Episode 55: The Co-Parenting Secret. It's Not About YOU!

Our guest for this episode:

Jon Bassford, JD, MBA, CAE

About our guest:

He has written a book called "The Co-Parenting Secret: It's not about you”.  Jon is actually a consultant.

Link to book on Amazon: https://a.co/d/6gR0ucX

He heads up operations for startups and nonprofits, but he has written this book based on his own personal story. His friends, his family, and people were amazed by him and his wife and how well they were able to co-parent. And they were like, you should write a book. And John's like, huh, maybe I should write a book. 

Keywords

co-parenting, divorce, family dynamics, intentional parenting, emotional well-being, communication, relationships, parenting strategies, self-reflection, family support

Summary

In this episode of the Better Than Bitter podcast, Tania Leichliter speaks with Jon Bassford about his book, 'The Co-Parenting Secret: It's Not About You.' They discuss the challenges of co-parenting, the importance of intentionality, and how to navigate new relationships while keeping the children's best interests at heart. John shares his personal experiences and insights on creating a supportive environment for children post-divorce, emphasizing the need for effective communication and emotional well-being.

Takeaways

• Co-parenting requires intentionality and focus on the children.
• It's essential to communicate effectively for the sake of the kids.
• Divorce doesn't have to be a negative experience for children.
• Maintaining relationships with extended family is crucial.
• Emotional well-being of parents directly affects the children.
• Letting go of animosity can improve co-parenting dynamics.
• Children benefit from having multiple loving adults in their lives.
• Being open to new relationships can be healthy for everyone involved.
• Self-reflection is key to personal growth post-divorce.
• Creating a supportive environment helps children thrive.

Titles

Navigating the Co-Parenting Journey

Intentional Co-Parenting Strategies

Sound Bites

"It's not about you."

"You have to be very intentional."

"Let go of the animosity."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Co-Parenting Dynamics

03:17 The Journey of Writing a Co-Parenting Book

05:42 Navigating Co-Parenting with Young Children

08:09 Intentionality in Co-Parenting Relationships

11:07 Humanizing Divorce and Co-Parenting

13:32 Building a Supportive Co-Parenting Village

16:19 Handling New Relationships and Dating

18:51 Communication as a Pillar of Co-Parenting

21:45 Teaching Children About Relationships

24:22 Focusing on Self-Improvement

26:53 Letting Go of Control and Embracing Flexibility

29:44 Creating a Loving Environment for Children

36:02 Introduction to Amicable Divorce

37:31 Resources for Support and Growth

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Welcome to the Better Than Bitter Divorce Podcast, where we flip the script on divorce and show you how to have a more amicable divorce resolution. I'm your host, Tania Leichliter a divorce coach, a certified life coach, and the mastermind behind the Better Than Bitter five-step game plan course, where I help individuals build a pathway towards a more amicable divorce resolution.

Each week, I'll bring you uplifting stories from people who've successfully experienced amicable separations, proving that divorce doesn't have to be a battleground. Whether you're overwhelmed with grief, struggling with custody and co-parenting, or just dealing with a high-conflict individual, this podcast is here to guide you towards reclaiming your life and being what I know is possible, better than bitter.

Welcome to the Better Than Bitter podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about co-parenting. I am excited to have John Basford join me today. He has written a book called The Co-Parenting Secret. It's not about you. And you would think that John comes from a therapy background, or maybe he was a co-parenting coach, but no, John is actually a consultant.

He heads up operations for startups for nonprofits, but he has written this book based on his own personal story. His friends, his family, and people were amazed by him and his wife and how well they were able to co-parent. And they were like, "You should write a book". And John's like, huh, maybe I should write a book. So I'm excited to have John here today. Welcome, John.

it.

Thank you for having me.

So tell us a little bit more. Tell us how this came to fruition, and tell us how the book really kind of blossomed into not just a thought, but an actual book

Yeah, it really was just a situation where people knew that things were rocky between my ex-wife and me towards the end. It wasn't a fairy tale ending as far as our marriage goes. People also knew that some of our conflicts were the inability to live well together. We just weren't compatible living together.

And so people really kind of like, you know, how's co-parenting going with, you know, someone that you didn't really live well with on both sides. And I was like, great, we could write a book. And so, after saying that, dozens and dozens of times, I wrote the book and put it out through self-publishing. But it's just a case study after case study of what we did differently and how we did it.

It really is just kind of a roadmap for people to flip the script on what it means to be in a two-home family and what it means to co-parent.

I love what you said that we didn't have this fairytale ending. The divorce wasn't fun. And I tell people all the time in my business, hey, listen, I'm not telling you that an amicable resolution means that going through your divorce journey is going to be warm and fuzzy. It's not going to be warm and fuzzy. It's going to be one of the hardest things you've ever done.

Keeping your eye on the ball, keeping your eye on the outcome that you're hoping for in terms of your re-envisioned family is where we are in terms of getting you trained from a mindset perspective and how you're going to move forward. Because again, you are going to be in a relationship with your ex if you have children for the rest of your life. So you have two choices.

You can make it feel really bad and have a really horrible future, or you can decide to flip the script. So tell us some of those secrets, John, that you outline in this book on how to flip that script and have a new relationship with your ex.

Yeah, so I'm stuck with these people for the rest of my life, at least until the child is an adult and probably beyond that. But even with us, we were very close to each other's families. I have my own relationship with my in-laws and my ex-wife, as well as with my family, and we didn't want to disrupt that. And we didn't want to come into this with disrupting our child's life

So we separated when my son was about a year and a half. He has only known a two-home situation. There were still some hurt feelings, but we wanna do this differently. We want to parent differently. We want each other's families to be a part of our lives, our son's life, without restrictions in...

and how things are done and when they can be done, that sort of thing. And we just really didn't quite know what it was gonna be. We just knew we were gonna do it differently. And we were willing to work together, put the past behind us, not try to settle old scores, but really keep the focus on our son and what is the best way that we can work together to raise him.

So he was really young, and that is really interesting. So when writing the book, were you also thinking about, well, how would this be applied if a child was 10 when their parents got divorced, or if a child was 14 when the parents got divorced? So tell us about, you know, some of these secrets and how some of your thinking was...

going through your head, because your kid knew no different, right? Your kid didn't know anything other. Your child had no idea what having both parents in the home parenting as togetherness, right? So tell me a little bit more about how your book might be able to apply to kids who, again, don't have that same experience as your child.

We ended up having that experience with my son, somewhat. There came a point at which he was like, why can't you guys just be together? Why do I have to be a kid in a divorced family? So we had those moments, right? It happened. So my son is 10 now. So it's again, almost over eight years. But we still had to deal with those situations. My son and two of his friends created the Divorce Kids Club.

at one point, to kind of help them kind of feel special. I'm like, buddy, like there's a lot more kids than just three of you in your class that parents divorced because I know, but we were friends. Really, what we did when faced with those questions and my son bringing that up, it's the exact same way I would do it if I was starting out with him at eight to 19 years old and talk about what's best for us as individuals, the parents.

And because when we are able to be our best selves, we're able to show up best for you. I know that's hard for a kid to understand. We know there are some frustrations. And, he feels like an outcast. But we also talked about, like, look, buddy, you have like four Christmases you go to.

You will actually have Hanukkah and Christmas because my ex-wife was Jewish. All these birthday parties, you have such a bigger family. I am remarried. My ex-wife has a partner. He's involved in their lives, and also involved in my wife's life. Would you ever think about not having these people in your life? And he's like, no, I could never imagine not having my life was like, know, so this is why mommy and I split.

We did it because we needed to be the best version of ourselves and be happy. If I finally say, don't you think both your parents agree deserve to be happy? And his answer is yes, he's a very mature, emotionally astute kid. And just really just talk through it right. And again, as much as we could at his level, but getting him to see that we are better people, individuals, not being together. And because of that, we show up better for him.

Now is that secret number one?

I think secret number one is to be intentional. think that is the very first secret is you can't...

It can't just happen accidentally, right? Like you're not going to just accidentally most likely discover in this great co-parenting relationship. You have to be very, very intentional from the beginning about how you're going to do it, how you want to work. And really, the key to all of it. So I would say the second secret is the part of it's not about you. mean, almost every single situation that I think people could throw at me, what causes

discussions and fights. Once there is the two-home situation about the kid's time, energy, et cetera, I can almost probably 99 out of 100 times point it back to a parent making it about them, their thoughts, their feelings, their emotions, their time, and not about the kid.

Yeah, I think that being intentional is so important. whether it's intentional dating, or it's intentional divorcing, or it's intentional co-parenting. We all need to be able to be very intentional with whatever we're doing in this phase of our lives, because all of that really does affect our kids. I love the fact that you all

believed that you were not being the best version of yourself when you were together. And I had a similar situation, and I don't know if my ex and I were as intentional about it in thinking about it in that way, but I know reflectively my children, who were older, and my daughter especially talks about the fact that for the first time, she felt like she was meeting her real parents once we had separated and that we were being ourselves with her and how much she enjoyed those people, you know, that she almost felt like she never got to know until we had separated. And I just felt...

like a light bulb went off in my head. And I made that part of my five-step game plan book. It's about finding your authentic self. And that literally is the first step of my course is about finding who you authentically are. And I allow for people to take that journey back in time and talk about who you were, pre-marriage, and what you like about yourself.

And then once you got married, who did you become? But then pull out what you liked about yourself from what, because obviously marriage and kids, like, bring out amazing things that you grew and evolved into. But then you get to take out the things on both sides that you weren't so psyched about, and then you get to bring them together. So I love the fact that you've drawn some attention to the fact that you can't show up as good parents if you are not feeling good about yourself.

If you're not showing up for yourself. So I love that piece of it. So give me some more of your secrets.

Sure, sure. Real quick on the divorce aspect, know, I think part of my book also tries to do is humanize it, right? I think, you know, depending on what your worldview is and how you view marriage and divorce. But, know, like, you know, I have a very unpopular opinion that you want to stomp out divorce, let no one get married before 35. Like, you don't know who you are at 24, 28, 32, like barely at 35.

And, you know, I don't have the same goals, ambitions, desires that I did when I was dating my first wife. You know, and I think that's to me, that's a big part of it is we all grow, we all change, and we change locations, change jobs, we change other aspects of our lives. But there's still kind of this dark cloud of divorce because we've committed to being together forever. And, you know, I think humanizing divorce, first and foremost, kind of goes a long way.

and let the animosity come down, and realizing that people can change, people can grow apart and go into the co-parenting without having all that heaviness. So that's a big part of it for me as well is just, you know, looking at that. Let me kind of just, you know, dive in and give some examples, I think maybe of what it means to that it's about your child and not about you. know, kids' time, I think, is one of those big things. It's when...

We've had a situation where our son was having a birthday party, and I'll call it a stepbrother for lack of better terms. wasn't gonna be allowed to come because it was on his mom's time. And we just view that differently. know, if my ex-wife calls me up and reaches out and says, I know it's your weekend, but my parents really want a beach weekend with Henry.

I'm like, great, go to the beach. That's Henry's time going to the beach. That's Henry's time with his grandparents. It doesn't matter if it was my time or his mom's time. Our biological connection to whose parent it is is irrelevant. The fact that it's our son's grandparents is what matters. You think about religion, you think about other things that can...

cause conflicts because one person's raised one way, one person's raised the other way. And again, but if we pull back our ego, what we want to see, what we believe should happen, and just let our kids be exposed to other things and have a life that really embodies both parents. Things really go a long way in just lessening the tensions and letting people work together better.

I completely agree. And a couple of things. We are aligned in a lot of ways, John. I feel like the idea is that you might divorce the individual, but you don't divorce their families. That, of course, I believe needs to be communicated at the very beginning of the divorce process to the family. To be like, you know what? Just because we are getting divorced doesn't mean I want you to hate my soon-to-be ex

You are still gonna be the grandparents of our children, and there should be no hatred, no matter what happened in the course of the marriage, even if there was infidelity or whatever. If you set the stage of like, listen, I'm working to forgive and accept and move forward in life. I want you to try to do the same because what is best for our children?

is that they have everybody in their life together, and that you need to be the one making that communication to the grandparents, to like my parents or your parents. Because if you give them the open door to continue the relationship, the relationship will probably continue with your ex. If you close the door and you start to tell them how much you hate them and that they're, you know, without too much profanity and that you're wishing that they take sides, you know,

Then that is coming from you, and they most likely will follow it, but that is not what's going to be best for your children.

Yeah, I think that's a good lesson for while people are going through divorce, is watch how much you are bashing your soon-to-be ex. I've seen it with people doing on social media. I know people do it private conversations, but the more trash talking you do during the divorce and, the more you know the fact that you build around you with animosity and anger towards the other person, the harder it is going to become.

Building that village around you and supporting your co-parenting. Luckily, my wife and I both were very, very conscious of that about who we talked to, and sure, we had our people that we vented to, right? And got our thoughts out and feelings and frustrations out, but we didn't go bash the other one to our family and that sort of thing because, as much as we are proud of what we have built in co-parenting and the son that we're raising, it's still weird to people. We're nearly,

You know, we're eight, nine years into this. And some people are like, you guys, you guys are divorced. Like, how can you sit next to each other at every single soccer game? My ex-wife, her parents, and her uncles were at my wedding for my current wife. You know, they came, were invited, came. I've stayed at her parents' beach condo. I'm always invited when my son is there to come spend the afternoon at the beach and go swimming with them in the ocean, and all those things. We've kept that close, tight-knit group.

and really open it up to whoever wants to be a part of it. But there were some times along the way, especially early on, where we were trying to build something and other people just weren't comfortable with it. Like, I know that you were invited to come to this, but this is my event, and I don't want you there. There may be time down the road. And so, like that was one of the first real things that hit me because I was invited through my in-laws. But then the person the event was for.

⁓ So I know that they invited you, and I don't want you there. You know, so it was, it was, it was hurtful, right? Cause it was someone who was kind of outside of our current circle that we trusted and was building this with. But you know, I got over it, but it was a reminder that what we did in having a divorce and having co-parenting without animosity is seen as such a weird different thing in our goal.

And my goal for writing the book is to change that. We, us, having a positive co-parent relationship that works well together, shouldn't be the abnormal. It shouldn't be the thing that people like curl their nose up like that, it's just freaking weird. How can they do that? And that's really why I wrote the book. But it takes some time. As you have, people have to learn to sit through the uncomfortableness of everything.

Even family functions, right? That I was going to with my ex-in-laws and everything. It wasn't natural at first, right? Even for us, we were intentional, but we sat through the discomfort to get to the point where I would call my ex-wife friends. I still would consider my ex-in-laws, now, parents of mine, right? We still have those relationships because we're willing to sit through and go through the uncomfortable time of all this to get to where we came up right around the other end.

I totally agree. I remember the first day when my ex-husband brought his girlfriend to my son's football game. And I remember sitting on the sidelines, and I remember the vibrations I was feeling in my body. And, I saw them walk in. I felt the discomfort. I felt the anxiety, the vibrations, the butterflies. Like, I felt that unknown. I had intentionally asked, he had... ⁓

told me that he had asked our son if it was okay if he had brought her. And then he told me that she was coming. There wasn't an ask if she could come. It was like, hey, I'm bringing her. Braden said it was okay, which is the right thing to do. Braden said it's okay for her to be there. And I just said, I just literally wanted to take it on, like take the whole thing on. So I said, Okay, that's great.

Thank you for telling me. If she's going to be a part of my son's and daughter's lives, I'd like to meet her. So at some point, could you guys come over to me in the stands? Because I'd like to meet her." So, mean lots of discomfort, lots of vibrations. They came over. We had a nice cordial conversation. They kind of went back and sat where they were sitting. But every time after that,

that they came to the sidelines. We sat a little closer. We had a few more conversations until we literally were sitting next to each other, like sharing umbrellas and having deep conversations. And again, those vibrations in your body, if you allow for them to be there, it's like hunger pains. They will begin to dissipate, right? The longer you have a hunger pain, it will go away eventually. You don't have to feed it. You don't have to...

escape it. You don't have to walk away from it for it to go away. You can just sit with it, and it will dissipate. So you're right. The discomfort at the beginning is going to be there. But if you do not engage, if you do not get yourself there, and you continue to run away from it, that's where it gets to grow. The bitterness, the anger, the resentfulness, it grows when you run away from it. So always tell yourself, come in.

Yeah,

Communication is important. Communication is definitely a ⁓ major pillar in my book. And again, my ex-wife and I probably communicate more now than we did the last year of our marriage. We probably talk daily, text, email, voice chat, video, whatever it is that needs to be relayed. But again, we were very, very intentional in communicating what was happening with us and dating. I don't have a problem admitting that.

by time we agreed to separate in therapy, which is for the last six years of marriage and therapy. And by the time we got to that point, know, I think that for me, especially that, you, I was mentally, emotionally, physically done with a ship. And so, like we had a discussion in therapy, like.

How are you guys going to view dating? You guys are, we're still going to live together a little bit while we're hashing out the separation agreement, that sort of thing. Who got the house and whatnot. And we agreed that, you know, someone wants to date, they could. And I started dating right away. So we had conversations from the very, very beginning when things started getting serious with anyone we were dating. We're getting there. Are some people getting ready to meet them? You know, we talked it through. Let's honestly ask for permission.

Right? Because we are individuals for adults. We can make our decisions, but we informed and made sure that a person was aware. I think I met my ex-wife's partner fairly early on. I think we went and met for beers just to meet him. You know, and I would say that my ex-wife did it a little more responsibly than I did. I think I had met some, some women to my son too early on in relationships where she was very, very slow.

He has a son, and you know that the two kids met the other adult, but didn't meet each other for months. So they really did in a gradual phase, right?I think it was really smart and I think you're looking back even at my introducing Henry to some women I was dating too soon. I think it created a little bit of an element of lack of what's the word I'm looking for here.

It'll hit me at some point here, but just not a secure environment. I think the change because I didn't stay with the first person. didn't stay with the second person. I think there is some ⁓ instability there. I guess what I'm looking for, that occurred. And so I think when I married my wife, current wife, I think that was like a real milestone for him that, OK, there's going to be no more women that I'm going to meet that sort of thing. So I do look back at some aspects and say, hey, look, you know, I didn't do it right.

I should have been a little slower and a little more conscious of who and when, and how I did some things. But by and large, I think we did it fairly well and kept learning and growing as we went.

Yeah, I do say that if you are dating, ⁓ that unless you believe that this is like a forever partner or a partner that is not just like two or three months and probably done, then you should potentially just hold off on having them meet your child. I talk a lot about the sleepovers and making sure that you

are not opening your bedroom door to your child or having somebody come in and out of the house as a sleepover too early on. And I think that's really important because that creates a, this doesn't feel like my house moment for a child. And I think that's just...

important for kids. Again, you put your kids first, I put my kids first. You can date, you don't have your child 100 % of the time if you've got some type of shared custody, even if it's not 50-50. So use those sleepover days if you are dating somebody for the days that your child is not wandering out of their bedroom. I feel pretty strongly about that.

My mother, I come from a divorced family. My mother didn't have that, you know, wherewithal to protect me from her revolving door. And even though most of her boyfriends were, that I met were longer-term boyfriends, I don't think how she handled it with me was right. think that, so I intentionally did things differently.

⁓ I too ⁓ dated somebody before my divorce was finalized. We were not living under the same roof anymore by the time I had met them. But I know a lot of people who are separated while living together who date. And again, as long as they're not coming in being in the house and if it's intentional and that you're not...

completely rebounding and trying to jump into something so quickly to escape what you're feeling in the moment. You are mourning or grieving properly your past relationship, which most people do. That's why they're called rebounds. And you think you're going to be with that next person forever. And you really realize maybe a year down the road that that is not the case and that you didn't properly grieve and that you need some time to regroup.

⁓ So, we do a lot better than better about dating with intention and talking through that about how to date with children involved. And again, I really strongly feel like your kids really don't need to be meeting everybody you date. They just, if you do really feel a strong connection, maybe they have children. Maybe you believe that the families would be nice to get together if it works out, but it doesn't happen after two months. think that...

My kids were older, so it's different. My daughter was begging to meet the first guy I was pretty serious with. She was really curious. She was about to go to college, and she didn't want me dating somebody that she'd never met. And it was for a while. She was really curious. My son, on the other hand, not interested at all. Even tonight, even that...

Like, not as interested. My daughter, very interested. And so you just have to learn about your kids. You ask them when they're older. So the little ones, you're not asking them questions. My kids, because they were 15 and 17, and now they're 19 and almost 21, I ask them, I'm like, do you have an interest in meeting so-and-so? Like we've been dating for six months. Do you have an interest?

Or even if it's early on and I've still got a sense, like, is like, be the person in my life moving forward, do you have an interest? Again, and then they say no, you're like, okay. Then protect them from that. There's not like a, when they're older, you don't, there's no rush.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

It's not one when all states fits all I mean, you said like one of your kids was interested one of them wasn't you know, My son being younger, you know the best advice that I got from my therapist at the time was like just don't show any affection He doesn't know the difference between you know what a date is. He doesn't know he doesn't know these terms. He's, you know, two, three, four years old. So, if you don't make it a big deal and you don't make this him meeting someone you're dating and all these things, he's never gonna really know, but you have to watch the affection

If he sees hand holding, hugging, kissing, he's going to put some two together, especially, you know, we got more like four to five, and then within like, you know, have to admit, like, you know, I had a situation growing up. We were probably mid-elementary, where my dad was a very private person. We were we were getting a typical '80s kid every other week. My dad's my mom had full custody, medical, physical, school, you know, all responsibility. My dad had fun weekends every other weekend.

But he was very, very private, and my dad introduced us. We knew the lady, but one just kind of flippantly said, hey, do see the ring I got got so and so like, oh, great. And then like a couple like a month or two later, we were talking to her kids like how he is excited about their engagement, like, they got engaged like like like to us just just buying a ring for a woman didn't necessarily mean engagement and the term engagement didn't mean anything or hey, we're going to get married wasn't brought up. And so we're like, oh, great. You bought our ring, right? And so

So that's what I like, you really go into where the development of the kids is, what they notice, and what they're going to infer from what they see is very important.

Yeah, and kids just would say questions naturally, you know, what does that other person have that my mother doesn't have? Whether you are feeling that or not, I am a very secure person. I don't think about divorce like that because I don't think about the divorce happening because I wasn't enough.

people who struggle with the wasn't enough. I think that opens up a whole can of problems in that area of divorce because again, that's where the bitterness, the resentfulness, and everything, it's because they're not feeling good about themselves. Divorce doesn't happen necessarily because one person is not enough. A lot of times it has to do with, as you said, we just weren't a great

romantic couple. Like we just didn't live well together. Maybe our values weren't quite aligned. Maybe we didn't, you know, our spending behaviors are different, or our living behaviors are different, or our sexual needs are different, or there are so many things, but feeling like you're not enough because somebody else isn't happy, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're not happy with you.

It just means that they're not happy and they have to figure out how to get happy before they can give love to anybody. Right. And so people go out there to get happy in a variety of different ways. Sometimes they say that the partnership is, you know, maybe not bringing out the best in me, and I've got to go figure out what the best of me is. But flipping that script is probably the most important thing if you're getting divorced that you need to do. Because again,

It flips back to how you're showing up for your kids. If you are not feeling like enough every day and you're really stuck on like whatever happened in that relationship that brought you apart, you are not showing up the best for your child. The resentment, the bitterness, the throwing under the bus, the disparagement of the other person, the really not feeling a good sense of self, having self-love, self-care, self-compassion, like that's not good for your kids.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, that's it, know, I've been on a spiritual journey. I hate using that term because I was also born and raised in the Midwest, where spiritual and religious met. That's not necessarily how I meant it, but just the mindfulness, consciousness, learning about the ego, superego, all that type of stuff that I started learning and reading about about five, six years ago has really changed my life. And it's really, you know, let me go of let go of the past, let go of things like.

I don't control anyone else's actions or emotions. I'm responsible for myself and what I do, how I do it, and when I do it. And I'm empathetic in how my actions affect people, obviously, but I'm not responsible for people's actions or emotions. And that's something I'm trying to teach my son as well, that I just think, again, being an eighties kid, you're taught, sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you, or just don't worry about it. And, you know, just kind of really just, you know, even things like

As a kid, you know, when you got in trouble, or like your parents, like you're making me do this, right? Like you're the reason why I'm upset. I don't want to be doing this, but you're causing me. And like when I lose my temper with my son, I'm like, look, I calm down, and I apologize to him. Like, look, I can't expect him to. You know, respect his emotions and control them if I'm not willing to admit when I make a mistake. So I realize this is kind of a little broader into child development and worldviews.

It's made a big difference in how I parent my son and the relationship that we have and the we talk about because I'm trying to teach him things that I don't quite really think I was taught growing up just because I don't think it was the way things were done and really getting him to view life differently and to wear less baggage for himself and have a happier life.

Well, you sound like an amazing dad, and I really do hats off to you. I wish that more people had the consciousness and the, I don't know, just the intent of wanting to be better every day. And you are so right. You cannot control other people. You can only control your reactions to them. If you find yourself blaming other people for how you feel.

You're just giving those individuals the power over your emotions. Being a victim in life just means that you are being controlled by whatever external force is happening. And I always tell my son when he says, Mom, you're making me feel guilty. I'm like, I'm not making you feel guilty. If you feel guilty, maybe something I said triggered you to feel guilt. But if you allow me, when I say something to make you feel a certain way, you're giving me all that power.

⁓ So, my kids hate it when I coach them, but take that power back. I tell my coaching clients every day, I get it. Your husband had an affair, your wife had an affair. I get it. But by continuing to ruminate over that, they are going to continue to have control over your emotions, and you don't want to give them all the power. You need to be focusing on what you can control.

And that's how you are going to be working in your life moving forward. And as it relates to co-parenting, yeah, you are not going to be able to control your co-parent. You're not going to be able to control what they do, what they say, or who they talk to. You are not going to be able to control them, but you can control your reactions to them, and you can focus on what you can control. Create your own philosophy, create your own...

world of comfort, and that is where you need to be focusing on, how you are gonna be showing up every day.

Yeah, another reason why I wrote this book is that most of the books I was seeing out there were like co-parenting with a narcissist, co-parenting with an alcoholic. And for what I'm like, if that's what you're looking up, this probably is not truly a co-parenting relationship. It's probably more parallel parenting or single parenting. But one thing that I've been thinking about since writing the book is obviously my son was young. We were very intentional, but how do you handle this when there isn't that dual intentionality between both the co-parents?

And I still say, with yourself. Because I guarantee you, if you let go of the animosity, you let go of the anger, and just give in. If the other partner says, hey, it's not my time, but can I get my kid for this time period? If there is no exact reason why you shouldn't do that, give in. I guarantee you it's going to make your life easier. Even in a potential co-parenting relationship like ours, it started out with quid pro quos. Sure.

You can have that weekend, but I want this. Now we don't even do it. Like, where it's kind of more of just like, do you want, don't want any other time? Like, no, it's not a big deal. Like I have them, you know, I'm to have them for an extended time in two more weeks. So that's fine. We're good. Right. We don't even worry about the quid pro quo anymore because we just come to this spaceship where we're all working together for the betterment of the kid and just let things go. And as long as there is no conflict, there's never a reason to say no.

Well, I'm gonna wrap it up because that was the best ending that I could have possibly imagined. Just let it go. Because again, your kid needs to be the center of all your decision-making. If you make an issue of it, it'll become an issue for them. And that is not what we're here to do. We are trying to create a peaceful, safe environment for our children that's full of love. And I love the fact that you and your ex-wife have pulled in so many other people.

You

into this circle of love for your son. And that's what it's all about. I always say the more people who love your kids, the better. So thank you, John, so much for joining us today. Everybody, I will put all of the information about John's book into our show notes, and you can get it on Amazon.

Any other information you want to add?

If you go to Amazon, just search for the Co-Parent and Seeker. It's not about you. It'll pop up there. If you do buy the book and read it, please leave a review. I appreciate being part of the show.

Thanks again, John.

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