Last night I was reminded just how crucial it is to communicate with your ex spouse. Most of the time my ex and I get along fairly well. Even though we weren’t married anymore, we knew it was important to have a good relationship with each other for our son’s sake. We do our best to work together on things because, coming from broken homes ourselves, we both knew how important that was for Logan.
For the last couple of months we have had some trouble communicating. He has a new girlfriend and so the dynamics of things changed drastically. We both had things that were really bothering us, only this time instead of addressing them, we let them fester until they blew up. After the initial blow up we were both able to calm down and communicate how we were feeling and what needed to be done about it. While there was no easy solution to the problem we were dealing with, we were able to re-open those lines of communication so that we could be on the same page with things again.
Communication is so important when you are divorced. You need to be able to co-parent effectively and that just isn’t possible without some form of communication. You don’t need to be best friends with your ex, but you do need to make an effort to at least be civil with each other for your children’s sake. It isn’t fair to them to be stuck in the middle of all that tension. If you are unable to communicate with your ex without it turning ugly, try communicating through text or email. That way you can take a time out and think about your response and come back to it later when you have had a chance to calm down. There is no reason for you to put up with being treated badly by your ex. If they can’t be respectful, simply don’t respond until they are. You can’t control what they do, but you can control your response to it. Do what you can to work together when it comes to your children. In the end you will feel better and so will your children.