Adventures in Co-Parenting

Anon and anonotoo,

For a different perspective, I’ll add mine. I left an extremely emotionally abusive situation where I thought the kids were both experiencing some emotional abuse and witnessing things that normalized dysfunctional relationship and misogynist treatment of women/non-binary people. I thought leaving would be terribly hard, dreaded the missed time with my children that is already so scant and precious in life, and worried about their experience in a new family formation and my ability to protect them. Still, I thought the arrangement would be for the better.

Now, 6 months into the separation and coparenting with my former abuser (there was no recourse for trying for full custody), and if given the chance to do it all over again, I would never leave. I would endure years of emotional abuse and learn to “manage” him and the situation better, understanding the tradeoffs and sadness in that (and I’ve already experienced cancer and other health effects that I believe are related in some way to years of that relationship’s effects on the body). The grief at losing that time with my children and having to send them to stay with someone I don’t trust, as well as the retraumatizing nature of coparenting with my former abuser, feel like the culmination of the worst decisions of my life. I knew how to endure the situation there, and at least I could be with my kids and have my intact family, with all its flaws. I’m making the best of the time when I don’t see them, fortifying my friendships, doing self care, getting stuff done around the house and to prepare to be present and in the moment when I do see them, but I also feel like *no one* talks about this kind of regret and instead we have the most exposure to things like the comments here saying it’s the best arrangement possible, or the recent NY Times article saying 50/50 parenting is better for mothers and is actually the arrangement that can support more even division of labor and all their dreams and time to work on themselves and have a social life, etc. I would give so much to be able to go back in time and make a different choice, emotional (and at times bordering on physical) abuse and all. I would learn more, protect my kids as best I could, and mediate the rage of their narcissistic abusive dad. I think it could have been ok, whereas this separation and all the fallout is anything but (and I don’t actually think it’s better for them either, even though my older child, in a moment of trying to soothe my regrets – which I never want him to have to feel or emotionally caretake but which he picked up on anyway – said I should have left sooner and his dad would have kept hurting me). My kids are a tween and a toddler (in case that gives you a sense related to your situations) and the more scant time with both of them and especially the littler one haunts me and wakes me up with hypervigilance and wells of longing and sadness in the middle of the night. I would suggest seeking professional support to make the decision if you haven’t already, and considering whether the awful calculus of staying until the kids are older (I would have tried staying until the youngest graduated high school – 17 years from now – even with all the potential consequences and loss of my chance to have a healthy romantic relationship and partnership in my lifetime) might be something that, however common and however discouraged for women selling out their lives, you might want to consider. Again, if I had known the realities of this life, even with the added meal prep time and exercise time and hanging out with my friends time and making art on my own time and travel and hot baths etc etc – I would never pick this again. It really depends on your situation though, what you can tolerate, and how prickly or abusive things are. If I had stayed and had a cancer recurrence or metastasis, would I have wondered if it was related to enduring toxic relationship, familial, and home conditions? Probably.