Relationships360° Blog

If you’re like most people, you can’t walk on water and your divorce did not end peacefully with you and your ex remaining friends. There was probably some yelling, screaming, trash can or pillow throwing and/or car kicking that took place while you and your former spouse went through the divorce process, especially if you were not the initiator. As a result you may have harbored or still might be harboring ill feelings towards your ex which has inadvertently or maybe purposely manifested itself into using your child as a pawn as a way to get revenge against your former spouse.

Likewise, using kids as pawns has to do with what’s missing in your life as a parent after the spouse who used to be your best friend is gone. To recreate the best friend relationship they had with their ex, parents begin to use their child as a confidant and start to disclose how they feel about their former spouse to their child, usually harping on their former partner’s negative qualities. This sort of behavior is retaliatory and extremely damaging to children. You’d be better off to talk to a wall than to your child about why you’re angry or just can’t bring yourself to forgive your ex spouse or partner. Using your kids as emotional sounding boards is not responsible. You should only be sharing information that is going to help them or nurture them. Furthermore, the child’s age should determine level or quality of information you need to disclose to them about why your relationship with the child’s parent didn’t work and the role their other parent played in it’s demise. It isn’t necessary to say you hired a private investigator to follow the child’s other parent and the hotel your ex and his lover checked into while you were married regardless of the child’s age. Spilling your guts to a child about how horrible their mom or dad is not a long term solution for dealing with your emotional pain after a divorce. Turning a child against the other parent and defaming their other parent’s character can drive a child away because the child will grow up and understand that in very few cases is one person all bad and the other person is all good. The truth is in almost all cases both parents love and want to be with the child. Thus if you drive a wedge between your child and the other parent it’s going to backfire.

Although it doesn’t always happen intentionally, altering the tone of what a parent said, exaggerating what they said, lying about what they said or all out brainwashing is a dangerous parenting technique. Often such behavior has to deal with the offending parent not dealing with the fact their marriage is over or if they initiated the divorce are seeking revenge against their spouse who they are still angry with. Children don’t know what is right and what is wrong, they just absorb what their parents tell them because they trust their parents, especially if the parent who is retaliating says the same negative things over and over such as, “She’s lazy,” “He’s never on time,” or “He drinks too much.”

Thus, don’t blame your child when they repeat what the other person said about you. leave the child out of it because they can’t do anything about their other parent’s feelings and behavior. Likewise, if the offending parent continues their retaliatory behavior, sit them down and explain to them they need to stop for the good of the child. As more and more as people do their own divorces and skip getting professional help from lawyers, mediators and counselors, so to has the number of parents using kids as pawns. However, if you and your former spouse can’t seem to get along seek help from a family therapist post divorce in order to create a better situation for you your ex spouse and children to work through issues that crop up after divorce that lead to vengeful behavior. If therapy doesn’t work, seek help from a lawyer or judge to create a parenting or visitation plan. However, don’t get too attached to this parenting plan as things evolve over time and it might be necessary to alter it. In all cases, aim to create a plan that is best for the child. For more information about this topic, listen to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/relationships360/2011/09/23/stop-using-your-kids-as-pawns. Also, get a free copy of Divorce Magazine by entering your name and email address at www.relationships360.com.

Since nearly half of U.S. marriages are failing and result in divorce, the concept of divorcing as friends is gaining importance. It’s critical for ex spouses to get along, especially when the parted couple has children together. Children get their ideas about how to treat the opposite sex and potential partners primarily from their parents, so if their parents engage in abusive behavior toward each other during their split, then the children are likely to follow suit, if ever faced with divorce. Likewise, the children may internalize their parents’ verbal abuse and act out their aggressive behavior with peers and family members or bottle up their anger and carry it into adult relationships to be taken out on future partners. However, adversarial divorces not only cause problems with the children of divorce but the divorcees themselves.

Harboring hatred or contempt for one’s ex spouse may be wrongly projected on to new partners or spouses, which is one reason second and third marriages fail at a higher rate than first marriages. Being unforgiving of an ex spouse can also lead to rebound relationships in which the parted spouse that is still angry with their ex jumps into another relationship soon after the divorce as a form of retaliation against or to spite their ex. Because rebound relationships are entered to with the wrong motives they almost never work out hurting the angry divorcee, their children and new partner. Again, if rebound relationships are successful, they tend to quickly result in divorce, boosting the failure rate for remarriages. Not only because the relationship was entered into with the wrong intentions, but also because the ex spouse who entered into the rebound relationship might still carry emotional baggage from their marriage and are therefore emotionally unavailable to the new partner, or unpack their baggage in the new relationship by taking out their frustration with their ex out on the new partner, which can lead to constant misunderstandings and arguments or even domestic violence.

To help prevent rebound relationships and remarriages from failing, Elinor Robin and expert guest on the “Successful Second Marriage” episode of Relationships360 urged divorcees to get post divorce counseling with a divorce coach or within a divorce support group. Doing so helps the angry and bitter divorcee to grieve the end of their marriage and heal from it faster giving them a clean slate to start a new relationship with less emotional baggage than if they would have jumped into a new relationship without help. The Relationships360 Marketing Group recently published, “Relationship Roadmap: The Guide To Getting The Relationship You Want,” which helps you determine if you’re ready for a relationship and have completely grieved your divorce or loss of a long term relationship. You can download it free by entering your name and email on this blog’s registration box.

Finally, if you are contemplating divorce or going through divorce, you might want to consider divorce mediation. It’s an alternative to litigation, which tends to be adversarial in nature with parting spouses bickering and fighting over everything from who gets the family pet to who will live in the marriage home. It’s possible that divorce mediation can actually help prevent a divorce from occurring with a post nuptial or marriage agreement being reached, but if it does, at least the parting couple can remain friends feeling that they have taken care of themselves in the divorce while being fair to their ex spouse, which will be better for them, their kids, in-laws and future spouses. For more on this topic, listen to “Divorcing As Friends” at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/relationships360/2011/09/09/divorcing-as-friends or “Successful Second Marriage” at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/relationships360/2011/10/14/successful-second-marriage. Also, get a free divorce coaching session by entering your name and email address at www.relationships360.com.