You Don’t Get Custody of the Narrative: On divorce, the language of abuse, and what we ask children to carry

I’ve written before about the fact that not everything that hurts you is abuse.

But there’s another side of that conversation that becomes especially important when a relationship ends and children are involved.

What happens when every disagreement becomes manipulation, every boundary becomes control, every angry comment becomes verbal abuse, and every shitty thing an ex says or does becomes further evidence that they are an abusive person?

Eventually, the children inherit the narrative.

And that can do damage of its own.

Someone Can Hurt You Without Abusing You

Divorce is rarely a showcase of humanity at its finest.

People get angry. They say things they shouldn’t. They act selfishly. They draw boundaries the other person hates. They tell uncomfortable truths—and sometimes they tell those truths in ways specifically designed to hurt.

None of that is admirable. But neither is all of it abuse.

There is a difference between cruelty and a pattern of degradation. Between refusing to do what someone wants and coercively controlling them. Between lying and gaslighting. Between conflict and intimidation.

Those distinctions are important because actual emotional and psychological abuse is real.

So are coercive control, threats, intimidation, isolation, stalking, and patterns designed to frighten or dominate another person.

If we use the same language for all of it, the language eventually stops telling us very much.

“This hurt me.” “That was cruel.” “That was selfish.” “That changed the way I see this person.”

We have words for these experiences. We don’t need to call all of them abuse in order for them to matter.

Divorce Creates a Particularly Dangerous Temptation

When a relationship ends badly, there is an understandable desire to make sense of what happened.

Sometimes people look backward and recognize patterns they genuinely couldn’t see while they were living inside them. Sometimes abuse is exactly the right word.

But sometimes a conclusion gets established first:

This person is abusive.

And from that point forward, everything becomes supporting evidence.

They disagree with me? Controlling. They tell me no? Punishing me. They get angry? Abusive. They don't respond? Stonewalling. They say too much? Harassment. They remember something differently? Gaslighting.

At some point, we stop evaluating behavior and start prosecuting a theory.

And when there are children involved, that theory rarely stays between the adults.

Children Shouldn’t Have to Decide Who the Villain Is

Children love their parents in ways that have very little to do with the success or failure of their parents’ romantic relationship.

That should be protected whenever it safely can be.

Your child does not need screenshots, a running inventory of every betrayal, or your amateur psychological diagnosis of their other parent. They don’t need to hear that Dad is toxic, Mom is a narcissist, or that you’ve finally realized you were trauma-bonded to a gaslighting emotional abuser for fifteen years because TikTok supplied you with the vocabulary.

Maybe some of those descriptions are even accurate.

Your child still shouldn’t be your confidant.

Once you repeatedly tell a child that someone they love is abusive, narcissistic, manipulative, or fundamentally bad, you aren’t simply telling them something about your ex. You’re giving them instructions about how to understand someone who is part of them.

If Dad is terrible, what does it mean that I love him? If Mom is awful, am I betraying Dad when I have fun with her? If I’m like my father, does that mean I’m bad too?

And children don’t need explicit instructions to take sides. They notice when mentioning Mom changes Dad’s face. They notice when enthusiasm about Dad’s house makes Mom go quiet. Eventually, they may start editing themselves simply because they love you.

That isn’t a victory.

A Bad Spouse Is Not Automatically a Bad Parent

Someone can have failed you spectacularly as a partner and still love their children.

They can have cheated, been selfish, emotionally unavailable, irresponsible, immature, or downright miserable to be married to and still have a meaningful relationship with their children.

Your experience of that person is real. It just isn’t necessarily your child’s experience of them.

And the reverse matters too. Being charming or well-liked doesn’t make someone a good parent. Sometimes a parent genuinely is unsafe and intervention is necessary.

Human beings are inconveniently complicated.

That’s precisely why labels require care.

Your New Partner Doesn’t Get a Vote in the Child’s Loyalty

A new partner may hear years of stories about the ex, witness conflict firsthand, and develop very strong opinions about someone they never chose to have in their life.

That’s understandable.

What isn’t appropriate is using their relationship with the child to help prosecute the case against that parent.

“You know your mom does that because she wants to control you, right?”

“Your dad always makes everything about himself.”

“I’m not telling you what to think, but someday you’ll understand.”

Suddenly the child isn’t simply experiencing their parent anymore. They’re being taught how to interpret them.

A new partner can become an enormously important person in a child’s life. They can provide stability, affection, mentorship, safety, and another adult who genuinely gives a damn.

That’s a beautiful role.

But loving the child doesn’t entitle you to rewrite their relationship with either parent. You don’t need the child to validate the version of the relationship you’ve been told, recognize the other parent’s flaws on your timeline, or prove your place in the family by choosing your household.

Sometimes that pressure is obvious. Sometimes it’s much subtler—particularly after remarrying.

“We have the same last name now.”

On its face, there may be nothing wrong with that sentence. It could simply be excitement about a newly blended family.

But said to a child who shares that name with one household while their other parent no longer does, we can carry another message:

You belong to this family. Your other parent is outside of it.

That may not be the intention. That’s precisely the point.

The problem comes when the new we requires an other.

When our family starts to mean something more than the people who love and care for the child, and instead becomes a category that includes one parent/step-parent while quietly (or not-so-quietly) excluding the other.

Sometimes a shared last name can become part of that story. Sometimes it’s the household, a new marriage, family traditions, or simply the language adults use about who counts as us.

And the logic doesn’t even have to be consistent. A blended family may happily include step-siblings with different last names while a biological parent with a different name somehow ends up outside the definition of family altogether.

That’s the part worth paying attention to.

The problem isn’t that children develop a sense of belonging with a new spouse, step-siblings, or a blended household. They should. Those relationships can become deeply meaningful parts of their life.

The problem is when belonging becomes exclusive rather than additive—when embracing the new family seems to require demoting someone from the old one.

A child can gain a stepmother without losing a mother. They can gain a stepfather without losing a father. They can gain siblings, grandparents, traditions, homes, and entire branches of people who love them without anyone else needing to be pushed outside the circle.

Belonging should expand a child’s family, not require them to redraw its borders.

If you’re the new partner, be another safe adult—not another attorney.

Listen. Be curious. Don’t interrogate, diagnose, or recruit.

Your arrival doesn’t give you custody of the narrative either.

Your Children Are Allowed to Have a Different Relationship With Your Ex

One of the most difficult gifts divorced parents can give their children is permission to have a relationship with someone they no longer like.

Not performative permission. Not, “Of course you can love your mother,” followed by twenty minutes explaining everything that’s wrong with her.

Actual permission.

Love your dad. Enjoy your mom. Tell me about your weekend. Heck, have a great time with your stepparent. You don’t have to protect my feelings. You don’t have to carry my anger. You don’t have to choose me.

But respecting that relationship does not require ignoring harmful behavior simply because it doesn’t qualify as abuse.

There is a lot of territory between “I don’t like how my ex parents” and “my child is in immediate danger.”

And frankly, that middle ground is probably where a lot of divorced parents actually live.

A parent can love their child deeply and still be irresponsible. They can have good intentions and terrible judgment. They can be fun and affectionate while also being unreliable. They can underestimate risks, disregard routines, break promises, or fail to take a child’s needs as seriously as they should.

None of that automatically makes them abusive.

It also doesn’t make the consequences imaginary.

Intent and impact are not the same thing. A parent does not have to mean harm in order to cause it.

That’s where the work becomes harder: you may need to advocate for your child without teaching your child to hate the person you’re advocating against.

You Can Name What Isn’t Okay

Giving children permission to form their own relationship with the other parent does not require pretending every parenting choice is acceptable.

Sometimes your child needs you to say:

“No, that wasn’t okay.”

There is a difference between teaching a child how to recognize unhealthy behavior and teaching them how to view the person who did it.

“That wasn’t responsible.” “You had every reason to expect them to show up.” “I understand why that hurt you.”

Those statements help a child develop judgment without handing them a verdict about the person they love.

As children get older, the conversations can become more direct. A teenager asking, “Is this normal?” deserves an honest answer. Protecting their relationship with the other parent should not require teaching them to distrust their own perception.

But there is also a difference between responding to what a child experiences and priming them for what you expect them to experience.

“No, what happened wasn’t okay” is very different from “Pay attention when you’re at Dad’s house and see if he does this again.”

One helps a child understand their experience. The other teaches them to collect evidence for yours.

And don’t invalidate the child in an effort to defend the other parent. Maybe Mom didn’t mean to hurt them. Maybe Dad had good intentions. Maybe they both love their child very much.

Intent still doesn’t erase impact.

Your child can love a parent and still learn that some of that parent’s behavior isn’t okay.

That may be one of the healthiest things we can teach them about love.

When “Just Communicate” Isn’t the Answer

There is a lot of advice telling divorced parents to communicate, compromise, and learn to co-parent effectively.

That’s lovely when both people are capable of doing it.

Sometimes they aren’t.

Sometimes every conversation becomes a fight. Agreements, schedules, medical arrangements, or court orders are repeatedly ignored. Sometimes legitimate concerns about a child’s well-being make “just work it out between yourselves” spectacularly bad advice.

The answer isn’t always better communication.

Sometimes it’s less communication, with better structure.

If direct communication repeatedly becomes a danger zone, build another road around it. Communicate in writing. Use a parenting app. Stick to established schedules. When necessary, involve mediators, attorneys, guardians ad litem, parenting coordinators, therapists, medical professionals, or the court.

Sometimes healthy co-parenting looks less like collaboration and more like parallel parenting with very good guardrails.

That isn’t necessarily failure.

What you shouldn’t do is route adult conflict through the child.

A child is not a messenger, mediator, witness, therapist, negotiator, or enforcement mechanism.

Protection Is Not Punishment

Protecting a child’s relationship with both parents does not mean ignoring legitimate reasons to restrict it.

Sometimes placement needs to change. Sometimes supervision is appropriate. Sometimes professionals or courts need to intervene.

Likewise, police reports, welfare checks, restraining orders, emergency custody requests, and other legal protections exist for a reason.

Use them when you need them.

If you or your child are genuinely threatened, harmed, stalked, harassed, or unsafe, asking for help is not vindictive.

But systems designed to protect people from danger should not become heavier artillery for an ugly breakup.

There is a profound difference between needing the police involved because you fear what someone may do and wanting the police involved because you know what it will do to them.

Sometimes legal intervention causes major disruption for children and is absolutely necessary anyway. When it is, use every protection available.

But deliberately manufacturing danger or disruption to hurt your ex is not protection. It is escalation.

Anger does not invalidate genuine abuse. Someone can legitimately need protection and still hate the person they need protection from.

But when you reach for systems powerful enough to restrict someone’s freedom, affect their access to their children, or involve law enforcement in their life, one question deserves an answer:

Am I trying to make someone safer—or am I trying to make someone pay?

You Don’t Have to Pretend Everything Is Fine

Keeping children out of adult conflict doesn’t require lying to them.

They need age-appropriate truth, not the complete evidentiary record of their parents’ divorce.

“There are some things Mom and Dad aren’t able to agree about, so we’re getting help making those decisions.”

“The adults are working on that.”

“You don’t need to fix this.”

And, when appropriate:

“You are still allowed to love your parent. ”

You can document legitimate concerns, enforce court orders, seek changes to custody or placement, involve professionals, establish firm boundaries, and decide direct co-parenting simply isn’t possible.

What you shouldn’t do is make your child responsible for any of it.

There are systems for adult conflict.

Let the children remain children.

Words Mean Things

We have more language than ever for describing unhealthy relationships.

That’s largely a good thing.

People can name coercive control, emotional abuse, manipulation, trauma, gaslighting, and experiences that once went largely unspoken.

But language becomes less useful when we stretch it until it covers everything.

Not every lie is gaslighting. Not every selfish person is a narcissist. Not every boundary is control. Not every uncomfortable interaction is unsafe. Not every painful relationship is abusive.

Using stronger language doesn’t make our pain more legitimate.

You are allowed to say someone broke your heart. You are allowed to say they treated you terribly. You are allowed to regret choosing them. You are allowed to be furious. You are allowed to leave.

You don’t need a diagnosis or a victim/perpetrator framework to justify ending a relationship that no longer belongs in your life.

Sometimes a relationship ends because someone was abusive. Sometimes it ends because someone was an asshole. Sometimes both people behaved badly. Sometimes two decent people became absolutely terrible for each other.

Sometimes nobody needs to be the villain for the relationship to need to end.

And sometimes accepting that ambiguity is harder than assigning one.

Divorce Ends a Partnership

Your marriage belongs to you.

Your divorce belongs to you.

Your anger and grief belong to you.

Your interpretation of what happened between the two of you belongs to you.

Your children don’t automatically inherit any of it.

They will eventually form their own understanding of their parents. They’ll remember who paid attention. They’ll experience broken promises. They’ll recognize genuine kindness. They’ll notice manipulation if it’s there.

They’ll see patterns.

Let them.

You don’t have to curate the evidence for them.

Because divorce ends a partnership.

It does not give either parent custody of the children’s interpretation of the other.

Neither does marrying one of their parents.

Perhaps one of the most loving things you can do when a relationship ends is refuse to make your children carry a hatred that belongs to you.

Your children do not need to hate someone simply because you do.

They need permission to love without feeling disloyal.

Give them that.

If You Recognize Yourself in This

Maybe you’ve already done some of this.

I know I have.

I’m writing this with the benefit of hindsight, not from some imaginary position of having navigated divorce and co-parenting perfectly. I’ve said things I probably shouldn’t have said. I’ve let frustration show on my face. I’ve answered questions with more information than was probably necessary. There are moments I would handle differently now than I did when I was actually living them.

Knowing better now doesn’t mean I always knew better then.

And I think that matters, because the point of recognizing these patterns shouldn’t be to create yet another category of terrible people. Most of us have probably gotten some of this wrong. Divorce is emotional, parenting is emotional, and maintaining perfect neutrality toward someone you are angry with—or genuinely hurt by—is a pretty unrealistic standard.

The goal isn’t perfection.

It’s noticing when your pain starts becoming something your child has to carry.

Maybe you’ve vented to your child when you shouldn’t have. Maybe you’ve rolled your eyes when they mentioned the other parent, told them things they weren’t old enough to carry, asked questions that were really attempts to gather information, or let a new relationship create more of an us-versus-them dynamic than you intended.

Maybe you’ve called behavior abusive when what you really meant was cruel, selfish, irresponsible, or infuriating.

Maybe your child has already learned which version of their other parent keeps you comfortable.

You can change that.

You don’t have to defend what you did before in order to do something differently now.

And you don’t need to make some enormous confession that gives your child another adult emotional burden to carry. Sometimes repair is much simpler.

“I think I’ve put you in the middle sometimes, and that wasn’t fair.”

“You don’t need to worry about how I feel about your relationship with your dad.”

“I realize I’ve said things about your mom that you shouldn’t have had to hear.”

“You are allowed to love both of us.”

And then you have to mean it.

That means changing your face when they tell you they had a great weekend. It means resisting the follow-up question you’re dying to ask. It means taking your anger to another adult. It means allowing your child to defend the other parent without treating it as betrayal. It means noticing when you’re about to hand them something that belongs in an attorney’s office, a therapist’s office, or a conversation with a friend—and keeping it there.

You may not be able to undo everything your child has already heard or felt.

But children notice patterns.

That’s been part of the point all along.

Which means they can notice new patterns too.

They can notice when you stop recruiting them. When you stop making them manage your feelings. When they no longer have to edit the good things they say about the other parent.

When loving both parents becomes safer than choosing between them.

You don’t have to have handled divorce perfectly from the beginning to start handling it better now.

You don’t get custody of the narrative.

But you do get responsibility for the part of it you’re still writing.