It may seem strange at first to say this, but putting your child’s needs before your own after divorce includes letting go. When I talk about letting go, I don’t mean letting go of the love and bond you have with your child or letting go of the responsibilities you have with your children, etc. What I’m talking about is helpful ways to let go while your child is with her other parent.
You see, once you get divorced, you usually lose the kind of influence you had when you got married. When you were married, you had a say in your preferences regarding what your son did and didn’t do, and when he did or didn’t do it. Once divorced, your ex may not care one bit about her preferences, leaving you with little to no influence in these matters.
One of the biggest challenges in divorce is learning to let go and let the other parent make decisions that affect their children’s lives without your input. However, giving up your ability to influence the other parent’s decisions is critical to creating a healthy post-divorce relationship with your former spouse or partner. At the same time, it is also important to build a foundation with your former partner or spouse so that you are open to resolving your disagreements. Sometimes an ex-spouse is simply not willing to work in partnership with her ex; It is in those moments that letting go becomes a deep spiritual practice.
If you and your spouse are willing to talk about navigating decision making, here are some helpful suggestions to lay a healthy foundation for moving forward.
Determine what issues you absolutely want to decide together. This generally includes things like educational decisions, non-emergency health care decisions, etc.
Determine what topics you want to discuss, but when the children are with you, each of you decides independently. This can include things like a child staying home from school.
Determine what topics each decides and does not need to discuss. This can include things like what foods your children eat or when they go to bed.
If something doesn’t matter to you, let it go. If one parent really cares about something, like health care providers, and the other parent really doesn’t, don’t fight about it. Choose your battles wisely.
Ask yourself why I am fighting about this; What is so important to me? Be honest with yourself. Are you fighting because you are angry about something else with your ex? If so, he talks about it.
To grieve. Letting go of decisions that affect your children’s lives is extremely difficult at any time in a child’s life.
You long to play a significant role in your child’s life and participate in decisions, from the mundane to the ones that really matter, but with divorce you lose some of your influence and power. Give yourself time to grieve and mourn this loss. Be kind to yourself AND to your ex-spouse. This is not easy.
If you and your ex can’t work together and your ex-spouse/partner is making decisions you don’t agree with, this is where the rubber meets the road. This, my friends, is when you really need a deep spiritual practice to guide and support you through this, as well as the compassionate guidance and support of a professional (and friends). It becomes critical, at times like these, to remember the sacred covenant you made with yourself and your child so that your hurt, anger, and hurt are not driving your decision-making and interfering with what is truly best for your child.
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