Respecting the Other Parent

For many people, respecting your child's other parent is hard. If the other parent was abusive or had some sort of addiction, this can lead you to not speak or think highly of the other parent. We as adults must lead by example for our children who are caught in the cross fire. Sometimes we need to take a step back and do some inner counseling. 

When a romantic relationship ends, your co-parenting relationship may suffer depending on the cause of the break-up. From my experience, if the relationship ends because the man was cheating and/or abusive, it is more than likely that the female victim of cheating/abuse will lose any respect they have for the other parent. Now for the sake of discussion, if neither abuse nor cheating was the reason for the relationship ending, they are more likely to have a positive co-parenting relationship.

Many relationships end which is nothing new, but when children are involved it seems as though people forget how the other person is as a parent. If you suck as a husband but are a great Father, then no woman should ever stop you from being a apart of your child's life. BUT, if you suck as a husband were not involved in your child's life when they lived with you, and still are not involved after the relationship ends, you have to prove yourself basically to the woman who is doing everything she can to take care of the child you share.

When a man who had no regard for the children he had during the relationship ended all of a sudden wants to be a father it can be 3 things: 1) he found a new woman 2)He realized he screwed up as a father and wants to make it right 3) Department of Child Support is going after him and he wants visitation rights so he doesn't have to pay. Now these reasonings may vary from situation to situation. Personally, I've experienced it all with my child's father.

Respect is a two way street and if only one person is showing respect, it will tell you a lot about how they are as a person. It took me a few years to learn how to respect my child's father and it was definitely not easy after the way he hurt me and continued to not care about the child he pushed me to bring into this world. I had to basically counsel myself into forgiving the actions of my child's father and learn to accept that he was not going to change into the father I thought he would be. That right there takes a lot to admit because instead of holding onto that anger, I had to let it go. There was no sense it being upset that he isn't a big part of our child's life, even though he has missed out on so much, I cannot be angry at him for that. 

How can I be upset and disrespect him if I expect him to not be upset and respect me as the mother of his child?

 As we grow up and mature, it is only right that we learn to forgive our past and move forward. If we are unable to mentally mature our minds, we will never be more than the "baby mama/daddy" persona that society gives to the immature parents who cannot get along. 

There are many ways to show respect to someone you do not like as a person. It isn't hard t be kind to someone that you used to know. I say "used to know" because they are no longer the person you once knew when you were together. It has taken me quite a while to accept the fact that I am the one who constantly disrespected my child's father after the split because of all the hurt and anger I had. It took some time to come to terms with the fact that as much as I didn't want him to be the father, he was, and I needed to give him that respect. 

Over the years I have learned to stop calling my child's father a piece of shit deadbeat father, even though that is what he was. I had to train myself to think of that man in a different light and find the positive in his role as my child's father.  When I felt myself getting angry at the thought of him abandoning our precious child, I would distract myself with a hobby or music. Till this day, I still do that. While my child's father would never know the devastation and chaos he brought to our life after our break up, it was my job to make sure our child was shielded from all the hate and anger that we, the parents, had for each other. 

I remember having a sit down talk with my child's father and he expressed that he wasn't angry with me anymore. He didn't apologize for anything he had done but rather stated that he wanted us to co-exist and wanted to be there for our child. I think I had hoped for so long that he would just apologize and all my hurt would go away but instead it sat there deep inside. I was furious about that. What in the world did he have to be angry about when he cheated and did not once contact me about our child?! But I pushed through my anger and hurt and tried as best to my ability to co-parent with him and after excuses of not being able to see our child, I was done. I accepted the fact that this man will never own up to his mistakes or at least own up to dipping out of his child's life. I had to respect this man for continuing his career and keeping his *new* family together. 

While he may not be an ideal father in my eyes, or at least a half decent human being, I need to respect this man. Not for myself or for him, but for our child who shares apart of that man's DNA because our child is the one who will be seeking him out when he is older and he will have to answer all those tough questions I have had to answer all these years.