Allowing Room for Change

One major growth theme for me in my co-parenting relationship this past year was:  Allow room for the change you seek.  Now, the change I’m referring to is all about the change I’m seeking in the man who parents this child with me.  Typically, you’ll find me pondering self-growth and ways that my co-parenting and parenting experiences support it.  But, like most other unmarried but human mothers, I often fall into the spirit of wanting to do a little behavioral nip-tuck on a Baby Daddy now and again.

And, when that spirit hits me, I have a tendency to do one of two things.  The first is to pseudo-humbly deliver unsolicited self-help advice that I have collected from the tomes of New Age and self-help texts I’ve consumed.  The second is to skip the self-help part and to just start telling him how to do whatever it is the right way…Step. By.  Step.  OK. I get that that could be pretty annoying.  But, in my defense, the fact is that in the past he’s demonstrated some pretty clear patterns that I’m still attached to.  For example, in the olden days, many times his plans would change on a day he was supposed to have our child, and they would change at the last minute leaving me to rearrange my schedule to accommodate whatever “important” affair had suddenly come up.  It’s a simple thing, a rescheduling exercise, except for the frequency and complete lack of consideration for my own “important” affairs.  I would find myself feeling so many different ways every single time it happened.

There was the guilt from thinking that my feelings about the lack of consideration somehow meant that I didn’t want to take care of my child.  Well, frankly, there were times when I didn’t want to. At the time, I was the sole financial provider for our son and he spent most of his time with me.  Sometimes I needed a break, but the guilt was intense, nonetheless.

Then there was the anger resulting in blame, bad mouthing and not a few arguments.  But, ultimately, the worst feeling of all was helplessness; my sense of having to just accept the situation, having the value of my time and energy determined by him and not knowing whether or not I could depend on the schedule we’d set .  I hated it…feeling helpless over something so simple.  But, the emotions that a “not going to be able to…” call aroused in me were intense.

So, flash forward a couple of years, and we are on a set schedule, our time split almost evenly.  And, he is holding up his end reliably.  But, then…the call.  “…blah…blah…blah…something important…blah…blah…blah…need to reschedule.”  And, that’s all she wrote…anger, guilt, and helplessness; it all came back with the same intensity.  And, I told him about himself, what was wrong with his parenting, what was wrong with his partnering…

But, this time, he didn’t fight back.  Instead, he acknowledged my feelings then said, “I am not that man from five years ago…not even from last year.  I know I still have things to work on, but I have grown and I have changed and I have demonstrated that to you.  I need you to acknowledge it and to deal with me based upon who I am showing you I am today.”

And, I stopped fighting.  He was right.  I had determined the “truth” about him years ago—unreliable, undependable, inconsiderate, selfish.  Frankly, I guess I also had developed at least one truth about myself, as well, “I am the better parent, because I sacrifice myself for my child.”  It made dealing with his whim much easier; it allowed me to manage my own expectations and to address my feelings of guilt for wanting a Mommy respite once in a while.  They were truths that served me when I knew no other way to cope.  And, that’s fine.  But, I had neglected to leave room for growth, for the possibility that a twenty-six-year-old (his age when our son was born) could mature, could become a better father and a better parenting partner or that I might have more power than I was willing to assert.  My emotional blinders left no room for any new truths or refinement of the old ones.

But, when I finally took them off, I saw that he was right.  He damn sure wasn’t perfect, but he also wasn’t the same.  Things had actually changed a bit in the past year.  And, on several of the dimensions that mattered to me, by my standards, he was better.  The “not going to be able to…” call of today was in actuality very different from those of yore.  It was true that the tone these days was more apologetic and less presumptuous.  Perhaps it was safe to let him out of the box in which he’d been held hostage; maybe confining him to that little space wasn’t really serving me as much as I had believed.  He was different.

And, I was different. Somehow, somewhere, I had found my own power and released those feelings of helplessness.  And with his words, I recognized that some sort of co-parenting conflict post-traumatic disorder drove my response.  I remembered that I really did have choices that I had been exercising over the past year.  Sometimes my response was, “Not a problem.”  But, on other days it was more like, “Hmmmm.  That’s a tricky situation you’re in.  I already have plans…would change them if I could…What are you going to do?”  And, then, I would go paint my nails and luxuriate in the tub…guiltlessly.

So, for you…What “truths” are holding you or your child’s other parent hostage?  What change are you ready to make room for?

Talibah Mbonisi, founder of WeParent, is a Marketer by trade, a problem solver by nature and a mother by grace. She is also an unmarried co-parent navigating the path that will lead to a happy, healthy son, and a fulfilled, balanced Mama and Daddy.

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