Co-Parenting With Dignity and Respect

How do we bring God’s ways into a broken situation?

I posted this on Facebook the other day with the picture above.

The other day, my ex husband held down the fort with my three littles while I took my teens to Portland (Maine) for their Christmas present and my husband was working.

I’m so grateful for my husband’s leadership in getting us all to this place.

I’m so grateful for the relationship skills I teach, which inspired me to write an apology letter years ago to my ex that completely changed our relationship.

We are such a great co parenting team - proof that it’s possible across culture war lines. And proof that God’s way gets God’s results - even when not everyone involved is a believer.

When I shared the above on Facebook, I received a lot of comments encouraging me to unpack how we arrived at this place. And it was such a great reminder that it was not always this way, and it definitely isn't something that we stumbled upon by accident.

It is not normal.

Which is such a great reminder that as Christians, we aren't supposed to be. We are called to be set apart.

People asked me things too, like "isn't your husband reacting to this?"

Which is a great reminder that my husband is extraordinary in this area. His extended family acts like exes are part of the family. Because they are.

I’m so grateful for my husband, who has a deep understanding of this that he brought into our relationship.

His extended family often includes exes in family gatherings.

He brought into our marriage an understanding that this is possible, if my ex and I would both truly learn how to put the children first.

“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Romans 12:18 (NIV)

My sister in law, for example, is besties with her husband’s ex. At graduations and holidays, they would post photos of all four co-parents gathered around their common daughter. 

And I would tell my ex "I want to be like them." I would invite him to family gatherings, and he would say no. Then I would tell him all the reasons that he should say yes.

I would tell him that our son, who was devastated by the divorce, needed us to.

Is it a surprise that he kept saying no? Guilting him just made it worse, and it became a topic too charged to bring up.

Meanwhile, my husband always encouraged me in the direction of respecting my ex, and giving him the time and space he needed to come around on his own terms.

Then my second marriage started to remind me of my first. I found the relationship skills I teach now.

Reading The Surrendered Wife (I endorse the Six Intimacy Skills™ not every word of the book), I felt deeply convicted about my first marriage. I wrote the following letter to my ex husband: 

Dear Peter,

I've been doing a lot of reflecting as I've learned more about myself and how to be a happy person, and I've come to see that if I had taken more responsibility for my own happiness during our marriage, we could have avoided all the trouble that we had over the years.

I just want you to know that I see how the constant disrespect/complaining/criticism that I brought would made any man unhappy and would have ended (or made intolerable) any marriage. I see that I made it impossible for you to know how to improve things, and see now that you were trying sincerely throughout how to figure that out.

I apologize for ever blaming you for the trouble we had, and for misrepresenting our issues to friends, family and especially our kids. I understand why you sought the friendship of other women and I also apologize for not focusing instead on all the ways that you were simultaneously safeguarding our marriage. I chose fear over trust, when I still could have offered vulnerability that I know in my heart would have brought connection.

I want you to know that I no longer consider your friendships emotional affairs, because I no longer believe in that term.

I also apologize for misrepresenting your friendships to friends and family, and especially to our kids.

I deeply appreciate the collaboration and communication we enjoy today and I consider it to be an asset - not a burden - in my life.

Thanks for listening.

Lucy

It was a real power move to write that email.

Why?

It changed our entire extended family. My ex husband instantly softened. We started to do holidays together. 

Pretty soon, we started to refer to my husband and ex as "the dads," and when I expressed a desire for the teens to get to go skiing at Sugarloaf, both dads brought them, as I talked about in my interview with Laura Doyle. 

When my ex and I were still married, he was given a book called The Good Divorce. Being the controlling wife I was, I threw it out. The same person gave it to him again, and I threw it out again.

There is no such thing as a good divorce. Divorce is always traumatic. It is such a lie that the trauma can be avoided.

The divorce is still traumatic for my teens and still impacts all of us every day. Even when it is this amicable. That's why I am so passionate about preventing divorce. Once I found the skills I teach, I realized that I could have been happily married to my first husband. I now believe that 99% of divorces are totally preventable, and I love to teach women the skills that I used to feel one hundred percent secure in my current marriage.

If you are in a co-parenting relationship and want some ways to improve things, here's some things you can experiment with:

• Learn what brings you delight. Become resilient and secure in your identity in Christ. This way, you won't be subject to the ups and downs that come with other people's opinions of you. You will be open to feedback. It takes a lot of emotional maturity to handle co parenting well. You can develop this by taking really good care of yourself. 
• Look at the bitterness in your heart in the light of Hebrews 12:15, which says that bitterness in your heart will corrupt many. This means that it spills onto your current husband if you have one, and on to your kids. Take responsibility for the bitterness in your heart. Forgive your ex, seventy times seven times and then some more. Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] for a PDF on a step by step process you can use to relinquish the bitterness and deeply forgive. But don't expect it to be a one and done. It's an ongoing process, like peeling back the layers of an onion.
• If you haven't offered a blanket apology to your ex, that's a great place to begin. There is always something on your side of the street that you can clean up.
• Relinquish control of the timeline as far as when things become more amicable.
• Be generous with no expectation of reciprocation - just like the Gospel tells us to. Go the extra mile, turn the other cheek. More than you think. Seventy times seven times, and then some more.
• Respect your ex as the father of your children. Let him take the father role. Say "whatever you think" to him often.
• Learn how to stay completely out of other people's relationships - meaning, let him have his relationship with his kids with no interference from you.
• Express desires in a way than inspires and receive every tiny good thing that comes your way graciously and with gratitude.

I believe that if you practice these Biblical principles you will get God's results, in God's timing.

I'd love to hear about your experience. Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] to let me know your thoughts and how it's going.