How to Forgive a Coparent Who Uses the Children

The Weight of Intentional Wounding

Imagine a delicate bridge stretched between two cliffs - constructed piece by piece, bearing the weight of shared dreams and obligations. Now, envision one side - perhaps unwittingly, perhaps consciously - placing stones on the bridge that were never meant to be there. These stones are the subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, ways a co-parent might use children as pawns in a complex struggle, as though their needs become invisible beneath another’s narrative. This dynamic - when the children are wielded as tools rather than treasured as individuals - can feel like betrayal, erosion, and a deep reordering of what trust once was.

We are often taught that forgiving is a simple act - an all-including phrase of letting go - but when a co-parent uses the children as use, that forgiveness twists into something more knotted and labyrinthine. It’s a slow-burning unlearning of conditioned responses. It’s an invitation to see past the acts to the human fragility beneath.

"Trauma reorganizes perception. Recovery reorganizes it again, but this time with your participation."

What I’ve learned after decades in this work is that forgiving a co-parent who fractures your family mosaic through their actions is less about excusing behavior and more about reclaiming your own center amidst the storm.

Understanding the Unseen Wounds

The strategic misuse of children in co-parenting conflicts is often not an isolated phenomenon - it is embedded in a complex emotional system where resentment, fear, and unhealed wounds converge. Like the silent currents beneath a placid lake, these unseen dynamics shape behavior in ways that are invisible yet immensely impactful. It is not uncommon to find that the parent who uses the children as use is themselves tethered tightly to their own unresolved pain.

In the words of Fred Luskin, a pioneer in forgiveness research, “Forgiveness is a process of change in the heart that liberates us from painful attachments.” It invites us to remember that beneath every harsh act might lie a deeply guarded vulnerability, even when the surface shows only conflict.

This does not excuse manipulation or emotional harm. Instead, it challenges us to shift perception - to distinguish the act from the actor, the strategy from the struggle. We open ourselves to the possibility that forgiveness, clinically speaking, is about relinquishing our grip on the pain that binds us to the turmoil.

Working through the Mirror of Resentment

Resentment is a mirror that often reflects our own wounds back at us, distorted yet truthful in its intensity. When a co-parent weaponizes the children - turning shared parenting time into battlegrounds, using the children’s affections as currency - resentment can harden like ice in the chambers of the heart. Yet, that very hardness - while protective - may also imprison us. One must wrestle with the paradox that holding onto bitterness sometimes fuels the very cycles of pain we wish to escape.

I've sat with people who described feeling anchored to their deepest disappointments, as if those feelings were their only solid footing in an unpredictable world. The nervous system, as Bessel van der Kolk explains, “doesn't respond to what you believe. It responds to what it senses.” So long as the body remains vigilant and guarded, true forgiveness remains elusive.

"The nervous system doesn't respond to what you believe. It responds to what it senses."

Forgiveness, therefore, is not simply a decision - it is a somatic journey where we learn to moment by moment alter our body’s response to threat. We practice extending the boundaries of safety within ourselves, paving a path through the shadow of resentment.

For a structured approach to this, I often point people toward Radical Forgiveness (paid link) by Colin Tipping - the framework is practical and surprisingly gentle.

Reclaiming Our Narrative Through Conscious Choice

When children become currency in a co-parenting dispute, it can feel like one’s story is being rewritten by invisible hands - each interaction, text, or court decision scripting a new version of self and family. Yet, within this unfolding story, one is not merely a passive character but a conscious author with the power to choose how to respond to adversity. Freedom, as I often remind those I work with, “is not the absence of constraint. It’s the capacity to choose your relationship to it.”

Forgiving a co-parent under these circumstances invites a radical reclamation of voice - a conscious choice to shift from reaction to response. It requires us to honor the truth of our experience without allowing it to dictate our future. This does not mean absolving injustice but finding a pathway through it that generates space for healing and presence.

Some find solace in the words of Janis Abrahms Spring, who emphasizes boundaries as an act of self-love, not abandonment. Setting firm, clear limits is not an act of hostility but one of preservation - especially when the children’s hearts are entwined in a tenuous balance.

Embracing Compassion for the Co-Parent and Self

The word compassion often feels heavy with expectation and softness - yet in this terrain, it is imbued with fierce clarity. Compassion here recognizes the humanity of the co-parent who may be acting out their own fears and fractures, while simultaneously holding space for one’s own wounds carved by the same experience.

In the paradox of holding fierce love for both ourselves and the other, we find a trembling, tender middle space - a ground where forgiveness can arise without the demand to forget or deny what was harmful. It is a reconciliation of paradox, a dance of shadow and light.

"What we call 'stuck' is usually the body doing exactly what it was designed to do under conditions that no longer exist."

Practical Steps to Forgiving When Children Are Implicated

Forgiveness is not an ethereal leap but a series of grounded steps - each rooted in awareness, boundaries, and deep self-clarity. First, one must develop the inner witness to the pain - the unblinking gaze that holds the full narrative without avoidance. This witnessing is both an act of courage and tenderness.

Gabor Mate's The Wisdom of Trauma (paid link) reframes the whole conversation - trauma isn't what happened to you, it's what happened inside you as a result.

• Identify Feelings Clearly: Naming anger, hurt, betrayal as distinct emotions helps to lessen their tangled intensity.
• Set Boundaries Firmly: Decide what will be allowed behaviorally in co-parenting interactions; reinforce limits for protection.
• Seek Empathy Without Justification: Understand the co-parent’s motivations without condoning harmful tactics.
• Practice Self-Compassion: Recognize your own humanity amid the swirling emotions.
• Engage Somatic Practices: Use mindful breathing or movement to regulate the nervous system during triggering moments.

These steps create a scaffolding for forgiveness that combines intellect, feeling, and sensation - integrating all facets of our being in the journey toward release. Everett Worthington’s concept of “REACH” forgiveness, which encourages recalling the hurt and choosing forgiveness consciously, connects deeply here, as it honors both memory and intention.

Forgiveness in this territory looks less like a destination and more like ongoing alignment - a practice of returning again and again to one’s center amid waves of challenge.

Holding the Children as Our Guides Amidst Conflict

The children, though sometimes used as weapons, hold within them immense wisdom about what is truly needed - a reminder to those caught in conflict that beneath every discord there is a human heart seeking connection and safety. They become living analogies, like the compass needle that points steadily toward true north even when the storm rages violently around it.

In our relationship with the co-parent and ourselves, the children invite us to develop a deeper intention - one that privileges their well-being above all else without absorption into the co-parent’s turbulence. This requires discernment, clarity, and often, difficult decisions made in quiet resolve rather than reactive moments.

To nourish this path, one might explore inner peace amid family turmoil or engage with nerving the nervous system to understand how somatic awareness supports resilience. What I’ve seen reveals again and again that when caregivers approach these challenges with grounded presence, the children thrive despite fractured landscapes.

The Heart of Conscious Forgiveness in Coparenting

The heart of forgiveness when the co-parent uses children is illuminated not by grand declarations but by persistent, often quiet, acts of conscious choice - acts that affirm one’s own soul without erasing the complexity of the pain. It is the recognition that forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves, a recalibration that frees us from the ripple effects of bitterness and empowers us to engage with life more fully.

Alan Watts once remarked that “You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” Within that freedom lies the radical possibility of redefining our relationship to past wounds and to those who have inflicted them.

Forgiveness here becomes a dance of boundaries and softening, of understanding that transcends forgetting but allows the conduit for peace to emerge. It is less about reconciliation between co-parents and more about the restoration of internal harmony - one wave after another, carrying us toward shore.

If you prefer working things out on paper, The Forgiveness Workbook (paid link) gives you guided exercises that take this from theory to practice.

"If your spiritual practice makes you more rigid, it's not working."

Concluding with Tender Endurance

The process of forgiving a co-parent who uses the children is a long unfolding - a territory where intellect and heart entwine like roots beneath a century-old tree. The ache is natural; the loss palpable. Yet within that ache is also the tender endurance of presence - that soft insistence that life, even fractured, carries its own mysterious invitation toward wholeness.

One does not forgive quickly, nor does one do so by forgetting the contours of pain - it is instead a continual return to self with compassion and courage. The children, caught between worlds, become witnesses not only to the conflicts but to the subtle alchemies of healing that undergird them.

As we work through the labyrinthine process of forgiveness in this context, may we hold both the complexity and the light - a proof to the resilience of the human spirit and the sacred possibility of love, ever unfolding.

Explore more on developing emotional resilience and finding peace in fractured family systems through finding peace in co-parenting or visit kalesh.love for further reflections on working through conscious relationships.

For further research, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy provides additional evidence-based resources on this topic.