An important note: if your co-parent has been physically, sexually, or emotionally abusive, having a functional co-parenting relationship with him/her may not be possible simply for safety reasons. In this case, this post doesn’t apply to your situation, and it’s best to get professional input on how best to handle co-parenting for both you and your child.
First, what the research tells us
Two things are important here:
- The strength of the co-parent relationship best determines whether both parents will remain active and involved with their child.
- It’s in the child’s best interest to have two, actively involved parents (provided the parents aren’t abusive or neglectful).
Thus, the conclusion which is no surprise: it’s best for your child if you and your ex have at least a functional co-parenting relationship—we’re not talking friends here, just cooperative co-parents!
What threatens the co-parenting relationship
After the breakup, what lingers
Even when you feel that breaking up with someone is for the best, it’s always hard when a child is involved. Managing your relationship with your kid’s other parent will likely be challenging for the next decade or two—that’s right, we’re talking decades because as long as you share a child, your ex will likely remain a big part of your life until your child is grown.
For years, I taught classes for never-married parents who were court-mandated to take co-parenting classes. I’ve worked with literally hundreds of split-up parents, and because they take the classes separately from each other, they’re very vocal in how they feel about each other.
Hearing all their stories about how hard it is to work with the other parent, there’s been one clear take-away: for nearly all of these parents, their pain and hurt from the breakup is at the heart of the co-parenting challenges.
The whole point of these classes—and for this entire website—is to focus on kids and what they need. Any time parents split up, it’s the kids who tend to be hurt the most. If dealing with your ex has been difficult for you, it’s at least this hard for your child to deal with the family’s breakup. (For more on this check out “The Emotional Impact on Kids When Parents Divorce/Break Up.”)
At best, even if the breakup is peaceful, mutual, and respectful, there’s still the disappointment that things didn’t work out. All of us want to find the so-called “right” person, and whenever we have a relationship, we’re hoping this person might be the one. In this way, we bring some degree of fantasy into the relationship. When we break up, we’re not just ending the relationship; we’re also losing the fantasy of who we wished that other person had been.
Typically though, parents feel a lot of hurt after a breakup—and it’s not just the breakup itself, but everything that’s led up to it. This hurt is the one thing I’ve repeatedly seen that interferes with a good co-parenting relationship. Parents feel a lot of anger, but beneath the anger is often sadness, disappointment, and pain that the relationship didn’t work out.
When parents deal with these feelings on their own—rather than venting the anger at the other parent—the co-parenting relationship can improve, which is the ultimate goal from your child’s perspective.
Fathers and loss
For many men, coping with loss is especially difficult. Consider how, when you were a child, you learned to cope with sadness or loss. Were you allowed or encouraged to cry? Were you encouraged to have these feelings or were you encouraged to “suck it up” or “move on” or “man up”? If so, it may be even harder for you to now have these feelings.
Unless there has been violence between the co-parents, nearly every time the co-parenting relationship breaks down, loss is at the center of things. And it’s not just that you lost a partner; you lost the person you wished they had been. In this way, whenever there’s a breakup, you’re always going to mourn two losses: the real person and the fantasy of who you wished the other parent had been.
When you start to mourn both of these losses, you can then move on.
When there’s high conflict
I’ve worked with so many co-parents who have high conflict relationships, and the issue often comes down to this: the problems that interfered and caused your relationship to end are now interfering with how you get along, communicate, and make decisions as co-parents. It often means that you’re each bringing something to the conflict. There’s something for each of you to own.
Don’t feel bad or guilty about this. You’re human like the rest of us. The more you can own your part, the more you can change.
You can’t change your co-parent. And focusing on them only distracts you from looking at your part.
It’s also in your best interest to understand what these issues are so you don’t repeat them in your next relationship.
But know this: when one person in a relationship changes, it invites the other person to change as well. For instance, let’s say you’re discussing rescheduling your child’s doctor’s appointment when your ex makes a snide comment. If, instead of reacting, you stay focused on the issue at hand, you have a better chance of resolving the issue. Over time, you might also find that the snide comments stop because they don’t get a response from you.
If there’s ongoing high conflict between you and your co-parent, it may be helpful to seek out therapy for your child so that he has a trained, non-family member he can talk to about his family stress.
With high-conflict: the bottom line
Parents, whether together or not, always have disagreements and conflict. How well they manage these conflicts directly affects how well their child does.
For some dads, collaborating with a difficult co-parent may be a big ask. But the bottom line? It’s in your child’s best interest. It means that as hard as it may be for you, it may be harder for your child if his parents can’t functionally get along.
The real bottom line? Your child needs you. Which means you have to stay in the game, even when it gets hard. Do as much as you can to own and reduce your part of the conflict. Then keep showing up for your child.
For more on a kid’s needs following a parental breakup, see “What Kids Need From Parents Following Divorce/Separation.” (Stay tuned—this post is coming soon!)
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