In most conflicts, parents will say how they wish for their situation to go right and how they wish their co-parent could be cooperative yet, their communication of choice is mostly complaining, criticising and threatening.
Right now you are feeling hurt, betrayed and angry. For you, to feel that you are getting control back over your life, you want justice and things to go your way. You are determined that no one will ever hurt you or your children again and moving forward in your life is about claiming your power back.
Making decisions under emotional torment will however come at a cost. To free yourself from someone’s control is not going to be accomplished with you trying to control them or the situation. You cannot control anyone or anything but you. Engaging on a vengeful path to show you have control is wasting precious time of your life and therefore your children’s life.
So how do you gain control and make peace with your “enemy”?
Having a negatively emotionally charged relationship with someone is recipe for conflict and if you are finding yourself in conflict with your children’s other parent you can understand that this is what it is. It is a negatively emotionally charged relationship and nothing good will ever come of it.
Instead, begin by treating this relationship as if it were a business relationship. This may sound odd at first, but give it some thought.
- Business has no emotions. Let’s face it, you think with your emotions whether you like it or not. Emotions don’t mix well with business because they cause you to do whatever will fix your hurt feelings, instead of whatever is best for the business.
- Choose to communicate with maturity
- Stay focused on the business, nothing else
- Train yourself to make decisions based on logic and self discipline over passion and emotions
- Business is about Partners with roles and responsibilities
- You need to define your roles and responsibilities clearly and agreeably
- Remember, it is business. There are no emotions. Only exchanging information about your mutual roles and responsibilities.
- Business is about agreeing and sharing a common pay off.
- In this instance, it is the children’s best interest
- Stay focused. Remember what your pay off is and keep your business partnership moving toward that goal even in chaotic times
Emotions have no place in business, unless you do business with them. Friedrich Durrenmatt