Please excuse me as I vent in this session about my disappointments with one of my coparents. I also hope this helps some of you feel seen if you're also dealing with difficult or disappointing coparenting situations. Just know, you are not alone.
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The Four Agreements by Don Miquel Ruiz
[00:00:06]
Unknown:
Hey, I'm Tracy Pinnock and welcome to the Bitter to Better podcast, where I talk all things love and life that help women live better after breakups. I'm glad you're here, and let's get into it.
[00:00:24] Unknown:
Well, well, well. This is, this should be an interesting episode because it's an episode that may not even be released if I, am not able to emotionally regulate myself and be impeccable with my word. It's one of my lessons from The Four Agreements. Great book. Read it. It can change your life. So I say that because I'm recording fresh off of frustration, regarding my fellow co parent, hence the name of this episode, disappointing co parent. So this is an episode that goes out to all of you who are co parenting with someone else or with others. And for those in particular So my son had his first soccer game of the season today.
He had been with his dad, and so his dad brought him to the game, except his dad brought him to the game, like, I don't know, a half hour late, something like that, because he was stuck in traffic, but also AKA because he didn't leave when he should have. And, unfortunately, this is his MO. He's I expect him to be late, so I try to plan things accordingly. Brought him to his birthday party late, a couple months ago, stuff like that. So I want to I guess this is mainly an episode about so I'm I'm going to keep it from being simply a vent session because I have ways of dealing with that for myself and make it one of, and make it an episode of you're not alone. I hear you. I see you. I'm right here with you.
And try to make it an episode that is also, like, helpful and provide some some tips and guidance. Generally speaking, I have good relationships with the fathers of my children. So that's two fathers of my two kids. These two people are two very different people. So the reasoning for the good relationship with one of them is due to his personality as a person and then partially due to the boundaries I tried to set there. With the other, it has been more challenging, and I had to make very deliberate decisions on my part of how to interact with this person in order to keep things more cordial. So, over the years and for for for a few years now, it's been quite good.
But early on, it was not. It was tumultuous, very anxiety provoking, and stress inducing for me. And I had to, I don't know. I might do an an episode just on this, and it would be in the vein of, like, boundary setting with co in co parenting, that's something that I very strongly had to do for myself in that situation because it was highly stressful to me. But
[00:03:52] Unknown:
Do you like what you're hearing? Are you picking up what I'm putting down? Want to help the pod? If so, please know it's greatly appreciated, and I welcome you to support the Bitter to Better podcast however you can. Might I suggest a few options? First, please rate and review the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever platform you choose. Next, how about sending this podcast to one friend who you know could use it? This way, she can't say you've never given her anything. If you're really riding with me, talk about the show on social media and tag me. I'm at tracy panach on Instagram. And lastly, if you ever use any products or services I mention in the pod, can you tell them Tracy Pinnock from the Bitter to Better podcast sent you?
Please and thank you.
[00:04:45] Unknown:
But with that, today, I was very frustrated because didn't want my son to get to his soccer game late, didn't want him to get to his very first one late. I didn't want my son to be disappointed, which it doesn't seem like he was or at least if he had been when he was with his dad, he didn't show it when he was with me. So he seemed to have a good time, so that's great. You know, definitely hard earned cash out of my pocket that I paid for, soccer, and so would like him to get all he can out of it. All of these reasons. It didn't help that I was there by myself with my youngest son, who is a handful, and was being a handful as three year olds are apt to do.
And also, developmentally, there seems to be, like, maybe some sensory processing things going on with him. And so, also, I think that adds another layer of, to his behavior in terms of, like, how he responds and things like that. So it just makes it a little bit bit more challenging. And I, so I I already knew that was going to be one of my challenges for today. And so then on top of it, being concerned about my son getting there on time, I think they waited for him a bit before they started, and then finally told the coaches, like, hey. Start without him because his dad was stuck in traffic. And then just, like, little things then were occurring.
At the time that his dad showed up, my youngest son started having a tantrum, and he his head bumped smashed into my chin, which now has a a small lump and it's very sore. And then my and then I bit my tongue, and it was bleeding. So all of this happened, like, literally as my as my oldest son was arriving to his soccer game. So I was pissed, and I was in pain, and I was frustrated dealing with a tantruming toddler, a busted chin, bleeding tongue, and being really freaking annoyed with his dad. But pulled it together enough to, like, get my son into his jersey and say, hey. You know, go meet your coach and get on the field and do your thing. So that happened.
His dad brought other people with him, some of his other kids and the woman who who he has those children with. And I in the moment, literally, when they arrived, I was picking up my youngest son off the grass, chin. So I did not say hi to anyone. I just walked past because I picked up my youngest son to kind of remove him from the crowd and tend to him. So it wasn't the way I wanted to greet people, but it was just all happening all at the same time. So then I spent some time with my youngest son playing a bit away from so I wasn't even seeing my oldest son on the soccer field yet, because I was tending to the the younger one. We did that for a bit and had to pull him away from that and say, okay. We're gonna go back to the field. We're gonna watch your brother play. And he was able to sit there. My youngest was able to sit there with me for the most part thanks to snacks and, YouTube.
Woo. Saving the day. And we watched and had a good time and all of that. But it's it's one of these situations that brings up a bigger overall issue. So, like, this specific situation overall worked out. The coaches were really understanding and all of that. But every now and then, these sort of moments happen where it just highlights a bigger issue. Like, and the let's work on some emotional identification here. So if I were to identify the feelings that come up for me around this, the obvious one is anger, but, honestly, the very first one is disappointment. And then that immediately leads to sadness, and then there's the anger. And I know that from my co parent's perspective, all he'll see is the anger. And and by see the anger, he'll know that I'm frustrated. But I didn't I didn't say or do anything to him to indicate any of that, but but he'll already know that. He knows our history. He knows how I am about time. He knows these different things. So he knows that I'm annoyed or frustrated.
I don't need to send a mean text. I don't even need to give you daggers. None of that. But, like so he assumes anger, but, really, it's disappointment. Like, I'm so disappointed in this person, not just for the specific situation, but them as, as a person based on their patterns historically. Like, from this perspective, little to nothing has changed since we were in a relationship. And now even for to extent where, like, you need to be showing up for your child in a certain way, this is highly upsetting to me. And it's particularly frustrating because I'm a very, get it done yourself, independent person. And I don't mean don't depend on anybody to my detriment. That's not what I'm about. I've talked about this in previous episode. Like, social support and all those things, I'm a big proponent of. We all need that. So I'm not, like, independent to a fault. But but I most definitely do not like having to rely on someone, especially someone who I can't depend on. So then I do whatever I can and gather whatever resources I can to not have to do that. It's one thing that has led me on my financial path of wanting to be as financially independent of my children's fathers as possible in regards to being able to care for my kids. I welcome and appreciate any and all financial assistance from them, But I do not have any official financial assistance from them. No child support, no going to court, none of that. And a lot of it a lot of it has to do with the, visitation arrangements that we have. My youngest son is with his father during the weekdays and with me on the weekends. So his dad takes out on, the brunt of the financial aspects of, you know, feeding him and clothing him and things like that. With my oldest son, the original arrangement was he split the week between me and his dad. So there wasn't any particular reason for me to say, okay. You know, you know, pay me pay me child support, stuff like that.
Then that changed between COVID. I moved out of state, all these sort of things. And now the way it is, because my son is in school, he's in our towns. You know, he lives his father lives in a different town. My son goes to school from my house, so he's with me during the week. And periodic weekends with his dad and, like, school breaks and stuff like that, but there's no official schedule. We just work it out ourselves. So I'll be like, hey. Can you take him this weekend? Or his dad might say, hey. I wanna see him this weekend or do something with him this weekend, and he'll take him. So it's just we play that by ear. And so I definitely take the financial brunt of things for my son. His clothing, feeding him, things like that. So I forget why I went down this path. Oh, I was talking about wanting to have as much financial independence from my sons' fathers as possible. Yes. And so it it's highly triggering to me then when there are situations where I am dependent on them and they don't come through. Because I'm like, oh my gosh.
I I could handle this myself, and it would have worked out the way it should have. And, you know, this is now annoying. And don't get me wrong. I preferred that his dad brought him this, to this game because he was already with his dad. I didn't want to have to go pick him up or meet him somewhere to pick him up or any of that. So I much prefer that he did it. So it's not like I want it to be in the position of having to get him to the game myself. I didn't. But at the expense of my son showing up late, well, then, yeah, I would have done what I had to do. So it's just it it's another drop in that bucket for me of, like, oh my gosh. Have your stuff in order. So while I was sitting there waiting for him to show up, I reached out to one of my babysitters and just started trying to put some things in order, which doesn't really solve the issue of my son getting there late because the babysitter would be for my youngest son.
Would it would be much easier to have him stay home with the babysitter, and then I can just bring my oldest son to the the games and be there at the games. And so that is something that I'm in the in the process of. I reached out to one of my babysitters to see her availability, because I'd rather not bring my younger son to the games. It's not, an enjoyable time for anyone, and it it distracts me from being able to focus on my older son while he's playing. So there's that. And, typically, my older son will be with me. So most of the time, I will be the person bringing him to the games, though his dad plans to attend the games. So that generally will be fine. Though there is a game coming up, it probably will be my son's last game if there's not a an extension of the season due to weather. I have a hair appointment that is, like, the only time I can get in sort of thing. And so I let his dad know, you know, you'll need to bring him to that one. He's like, of course. No problem.
And I'm like in my head, I'm like, yeah. Let's, let's hope. Let's hope you figure out the appropriate time to leave wherever you're at to get him to the game on time, because it sucks to not feel like I can 100% depend on you. Whereas you don't ever have to question my dependability when it comes to our child, when it comes to our kid. This has come up before. He offered to pick my son up from school, and I was like, okay. Sure. And then a couple like, maybe ten minutes into to pick up time, I simply reached out to him by text and because this was the first time he was gonna be picking him up. So I was like, did that you know, you got him? Everything ran smoothly? He was like, actually, and I think some minutes passed by. Some time passed by before he even responded. He's like, actually, I can't get him. What?
You weren't able to to tell me that before he was I was already late for pickup. So I get there, and I look like bad mom as my son's waiting in the office to be picked up because of my disappointing co parent. So I'm coming in hot today, coming in hot, but nothing I'm saying is untrue. Nothing I'm saying is slanderous. Nothing co parent not being available to hear my my concerns or frustrations. More available these days than he had been earlier on in our relationship. But generally speaking, he doesn't do well with constructive criticism. And I wanna be clear. This would be constructive criticism because it's not me coming out call calling you, him names or saying you're this, you're that, you're not this, you're not that or any of that. That definitely has happened in the past.
Turned over a new leaf years ago. It is literally the the stuff I say, the feedback I give is literally for the intentions of making this co parenting process as smooth as possible and having things for my son be okay, be good. So, like, getting him picked up from school on time, getting him to soccer games on time, making sure his insurance is active, which is a whole other conversation, a whole situation that's going on right now where I am depending on his father, and that's not coming through in the ways that it needs to at this exact moment. So this is just me saying, I see you. I hear you. I feel you. I guess in terms of me trying to be helpful and give some guidance and advice, that might turn into a whole other episode because a lot of because a lot of it has to do with boundaries that we set in terms of how we communicate with the person, in terms of our financial expectations of the person, in terms of how we expect them to show up physically for our children, all of those sort of things. And for me, that journey started years ago when I had to set an emotional boundary up for myself with this person because I was highly, highly, upset about the ending of the relationship and had a lot of questions for him about how things happened and all of that. And I would try to broach those topics with him, and he was not available. It would turn into these very, explosive problematic interactions that became highly anxiety provoking for me and that I ultimately decided. I was like, oh, what do I want my son to see between his parents as he gets older? Because we broke up when I was pregnant. So I literally decided. I was like, what I don't want is for my child to be stressed whenever he thinks of his parents interacting.
And that one desire directed my behavior in my boundary setting with his father from then on, which meant I had to let go of a lot of asking questions to get answers about things that happened in our relationship strictly business basis. And, overall, that has been the key to having a calm, cordial cordial, co parenting relationship with him. Was it easy? No. Was it worth it? Worth it? Yes. So generally speaking, the things that I'm saying right now, the way that I'm feeling right now doesn't come up in my interactions or in my co parenting relationship with him, but there are these type of moments. And it's frustrating because they're not just moments, but they're repetitive patterns, which, you know, goes a lot to say with recognizing who you've had children with and who your co parenting with and all that stuff. Stuff, but none of that can be undone, can it? So we move forward with trying to make the best decisions possible in terms of our interactions.
So like I said, maybe that's a future episode around just the actual process of the boundary setting. But this was, I guess, a bit of event session, definitely a support supportive session of I see you, I hear you, I feel you if you're dealing with such a thing. And the general advice being thinking about how you choose to interact with the with the co parent. And my my general answer is strictly business. Keep it cordial. Keep it cute. Don't try to go into the ins and outs of x, y, and z. The name calling, the this, the that never helps anything. Write it down in your journal. Name call them in your journal. Write your feelings out there because if you don't have someone on the other end who is, receptive to constructive criticism, so I wanna be clear. I'm not saying criticism where you're being disrespectful or mean or any of that. That's different. But actual constructive criticism, if you don't have someone who's available for that, then you become highly frustrated when you try to interact with them.
And so you need those other outlets, which brings me to another episode that I had already planned to, record, which is, like, what do you do things to do when you're kinda down. And this is one of those situations that puts me in that down place. Like I said, disappointment, sadness, anger, but really disappointing. I want better for him, for my son. I do. And so that's really annoying, but here we are. So I think I'm gonna do some hula hooping, maybe play some online poker. Oh, there's some shows. I've been, I've never watched, Wolf of Wall Street or Gatsby, those Leo DiCaprio movies.
And I started getting into Wolf of Wall Street, so maybe I'll pick that up or watch some Succession. Rich people behaving badly in dysfunctional families. Oh, that's my jam, man. That's a sweet spot for me. So watching other people's dysfunction really helps me when dealing with some of my own. So I think I'm gonna go do a little bit of that. Alright. That's all I have for today. Let's talk next week.
[00:20:49] Unknown:
Hey, by the way, I can be found in other places besides this podcast. Just search my name on YouTube and you'll find my channel. Subscribe for periodic how to videos for dealing with breakups and mastering dating. That's right. I said mastering dating. It's a skill, ladies. I can also be found on Instagram at tracy panach. And lastly, I most encourage you to join my email list where you get breakup and dating support delivered to your inbox in addition to getting the most exclusive access to my programs and coaching services. My email list subscribers are the first to know when my coaching programs launch and the only people to get discounts when they're offered. As always, I'm glad we got into it and looking forward to next
[00:21:37] Unknown:
time.
Hey, I'm Tracy Pinnock and welcome to the Bitter to Better podcast, where I talk all things love and life that help women live better after breakups. I'm glad you're here, and let's get into it.
[00:00:24] Unknown:
Well, well, well. This is, this should be an interesting episode because it's an episode that may not even be released if I, am not able to emotionally regulate myself and be impeccable with my word. It's one of my lessons from The Four Agreements. Great book. Read it. It can change your life. So I say that because I'm recording fresh off of frustration, regarding my fellow co parent, hence the name of this episode, disappointing co parent. So this is an episode that goes out to all of you who are co parenting with someone else or with others. And for those in particular So my son had his first soccer game of the season today.
He had been with his dad, and so his dad brought him to the game, except his dad brought him to the game, like, I don't know, a half hour late, something like that, because he was stuck in traffic, but also AKA because he didn't leave when he should have. And, unfortunately, this is his MO. He's I expect him to be late, so I try to plan things accordingly. Brought him to his birthday party late, a couple months ago, stuff like that. So I want to I guess this is mainly an episode about so I'm I'm going to keep it from being simply a vent session because I have ways of dealing with that for myself and make it one of, and make it an episode of you're not alone. I hear you. I see you. I'm right here with you.
And try to make it an episode that is also, like, helpful and provide some some tips and guidance. Generally speaking, I have good relationships with the fathers of my children. So that's two fathers of my two kids. These two people are two very different people. So the reasoning for the good relationship with one of them is due to his personality as a person and then partially due to the boundaries I tried to set there. With the other, it has been more challenging, and I had to make very deliberate decisions on my part of how to interact with this person in order to keep things more cordial. So, over the years and for for for a few years now, it's been quite good.
But early on, it was not. It was tumultuous, very anxiety provoking, and stress inducing for me. And I had to, I don't know. I might do an an episode just on this, and it would be in the vein of, like, boundary setting with co in co parenting, that's something that I very strongly had to do for myself in that situation because it was highly stressful to me. But
[00:03:52] Unknown:
Do you like what you're hearing? Are you picking up what I'm putting down? Want to help the pod? If so, please know it's greatly appreciated, and I welcome you to support the Bitter to Better podcast however you can. Might I suggest a few options? First, please rate and review the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever platform you choose. Next, how about sending this podcast to one friend who you know could use it? This way, she can't say you've never given her anything. If you're really riding with me, talk about the show on social media and tag me. I'm at tracy panach on Instagram. And lastly, if you ever use any products or services I mention in the pod, can you tell them Tracy Pinnock from the Bitter to Better podcast sent you?
Please and thank you.
[00:04:45] Unknown:
But with that, today, I was very frustrated because didn't want my son to get to his soccer game late, didn't want him to get to his very first one late. I didn't want my son to be disappointed, which it doesn't seem like he was or at least if he had been when he was with his dad, he didn't show it when he was with me. So he seemed to have a good time, so that's great. You know, definitely hard earned cash out of my pocket that I paid for, soccer, and so would like him to get all he can out of it. All of these reasons. It didn't help that I was there by myself with my youngest son, who is a handful, and was being a handful as three year olds are apt to do.
And also, developmentally, there seems to be, like, maybe some sensory processing things going on with him. And so, also, I think that adds another layer of, to his behavior in terms of, like, how he responds and things like that. So it just makes it a little bit bit more challenging. And I, so I I already knew that was going to be one of my challenges for today. And so then on top of it, being concerned about my son getting there on time, I think they waited for him a bit before they started, and then finally told the coaches, like, hey. Start without him because his dad was stuck in traffic. And then just, like, little things then were occurring.
At the time that his dad showed up, my youngest son started having a tantrum, and he his head bumped smashed into my chin, which now has a a small lump and it's very sore. And then my and then I bit my tongue, and it was bleeding. So all of this happened, like, literally as my as my oldest son was arriving to his soccer game. So I was pissed, and I was in pain, and I was frustrated dealing with a tantruming toddler, a busted chin, bleeding tongue, and being really freaking annoyed with his dad. But pulled it together enough to, like, get my son into his jersey and say, hey. You know, go meet your coach and get on the field and do your thing. So that happened.
His dad brought other people with him, some of his other kids and the woman who who he has those children with. And I in the moment, literally, when they arrived, I was picking up my youngest son off the grass, chin. So I did not say hi to anyone. I just walked past because I picked up my youngest son to kind of remove him from the crowd and tend to him. So it wasn't the way I wanted to greet people, but it was just all happening all at the same time. So then I spent some time with my youngest son playing a bit away from so I wasn't even seeing my oldest son on the soccer field yet, because I was tending to the the younger one. We did that for a bit and had to pull him away from that and say, okay. We're gonna go back to the field. We're gonna watch your brother play. And he was able to sit there. My youngest was able to sit there with me for the most part thanks to snacks and, YouTube.
Woo. Saving the day. And we watched and had a good time and all of that. But it's it's one of these situations that brings up a bigger overall issue. So, like, this specific situation overall worked out. The coaches were really understanding and all of that. But every now and then, these sort of moments happen where it just highlights a bigger issue. Like, and the let's work on some emotional identification here. So if I were to identify the feelings that come up for me around this, the obvious one is anger, but, honestly, the very first one is disappointment. And then that immediately leads to sadness, and then there's the anger. And I know that from my co parent's perspective, all he'll see is the anger. And and by see the anger, he'll know that I'm frustrated. But I didn't I didn't say or do anything to him to indicate any of that, but but he'll already know that. He knows our history. He knows how I am about time. He knows these different things. So he knows that I'm annoyed or frustrated.
I don't need to send a mean text. I don't even need to give you daggers. None of that. But, like so he assumes anger, but, really, it's disappointment. Like, I'm so disappointed in this person, not just for the specific situation, but them as, as a person based on their patterns historically. Like, from this perspective, little to nothing has changed since we were in a relationship. And now even for to extent where, like, you need to be showing up for your child in a certain way, this is highly upsetting to me. And it's particularly frustrating because I'm a very, get it done yourself, independent person. And I don't mean don't depend on anybody to my detriment. That's not what I'm about. I've talked about this in previous episode. Like, social support and all those things, I'm a big proponent of. We all need that. So I'm not, like, independent to a fault. But but I most definitely do not like having to rely on someone, especially someone who I can't depend on. So then I do whatever I can and gather whatever resources I can to not have to do that. It's one thing that has led me on my financial path of wanting to be as financially independent of my children's fathers as possible in regards to being able to care for my kids. I welcome and appreciate any and all financial assistance from them, But I do not have any official financial assistance from them. No child support, no going to court, none of that. And a lot of it a lot of it has to do with the, visitation arrangements that we have. My youngest son is with his father during the weekdays and with me on the weekends. So his dad takes out on, the brunt of the financial aspects of, you know, feeding him and clothing him and things like that. With my oldest son, the original arrangement was he split the week between me and his dad. So there wasn't any particular reason for me to say, okay. You know, you know, pay me pay me child support, stuff like that.
Then that changed between COVID. I moved out of state, all these sort of things. And now the way it is, because my son is in school, he's in our towns. You know, he lives his father lives in a different town. My son goes to school from my house, so he's with me during the week. And periodic weekends with his dad and, like, school breaks and stuff like that, but there's no official schedule. We just work it out ourselves. So I'll be like, hey. Can you take him this weekend? Or his dad might say, hey. I wanna see him this weekend or do something with him this weekend, and he'll take him. So it's just we play that by ear. And so I definitely take the financial brunt of things for my son. His clothing, feeding him, things like that. So I forget why I went down this path. Oh, I was talking about wanting to have as much financial independence from my sons' fathers as possible. Yes. And so it it's highly triggering to me then when there are situations where I am dependent on them and they don't come through. Because I'm like, oh my gosh.
I I could handle this myself, and it would have worked out the way it should have. And, you know, this is now annoying. And don't get me wrong. I preferred that his dad brought him this, to this game because he was already with his dad. I didn't want to have to go pick him up or meet him somewhere to pick him up or any of that. So I much prefer that he did it. So it's not like I want it to be in the position of having to get him to the game myself. I didn't. But at the expense of my son showing up late, well, then, yeah, I would have done what I had to do. So it's just it it's another drop in that bucket for me of, like, oh my gosh. Have your stuff in order. So while I was sitting there waiting for him to show up, I reached out to one of my babysitters and just started trying to put some things in order, which doesn't really solve the issue of my son getting there late because the babysitter would be for my youngest son.
Would it would be much easier to have him stay home with the babysitter, and then I can just bring my oldest son to the the games and be there at the games. And so that is something that I'm in the in the process of. I reached out to one of my babysitters to see her availability, because I'd rather not bring my younger son to the games. It's not, an enjoyable time for anyone, and it it distracts me from being able to focus on my older son while he's playing. So there's that. And, typically, my older son will be with me. So most of the time, I will be the person bringing him to the games, though his dad plans to attend the games. So that generally will be fine. Though there is a game coming up, it probably will be my son's last game if there's not a an extension of the season due to weather. I have a hair appointment that is, like, the only time I can get in sort of thing. And so I let his dad know, you know, you'll need to bring him to that one. He's like, of course. No problem.
And I'm like in my head, I'm like, yeah. Let's, let's hope. Let's hope you figure out the appropriate time to leave wherever you're at to get him to the game on time, because it sucks to not feel like I can 100% depend on you. Whereas you don't ever have to question my dependability when it comes to our child, when it comes to our kid. This has come up before. He offered to pick my son up from school, and I was like, okay. Sure. And then a couple like, maybe ten minutes into to pick up time, I simply reached out to him by text and because this was the first time he was gonna be picking him up. So I was like, did that you know, you got him? Everything ran smoothly? He was like, actually, and I think some minutes passed by. Some time passed by before he even responded. He's like, actually, I can't get him. What?
You weren't able to to tell me that before he was I was already late for pickup. So I get there, and I look like bad mom as my son's waiting in the office to be picked up because of my disappointing co parent. So I'm coming in hot today, coming in hot, but nothing I'm saying is untrue. Nothing I'm saying is slanderous. Nothing co parent not being available to hear my my concerns or frustrations. More available these days than he had been earlier on in our relationship. But generally speaking, he doesn't do well with constructive criticism. And I wanna be clear. This would be constructive criticism because it's not me coming out call calling you, him names or saying you're this, you're that, you're not this, you're not that or any of that. That definitely has happened in the past.
Turned over a new leaf years ago. It is literally the the stuff I say, the feedback I give is literally for the intentions of making this co parenting process as smooth as possible and having things for my son be okay, be good. So, like, getting him picked up from school on time, getting him to soccer games on time, making sure his insurance is active, which is a whole other conversation, a whole situation that's going on right now where I am depending on his father, and that's not coming through in the ways that it needs to at this exact moment. So this is just me saying, I see you. I hear you. I feel you. I guess in terms of me trying to be helpful and give some guidance and advice, that might turn into a whole other episode because a lot of because a lot of it has to do with boundaries that we set in terms of how we communicate with the person, in terms of our financial expectations of the person, in terms of how we expect them to show up physically for our children, all of those sort of things. And for me, that journey started years ago when I had to set an emotional boundary up for myself with this person because I was highly, highly, upset about the ending of the relationship and had a lot of questions for him about how things happened and all of that. And I would try to broach those topics with him, and he was not available. It would turn into these very, explosive problematic interactions that became highly anxiety provoking for me and that I ultimately decided. I was like, oh, what do I want my son to see between his parents as he gets older? Because we broke up when I was pregnant. So I literally decided. I was like, what I don't want is for my child to be stressed whenever he thinks of his parents interacting.
And that one desire directed my behavior in my boundary setting with his father from then on, which meant I had to let go of a lot of asking questions to get answers about things that happened in our relationship strictly business basis. And, overall, that has been the key to having a calm, cordial cordial, co parenting relationship with him. Was it easy? No. Was it worth it? Worth it? Yes. So generally speaking, the things that I'm saying right now, the way that I'm feeling right now doesn't come up in my interactions or in my co parenting relationship with him, but there are these type of moments. And it's frustrating because they're not just moments, but they're repetitive patterns, which, you know, goes a lot to say with recognizing who you've had children with and who your co parenting with and all that stuff. Stuff, but none of that can be undone, can it? So we move forward with trying to make the best decisions possible in terms of our interactions.
So like I said, maybe that's a future episode around just the actual process of the boundary setting. But this was, I guess, a bit of event session, definitely a support supportive session of I see you, I hear you, I feel you if you're dealing with such a thing. And the general advice being thinking about how you choose to interact with the with the co parent. And my my general answer is strictly business. Keep it cordial. Keep it cute. Don't try to go into the ins and outs of x, y, and z. The name calling, the this, the that never helps anything. Write it down in your journal. Name call them in your journal. Write your feelings out there because if you don't have someone on the other end who is, receptive to constructive criticism, so I wanna be clear. I'm not saying criticism where you're being disrespectful or mean or any of that. That's different. But actual constructive criticism, if you don't have someone who's available for that, then you become highly frustrated when you try to interact with them.
And so you need those other outlets, which brings me to another episode that I had already planned to, record, which is, like, what do you do things to do when you're kinda down. And this is one of those situations that puts me in that down place. Like I said, disappointment, sadness, anger, but really disappointing. I want better for him, for my son. I do. And so that's really annoying, but here we are. So I think I'm gonna do some hula hooping, maybe play some online poker. Oh, there's some shows. I've been, I've never watched, Wolf of Wall Street or Gatsby, those Leo DiCaprio movies.
And I started getting into Wolf of Wall Street, so maybe I'll pick that up or watch some Succession. Rich people behaving badly in dysfunctional families. Oh, that's my jam, man. That's a sweet spot for me. So watching other people's dysfunction really helps me when dealing with some of my own. So I think I'm gonna go do a little bit of that. Alright. That's all I have for today. Let's talk next week.
[00:20:49] Unknown:
Hey, by the way, I can be found in other places besides this podcast. Just search my name on YouTube and you'll find my channel. Subscribe for periodic how to videos for dealing with breakups and mastering dating. That's right. I said mastering dating. It's a skill, ladies. I can also be found on Instagram at tracy panach. And lastly, I most encourage you to join my email list where you get breakup and dating support delivered to your inbox in addition to getting the most exclusive access to my programs and coaching services. My email list subscribers are the first to know when my coaching programs launch and the only people to get discounts when they're offered. As always, I'm glad we got into it and looking forward to next
[00:21:37] Unknown:
time.
Introduction to Bitter to Better
The Disappointing Co-Parent
Coping with Co-Parenting Challenges
Managing Expectations and Emotions
Financial Independence and Co-Parenting
Setting Boundaries for Peaceful Co-Parenting
Finding Personal Outlets for Stress Relief
