COMPLICATED CO-PARENTING SERIES – Part 2

Part 2 – Complicated Co-parenting with Your Children In Mind

What is Complicated Co-Parenting, you might ask?  Yet, if you are reading this post, you are likely familiar with what it feels like to be in a complicated co-parenting relationship. Complicated Co-Parenting is my term for parenting with a partner who you are separated or divorced from but still actively parenting with who has some level of disturbance that interferes with their communication/relationship/parenting skills.  

I created this term to respond to how parenting can be complicated by issues that create a sense of being or feeling “stuck” in or entrenched in old. negative relationship dynamics in the co-parenting relationship.–It’s when we feel like we are still in the old fight or trap (or even worse conflict than before) that we were trying to escape from by getting separated or divorced.  Much like grief can become complicated when there is a current trauma or past unresolved trauma/complicated event, so can our co-parenting relationship.  

Most of us know that acute grief is a normal response to loss with symptoms that should not be pathologized. Many clinicians have long recognized that clients can experience complicated grief, which often results in the grieving process being erratic, prolonged, and more intense.  In my work with clients, it often looks like the normal grieving process is “stuck” or “halted” in some way, and there is a stop/start to their normal grief that is disorienting and disruptive in their daily lives beyond just being sad or missing their loved one.   These authors note that “it is now clear that grief can be complicated, much as a wound healing can be complicated, such that intensity of symptoms is heightened and their duration prolonged” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3075805/). I personally like the term complicated grief over the newer DSM V disorder, which exaggerates and skews what I often see in sessions with clients.https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/prolonged-grief-disorder

In my opinion and clinical experience treating hundreds (if not thousands)  of trauma survivors who are now parenting, many of whom have experienced grief at some point in their lives and treatment with me,  I see complicated grief as an apt description for when clients get “stuck in their grief process.”  This dynamic of “getting stuck” or “halted” in the recovery process from separation and divorce is largely evident in high-conflict divorces where some kind of “other” issue or dynamic is at play, which is often related to the mental health or relational weaknesses or deficits of one or both of the parents.  

In my professional role, I routinely treat parents who are undergoing high-conflict divorces and are engaged in a Complicated Co-Parenting relationship. Don’t get me wrong; divorce can make any of us feel crazy, especially if our co-parent is threatening our relationship with our child or harming our child in some way.   Yet, it is still up to us to manage our intense pain and worry and not  act on “our own unique crazy.”  Mediation often does not work for these parents.  They are almost always working with a Parenting Coordinator to help them develop a Co-Parenting Plan, yet are stuck somewhere in the process of trying to complete it and not being able to agree upon the terms and execution of the plan. They’ve often read all of the divorce books and know all of the best practices for separating and arranging a parenting plan with their ex-partner and current co-parent. Yet, they are mired in conflict and unresolved pain that keeps them spinning in arguments and cycles of miscommunication.  So just like grief can be complicated, so can co-parenting, our own, perhaps from our own personal past traumas, the relationship trauma that occurred in the relationship, or even the trauma and pain of our family breaking up.  It taps the most intense pain possible, which is probably next to the pain of losing a child or loved one tragically.

Many books have come out recently to try to help these families, yet all seem to be lacking both the big picture perspective and the specificity of therapeutic skills that a “healthy enough” parent needs in order to weather this extremely high conflict and endlessly damaging end to an even more harmful pre-divorce constellation of toxic interactions.  

Coparenting with  Narcissist by Mia Warren,  Co-Parenting with Narcissistic Ex by Lara Carter  Co-Parenting with a Narcissist:  A Life-Changing Guide to Set Boundaries, Protect Your Child from Parental Alienation, and Preserve Your Sanity by Melanie Parker,  Divorcing a Narcissist and CoParenting:  How to Break Free from a Toxic Marriage and Shield your Child from Parental Alienation and Conflict during a Divorce by Adele Moore (excellent “how to” book), and Co-Parenting with a Toxic Ex: What to do When Your Ex-Spouse Tries to Turn the Kids Against You by Amy Baker & Paul R Fine (all found on Amazon).  

So where does that leave the parent who is leaving a toxic relationship for the aim of better health for themselves and their children?  

First, I think we need to think long and hard about what our original goals were for wanting to parent with this partner.  We did decide to marry our ex, and we did commit to raising our children together and building a family.  We both likely want certain experiences for our children–a happy home, a loving childhood, a sense of security at home and school, and a healthy future.  So get clear about your Co-parenting Goals. Ideally, you’d work out these goals together and continually refer back to them during times of conflict.  If you’re unable to do that with your co-parent because of too much conflict or too little engagement on their part, then write them down for yourself and refer to them in moments of distress.  Be specific. Be concrete. For instance, you might want your child to be able to develop a sense that their life is better and their relationships are stronger with each of you since the divorce than when you were together.  You also may want your child to continue to grow in their confidence as a student and maintain a solid homework routine that they had established in your prior family schedule.  It could be important to both of you that your child keep participating in a favorite confidence-building sport or activity, which is more difficult to navigate now that you have two homes to juggle. Whatever your co-parenting goals are, be sure to keep them child-focused and top of mind. You will need to refer to them when negative interactions cause you to question if you are making any progress or not. 

It is also important to both have and hold lightly Co-parenting Ideals.  Yes, there is a grieving process that necessitates that we let go of certain dreams and ideals that we had wanted for our kids. We may not be able to be together as a family positively on Christmas or Passover.  We also might do better at separate seats or tables during high school graduation.  However, we can consider what would be best for our family if we were able to achieve certain ideals in how we uncouple or deconstruct our old “together family” and reconstruct our new separate families. 

 In the books Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to Living Happily Even After (2022, Katharine Woodward Thomas)  and Better Apart: The Radically Positive Way to Separate (2019, Gabrielle Hartley and Elena Bower)

both authors assert that separation and divorce can offer parents/partners a chance to find greater emotional freedom. Yet, it truly takes “breathing in love to the parts of your suffering…and breathing out hate through a blessing for yourself and to your ex-partner.”  No matter how disturbed or hateful our ex-partner or co-parent is, it all starts with us. At some level, we do have to acknowledge what this person has been to us, even if it is only honoring that you created children together. Even beyond that, we can try to appreciate how we’ve grown through the gifts they’ve offered in the relationship or even the hardships that have forced us to grow through.  We can all strive to be able to say silently or out loud, “I love (or have loved) you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.”  To begin to believe that you and your co-parent are better apart, you need to truly do the work of letting go of old hurts and raw wounds. If you can’t let go, consider what attachment you have to the past or what you fear you have about the future.  

Striving for ideal goals is different from being stuck in fantasies about what our family was or should have been. Sometimes, we can only take the high road for ourselves and the sake of our child with our co-parent. And yet, that mindset to strive for “better” always beats out remaining fixated on how our ex is to blame.  

And, there are real-life issues and serious problems to acknowledge and deal with when you are working with someone who perhaps isn’t’ well or aware.  So strive for the ideal in your co-parenting goals, but let’s work with the real-life stuff when it comes to having strategies to deal with your difficult or compromised ex. 

When I think about Complex Co-parenting, I often refer to parental capacities and skills and what the trauma of divorce, separation, or high conflict does to each of us.  Take a minute to do a self-assessment of your Parent Functions and Parent Capacities [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KWmibl4x29eNNsoddGWTS-alsKohzBTiwAtIOcLoYzw/editcapacities], and consider the impact of your separation or divorce. It’s normal for our skills to be down during a difficult time.  Yet, some parents’ skills have never developed or remain chronically compromised for a variety of reasons–mental health problems, unresolved trauma,  physical illness, relationship trauma/dysfunction.  Read on in the 3rd post of this three-part series on Complicated Co-Parenting about how to think about your ex as a Compromised Co-Parent and how to relate to them in a way that is therapeutically sound for you and your child.