Cooperative Parenting With An Ex-Spouse, Easier Said Than Done

“I’m gonna strangle my ex-husband!” divorced mothers cry out in utter frustration.  Divorced fathers shake their fists and yell, “My ex-wife is driving me nuts!”  They tend to go on, “You’ll never believe what the idiot did now,” and then they report some sort of action that they expect to shock and disgust me.

“He bought him a baseball bat for Pete’s sake!”  “She took him to her freaky church again!”  “He told her she could have a Mustang when she turns 16!”  I pause and offer a therapeutic, “Hmmm,” while I contemplate whether or not I should call CPS for these violent offenses.

Who knows what manner of mayhem a kid could get into with a baseball bat or what peril could befall his eternal soul if he attends St. Matthew’s Catholic Church even one more time, and allowing a child to pick the model of car they will drive when they are 16?  What are these parents thinking of?!  Someone’s gonna get hurt!

I hope you have correctly interpreted some sarcasm here and you agree that no particular child is really in any sort of acute danger if he is given a baseball bat or taken to a church service, at, let’s say, 8 years of age or so.  If so, why do the parents come into my office screaming and yelling and carrying on as if their ex-spouse is selling the child’s kidney in order to buy cocaine?

Because, as you have also probably surmised, the ex-spouse’s actions are frequently harmless-looking on the surface, but are actually quite specifically designed to frost other parent’s butt.

A disgruntled ex-spouse frequently chooses gifts, activities, hobbies, and vacations that they KNOW the other parent would object to.  Why?  Often the answer is just as simple as, “Because they can.”

Once the divorce is final and the couple no longer really needs to answer to each other on a daily basis, some people just take that to mean that they are free to go about the business of parenting the way they’d like to see it done, regardless of the wishes of the other parent.  Often, there’s not even any malice intended, they just are doing things the way they always wanted to see them done in the first place.

Sometimes, the ‘offending’ parent is acting with a strong conviction that the other parent is, in fact, wrong, and it is the other parent who is harming the child.  The father that buys his son the baseball bat over the objections of his mother may feel that the mother is stifling the son’s growth and that he is doing his son a fantastic service to allow the son to play baseball despite his mother’s disagreement.

Another, more unfortunate answer is because the parent is hurt, angry, or resentful about the divorce, and they are absolutely doing it on purpose to retaliate against the other parent.  They think there’s no real harm in getting the kid a baseball bat, other than the fact that they know that it will irritate mom to no end.

Folks, it’s not easy to parent kids with two loving, biological, married parents who live together and make a decent income.

Throw a divorce in there, thousands upon thousands of dollars in legal fees, a couple of different households, maybe a step-parent or two, a couple younger half-siblings, a couple older step-siblings – heck, make a kid an instant aunt or uncle by throwing in a step-parent who already has grandkids – with each additional complication, the job gets harder and harder and harder.

People who couldn’t solve problems together when they were married rarely figure out how to do it once they’re divorced.  Cooperative parenting with an ex-spouse is about the hardest task there is on the planet.  Don’t be too quick to sign up for it.

If you can’t solve problems productively as a married couple, wait to have children until you can.  If you and your partner are having trouble with the children from a previous marriage, don’t make it worse by adding more kids to the environment.  Finally, do not think, for one moment, that divorcing a difficult and uncooperative parent will make him or her more cooperative.  On the contrary, the divorce is often the beginning of conflict more intense than you ever saw during the marriage.

It is so important that you do not view divorcing your spouse as the end-all solution to parenting conflict.  Often, it is just the beginning of conflict that will last for years and will all but destroy each of you and the children, not to mention family members and friends!

It’s a lot harder than you might think to co-parent with an ex-spouse!

Marlo J. Archer, Ph.D
Licensed Psychologist
1250 E. Baseline Rd.
Suite 102
Tempe, AZ 85283
480-705-5007
DrMarlo.com