My Least Favorite Part of Co-Parenting
How I Overcame Being Labeled “The Bad Guy”
The moment I heard my daughter’s heartbeat for the first time was every bit as life-changing as it is in the movies. Tears welled in my eyes and my heart overflowed with love (even if my brain still couldn’t believe there was an actual human in there!). Fast forward eight months and she’s choking out her first cries on my chest. My eyes memorize her face and count her long toes that look just like mine. I hold her tiny hand and smile at the six and a half pounds of perfection blinking up at me.
My mind was bombarded by thoughts ranging from the impressive amount of hair my newborn had to what kind of food my exhausted body was going to inhale. Can you guess what I was most definitely not thinking about?
Co-parenting.
Co-parenting was not even a possibility in my book back then. We were going to be together forever, obviously. Unfortunately, after my daughter was born a lot of things changed in my relationship. A mixture of jealousy, insecurity, financial problems and parenting differences eventually led to my ex moving across town to live with his brother.
We made a few feeble attempts to try and make things work but couldn’t seem to figure it out. The animosity between us raged like a wildfire. To make a long story short, co-parenting was not going well. At. All.
My own parents had a terrible time getting along and I always felt like I was the middle-man, a constant referee there to keep the peace. No way I would put any child of mine through that sort of stress! Sadly though, it almost felt like the more I tried to be the bigger person and get along, the more my ex would try and fight me on things and make them difficult.
Like I said, my parents were awful to each other and I wasn’t even allowed to talk about one parent in front of the other parent, especially in a positive light. Not wanting my daughter to deal with the same anxiety I went through makes me rather sensitive to this subject. Therefore, I have always been extremely strict to keep it positive in front of her and only vent about her father to trusted friends or family when she is not around.
Children should feel safe to love both parents openly.
Sadly, things took a turn for the worst when my daughter became old enough to hold conversations. Her dad would tell her things a child‘s brain is not equipped to handle. For example, “I want us to all live together but Mommy doesn’t love me anymore.”
The chubby-cheeked center of my universe screamed how much she hated me and my heart hurt more than it ever had in my life. I used to be her favorite person, her hero, the one she always wanted, and now I was the exact opposite.
It was a hard pill to swallow. I was the bad guy.
How could he make my baby hate me? I temporarily lost my mind and sent a slew of hurtful, angry text messages to him in an attempt to make him feel the same level of pain he was causing me.
As you can imagine, this solved absolutely nothing. I felt so powerless because I had zero control over what happened at her dad’s. There was nothing I could do to stop him from trying to poison my own daughter against me. It didn’t feel fair. It felt as though the universe was playing some sort of twisted, cruel joke on me.
After a couple months of spinning my wheels, not knowing what to do, I did the only thing I could do. I just kept being her mom. I even managed to keep on telling her to have fun with her dad. As time went by, the “I hate you’s” seemed to be replaced more and more with “I love you’s” and the ache in my heart faded.
Children can be easily manipulated, true, but they also are a lot more aware than we give them credit for sometimes. Putting aside my own ego was the best thing I could have done for both my relationship with my daughter and my relationship with her father. Actions mean a lot, even to children. Being kind to her father (even when I really didn’t want to be!) made her feel safe and helped build back the trust we once had.
Thankfully, for everyone involved, things have improved immensely all the way around and I can genuinely say I’m proud of how far our co-parenting skills have come. Four years ago, where we are now didn’t even register as a possibility in my mind. Four years ago, I felt hopeless, defeated, angry and broken. Today I feel happy, confident, secure, and so incredibly loved by my daughter.
Perhaps, you’ve just started the rollercoaster of a ride co-parenting can be or maybe you’ve been on for what seems like forever now. Either way, my message to you is to not lose hope. At rock bottom, I felt like I had lost everything. Years later, I’m doing better than I ever have and my six year old informs me, on an almost daily basis, that I’m “the best mom in the world”.
Everything is going to be just fine. I promise.
