How to Co-Parent with Someone Who Hates You

Do you happen to know? I’m asking for a friend.

Photo by Syda Productions

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My divorce honeymoon is over.

I’ve come down from the high of being done with the soul-crushing legal process, the tedious paperwork, the financial uncertainty.

I’ve become accustomed to the general serenity of my day-to-day life. Dare I say, I sometimes take it for granted.

I’ve enjoyed some “me time” during the occasional weekends the kids see their father. The 20 days I’ve gotten to myself in the last year are more than I ever got during my marriage.

I have zero regrets.

And yet. I expended so much energy disentangling myself from an angry, abusive man that I neglected to account for the myriad ways that our lives will still be entangled. I accounted for them on a theoretical level, of course, spent hours drafting and negotiating our co-parenting plan.

But what I truly neglected to account for was how much this man fucking hates my guts.

I dared to dream that once I’d made the hefty money transfer to his bank account and signed the final paperwork, maybe, just maybe, the dust might settle, the bitterness might ebb. Maybe we could start a new chapter together. A chapter as amicable co-parents who could correspond cordially with one another about drop-off and pick-up times, who could sit in the same bleachers during our kids’ basketball games.

I know that beneath my ex-husband’s hatred is pain, and beneath his pain is love, but I continue to feel floored by his profound lack of interest in exploring either. Instead, he is busy sharpening his hatred, letting it harden, flinging it at me, liberally and with abandon, whenever the opportunity presents itself.

I am the villain, and I will continue to be the villain for the foreseeable future. Perhaps, even, until death do us part.

Just as I used to envy other people’s shiny, happy marriages, I now envy other people’s shiny, happy divorces. I know it all looks shinier from the outside, but when divorced friends reference interactions with their exes in which logistical decisions are reached without either party being called delusional or fucking psychotic, I can’t help but feel a pang of longing for the divorce I didn’t get to have.

Nobody really prepared me for life as a “co-parent” after a high-conflict divorce. Maybe no one really can. But I’d like to take this opportunity to get a few things straight.

The notion of co-parenting after a high-conflict divorce is nothing short of absurd

During our divorce, my ex was out to get me for everything he could. The only reason we settled out of court was because he had spent too much money on leather chairs and custom jewelry during our separation and couldn’t afford a trial.

But even if we were in a place to mutually prioritize the common good, the legal process of divorce is not exactly set up to encourage amicability. There is such a thing as “collaborative divorce,” which sounds like an oxymoron, but which I’ve been told sometimes works. In fact, I found my lawyer because she practices collaborative divorce, and I like collaborative things. When I explained my particular circumstances, however, she suggested a more traditional route.

I had to laugh when I saw the initial paperwork — after all the months I spent during our separation trying to convince my spouse that this wasn’t about “me versus him,” that both of us needed some space and time to heal, there it was on the first page of the divorce summons, in so many words: “Me vs. Him.”

Once the lawyers got involved, they wanted to win. They were not particularly concerned with the nuances of our 20-year relationship. I had good reasons for questioning whether or not I should request sole custody or demand child support, but my lawyer more or less insisted on it. I saw early on that there would be no healing during this process, that it was designed to be combative, as our legal system is, and that we would both walk away feeling even angrier. Neither of us were happy about the final settlement, and the frequent sparring through our lawyers had only deepened divisions, not bridged them.

After that emotionally draining process, there was still no time to heal. In prior breakups — which didn’t cost me six figures nor take 18 months — I felt intensely sad for a while, then more or less let my ex fade from my life while we both moved on. I didn’t have to coordinate childcare exchanges with him or text him volleyball schedules or share summer travel plans.

I was lamenting this recently in a Substack note, and a commenter likened it to separating two boxers in a ring and then instructing them to continue the fight over email for the next decade. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

There is so much lurking grief that I can’t find a way to process. Grief over the death of our relationship, over the tidy nuclear family unit we’ll never have again, over everything left unsaid. But grief requires distance, silence, space. While I haven’t laid eyes on my ex-husband in nearly 18 months, I can’t find the distance to properly grieve.

Here’s another analogy for you: Imagine contending with the death of a loved one with whom you’ve had a complicated relationship. Imagine scrolling through old photos, tenderly plucking out the good memories, taking baby steps toward forgiveness. Then imagine that each time you inch closer, you get a text from the grave of this dead person telling you you’re insane.

If there was inequity and abuse in your marriage, there will be inequity and abuse in your divorce

Divorce is often seen as a feminist institution, a means of escaping the gendered inequities and abuses that have so long been endemic to marriage.

The threat of divorce, clearly, has not “solved” these gendered abuses and inequities. Over 50 years after no-fault divorce was first established in California, women continue to initiate nearly seven in 10 divorces. And for me, what’s been the most bitter pill to swallow, is the slow realization that I will still be subject to my ex-husband’s abuses, and my time and labor will continue to be exploited for many years to come.

Even in the most amicable divorces, inequities persist. Dads who co-parent 50 percent of the time take on more domestic labor by default — unless, of course, they remarry, which many of them do, and often quite quickly. But even though divorced mothers with 50/50 parenting plans generally enjoy more leisure time than married mothers, the mental load is not confined to which house the kids happen to be at. Events still need to be calendared, emails and texts still need to be responded to, phone calls from school still need to be answered.

The forces of socialization and gendered patterns of behavior persist after divorce, even in the “best” divorces, and perhaps this should come as no surprise. The majority of divorced mothers do not enjoy 50/50 co-parenting arrangements — and while some embittered men attribute this to a power play on our part, there are usually damn good reasons for this. In fact, most of us would like nothing better than to be able to enjoy a 50/50 co-parenting arrangement with a reliable adult who has our kids’ best interests at heart and can be trusted to take care of their needs. But all too often, this is simply not the reality in which we find ourselves operating.

There is a very straightforward reason that I do not have a 50/50 co-parenting arrangement — my ex lives close to the job he took on shortly before our separation, which is 1.5 hours away. But he has talked about moving closer, commuting to his job, and alternating parenting weeks — in which case, as he has claimed to my kids on more than one occasion, I would have to pay him child support.

His financially motivated fantasy entirely disregards the logistical reality of taking care of children full-time every other week. How would he get the kids to school before commuting over an hour to work? How would they get home when school ends at 2:30 p.m.? How would they get to their afternoon practices and games? What would they eat for dinner?

I specifically chose my current job for its built-in flexibility so that I could handle these daily logistical puzzles — the same criteria by which many mothers choose their jobs. I spend a sizable portion of my weekends doing meal planning and prep, and I have a deep freezer full of soups and stews for all the rushed weeknight dinners. In marriage and in divorce, I have intentionally structured my life to accommodate the ever-evolving needs of my children, to ensure that they have access to relatively healthy meals and that they don’t spend all their free time on screens.

But it’s not just about logistics. What has been most disturbing to me since our separation is how casually my ex has simply disappeared from his children’s lives, often for months at a time. It has happened on three different occasions over the course of 17 months, most recently a couple weeks ago. It is sudden, difficult to explain to my children (as I struggle to understand it myself), and always nebulous. We never know when he will decide to surface again. I was hopeful this would change once we had a legally recognized co-parenting plan in place, but he has simply decided, on two occasions, to stop following it.

“Co-parenting” sounds as nice as “collaborative divorce,” but many of us are not actively co-parenting. We are either parallel parenting while sparring over text or email, or one person is actively parenting while the other occasionally babysits. The latter scenario most accurately describes my situation. In my divorce, I have managed to procure the world’s most expensive babysitter, one who only sporadically follows through on the plans he’s committed to, drinks on the job, and lets my 10-year-old watch R-rated movies. If he were an actual babysitter, I would have fired him a long time ago.

But he’s their father, and according to just about everyone, it’s really important that my kids have a father. I have questioned many times whether or not an inconsistent, emotionally abusive dad who struggles with alcoholism is someone who should currently be in my kids’ life. Throughout the legal process and my many hours of therapy, I seem to be the only one asking this question.

Apparently, as there are no physical bruises, society has deemed him a good enough dad.

There is no perfect text message

I spent two decades believing that I could help pave the way to my husband’s happiness, health, and well being. My divorce represented a recognition of my own powerlessness — not just over alcohol, as they preach in my recovery group for friends and family members of alcoholics — but over his own healing journey. If he wasn’t willing to take it, there was no dialogue script or communication tool that would convince him otherwise.

All that said, I didn’t feel completely powerless in my divorce. I was taking action, after all. I had a lawyer. (As much as I loathed the process, it did make me feel badass sometimes to say, “My lawyer…”) But in the months since I signed the final papers, I have had to come to terms with the fact that I am still powerless when it comes to my ex-husband’s behavior.

I was sharing with a recovery group member that I’ve spent so much time in those intervening months trying to craft “perfect text messages” to my ex. Messages that are neutral but not cold, direct but not confrontational, informative but not preachy. I still get so triggered when he resorts to name-calling that I want to avoid it at all costs.

My fellow group member said: “There is no perfect text message.” And she is absolutely right. He is intent on casting me as “crazy,” and there is nothing I can say or do to convince him otherwise. I could slash his tires or inform him that I have the kids for Thanksgiving in odd-numbered years, and either way, I’d be fucking psychotic. (To be clear, I’ve done the latter, not the former.)

I am the villain. That will remain his story until he decides to change it. That may happen next year, or in five years, or never. So I can at least save myself all the hemming and hawing over whether an exclamation mark makes my text message come across as friendlier. And when he inevitably gets nasty, or proceeds to disappear for two months, I can assure myself with confidence that it’s not because I decided to leave off that exclamation mark.

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I apologize if the title of this story misled you. When you are dealing with an ex who is intent on blaming you for all their woes, who has no interest in exploring their own role in the demise of your marriage, and who is unable or unwilling to prioritize their children’s best interests, there really is no way to effectively co-parent.

The first order of business, then, is to stop calling it co-parenting. It’s a nice aspirational word, but let’s only use it when that is actually what’s happening. The second order of business is to recognize that divorce is not a solution to inequity and abuse, and family law will help you with neither. And lastly, while divorce offers an escape from the daily realities of contending with said inequity and abuse, we must ultimately accept that we are as powerless in our divorces as we were in our marriages when it comes to changing or controlling our ex’s behavior.

Also, we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves for being human. It is human to feel hurt when someone calls you names. It is human to feel defensive when someone makes false accusations. It is human to feel angry when someone for whom you made substantial sacrifices and whose needs you prioritized over your own for two decades unilaterally casts you as the villain in their own life story.

I can feel all these things, and it’s okay. Over time, I hope, I’ll feel them less intensely.

Maybe someday, my ex will be inspired to embark on his own journey of healing and recovery. But whether or not this happens, or when this happens, is entirely beyond my control.

As I said, I have no regrets. I can focus on what is within my power, like building my network of support, deepening my friendships, and showing up for my children. One step at a time, I’m taking back my life. And when my serenity is occasionally interrupted by the ping of a nasty text message? I also have the power to put down my phone and simply walk away.