In the current economy, you’d be a fool to turn down a promotion. But what if it meant upending your life, moving to the other side of the country, and leaving your two kids behind with your abusive ex-husband?
This is the exact situation facing a woman who’s looking for a fresh start so she can create a better life for her children. Torn between earning more money and staying connected to her kids, she turned to the Mumsnet community for advice.
More info: Mumsnet
Almost all of us could do with a promotion, but for this woman, it comes with a serious downside
Eager to secure a better future for her kids, she wants to take it, but it would mean moving to the other side of the country
The only way it would work is if she left her two kids behind with her abusive ex-husband and only saw them every other weekend
She says he’s lazy with the kids and never takes them to any of their extracurricular activities, expecting them to fit in with his lifestyle
Torn between the promotion and keeping up her relationship with her kids, she turned to the web for advice
OP begins her story by telling the community that she’s been offered a big promotion but taking it would mean moving 5-6 hours away from home. She goes on to say that she and her ex-husband share custody of their two children, and that he won’t give it up so she can take the kids with her.
She adds that her ex was controlling and abusive and has even told her that his goal is to make life as tough as possible for her. While he says he loves his kids, he makes co-parenting nearly impossible and is jealous of her close relationship with the children.
She also mentions that he’s lazy with the kids and expects them to fit into his lifestyle, which regularly involves trips to the local pub with his friends. OP says that his only aim with the shared custody is to avoid paying maintenance.
OP says she’s tempted to call his bluff and take the promotion anyway, but she’s worried what leaving the kids behind with him would do to her relationship with her kids.
She’s only considering taking the promotion so she can rebuild a life with her kids after an admittedly horrendous divorce. She’s since turned to the Mumsnet community to ask if it’d be unreasonable to go for the new job, even though it would mean only seeing her kids every other weekend.
In an update to her original post, OP tells the community that she’s not going to take the promotion after all, stating that her relationship with her kids is what should come first.
It sounds like OP’s ex is a real piece of work. Now that she’s decided to stay put, she could probably use some strategies and tools to help cope with his bad behavior.
For starters, it doesn’t look like co-parenting is possible thanks to the husband’s attitude towards OP. That’s because co-parenting involves both parents sharing an amicable relationship and working together to minimize the negative impact of the divorce on their kids.
OP would need to turn to parallel parenting. This method allows a parent who’s dealing with a toxic ex to create a workable, more independent, and less stressful relationship via a number of practical strategies.
In her article for Choosing Therapy, Dr. Suzanne Degges-White writes that parallel parenting focuses on maintaining limited interaction and setting clear boundaries between separated parents who share joint custody of their child(ren). All communication is conducted via mediators or email to establish distance between the ex-couple.
While co-parenting couples work together to develop a shared parenting plan for their kids, in the case of parallel parenting, there’s no collaboration and strict boundaries when it comes to communication between parents. This model of co-parenting involves detailed and agreed upon plans regarding things like schedules, locations, and pick-up times.
In her article for Divorce.com, former attorney and mediator Brette Sember JD writes that, if you have a toxic ex, it’s critical you realize two important things. First, you cannot change them, you can only control yourself and your own behavior. Second, you will be co-parents with them for the rest of your natural lives, so you have to find a way to manage the situation.
Sember puts forward 11 tips for co-parenting with a toxic ex, some of which include putting your child first by respecting the parenting schedule, prioritizing your self-care and well-being, finding a lawyer empathetic to your case, and getting a detailed court order.
She goes on to add that it’s crucial to establish personal boundaries. For example, you may decide that if your ex raises their voice, that’s the end of the conversation. Be decisive about your boundaries and don’t back down if they’re being crossed.
If texting with your ex proves to be too toxic, there are even co-parenting apps that help manage communication and scheduling. As an added benefit, communication stored on these apps can become part of the court record. Some even offer online access to mediators who can step in to resolve conflict in near real time.
While we’re glad that OP decided not to sacrifice her kids’ well-being just to get back at her ex, it does seem as though she needs to switch up her co-parenting situation or her life will remain as miserable as her ex wants it to be.
What would you have done if you’d found yourself in OP’s shoes? Do you think it’s time she re-evaluates the parenting arrangement with her abusive ex? Let us know your opinion in the comments!
Commenters on the woman’s post seemed to agree that taking the promotion would be a terrible idea and would give her ex-husband the perfect opportunity to badmouth her to her kids
