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Hi ladies. I read some great advice recently about how to coparent with an abusive ex. First, there’s no such thing as coparenting with an abuser. The will undermine you every chance they get. They will be purposely uncooperative. At best you can hope to parallel parent with them, which means that only the essential info about the kids is communicated, but outside of that, what goes on in your house is none of their business. You do your parenting thing, and they do their parenting thing separate from you.
Along those same lines, when communicating about the kids avoid over sharing, over explaining yourself and providing too much detail. Because I love my kids so much and want to make sure my ex is in the loop, I used to overshare. Any conversations would include a lot of details that he didn’t really need to know, and sometimes I would be overly polite and even friendly because I was still trying to coparent. Unsurprisingly, my ex used these things against me and used it as an opportunity to be abusive. The abuse won’t stop after you leave unless you erect strong boundaries even when it comes to how and what you communicate about your kids.
I read something that changed my communication style. The advice I read said that before you send a text message/email etc to an abusive ex regarding your kids, read it back to yourself and then delete out any words that are not absolutely necessary. Trim it down to the absolute bare minimum. Make the message dry & succinct. So for example, instead of texting, emailing or saying something like “the kids had the best time at the park today. They ran around the playground for 2 hours and are probably really hungry now. They’ll need a nice yummy dinner when they get to your place” trim all of that down to the absolute bare minimum essential info. In this case that would be “The kids need dinner.” At first it will feel weird to make your messages or verbal communications so brief, but over time you’ll get used to it. It’s natural to want to share information about your kids with their other parent. In the case of an abuser however, it’s in your best interest to share only what is absolutely essential. The less you share about your life and the less information you give them to twist around, distort and manipulate, the better. By being succinct and dry, you’re giving them less material to work with. The succinct communication also communicates a message to them which is that they are no longer privy to the details of your life unless it’s essential information related to your children. I’ve had to make this adjustment and it’s been working out well. My ex is still the same abusive monster, the only difference is I’ve developed new boundaries. Hope this helps ladies ❤️
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