Coparenting With an Abusive Ex

We all know that parenting is enough of a challenge on its own, but what about when you’re coparenting with an abusive ex, someone who may be acting more for themselves than the best interest of your kid? My guest, Lisa Johnson, is a certified domestic violence advocate and the cofounder of a divorce coaching program called Been There Got Out. We’re talking all about: • The goodness and peace that are on the other side of the pain and struggle. • What to look out for when it comes to coercive control, loyalty conflict and reacting to your ex. • Ways to support your kid and help them navigate difficult situations. • How to get the support you need to care for yourself and your child. If coparenting with an ex has been a struggle for you, or if you are making a decision to leave a relationship, this real-talk conversation will give you the information you need to make the best choices for you and your child and support them through it all.  ------------------------------- My guest, Lisa Johnson, is a certified domestic violence advocate and the cofounder of a divorce coaching program called Been There Got Out. She works alongside her co-founder and romantic partner, Chris, to help people who are dealing with high-conflict separation and divorce, custody battles, and coparenting hell so that they can have the best outcome in family court and beyond.   Lisa’s Story Of course, there is much more to Lisa’s story than what we could cover in this conversation, but there are some elements she experienced that she has seen to be pretty common with her clients, as well.  When Lisa was making the decision to leave her previous marriage of 18 years, her now-ex-husband made her feel like if she left, then she would be responsible for breaking up their family, which included two kids. She would be to blame for destroying their kids’ lives.  So she did everything she could to stay and keep the family together. Ultimately, she realized that one person can’t make both people better. They wanted two different things, and it just wasn’t working.  Like so many others, Lisa knew she had to leave her marriage for herself. She didn’t know what would happen with the kids. She would figure that out later. But for her to survive, she had to go.  She describes the feeling of carrying a ball of pain inside of her trying to keep it all together. And when she admitted that it wasn’t working, and her ex left, there was such a sense of relief. A weight had been lifted.  She didn’t know what would happen next, but she knew she couldn’t try to control it, and letting go was so freeing. Now, she’s on the other side, has found the love of her life and created her business to help others through those same kinds of struggles.    Coparenting With an Abusive Ex Lisa’s clients are often dealing with ex-spouses who are not handling things with maturity and who are trying to take back control. There are a lot of hurt feelings and, often, a history of abuse.  In many of these cases, Lisa sees instances of coercive control, which means that some freedom has been taken away from one person in the relationship. It might look like financial abuse, where one person doesn’t have any control over the family’s money. It can also show up as social isolation or other types of verbal, psychological or sexual abuse.  Although they’re now in different living spaces, the parenting relationship is not over. Lisa says that the three main areas where conflict and abuse come up after a divorce are money, kids and court.  Legal abuse related to money and court conflicts go hand-in-hand. It’s all about winning and losing. The abusive partner wants to take everything - kids, money, time and control. Conflict around the kids lasts the longest and is the most painful.  In these situations, the child is often put into something called loyalty conflict, usually by the abusive parent. Kids are expected to choose sides and be loyal to one parent over the other. They’re then rewarded for rejecting the parent who's often the target of the abuse, often the safe, healthy, protective parent. The child may also be punished for showing affection or love to that parent. This often starts even before the relationship ends. One parent might try to undermine the other or grill the child on everything that happened while they were at the other parent’s house. One of the most common things that they do is send poisonous messages about the other parent to the child, wanting them to believe that that other parent is unsafe, unloving or unavailable (even though the opposite is usually true).  This feels so scary and dangerous, because sometimes your kid will absorb these messages. They’ll be angry and confused and lash out at you. You feel triggered the same way you are by your ex, because you see that same behavior coming through your child.  We talk about this behavior as “poisoning the well”. As the parent, your challenge is to take t...