Co-Parenting Conflict is a Chronic Condition

When I first started on this WeParent journey, long before the site ever launched, I thought that effective co-parenting meant that there was never any drama, that through hard work, self-development, lots of prayer and meditation, you could transcend all that. I guess it was my version of the two-household white picket-fence fantasy.

And, so, I embarked on a long, enlightening quest for my best self, the one who would be the uber-parenting partner; the co-parenting supershero who could rise above the petty and not so petty to emerge ever peaceful, understanding and yet powerful. All the helplessness, victiminess, frustration, anger and resignation would all be behind me. I was taking this mission seriously.

And, I was setting myself up for failure and a whole lot of tears, because every time something came up that thwarted my pretty picture of co-parenting bliss, I found myself in the exact place I was trying to escape in the first place. My desire to transcend conflict, i.e., never experience it just wasn’t realistic.

Thus began the new quest to just minimize it, contain it, manage it and get over it as quickly as possible for the sake of my child and my own well being. Thank goodness, because just a couple weeks ago, my newfound super powers were tested.

My son’s father and I have come a long way in our partnership. Just how far was clear to me at our most recent planning meeting to finalize our son’s schedule for the year. It was a great meeting! I felt fully immersed in the very vision I had crafted of what a perfect meeting would feel like. We were making decisions together. We were discussing rather than arguing when we disagreed. He was actually looking at a calendar and using the online tool I’d been begging him to use for years. We were both on the same page, fully committed. It was all good. We had overcome!

But, just a week later, he called, frustrated and suggesting that we consider changing the schedule. The one he was proposing would involve more switches for our son and less extended parenting time for each of us. As soon as he even broached the subject of changing a schedule we just pinky-swore on and communicated to our son days earlier, a visceral response overtook my body. Seriously. I wanted to cry. Every story I had told myself about him being uncommitted to this process and being undependable and being immature…all those stories came back from the archives where I had put them to rest in exchange for stories about his being a loving father, an engaged parent and a steady partner. And, I wanted to fight. I wanted to prove my point, to make him see how wrong he was, what a bad parent he was. All of that was in me. And, in the tension we created in those few minutes, it was clearly there for him, too.

But, we have come too far to go all the way back there. It has taken too much. We both prefer the partner that we’ve found to the more-difficult-to-deal with caricatures we were parenting with before.

So, we acknowledged that we should resume the conversation later. And, during that brief time of retreat to our own corners, we each got to choose who we were going to be in this relationship. We chose partners. That meant that instead of dismissing his proposal, I committed to staying open to revisiting the schedule and not making him wrong for having an opinion different than my own. And, for him, it meant standing by the decision we made together long enough to effectively assess how it was working, not just for himself, but most important, for our son.

Based upon the last several check-ins, everyone is really happy with the schedule. But that isn’t the point. The moral of this story is that as we allow the conflict in our co-parenting relationships to guide us in growing ourselves, we may find that the conflict lessens. But, it doesn’t go away. It really is a chronic condition. If you chose to walk this journey, that’s part of the deal.

So, our mission is to get better at managing it and to deny it permission to run our families and our lives. In every moment of every conflict, each of us has a choice about who we will be, how we will respond and what really matters to us.

Being right about the schedule didn’t matter as much as knowing that my son’s father and I could have a conversation that would result in the best outcome for our child.

So, your turn…When have you found yourself in conflict with your child’s other parent and what choice did you make?

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.

Read more articles by Talibah Mbonisi