episode of "Busy Philipps is Doing Her Best." "Ultimately with everything … If you don't get it, I'm glad you don’t have to do it. I'm glad it's not your family. I'm glad it's mine."
Philipps says the couple told family and friends when they separated, but not the public until this week. And she's hopeful that the separation will work well for their children, Birdie Leigh, 13, and Cricket Pearl, 8.
"Now listen, my children … I don't know how grateful they are in this moment but… can hope it will hit one day in therapy when they are like 35," says Philipps who is starring in "Girls5Eva" on Peacock and is known for her roles on "Dawson's Creek," "Freaks and Geeks," and "Cougar Town" among others.
She says their arrangement, in which the family has one house where Birdie and Pearl have their own bedrooms and and she and Silverstein each have their own rooms as well as their own places, can be difficult.
"The idea is that the kids stay put and the parents basically have to be inconvenienced," she says. "There’s a lot of complication within the arrangement sometimes for … the two of us."
Nesting can help children experience less stress in a divorce and help them transition to a new relationship, according to a 2019 article in Psychology Today.
She also says the lack of seeing other families using this method instead of a more traditional shared custody arrangement with two homes and children going back and forth can make things challenging.
"The last several years has shown me is a little bit that like you can only do what’s right for you and your family whether or not you have a public facing life or you just post on Facebook. We all at this point have a public facing life," she says to her co-host Caissie St. Onge.
She praises Gwyneth Paltrow for talking about evolving relationships, and "you know everyone had a version of rolling their eyes at Gwyneth Paltrow when she started talking about consciously uncoupling, but how (expletive) great for her to have started talking, the fact that there are many different ways to move through relationships changing."
Philipps, 42, who has talked about difficulties in her marriage and written them in her 2018 memoir "This Will Only Hurt a Little," says she didn't want to share news of the separation before she had time to process it.
Many celebrities, she says, issue statements about breakups, and she wasn’t ready.
"Marc and I talked about it, and when we first separated, we couldn't even think about putting one of those statements out — it made us sick, both of us, truly ill,” she says.
She says sharing their family’s story can be good because it’s different, and helps her emphasize that relationships are always evolving.
"Well, we love each other very much, we have these beautiful kids together. There are a lot of things that really work about our relationship," she says.
She says both therapy and separation have helped her create a deeper love with the father of her children.
She says there is "much more value to be had, a deeper appreciation and in some ways, a deeper love to be had," in their new relationship. She says what helped her was to be "open to the idea that when things shift in a romantic relationship, you don’t have to throw it all away."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Busy Philipps separation: Actress splits from husband Marc Silverstein
