Avoid the Fight at All Costs
Divorce can go a lot of ways. I’ve seen families that coparent well together—make decisions about the kids’ well-being with some ease, can discuss strategies for things like supporting good grades, have polite conversations when they exchange the kids or run into each other at a dance recital. I’ve seen exes who manage to have monthly “family” dinners and still take vacations together. And, there’s a spectrum of conflict that can occur, ranging from minor disagreements over how to best care for the kids, to accusations and abuse that escalates into ongoing arguments and even battles in court.
The family court system, with its outdated and uninformed structure, believes that families who can’t get along do so because both parties are behaving badly. It assumes that the parents are thinking only of themselves, and that they are more concerned with being right than the happiness of their children. Their solution is to force the divorced couple into things like family therapy, assigns professional strangers the task of “assessing” the parents and the safety of the children, and to continue to put the parents in front of each other with joint decision making. All of these tactics only serve to create more engagement as high-conflict personalities and abusers will lie, manipulate, and put on their best face for judges and parenting coordinators while continuing to harass and abuse the other parent or even the kids.
If you’ve been on the other side of that abuse, found yourself in the line of fire of a parent who continually creates conflict and tries to engage you in arguments about the kids or questions your character, you know the impulse to defend yourself in this situation is strong. It is basic human nature, in the divorce setting or anywhere, to defend yourself against someone who attacks you as a person, questions your sanity, and lies about things you did not do or say. We naturally want to correct someone who’s gotten it horribly wrong or mistakenly accuses us of something immoral. On an ongoing basis however, these accusations take on a life of their own, where self-defense begets counter accusations, and arguments circle back and forth, escalating to a fever pitch.
The concern I hear most in divorce coaching is that the parent who is being accused believes they must correct the other person’s lies and false beliefs. The fear is that the family court system will view these accusations as truth unless they are vehemently defended against. Parents feel the burden of proving their integrity directly to that other parent, in case someone in a position of authority (like a judge) finds out. This is a fallacy, the mistaken belief that we must prove our worthiness and our innate goodness to someone who never believed in it in the first place, and truthfully, the belief that the court will even see it, too.
While this is a complicated situation that often requires individual attention based on the level of conflict, there are a few things parents can do to start separating themselves from this dynamic. Here are my suggestions on how to begin to untangle yourself from the ongoing fights:
1. Figure out what you’re afraid of and question its validity. Mark Twain said it best: “My life has been filled with terrible misfortunes, most of which have never happened.” Many of our fears are based on past trauma, on the dynamic created in the marriage that you are no longer in, and that don’t require you to continue to fight against. Tending first to those fears on our own is what allows us to feel safe and less afraid.
2. Document everything. Keep records of conversations, emails, and texts with your co-parent that accuse you of doing things you’re not doing, or any situation where your ex behaves badly. Write down the facts without emotion, sticking only to the facts, so that you have a clear record of what actually happened. This is the document you save for a potential court hearing. Then, if your character comes into question, you have time-stamped proof of what actually went down, without the paper trail of an argument between the two of you.
3. Avoid the fight at all costs. This comes from my days in jiu jitsu and is a phrase I have tattooed on my brain. Even though you can fight back, don’t. There is no point in trying to communicate with someone who has no interest in believing your side of the story, or that you are even a good person. Answer emails and texts succinctly, without emotion, even if there are lies and stories and hooks for a fight to bite. Instead, respond to questions about the kids (“I’ll drop her off at 9am”) and leave all the other triggers alone. Document the truth and then take care of yourself to calm down and let that shit go.
Many people who have gotten to the other side of a high-conflict divorce situation years down the road say they wish they wouldn’t have been so afraid. They see in hindsight that many of their fears and the arguments they induced were unfounded, triggered by a belief in their own unworthiness and trauma that had very little to do with the other person. Take time to strengthen your belief in your own basic goodness and stop fighting against the one person who never believed in you in the first place.
