Coparent Academy Podcast
Lifechanging Coparenting
Coparent Academy Podcast
#87 - How to Move on When Your Coparent is Your Abuser (Reddit post conversation)
In this 4th in a series of Reddit post discussions, we address a Reddit user's question about how to move on when your coparent is your abuser.
Next week we begin a series in which we do a deep dive into coparenting and domestic violence. If you would like to participate in our domestic violence series as a guest, please contact us and let us know. We are interested in all perspectives and backgrounds for our conversations.
Thanks for listening! If you have questions, comments, or concerns, please email us at podcast@coparentacademy.com. To learn more about becoming the best coparent you can be, visit coparentacademy.com.
Welcome everybody. Today is the fourth in our four-week Return to Reddit series. Today, we're going to be talking about a more complicated topic than we have gotten into in the past few weeks, and it's how to move on when your user is a co-parent. So the issue of domestic violence is one that both Linda and I take extremely seriously. It is a topic that's never easy to talk about.
Speaker 1:There's lots that it just gets so complicated and in depth, and we know that there is a good chance that we wind up saying something that is potentially hurtful to someone when we don't even have any reason to know that it would be.
Speaker 1:So, as we have our conversations today, if there's something that you find difficult and if you want to talk with us about it or let us know how you feel, please do. We also are going to be getting into a series on domestic violence and co parenting starting up in the next several weeks, and we would really love to hear from anyone who has a question about the topic, who has thoughts that they'd like us to touch on in our conversation, and if there is anyone who would like to come on and have a conversation with us, whether you were the victim of abuse or whether you were the abuser. We would love to have a conversation with you and get your perspective when it comes to how to move on with co-parenting from either side of it. So, linda, how about that introduction that gets everybody happy and excited? Done it?
Speaker 2:Well, unfortunately it does happen in so many cases in some degree, some level, sometimes on both sides. Sometimes you know the abuser is female, sometimes male. It's just you all over the place. So I think we we look at it as maybe calling it the the abuser and the victim. Do you think that's the right terminology to use, so that it's not man-woman?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that makes sense because there's so many different ways for people to abuse, and it's not just physical, it's the power and control dynamics, and and although the Duluth power and control wheel is geared towards the man being the abuser and the man is typically the abuser, especially when it comes to physical abuse you and I both are well aware that there are many instances whereas the woman who's exerted the power and control dynamics, especially when it comes to co-parenting Right, and so I think victim and abuser makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:Well, and even I think it's extremely under reported that the female can be the physically hurtful person in the relationship as well.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, because a lot of guys take the position well, if I didn't, if I didn't actually get hurt, does it really matter that she hit me? Right? And the answer is yes, especially if a child was aware of that dynamic, right. But you're right, I think it is very much under reported and I think it's also just there is a seriousness bias, a severity bias perhaps, where it may be the case that there's a lot of numbers of attacks of women against men, but I think the most severe attacks physically are men against women, and so I think there's a bit of a severity bias in terms of the reporting, in the focus.
Speaker 2:I could say a lot of levels going on here.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Okay, well, let's get into this one. This Reddit post is how to move on when your abuser is a co-parent and this person is saying that there's no contact order protection against the abuser, the child can't perform in school when visitation is coming up and then after the visitation, the child can't sleep and has a really hard time regulating emotions. This is completely normal. The poster says I just don't know how to move forward. I feel like I never let the abuser go. Excuse me, all right, I'm going to back that up.
Speaker 1:The victim writes I feel like I never left my abuser. Every time I go to the agency that supervises the visits, I feel confused when my child talks about our abuser in a positive way, because the recollection is usually inaccurate and my child sees our abuser through rose-colored glasses. The child never got it as bad as I did when it came to abuse and, even with it being hard for me, it took over a decade for me to finally leave. How do you move on when the child hasn't even come to terms that their parent is a very dangerous person? There's so much there.
Speaker 2:There's so much there Like the no-contact, probably as a protective order, you think, or a restraining order, would that be?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds like a protective order, not just an emergency, but probably a protective order that's in place. We're going to assume that this is not just an allegation of abuse. We're going to assume that this is substantiated abuse.
Speaker 2:And that it is for the child as well as the parent.
Speaker 1:That's what seems to be the case.
Speaker 2:Because I would think if the child is being supervised in a particular place and they're not able to go out into public at large to have a visit, that it's probably pretty stringently kind of the what do you call it most restrictive environment for them to have some sort of visitation.
Speaker 1:It seems like it for sure. And the first thing that jumps out at me in this is I want to say well done to the victim in this case for not alienating the child, Because that's actually the first thing that jumped out the child sees the abuser with rose-colored glasses, looks forward to I mean, has trouble with the visitation, has nerves for parts I'm regulating emotions after but still says seeing the child and rose still says that the child sees the parent through rose-colored glasses. That's a little confusing to me, but I get the sense that the parent is not the victim, is not trying to alienate the abuser, which is probably very hard for that parent to do.
Speaker 2:And that's something to do with the child's visceral reaction to the visit coming up, because they may sense and kind of take on some of that anxiety from the victim parent. From the victim parent yeah, Child is probably talking about the positive visitation they've been having at the supervised situation. And yes, it's supposed to be positive. It's being supervised, there's not any chance for anything to happen it shouldn't be and so no wonder the child is talking positively about how the parent is behaving there, right?
Speaker 1:Which is one of the things that comes up a lot Whenever you have a client who's the abuser and they say I've been on supervised visitation and it's gone well for so long, and you have to explain to the person. Well, to the court, what that proves is is that supervised visitation works well. It doesn't prove that unsupervised visitation works well, right, and there's a whole process to get safely from supervised to unsupervised and there's lots of things that we have to do to get there Right. So that is for sure.
Speaker 2:Well, it's helped me that they're afraid for it to be unsupervised, even afraid for it to go to like in-person supervision, from doing the reconciliation with me, online with the parent, because they're so afraid that something will cause that parent to revert back to behavior that they remember.
Speaker 2:Something that really jumped out at me was, even though the mother is not overtly talking to the child about what had happened in the past, she says the child talks about our abuser in positive terms and it's going to be very difficult for the victim to continue to not tell the child what the victim experienced, because evidently they are expecting the child to be as wary of, as scared of, as concerned about possible future behavior that could be abusive in the same manner as the past behavior. And I know a lot of parents are like you know, if it was just talking about. You know like these days we have intruder drills at school and children have to be talked to about those things. They have to practice those things, and so the victim parent is you know how come I can't talk to my child about the very real threat that they are facing when they go to the other parents to visit.
Speaker 1:Right, right, and it's not clear to me whether this parent and I think we've gone ahead and determined this is the mom.
Speaker 1:And it does say in the writer post it gives us some indications that that's the case in this particular case that the child was actually abused or observed the abuse, which is just as bad as being directly physically abused for the child. So it's not clear to me there, and that does make a difference to some degree, because there are some people who will abuse their spouse but wouldn't abuse the child. I mean, it seems unusual. And then there's some people who are just looking for a target. It could be the spouse, it could be the child, if neither one's there, it could be the dog, it could be the neighbor, it could be the inanimate objects, just everybody's different.
Speaker 2:And so I think that is something that would need to be taken into consideration. And many times, if the child looks like or acts like the parent that was the victim and that person's no longer there to be the buffer between the abuser the child, then the abuser may start treating the child more like they treated the adult 100%, and it also matters whether or not this parent is going through any corrective training.
Speaker 1:We have batters intervention here in Oklahoma which has a fairly good success rate for someone who actually completes it in good faith. The recidivism is a lot lower than you would think, so it would depend on you know, it's 52 weeks Right yeah.
Speaker 2:Longer than that if they relapse somewhere along the line, which they do Correct.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, so completing that 52 week weekly program, with a lot of it being focused on having building up your empathy for others and thinking you know, compassion for others, it does a lot of work. You know you fake the funk until the funk is real and if you have to fake the funk every week for 52 weeks, eventually it can become a little bit more real for you than it was before.
Speaker 2:Exactly. So yeah, it's huge whether or not, first of all, with the so many layers here, you know how much of this was they were mutual combatants. How much was? You know one person was definitely abusive to the other, how much was. Because sometimes both sides are mutually physically combative. Sometimes they're one can trigger the other one on purpose, but with some things that are said or done, so that person needs to work on their issues that are probably carried over from another relationship or a family of origin situation. So it's important that everybody is able to look at their part of the situation and not just own it but see what they can do to work on it. You know, if you're still suffering an abusive situation from your childhood and you have met this person that is acting out on you in a way that your abuser did from your childhood, then, even though we wouldn't call that your fault, we would look at you'd need to work on some issues there and for your child's sake, if not your own.
Speaker 1:Which is why it's such a complicated topic and why we're gonna devote a series to dealing with all these issues, because it's just there's just so much.
Speaker 1:There's just so much there. So for this particular one, to talk about this particular question, we're going to make the assumption that this person is reporting accurately, that both she and her child were abused over a period of a decade, potentially that the father is a very dangerous person and how to move on when your abuser is a co-parent. One of the things that is surprising to me and maybe it's definitional typically, if you have a protective order against the person and they're still in this highly restrictive supervisory setting, there's probably not a lot of co-parenting going on in terms of a typical joint legal custody situation. I agree with that too.
Speaker 1:So if we're thinking definitionally about it, let's handle it in both ways. Let's say for the moment, that the person does not have joint custody, and so this mother is speaking solely about how to continue to have to allow the child to see the other parent in a professionally supervised setting, and that's what she means by co-parenting. So how do you move on when you're stuck having to deal with and think about that person who abused you for a decade on a weekly or every other weekly basis, when you're having to take your child to see them?
Speaker 2:And that's where I was talking about a while ago that that victim needs a lot of therapy for themselves because it is a weekly or every other weekly trigger, big time Right, and it is going to be, I'd say, pretty much impossible for that parent to not lay some of that anxiety out in the vehicle on the way or ready to go or something. We just don't even realize how much of that we do put off, even when we're trying to be very circumspect about our adult information. We're giving a child or something.
Speaker 1:Right, especially if the other parent has only professionally supervised, then this parent is spending a lot of time with this child and it's probably, in a lot of ways, them against the world, right? I think that dynamic happens a lot, right, and so close with another person that way you're very especially when you're the child and you're dependent on that person for everything. You're very attuned to slight changes in that person's temperament and their facial expressions. Just even micro changes in their facial expression you're going to pick up on and assign a negative inference to. Typically.
Speaker 2:And that could be why the child has such difficulty before each visit, right?
Speaker 2:I know from my experience with similar situations when I was the person that the child was only then seeing the parent that had been diagnosed as the abuser. In the situation it was very possible that the child was having especially if they were a younger child, let's say eight or nine and below they could be having a great time with the parent in my office and then by the time they get back to the other parent in the wedding room have an emotional fall apart and you know, it looks like they were having a horrible time the whole time when they weren't. So it's really. And then there are children that will be extremely intimidated and withdrawn from that that abuser parent the entire time. And then that's what I wonder as the therapist facilitator why are we even doing this, you know? But what is the bout? And sometimes I feel like I get those orders just so we can give it a shot and see how the child reacts, and I think that is a great disservice to a child in that situation.
Speaker 1:Which is why I think all reconciliation counseling order should have with the orders that you and I use, although we don't get a chance to work much together anymore is reconciliation counselor and attorney, because we have our co-parenting business together. But to have the first step be for the counselor to do intakes with everyone individually and determine whether it's even therapeutically appropriate to begin the parent and child reconciliation process. That's a critical step that sometimes aren't in the reconciliation counseling orders.
Speaker 2:Oh, rarely. And also if the child, and probably if they've been through a situation like this, they are receiving individual therapy as well, and in that role I'm not there to be the child's individual. But I do want to make sure that I'm not making something worse for them, and so that's what I would be talking to their individual therapist to find out what they are saying about the abuse or parent.
Speaker 1:Seeing. That gets really complicated as well. Because when I have reconciliation counseling orders put in place and there's also individual counseling, then I ask the judge to put into the reconciliation order that the reconciliation counselor is authorized to talk with individual counselor and if the reconciliation counselor determines that individual can that. It's a multi-step process. First the reconciliation counselor determines whether it's therapeutically appropriate to begin the parent-child reconciliation process. If it is, then the reconciliation counselor needs to speak with the individual counselor to make sure that the individual counseling isn't going to interfere with the reconciliation process. And if it is, then the individual counseling needs to be suspended to the extent necessary to permit an honest attempt at the reconciliation process, which is something that sometimes a lot of folks and a lot of counselors don't like. But I feel like if you've made the determination that the reconciliation counseling is appropriate, then you have to give it a good chance to work as quickly as possible, because dragging it out is not good for anybody.
Speaker 2:Well, and that goes back to one of those levels or layers of this issue you know hasn't actually been determined that this person was abusive, that they are an abuser, and have they been remanded to like the 52-week program? Have they had a psycheval? Is there, you know, an anger management class that they're working on? Is there something already in the works that says they are bonafide abuser? Or, as in many of our cases, that's not the case and I know many victims never call the police. It's real. So many different steps and parts of the process and so if there isn't the paperwork, the substation, the determination made that this was actually abuse that the child was a part of, but the individual therapist just thinks the child should not be around that person and they've never met the abuser, then that's typically more when that becomes an issue to suspend some of the individual therapy at that time.
Speaker 1:Precisely because, especially with younger children, what you'll get is an intake with an individual counselor, where the case history comes from the parent who says that it was an abusive relationship, and the entire focus of the individual counseling has been on reinforcing even unintentionally but through the process the trauma of the abuse, which may never have happened or, if it did happen, maybe it wasn't as significant and the child maybe wouldn't even have remembered it If it hadn't been for the fact that she were an individual counseling every other week talking about it.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So lots of, yeah. Oh, it's so complicated.
Speaker 2:And most of our listeners have probably heard some part of this that is their life that they've experienced in one of these subsets or the other.
Speaker 2:And so when the mother then says that the child has not come to terms in this particular case, that their father is a dangerous man, I think that is something that is once again subject to all the above. Is that just that particular parent's viewpoint on it? Is that substantiated in all these ways, and is that person in treatment for it, or is it something that the child never has perceived to be true, even though the mother in this case has definitely perceived it to be true? I have had many cases through the years where one of the parents will tell me that the other one has been abusive, and when I talk with the child and try to get to that part of things, they act like they don't have a clue that anything like that's ever happened in their home. Sometimes they will say they've heard people arguing in another room or something, but they've never seen anybody physically hurt the other one. Or it will be the child's perception that both parents are equally causing the fights and should both do something better than argue with the other parent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I can imagine some listeners are thinking we were all over the place in this conversation and I think that's for good reason. I think there's a lot of unknowns and unless you can get into the case specifically and really make those assessments, our minds, having seen all different variations of this, are going to all the different permutations of what it could be. One thing that I notice I get the sense that mom, although it seems like she hasn't been actively trying to alienate the abuser parent, she has to be really cautious about letting this child have the best relationship with the parent the abuser parent that the child can safely have, because if this child is already viewing the abuser parent with rose-colored glasses, that rose tint is only going to get more vibrant if there is zero access.
Speaker 2:Very good yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, you're the one who taught me this.
Speaker 2:Well, I think I've told you this story before, but I had a sweet, precious eight-year-old years ago whose father was incarcerated because of attacking someone else physically not the mother, but he hadn't seen him most of his life and was so missing that father figure in his life and he had built this person up to be kind of a Superman character in his mind and to the point that he said his plan was when he became an adult, when he turned 18, he was going to do something bad enough that they would put him in prison with his father. He perceived they could be cellmates and just have a great time. And that's the most extreme situation I've ever seen where the child builds up that absent parent.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's what I was thinking of, but it happens, to lesser degrees, all the time.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And especially as the child gets older and starts to get frustrated, starts to resent the victim parent for interfering, to their perception, with that relationship that they could have and every kid, to the extent possible, wants to have a relationship with their parent. I mean, even if your parent was damaging, you still have that yearning to have some form of relationship, to understand where you come from, to know that someone loves you unconditionally, if that's possible, and to I've been there almost every child that I do conversation with, whatever the time frame is.
Speaker 2:What are the questions they want to ask? That having that absent parent is where have you been Right? What have you been doing? That was more important than being my parent.
Speaker 1:Right, and the only reason they care about that question is because it was important to them to have the parent in their life.
Speaker 2:And if that parent is working on the issue, if the child remembers what was happening, if the child is aware that the parent has a problem. The best thing that parent can do and we know it's the best thing they can do for the court as well is to fully own what they've done and show the child what they're working on. I've actually had parents bring in the workbook that they're using in anger management class or in the domestic violence classes. Really show the child that this is what I'm learning to do if I get angry in this kind of situation. I now know to do these three steps Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's so important. Just because our kids sometimes see us as being perfect doesn't mean that we need to present to them as if we are. It's better for our children to present ourselves to them as human beings with flaws that can be overcome and worked on and apologized for. And you know this person. And to the mom from the mom you know, if this guy is so bad that he's never going to change and never going to be a good person to have any parenting with this child, the best thing that she can do is have the child have this visitation so that he can see that for himself, because the abuser parent is not going to be able to fake the funk forever. I mean, if he's not making good changes, it's going to come out somehow some way, even in the supervised visitation, that the child will pick up on.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Even on a virtual format.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:They will give it up that they are very self-centered and all about themselves and not carrying out the child feels and trying to make the child feel guilty for not saying they love them or meeting their needs. You know they don't think about meeting the child's needs. They're thinking about how the child is or isn't meeting their needs.
Speaker 1:Right, and this is one of the reasons, tangentially, why it's important to have in this kind of circumstance, except for in very rare circumstances, the abuser parent to have visitation with the child, just by himself, not with his mother, not with his sister, not with the new girlfriend or other children, because the more you can put the onus on the parent to sustain the visitation with the child, the more the person is either going to rise to the occasion or fail.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and they don't have those other people to be distracting or pretty much helping to facilitate the visitation Exactly.
Speaker 1:Well, let's give a bottom line answer how to move on when your abuser is a co-parent? You're not going to be able to move on from the fact that that person is a parent to your child. You're not going to be able to move on from the fact that your child deserves to have the best possible relationship with both parents in a way that is safe. So what you have to do is to fortify yourself, to address the issues that trigger you, to make yourself as strong as possible so that you can have the level of relationship that is required by the court and required by your child's needs to do the best you can for your child while keeping yourself safe. Very good summary, thank you.
Speaker 2:And it's way easier said than done for sure Sounds great Right Now.
Speaker 1:Try to do it yeah. So I mean heart goes out to anyone who is a victim of abuse and is put in the position of having to face a child's life Place on a weekly basis, the the ghost of your past and the abuser and put your child in that situation. That's just I mean. That is a crippling thing for people for sure. There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 2:And those kinds of visitation venues is typically there will be no visual contact between. Yes, it's triggering enough to know who's there. It is a court, it is, it is anywhere, and so at least they will have a handoff situation where the child is with the supervisor and then the supervisor returns the child to the victim parent, because there's no reason why they should ever come across each other in the parking lot or anywhere For sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, if you're done, I think that does it for this week, and I just want to reach out to anyone out there who wants to give us feedback, who wants to participate in this upcoming series we have on co parenting and domestic violence, who wants to participate either by being on the show or by providing us with questions, comments, concepts that they want us to consider.
Speaker 2:How would they go about that?
Speaker 1:So good question, they can send an email to podcast at co parent Academy calm and we will get that and we will communicate back with you.
Speaker 2:We've had folks come on the show in the past and we've always enjoyed the perspectives that people can provide us.
Speaker 1:And so we would love to hear from you two.
Speaker 2:And we are very serious about that. Oh yeah because the two of us haven't necessarily had all the situations happen, but we have all the things happen to us, thank goodness that are out there. So we don't pretend to know about your situation and we would love, love, love to hear from you.
Speaker 1:Yes, ma'am, all right. Well, thank y'all and we will see you next time. Take care, bye.