Toxic Ex-Spouse and Child Sharing Can Be a Recipe for Disaster! Or Can it Be Prepared Differently?
TES - Toxic Ex Spouse
When you share a child or children with someone, getting divorced may end your marriage, but it doesn’t end your obligation to co-parent your child. So, what happens when your ex is just downright nasty?
This is a story we all have heard at one point from a loved one or a friend that is living in this hell or trying to stay above the water dealing with such a dreaded issue. It’s called a toxic ex-spouse or better known as TES. We have all heard of this famous line of words once before. The first thing that comes to mind for me is my own personal life involvement. Dealing with the TES can be draining. It took me a long time to figure out what a toxic ex-spouse is, even while watching it play out for years in my family and friend’s lives. It happens all the time in this beautiful world we live in, and, believe it or not, it’s not just in relationships with young children, but older children as well. Sometimes, even with adult children, your TES will try to contact you and send nasty messages asking why the kids won’t have anything to do with them, and then shame the good parent as if they are the problem… when it’s really the manipulating toxic ex-spouse.
Creating a Loyalty Conflict
What is a toxic ex-spouse you ask? According to Healthy Place, a consumer resource for mental health, a toxic ex is a co-parent who “creates a loyalty conflict for your children”.
Loyalty conflict sounds like a new term these days. Loyalty
conflict is “an uncomfortable and harmful feeling experienced by a child who is under the impression that they must take sides or choose between adults who are important to them”. I’ve been watching this play out for years among many people I know. After all the years of watching ex-spouses do this, I see that it ends with the same result. It hurts the kids, young and old, and puts them on a path for what could be a very disappointing and dysfunctional life in the future. At some point in the crossroads of life, it will sneak up on them, and BAM! there it is. Dysfunctional Road.
Frustrating and Unhealthy
I often get frustrated about this. Why would any parent want to intentionally hurt their child by not allowing both parents to be involved in their children’s lives? And why does an ex-spouse get jealous when someone new enters the children’s lives? They immediately tell the children lies or disrupt the children’s visitation schedules.
Examples Include:
- The TES tells the children that the other parent had an affair.
- The TES planning a trip for the holidays when the other parent is supposed to have them.
- The TES telling the children the other parent hasn’t paid child
support even though they have.
The list goes on and on. They want to keep the hate going and pretend there is a financial struggle in the family. All these real-life examples have been used over and over, and again, only hurt the children involved.
I have witnessed toxic ex-spouses make sure their own children don’t have a good experience with the divorce because the TES is still so miserable from their own parent’s divorce. Whatever situation is happening, it’s not okay to be a TES.
Prepare the Recipe Differently
These behaviors can seriously damage your relationship with
your child, especially if your child is very young at the time of your divorce. Younger children lack the life experience and emotional intelligence to recognize when a toxic parent is trying to disrupt their bond with their other parent. This can lead to children taking the lead of the one parent and creating hatred or built-up anger over time for the other.
What I can’t understand to this day is, why? Why does any parent want to do this to any child? Can’t you find other ways to be mad at your ex-spouse or just move on and let it go? What good does it serve to be angry and keep that going into your child’s life?? I say, break the cycle! Make it stop, so it no longer repeats itself or keeps going farther into the family blood line. Can’t we all be friends with our ex- spouses to some degree?!
If you’re dealing with a TES, try to figure out a way to come together for the children and be nice and kind for the others that are involved. If you currently are a TES and realizing it now for the first time, do yourself the biggest favor and stop! Just let it go, dear! I promise it will be better for you in the long run. Not all recipes turn into disasters, we must learn to prepare it differently sometimes.
