Infidelity hurts and compounds the pain of divorce making it even harder to build that co-parenting partnership for your children. I asked Carolyn to talk about her relationship with her ex and how that has evolved in the two years they’ve been divorced. Here’s Carolyn:

It’s better in that we don’t have much to argue about anymore. At first it was difficult. We had a lot of arguing because I wanted to move to where my mom was and I needed support.  As a child who’d grown up in a broken home where the father was absent, it was difficult for me to really grasp what I would have been giving up if I had moved away, in terms of having his help. Now, I can see that having a half-time schedule is really a blessing when you’re in school.

Once those things were resolved and settled down, things got better. We’re not close but we don’t argue about things so much anymore. We occasionally have difficulties like this fall, I need to be in class on Mondays and Tuesdays and then Wednesdays he gets the kids anyway. What we’ve been doing on transfer days is I drop them off at school, he picks them up from school, but with his class schedule, he needs them in school the second half of the week. So we’re going to have some scheduling difficulties because he doesn’t want to have to pay for my son to be in daycare five days a week. But, even when we have to negotiate those things, we usually just work it out.

Neither of us likes to fight. I say that, like anybody likes to fight, but I think some people really do. Some people are better at it and some people can handle it. I can’t handle it. To me, it’s often better to just concede because I can’t handle the stress of having an ongoing battle about anything.

I laughed the other day because my kids’ stepmother was here dropping the kids off and she came in for a few minutes. My landlord stopped by and without even thinking, I almost introduced her as “my friend” but I caught myself and said “my children’s stepmother” because I’m not going to call her my friend. She doesn’t get to called my friend anymore, but I almost referred to her as my friend because I guess we’ve distanced ourselves from all the initial stress. Our interactions now are pleasant enough that for a minute, I guess I forgot.

My sister’s having her own marriage problems now and she’s probably going to be divorcing her husband. I feel sorry for her because her husband, unlike my ex, is kind of a flake. She expects him to show up to pick up the kids at a certain time and he won’t show up and she has to call around to figure out where he is and she’ll have fights with him because he was in a bar instead of picking up his kids.

I realized that while I did certainly have a lot of interpersonal drama between me and my ex husband and his now-wife, one thing we didn’t have drama about was the kids. He’s never flaked on me, ever. He shows up when he’s supposed to and he values his time with the children. He takes them half of every week and when they’re at his house, I don’t have to worry that they’re being poorly supervised or not fed well or anything like that. I don’t have any of those concerns. I guess I appreciate the relative luck I have in that I picked a good ex-husband. He wasn’t a very good husband, but he’s a pretty good ex husband.

The fights we had in the beginning were because he was worried he was going to lose his children. His focus this whole time has been on yeah, he screwed up his marriage, but he didn’t want to screw up on being a parent. I guess I consider myself lucky there.

I think Carolyn shows admirable maturity in being able to accept her friend as her ex’s wife and children’s step-mom. It can’t be easy. However, the phrase that stands out the most to me is

The fights we had in the beginning were because he was worried he was going to lose his children.

This echos what a number of women have told me. In my interview with Judy Osborne, author of Wisdom for Separated Parents, Judy talked about intention and time being just two factors in reaching a benign space that allows for the possibility of on-going kinship. Another of my guests, Holly, found that their parenting became easier and more flexible over time, as she and her ex built a mutual trust that neither was trying to take away parenting time.

How about your co-parenting relationship? Could it be improved if you reassured your ex you weren’t trying to take away parenting time?

We talk almost every day depending on what is going on in the kids’ lives. They go to their dad every Monday and Tuesday after school, and then every Wednesday and Thursday after school, they come to my house, switching off every other week. So every other week, I have five days in a row with them.

They have friends that were doing this before, so when we suggested this to them, it wasn’t weird for them to adjust to it. They were like “okay, yeah.”

He was a really good dad, he still is a really good dad, and I think that’s how I’ve been able to co-parent with him. I feel very comfortable when they’re over there, just like he feels very comfortable when they’re with me. My kids are very involved in sports, so we see each other at soccer fields and things like that and we’ll sit next to each other and we’re able to both be in front of our children, even with our significant others, as well, so all four of us can be there talking to our children and able to talk to one another, as well.

I think for the kids’ sake, they’re not having to feel like they have to choose anybody. They can go to either one of us, any one of the four of us, really, and know they’ll be supported and able to talk to the other parent without a fight. We didn’t fight much when we were married, so it’s not hard to not fight with him now.

He’ll copy me on emails he sends to my son’s teacher. I might call, or we both sit in together at teacher conferences every year and tell the teachers,

“We’re united in this, whatever you need.”

We talked most when we were separating:

“This is what I want to see for the kids. So if I make a rule at my house, I want it to be a rule at your house, and if the teacher contacts you, I want you to contact me and tell me what the teacher says as well so that we’re all in that loop.”

How to co-parent was the easiest thing we agreed on. He is a kid of divorce and his parents never got along, did not do any of the above, and he didn’t want that for our children. We were both going to conferences and talking and stuff when we were married, so he was like,

“We’re just going to make that work for them.”

That was very easy to agree on.

What I take from Terry’s story are some critical elements for successful parenting:

• a philosophy that puts the children first;
• an acceptance that your ex has an important parenting role to play and wants to be actively involved;
• a commitment to open communication about the children.

Almost every aspect of a parenting plan can be approached starting with the children, as another of my guests, Kathleen did. Terry and her ex demonstrate this here by looking for a schedule that wasn’t foreign to their children and in the process lessening the change their divorce would mean. They also think about their children by sitting together at soccer games. It might seem like a small thing but in the eyes of children it’s huge – imagine, after the game wanting to get a hug from your parents and not knowing which side of the field to run to and feeling that you’re bound to upset one parent by going to the other one first.

Terry’s recognition that her ex is a good dad is similar to Kristi saying that her ex is still her children’s father and Carolyn saying that her ex may have been a lousy husband but he’s a great dad. They’re all able to separate their spousal relationship from their parenting relationship and recognizing the value of their ex as their children’s father, sends a clear message to the children, that they not being asked to choose between parents. More than that, your children can feel safe knowing that they don’t have justify or explain wanting to spend time with the other parent.

The communication piece is what, in my opinion makes it all work but it’s to be a two-way street. It’s impossible to be actively involved when you only get part of the information or when you never act on the information. Terry’s co-parenting works because both she and her ex are committed to making it work.

***

We don’t really decide ahead of time. It’s been strange and lucky – somehow, we’ve never both wanted to take the children at the same time. Christmas has been hard for me. He has his entire family come into town every year. They all stay at his place, like 18 relatives and cousins! My family is very segmented and nobody ever comes here, so it’s very quiet for me.

I think now the kids are older and they enjoy their cousins more, they realize I could go away and then we could have Thanksgiving together. I’m still available if they want to come over and get away from the house full of people but there’s not a lot of tugging or pulling. It’s all fallen into place.

I’ve changed the way I perceive holidays. They’re more of a retreat for me these days – a meditative time because it is very silent for me. I was serving wine in the Catholic church up until about seven years ago and I was steeped in Christianity. Now I’m not at all. Zero. I love my roots and I love what Jesus represents but I’ve made a complete break and changed so radically. His family, they’re all going to church so I think it’s more important for my children to celebrate Christmas with their father on Christmas Day.

***

I have what I think is a more typical parenting plan – it does spell out which holidays are spent with which parent and what happens during summer vacation and so on. I’ve liked having that spelled out because I think it has saved some disagreements. It’s a fall back, a safety net. I don’t think having an open parenting plan would have worked for me, at least not at first.

Now, after three years, I think we’re getting to where we can be more flexible. We did a little bit of weekend swapping so I could go to the Blissdom conference, for example. Our plan calls for the children to be with one parent for Christmas Eve and with the other for Christmas Day and then the rest of their school vacation is split 50/50. That arrangement makes it challenging to go away and I’m hoping we could be flexible on that in the future.

A friend of mine has a parenting agreement that calls for her children to spend her birthday with her. Birthdays aren’t covered in my agreement. For the children’s birthdays, my ex and I start with asking our children what they’d like to do (remember my kids are now 16 and 14) and then we take it from there, making sure that both he and I get to have a birthday celebration with the child. It doesn’t matter to me if my children aren’t with me for my birthday but it does matter that we celebrate it together at some point. My ex grew up in a house were birthdays were just like any other day so it’s not a big deal for him. Me? I like to make birthdays special.

I think that flexibility my ex and I now have has come as we’ve adjusted to our new roles. We’ve learned to trust that we’re supporting each other in our parenting roles and we recognize that we each have a valuable role to play in our children’s lives. It’s like Holly said, Parenting after divorce gets easier with time. Well .. maybe what I meant by that headline is that partnering with your ex on parenting issues gets easier with time – the parenting itself definitely gets harder as the children get older … but that’s another story.

Photo Credit:

***

On my side, everything is great. I have a really good relationship with my ex-husband. I actually like him. He’s a great guy. He and I were just really young when we met and I don’t think I knew myself as an adult yet. Once I started to figure myself out, it wasn’t the right fit for me.

We are both happier being divorced. We never had a miserable marriage so it was kind of hard to split at first but once we both got our lives started, it was easier. Now we like each other.

We get together on holidays. We’ll bend over backwards to help the other out in terms of “can you watch him on my day because I have this going on?” We get together at our son’s events and we throw his birthday parties jointly. We’re friends and I am actually friends with my ex’s girlfriend too.

She and I have a monthly day out with my son where we’ll take him to do something fun. We’ll go get a bite to eat and see a movie and he really enjoys it.

My son absolutely adores my boyfriend. There’s no confusion. He doesn’t see him as a father figure because his dad is still in his life. My son understands what everyone’s role is. He calls my boyfriend his best friend – it’s adorable. My boyfriend taught him how to spell his name one weekend because he turned it into a song. My son went to school on Monday and spell his name for his teacher. When I picked him up that afternoon she told me he’d said, “Yeah, my best friend is grown up. He taught me how to spell my name.” It was so cute.

Obviously, my boyfriend really likes my son . And now, my boyfriend and my ex are friends from the parties we’ve had. They’ll have a beer together, watch the Bears’ game and laugh. It’s almost disgusting. I’m sure it makes people want to throw up but really we all get along nicely and we’re a fun group.

The part that’s not so good is we have difficulty on my boyfriend’s side. He and his ex don’t get along well. She lives an hour and a half away with his kids and it’s in the opposite direction to me which is unfortunate. I don’t have a relationship with his kids but we’re hoping that will come in the future.

***

You have agree that what Lauren has here is pretty unusual. With their son being just four years old, Lauren and her ex have many years of co-parenting in front of them and getting along like this, should make life much easier for everyone.

When I was in the process of splitting up with my ex, I went with him to his therapist. My ex was struggling to accept that I wanted to end the marriage and I thought it might help if I talked to his therapist. His therapist had been divorced and had the same sort of relationship with his ex as Lauren has with hers. Even with adult children, the therapist still had ski days with his ex.

My ex and I do not have that relationship and honestly, I don’t think I would be comfortable with such a close relationship. Maybe that’s why we don’t. However, we are able to agree on most parenting issues, we do support each other on discipline issues and I’ll take that any day.

Before then, I want to finish up the Leap and the Net Will Appear series that features Carolyn. You’ll remember that Carolyn and her ex have two young children and share custody. That means although she and her ex are divorced, they are going to be tied by their children for quite some time to come. Carolyn sees that as a cloud looming over her future, even when everything else is falling into place. Here’s how she describes it.

***

When I first moved out, I tried to move to New Mexico because my mother and good friend lived there. I thought moving there would help me get through the break up.  I had never been alone before and I thought staying with my mother would make it much easier. My ex objected and so I took him to court. They said no. At the time, I was really upset but now I agree with the court’s decision.

I think it would be different if he was a deadbeat dad who didn’t want to see them all that much or was a bad influence on them, but he wants to see them, he loves them and they love him. So I understand why the court decided it was in their best interest for me to stay in the state.

Now, given how I’ve seen his relationship with the children develop, I wouldn’t go out of state even if I had the right simply because I didn’t have a dad and my children have a pretty good one. His interactions with them are really good and loving and I wouldn’t want to take that away from them.

My boyfriend and I are talking about getting married but it’s a big undertaking. He lives an hour south of me and that’s where his work is. But knowing my ex as I know him, I’m pretty sure he would take me to court to stop me from moving with the children. Even though the children would be gaining financial support, living in a house where they could each have their own bedroom, have better health insurance, I still think he would fight me and that makes me angry.

I really wish sometimes that my ex-husband and my ex-best friend would make some grand gesture towards making things right because I’m a very forgiving person. I could probably forgive them enough to have a pretty co-operative friendship with them as co-parents. But they’re not there and I’m not sure they ever will be.

Maybe, I never really knew them all that well because I feel the least they could do is relocate an hour south to facilitate me being able to have a stable, happy life after they completely derailed my life. If she can’t do that, I can’t ever forgive her and that’s really tough because she and I were so close.

I feel that if he really knew how much he hurt me and what he did to me, how could he begrudge me wanting to move 25 miles south so I could get remarried and have another shot at having a happy life? I don’t think he sees it all and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to take him to court. The thought of that is stressful but I try to remind myself that there’s nothing I can do about it. All I can do is proceed and hope that the stars will align so everything will work out for the best somehow.

***

What this story captures for me is that even though divorce ends a marriage, your parenting relationship with your ex continues and honestly, I’m not sure when it ends. I’m assuming certainly not until college over. If you have a special needs child, then it could be much, much longer. And what do you do when you want to relocate somewhere and your ex says no?

I’m a transplant from England – I’ve been here for over 20 years. When my ex and I got married, we never really talked objectively about the possibility of moving back to England. His mom was not well and I accepted that that tied us to the U.S. I also thought we’d just be able to figure it out as we went along. Now, I’m no longer married, I have no family here in the U.S. and the thought of moving back to England has crossed my mind – the two ladies I consider to be my closest friends in the world are there as well as my sister.

However, aside from the likely (and reasonable) objections from their dad, I can’t see my teenage kids wanting to uproot themselves from their schools now. Even when they do go to college, I don’t want to be living on a different continent to them – I keep saying to them, “Please don’t do to me what I did to my parents.” So on some days, I feel stuck here. Other days, maybe when I’m being more objective, I question how realistic I’m being about being able to adapt to life in England after so long away. For now, my master plan is beginning to look like, once I’m an empty nester,  trying to manage my life so I could at least spend a couple of months there each year.

Carolyn’s has just to posted about the ‘deep breath’ – the conversation she’s started to have with her ex about her possibly moving. Hope you’ll visit her blog and give her some support as that conversation progresses.

Photo Credit:

Bearing that in mind, Student Mama, is in her mid-twenties, has been married for about five and a half years, separated for about six months and has a five-year-old daughter. With the break-up still fairly recent, there remain lots of unanswered questions about how the future as a co-parent might work out.  Here are a few of Student Mama’s current concerns.

***

When a child is small, there’s comfort in knowing that they’re not conceptualizing everything that’s going on. At the same time though, there’s so much emotion they’re feeling from the changes that they can’t really express. You can’t really communicate with them.

I went through a whole period of questioning my motives – am I doing the right thing by breaking up the family? Am I handling my ex appropriately? Are we, is she going to come out ahead on the other side?

We’ve been honest with her about what was going on and she’s been angry with both of us. I think she would like to fix things – she’ll say, “Daddy, all you have to do is go get a ring and marry mommy again.” So I know she’s trying to grasp what’s going on. I’m very in touch with her preschool teacher and about how she’s doing there. For the most part, it seems she feels safe expressing herself because she just tells people if she’s having a hard time. At home there’s more of a wall between us and I’m trying to work on that. The hardest thing is seeing how much it affects her and feeling kind of helpless.

My ex is still involved. We don’t have a set schedule yet but we’re trying to keep it consistent for her. She goes and stays with him probably twice a week and he comes over after work sometimes and hangs with her. My ex and I went Christmas shopping together and we’ve gone to our daughter’s soccer games – not in the same car but we’ve met and sat together.

What gets difficult for my ex and I is whether or not we’re going to continue with the divorce. I’ve put my foot down and said “I’m not going back to our marriage” but I don’t think he’s at that final closure stage yet.  I don’t know if that’s rejection to him but there’s definitely been more strain on our relationship. There’s more arguing and more tension, especially around my decision to date.

I can’t say what’s going to happen in the future for us but I really would like to have a good co-parenting relationship. Doesn’t everyone want that? But for now I’m trying to stay in the present and not get too caught up in what I want because then I’ll start trying to push in that direction and that won’t be helpful until he’s ready to go there with me.

***

My husband and I didn’t have a separation although we debated the question of divorce for almost a year while living under the same roof, living increasing separate lives. It’s hard to know whether it would have been helpful or not. However, I do think there’s a lot to be said for a period of separation when the decision to end the marriage isn’t accepted by both spouses.

I think such a period can help bring clarity to the situation and if the end result is divorce, I think there’s great potential for less contentious settlement negotiations because emotions may not be running so high. I love what Student Mama says about living in the moment and waiting until her ex is at the same point she is – undoubtedly easier said than done but I think she may be laying the foundation for a solid, cooperative co-parenting relationship. Another story that might be helpful to read is the Kathleen Christensen’s series in which she talks about Collaborative Divorce.

Student Mama blogs about the daily trials and tribulations of adjusting to singledom over at Little Skool Girl – yesterday she was coming to grips with a broken car, soccer practice, doctor’s appointments, midterms and no help from her ex. Hope you’ll hop over there and give her some moral support.

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***

We still see our psychologist once a month pretty much on a proactive basis. We’re mostly relaxed and friendly but we can still get triggered. If something seems like it’s going to be harder to talk about, we bring it here. For example, I wanted my ex to have a land line phone at his home and he wanted to use just his cell phone. I prefer that my daughter not talk on a cell phone – she’s not a big telephone talker anyway but I don’t think the safety of cell phones for developing brains has really been established. My ex and I finally worked out that I’d split the cost of a land line and I had an old phone. Even something like this can be hard for us to resolve.

Other topics we’ve talked about – bedtimes. She’s a real night owl, I’m a night owl and he’s not. So how do we get her enough sleep? We’re still working on that one. We’ve talked about media time like should we have rules about how much time she should have on the computer. She used to go online occasionally but then she got Webkinz and wanted to be on the computer lots.

We’ve talked about housework. Conventional wisdom would say different houses are like different cultures and you just respect that. He’d been asking her to do some housework stuff and she was saying, ‘I don’t have to do that at Mom’s.’ So we were thinking we would work on that together. Housework is not one of my strong points but I came up with an idea based on FlyLady . She has this habit of the month so I thought we could choose one task, like throw your laundry in the basket, and work on doing that for a month and then adding another task.

Another tension between us is food and feeding say artificial colors or eating junk foods. I tend to want to keep things as organic and healthy as possible and he’s more casual. I would like us to come up with some basic rules and we could share strategies to get her to eat fruits and vegetables. We’re still in conversation about this.

Seeing the psychologist helps because we can deal with disagreements as they come up. It works better not to wait until things have gotten out of hand and then see someone.

***

That’s the thing about being a parent – it’s constantly evolving and just when you think you’ve got the upper hand, it changes. I think Kathleen is fortunate that her ex agrees to meet jointly with the psychologist. It does at least give her an opportunity to decide whether or not a particular battle is worth fighting. Fortunately, my ex and I have been able to agree on the points that we both feel are important but what happens when you don’t agree or when you can’t have a civil discussion?

Leave a comment and be entered in the drawing for a copy of Karen Salmansohn’s book, Prince Harming Syndrome. And if you’d like to know more about Kathleen, then head over to her blog, Head In the Clouds and follow her on Twitter, @kathwriter.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/compujeramey/ / CC BY 2.0

***

We were really building the relationship for the future. We were building a healthy relationship and a foundation. I think a lot of people are able to go into divorce and come to an agreement fairly easily. We didn’t go in that way at all.  At the same time, I’ve come to see the traditional system as enabling unhealthy behaviors, like trying to hide assets or just looking out for yourself. With a collaborative divorce while you could still theoretically hide assets, you go in agreeing you’re going to be honest with each other.

It felt safe to be honest about everything because of the framework that was around us and because we weren’t being enabled by a ‘you deserve this, get what you can’ approach. My lawyer did go over what would happen in a typical court case, what were the rights and what were the formulas but there wasn’t any just get as much time with your daughter as you can and just get all the money you can.

I was talking about the collaborative divorce process with a friend and I was painting this glowing picture. She said, ‘Yeah but it was really hard at first wasn’t it? And she’s right. It wasn’t wonderful at first. It was really kind of awful to be trying to work this stuff out together when we were not making decisions together at all. We had to work really hard at it but it changed our thinking and since we made all the decisions we’re more invested in the decisions. It takes away the self-interest.

***

I love Kathleen’s perspective – I had not thought of divorce negotiations as the foundation for your future relationship with your ex. When I was going through my divorce I always felt the process was bringing out the worse in both my ex and I. Even though I was trying to approach the settlement from what’s best for the children perspective, I found it didn’t help much when I was figuring out how I would finish college and start a new career. In future, when asked about the divorce process I’m going caution … you’re not just negotiating your divorce settlement, you are negotiating your future relationship with your ex.

Was there something you did during your divorce that helped you build the foundation for your relationship with your ex? If you’re facing divorce now, have you considered a collaborative divorce? Leave a comment and you’ll be entered in the drawing for the Prince Harming Syndrome book giveaway.

Curious to know more about Kathleen? Visit her Head in the Clouds blog where she writes about life with ADD. She’s on Twitter too – @kathwriter.

]]> http://www.sincemydivorce.com/hidden-benefit-of-collaborative-divorce/feed/ 1 http://www.sincemydivorce.com/miracle-behind-good-coparenting-relationship/ http://www.sincemydivorce.com/miracle-behind-good-coparenting-relationship/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:00:29 +0000 Mandy http://sincemydivorce.com/?p=1384 This post begins a series about Kathleen Christensen and the amazing relationship she and her ex have post-divorce. They were married for about nine years and have now been apart for about three years. They have a daughter who was seven when they separated.  Kathleen and her ex have come a long way and it’s been a hard, difficult struggle. When I interviewed Kathleen, she started by telling me about the marriage breakdown.

***

We worked really hard on the marriage but I think we had too many strikes against us. My ex had severe abuse of all kinds growing up and PTSD as a result of that and I’ve got the ADD thing which I just figured out seven years ago. So we used to joke about our marriage being PTSD meets ADD. We truly did try hard but it was a pretty dysfunctional relationship even thought there weren’t affairs or physical violence.

We saw a couple of therapists and when we were seeing the second one, things just went downhill. They spiraled down. I think part of that was she missed some of the big picture and added gasoline to the fire.

It wasn’t my decision to get divorced although I might have come to the same decision because I knew things were pretty bad. When he first said he wanted to get divorced I was horrified because I thought, ‘Oh my God, we have a child. What a terrible thing to do to a child.’ And given where our relationship was, I thought it could get even worse because that’s the way it is with a lot of people. I could see us going into the future with this terrible relationship having to make decisions about our daughter.

We did try to keep things under wraps and away from our daughter but she sensed the tension and sometimes it would boil over when she was around. When we told her we were getting divorced she said, ‘At least I won’t have to listen to you guys fighting anymore.’ So we obviously didn’t keep it hidden from her.

So now, after all we’ve been through, we can actually be relaxed and friendly with each other, make decisions together, and be flexible about decisions we’ve made. I never would have said this before, but it’s even better for our daughter than when we were married. I didn’t think we’d get here. It feels like a miracle that we can actually have this kind of co-parenting relationship.

***

Kathleen credits a collaborative divorce and counseling for the miracle of her co-parenting relationship and in this series of posts Kathleen will share more about what a collaborative divorce is and how it benefited her. Kathleen is a fellow blogger – she writes about the challenges of daily life with ADD at her Head in the Clouds blog so do hop over there and visit with Kathleen. You can also follow her on Twitter – @kathwriter.

***

There’s still some awkwardness. He’s very private and I’m not – I have a blog! He doesn’t really ask me too much about my personal life and we do have boundaries that we maintain. But I didn’t know what co-parenting was going to be like.

In the beginning, it was so frustrating for me because I had an idea of the type of father I wanted him to be and he wasn’t meeting any of that. It wasn’t until I let it go that I saw him really start to blossom into the father I wanted him to be.

I’m big on quotes and one that I read was, “Change doesn’t happen when you force it. It happens when you let it go.” I believe that.

I’m very type A and after we’d separated, every time the girls were going to him, I’d make sure he have everything he needed. Well, I think I was sick one time and I forgot to pack several things. He called me and said, ‘You didn’t pack this and you didn’t pack that,’ and I was very upset with myself. Then he said, ‘Don’t  worry. I went to Walmart and got everything I needed.’

I thought, ‘Wow. Look at that. He actually took the ball and ran with it and I didn’t have to do it for him.’

Then he started to feel more confident in his abilities and thought, ‘I can handle this, I can handle being a dad and I can handle the kids by myself.’

I was scary because I didn’t know if he was going to run with the ball or not. You don’t know until you let go and that’s the scary part – letting go.

I think somewhere in there I learned to respect him more for the dad that he was and he respected me more for the way I treated him and our children. There’s something about that respect that was very surprising and wonderful and  think that’s why we’re able to get along as well as we do.

***

I was the same as T at first, even though my children are older. I would be making sure they had everything they needed for the weekend packed and ready to go, hovering over them. Now, the burden is firmly with them – I think it’s all part of building organizational skills. It is however a rare weekend that I don’t see them from Friday evening to Sunday evening – they’re usually back here at least once. And in my case, it is the kids who’ve really stepped up – my ex was never organized and still isn’t. But like T said, I can’t change that and the kids seem to accept that far better than I ever did. These days it seems to matter less.

T blogs about her journey of self-discovery over at Quest for T and there’s usually a quote at the end of each of her posts. You can follow her on Twitter @TsQuest.

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