This Is What I Know: Shifting From Co-Parenting to Parallel Parenting

You can’t co-parent with a narcissist. I wish someone had told me that from the start. It would have saved me a lot of aggravation and hurt over several years post divorce. Of course everyone hopes for amicable divorces. We want to put the children first. We read books on the topic. We attended the state-sponsored class on it. We write into our divorce agreements that we intend to “co-parent”. We reassure the kids. We reassure our own parents. We leave the courthouse feeling all will be ok. 

My x-husband and I wanted the kids to feel both parents were aligned and supporting them just as we always had when we were married. If we work together we can make it work. Right? Wrong. The trouble is that narcissists in their very nature can’t collaborate or partner. They have to have control. I began to notice this as I began to express my life more independently. My ex desperately held on even tighter to whatever he could still influence and control. Unfortunately, that control was redirected to the kids. 

Much of what he did for the kids included leverage and power — against me— against the kids — it just depended. If he paid a sports fee then the kids owed him their gratitude and their commitment. If he didn’t feel he was getting the desired behavior he would threaten to “stop paying” and pull the from the sport. The rides to and from school became a 10 minute barrage of questions, accusations and threats to the kids. (When COVID came and I began to work from home, I happily took over the rides to minimize this tortuous beginning and end to a school day.) If my schedule changed or I traveled he insisted the kids stay with him. Inevitably, he would use this against me later as I “owed him a big favor.” This push and pull of conditional love was very confusing for the kids often leaving me to triage. 

Over time, as his personal involvement with the kids dropped off, his online bullying increased. Relentless “Answer me now” texts. Some were just flat out cruel. Many were abusive and included foul language and put downs. I blocked him for a time. Unfortunately the kids didn’t know what to do. My youngest began to ignore the texts. My middle son just stopped communicating with his Father altogether for anything meaningful. 

I tried a new tactic with emails such as  “what are your thought on…”. Those conversations were rarely productive and mostly an opening for questions and derailments. I began to get more and more criticism back. Armchair coaching as he would list what I needed to do better, what I was doing wrong. These communications often included threats to stop paying child support I didn’t change my approach. “Do your job” he’d say.  Do my job? I thought, hey aren’t we in this together? Aren’t we co-parenting? I realized we were not. He wasn’t capable of it.

It was at this time I began to parallel parent. I now CC him on school emails. I email him about sports sign ups, medical issues, or events in which he may want or need to participate in. In short, cut him out to save the kids and my mental sanity.

I regret we weren’t able to co-parent. It would have been nice to partner and share in the ups and downs of parenting our children together. I feel sad to cut my ex out of many every day decisions and conversations with the kids. But this was not going to work in our situation.

I would like to see more resources acknowledging and factoring in narcissism, abuse and controlling relationships. There are a lot of us out there navigating this and figuring it out by ourselves. What I know now I wish I knew long ago. While co-parenting is the ideal, by trying to do it, the kids can suffer.