Sol (00:01)
Welcome back to Coparenting Beyond Conflict. I'm your host, Sol, founder of the BestInterest app. At BestInterest and on this podcast, we help co-parents find peace. Today, I'm joined by Teresa Luce, known as the Family Peace Broker. She's a co-parenting coach, family mediator, and bestselling author. Teresa shares what she's learned from her own path through divorce and step-parenting and how empathy, self-reflection, and clear communication

can turn even the most combative dynamic into collaboration. If you've ever wondered whether peaceful co-parenting is even possible, this conversation will show you the way. Let's dive in.

Sol (00:36)
Hi, Teresa, welcome to Coparenting Beyond Conflict. It's good to have you here today.

Teresa Luse (00:39)
Good to be here, Sol. Thanks for having me.

Sol (00:42)
One of the reasons why I wanted to have you on is that you talk a lot about peace. You talk a lot about how to co-parent with a narcissist. Before we get into that, I'm also curious about your background. You mentioned that you navigated your own divorce and became a stepparent. I'm curious how you got here today helping others that are going through this.

Teresa Luse (01:04)
Yeah, my son's father and I divorced when our son was six. And at that time, co-parenting wasn't even a term I think people used, but I was determined to figure out a better way than I had observed with other people in my life. And so, we set out to put our child first

and also not be miserable ourselves whenever we had to interact with each other. As we did that, people that were around us, soccer moms and dads and other people that we came into contact with that observed how we interacted together came up to us all the time. And they were like, "wow, I cannot believe you guys have figured this out. I wish my parents had done this for me.

I wish that I could do this for my child now that we're divorced." And I thought to myself, well, you can, it's not impossible. You just have to have intention and the focus on the right ends. So as I watched my son grow up and continued to get this kind of feedback, about when he was 18, I started writing a book about it.

A few years later, I published that book as a way to help others to overcome what they felt was impeding them from living the life that I was able to enjoy as a co-parent. Now I will tell you that my son's father and were pretty easily transitioned into the role of co-parent and collaborative co-parenting.

As I recoupled and met my now husband, I expected kind of the same thing to happen, but lo and behold, it was quite different experience. I can tell you that it took about 10 years from the time that he and I met to the point where his ex-wife and I were on better terms and able to have

meaningful, civil conversations and allow our children to interact with both of us present without a lot of animosity. It was just a moment in time that presented itself that showed there was a crack in the door and each of us stepped through that door and it changed everything. Not everyone's ready to be collaborative in the beginning. Sometimes we have to live through certain chapters of our life and experiences

build up to that, but it happened and now all of us can be together and you don't have all this underlying tension. The kids trying to figure out where parents are in the room, make sure parents aren't together and all of that stress that is on them no matter how old they are.

Sol (03:39)
Wow, what a journey to have not only shifted into co-parenting and the challenges there, but also to become a stepmother and then facing the conflicts there. Wow.

Teresa Luse (03:49)
Yeah.

Yeah. I jokingly will say the beginning years, I wrote the book Happily Divorced, which then later became Combative to Collaborative, the Co-Parenting Code. And I said, well, my next book's going to be Stepparenting Sucks, because that's how I felt for so long, but figured it out eventually. And now we're on a better course.

Sol (04:10)
I know a lot of our listeners are stepparents and it's its own challenging journey. One of the things I know you talk about in your book, you make the point that better co-parenting isn't about fixing your ex. We can get trapped in this, like, if they could only do this. Given that idea, how do I implement that?

Teresa Luse (04:29)
A lot of times when parents come to me, they'll tell me all about the faults of their co-parent. And a lot of times they even label them as narcissist. They're focused very much on the other person. And when they do that, they're

basically trapping themselves in I help parents to do is refocus their efforts on things they can change because you're not going to change that other person. So when I say, I can't fix your ex, that also includes them. They can't fix their ex or they would have done it by now. There's a reason they're separated or divorced.

Rather than focusing on something you can't change, refocus your efforts on something you can actually influence. And that is how you interact with the person that is in front of you. Because like it or not, they're the person you're going to, have in your life for the foreseeable future. And it doesn't just end when the children turn 18. I mean, this continues. Children

graduate from college, they get married, maybe they have children. So you're going to constantly be faced with this other person that you can either choose misery and just say, well, they're impossible or they're a narcissist or I can't deal with them. Or you can figure out how to deal with who they are. So I help parents to learn how to

reduce, diffuse, and redirect that incoming animosity that you're victimized by continuously and turn it into something else that can be more productive and helpful for you.

Sol (06:01)
That sounds really empowering and it aligns with this idea that people who are listening to this podcast and who are in this position, they tend to be the ones that are more introspective and willing to change and shift, whereas their co-parent may not be. So you're arriving here, you're listening here, you're trying to fix this. And what I'm hearing from you is, well, it starts with you.

Teresa Luse (06:24)
Yeah, it goes back to you're not going to change them, but does that mean you can't do anything? No, it doesn't. There are many ways that you can take back control of your situation. I'll give you an example. When your co-parent is, throwing this fire hose at you of hostility, it's like, you can either absorb that

and become that or you can reflect back something to them that you want to see demonstrated back to you because what you put out there is what comes back to you. Now that's not to say that the minute you start acting nice to them they're going to do that. Probably not. But your best lever for influencing the other person's behavior is by demonstrating the behavior you want to get

back from them. And even if they never give it back to you, you still win because you're demonstrating behaviors that you feel good about, that are admirable, that you can hold your head high. And also as your children are watching that, they see the type of behavior that you want them to demonstrate as well as they grow up and treat others around them in certain ways.

So whether or not your co-parent ever reciprocates that, you've taught your children a valuable lesson and they will hopefully carry that forward with you as their model. An example would be if the other party is incapable of showing you empathy.

They never show you empathy. They never give you credit. You're always the problem. And they're coming at you with all the reasons that you're terrible. You can say, "I appreciate what you're saying." That doesn't mean you agree with them. And maybe appreciate's a little strong. Maybe we could go with, hear you. It's kind of like the most powerful way to diffuse incoming hostility.

Because what are they going to say after that? "They heard me. Okay, now where do I go with that?" You started on a path of reclaiming the control of this interaction. It's like, "I hear you, now how about we talk about how to move forward from here?" So that's an example of the use of empathy and acknowledgement of incoming hostility from someone without

compromising your own beliefs because again, you're not saying "I hear you and I believe you." I heard you. So I've met you where you're at and now I'm going to redirect us to something that we can do something about, which isn't me changing how you feel about me.

Sol (08:57)
It's an interesting line that we are at, we're learning boundaries and we're wanting to enforce them and have more control in our lives. And then we feel like our co-parent is trying to control us and trying to break down our boundaries. And yet what I'm hearing from you is it starts with validation, that we're validating that they're having an experience,

but we're not necessarily stepping over that line and just caretaking and doing what maybe we did in the marriage.

Teresa Luse (09:27)
Yeah, well, just because they label you somehow doesn't mean it's true. That's their own perspective, just as you have your own definition of who they are. But that doesn't make it so. You don't have to adopt it and absorb that into yourself and you have to give them license to allow them to absorb into you. You can certainly say, "I hear that,"

doesn't say you believe that and you simply give them a path to move out of that, whole tone and whole piece of the conversation.

Sol (09:59)
Speak to us more about this idea of treating your co-parent in the way that you want to be treated. How does that really work in practice?

Teresa Luse (10:08)
Well, it's demonstrating the behaviors you want to receive back from others. Whether you're speaking to someone, making decisions that impact somebody else, always thinking about if I were in the other person's shoes, how would I want to be spoken to?

How would I want to be treated in a moment where a decision is made that affects me negatively and treating that person in that way, because then you've stayed true to your values. If you treat them the way you think they deserve to be treated rather than how you would want to be treated, then you're actually violating your own values. It's like, you wouldn't want to hear those words, so why say them?

That doesn't mean you don't make decisions that negatively impact the person. But if you do make a decision, consider if you were on the other side of the equation, what would you expect someone to do to show you courtesy and to allow you to maintain your dignity?

And then using those inputs to your interaction with them.

Sol (11:13)
I got an email recently from a BestInterest user and they were talking to me about this experience that they have with their co-parent, which I think is pretty common. They'll treat you differently over the course of a month. So they'll be super aggressive and then

a couple weeks later, they'll be at least kinder. It's hard to just go in that style where it seems like, maybe they're getting better, but then they drop back into it. And they're really challenging again. How do you navigate those ups and downs?

Teresa Luse (11:42)
Well, yeah, I mean, you're dealing with people they put you on this roller coaster ride. And I would say stick to what you're doing because again, you can't, change what they're going through. And frankly, you don't know that you're the reason that they're having these ups and downs. A lot of times I have parents that assume so many intentions from their co-parent.

And this gets everyone into trouble. It's like, it's about me. They're doing this because of me. When in fact, maybe they had a bad day at work. Maybe they got laid off. Maybe they're having health issues that you're unaware of. Maybe the child was screaming this morning and they couldn't get them to calm down. So every time that a co-parent is treating you indignantly or hostily,

It may not even be about you. And even if it is, assuming that it's about you doesn't help you. It just puts you in this negative mindset where you want to react to it and defend yourself because that's what humans do. We feel attacked, we throw up our guard and we want to defend ourselves from further harm. So if you can just in those moments where you're getting this, just recognize they can't harm me.

We're not together anymore, we've decided that. And so I don't need to fix them and I don't need to own what they say about me and whatever they're going through, I don't have to necessarily be the cause of that because they got problems. You can diffuse your own hostility before it goes back to them by thinking that through because what is it going to help you to

respond to them in you're giving them back something and then it just becomes this volley back and forth and and it spirals downward.

Sol (13:26)
As a co-parent myself, I know how difficult communication can be. That's why I created Best Interest, the co-parenting app that uses advanced AI technology to automatically filter out all negativity, promoting positive communication and helping you create a healthier environment for your family. Try it now and get with code Beyond10. Link in the show notes.

Sol AI (13:48)
And now, back to the show.

Sol (13:50)
A term that I've recently heard about that I like for these situations is, instead of using the term 'narcissist', you realize that the co-parent that you're dealing with may just be emotionally immature. And so when they're dealing with the stresses you're talking about, a stressful day at work or a challenge with the kids, they may not have the emotional capabilities or support systems in place

Teresa Luse (14:00)
Yeah.

Sol (14:12)
so that they can internally resource and help themselves with that. They kind of externally resource it by making everyone else's lives difficult.

Teresa Luse (14:19)
Emotional intelligence isn't something everyone's imbued with. Is that the right word? There's that, but let's talk about the term narcissist just for a second, because, like I said, it's probably the most common term I hear co-parents use in, describing the other parent.

Sol (14:29)
Great,

Teresa Luse (14:37)
What really is a narcissist? I mean, we all think we know it's thrown around like it's very common knowledge, but if you look it up, it is truly a clinical behavioral disorder, but there are specific criteria for meeting that. And so you've got narcissist and you've got narcissistic behavior. So the narcissist, the clinical narcissist would be someone that's incapable

of empathy. And that's not saying they're incapable of empathy with you. They're incapable of empathy with everyone in their life. And I think I've known exactly one narcissist in my entire life. The rest, that might have acted hostily in moments here or there, you could more

accurately describe that as narcissistic behavior. In fact, I've probably demonstrated narcissistic behavior in any given moment of animosity towards someone. So just because your co-parent acts hostily to you and narcissistically to you doesn't make them a narcissist. Now, I'm sure there's a lot of co-parents out there saying, what difference does it make? I'm the receiver of the narcissism.

I think one of the biggest risks that they run there is that when you label this person a narcissist, it's kind of like you're letting yourself off the hook, letting them off the hook. Why should anybody try to improve? They're doomed to narcissism. They can't improve. and I can't do anything about it. So therefore I'm off the hook too.

I find it really a powerful thing to reset how you think about your co-parent, as, okay, in a moment in these moments, I'm living out narcissistic behavior, but

that doesn't mean that I can't do anything about it because I really feel like there's always opportunity for the potential to be released at least on your side because that's what you can control.

Sol (16:34)
my interview with Dr. Ramani, she used the term antagonistic co-parent, which there are so many different ways that we can use to describe this experience. And what I love about your point is that when we label someone with a mental disorder, not only are we not necessarily accurate in our assessment, of course we're not clinicians, but it doesn't

give you the opportunity to empower yourself and to change things and to shift the dynamic, which we know that the dynamic can shift when you change how you interact. Adopting a mindset and a term that works for you, maybe that doesn't keep everyone fixed into place, might be beneficial and might be worth a try.

Teresa Luse (17:14)
Yeah, I mean, that label is not going to do you any good, whether it's there, whether it's an actual clinical diagnosis or not, it still doesn't change what you're dealing with.

Sol (17:23)
I think, the other thing to the point to make, this is not to shame the term narcissist or to even say that, your experience is not valid. People come and they say "my co-parent is a narcissist." And what they're expressing is, dear God, this is painful. This is not what I expected,

that's valid.

Teresa Luse (17:40)
A lot of that, narcissism, animosity, whatever you want to call it, antagonistic behavior is rooted in the past that this couple shared. Not necessarily in the current behaviors, but they're fixated on the pain, the disappointment, the hurt, the anger that they experienced. And that's traumatizing.

That's why, I encourage my clients, if they're not already also seeking therapy to work with therapists to heal that trauma so that they can get beyond it, so that they can adopt the tools that will help them move forward then to their present and future self. I've got a whole chapter in my book about that,

Correcting Course, and it came about because a friend of mine who pre-read the book before it was published said, "your book's great but my ex wouldn't read it, because she thinks she's perfect, but I'm the one receiving this. What do I do about it?"

So, I went back and I started off the book thinking I'm going to write this and tell people "don't do this, don't do that. These are bad things, you know, and talking about here's all the ways you screw up." And he's like, "but what do I do when they screw up? What do I do?" So I went back and completely edited every single chapter to say, "here's what you do when you're on the receiving end of this hostility.'

He had said, okay, so, so what else you got? That sounds good. I said, "well, first you have to stop fixating that past relationship. It's over. the grief that comes with that. Yeah, it was terrible. And allowing yourself to feel that and it and, and leave it

in the wake of the boat. It's behind you. You can't change what's behind you, but you can change what's in front of you. I encourage parents to think of this was our past relationship over here. The relationship that existed between us when we were an intimate couple and that relationship is done. And now we're on a new chapter and this chapter is called the Parenting Team.

They can kind of have a reset and start with a relatively clean slate. Easier said than done, I know. But if they can get to that mindset, and sometimes I say, sometimes you just gotta fake it until you make it, okay? It may not feel right yet, but if you try it on and keep doing it, eventually it may feel more natural to just allow this new relationship to start and

develop into something that the other one could never be. That tends to help parents to realize "okay, yeah, I went through this pain, it was real. I'm allowed to feel bad about that. But I don't need to feel bad about the current relationship I have with this co-parent, because this is new." So it doesn't have to come with all that baggage. If I'll just let that baggage kind of sit over here on the side.

Does that make sense? ⁓

Sol (20:36)
Mm hmm. Yeah,

Definitely. What it makes me think about is how baggage gets carried into the new relationship and you experience patterns in that new relationship that were the result of resentments, either you or your ex carried into the co-parenting relationship. And so then you're stuck with a challenging co-parenting relationship.

With this realization, how do you say, okay, fresh start.

Teresa Luse (21:04)
Yeah. I think I mentioned earlier that parents tend to, assume that their co-parent's intention is negative toward them. It may or may not be, you can never know that for sure. So why adopt the attitude that isn't going to serve you? It's not going to help you to assume that what they're doing right now has

this other motive behind it. It may or may not be true or maybe they're just upset about something else and clear that away. It becomes noise that gets in the way of your progress and your potential.

Sol (21:38)
You're advocating for becoming more aware of your own assumptions that you're making about your co-parent, which is something we can all benefit, just being more mentally aware of what's going on inside and then catching ourselves before we jump to conclusions about what we're witnessing.

Teresa Luse (21:54)
Right. I mean, is it possible what they're saying right now is not true and they just don't realize it because they don't have enough information. There's a lot of times, a co-parent will come attacking the other parent because they've maybe in that moment had limited information. Maybe they missed a line in an email. They skimmed over it. And so a message that you wrote to them landed a way you didn't intend it,

and now they're attacking you. you're assuming they hated your whole message when in fact they just missed something in it that would have reset how they thought about the whole thing. If you've worked in corporate settings and you've got all these emails, you know how bad people are at reading an entire email.

We're very ⁓ inclined to read headlines and skim through if it's a very long message. And the same goes for any other communication, especially in written communication.

Sol (22:47)
Yeah, in a way

what that evokes in me too is the idea that really should be slowing down the communication and in many ways reducing the amount of communication to what's necessary. That's one of the roots of the BestInterest app is trying to slow it down so you're not constantly making assumptions.

Teresa Luse (23:06)
Yeah, I think you got to step back from it. And I always tell parents when you're about to interact with your co-parent, it's good to think through why you're having this interaction. Do you need to address this at this moment?

There's a couple of things there, because I've got a lot of co-parents where they just have stylistic differences in how they communicate. Where one parent might send off a single message for every single thing that comes up through the day, another parent prefers all of those things grouped into one summary for the day, because they're like, "look, I'm getting 300 emails over here at work. I don't have time to field these and give you a response within certain timeframes

when it's not urgent." Their mind works differently and they organize things differently and we're all humans and very unique. So sometimes it's just stylistic differences that create the conflict, not actually even the content.

But they feel like they're being goaded or set up because it's like, I'm supposed to respond in a certain amount of time and it's being tracked on these apps or in emails or whatever time stamping. And then they feel like, like I said, they're being set up and well, that's not their intention. They're not trying to set you up. They just have a different style of communicating.

And even if they are trying to set you up, you don't have to adopt that mindset that just makes you angry and makes you want to lash out at them.

Sol (24:32)
Yeah, those assumptions often come from a place of fear. So being conscious of our fears and what we're trying to protect from with our defense and realizing that that protection isn't always the best for our mental health, as you're saying. Going back to an earlier point you're making about the power of appreciation and empathy co-parenting.

Can you give us more examples of how we might employ empathy to benefit the relationship?

Teresa Luse (25:00)
A lot of times there's maybe issues that come up about the schedule or someone not keeping commitments to their parenting agreement. The first thing that parents tend to do to each other is blame the other person. "You're doing this wrong. What's wrong with you? Why are you so irresponsible?" and throwing all kinds of names around,

rather than seeking to understand what's going on with them. So acknowledging that the person for whatever reason is struggling, even if it's because they can't jettison their narcissistic behavior. Something is blocking them from being more effective with interacting with you.

So acknowledging something like when you're having this incoming hostility "I understand this is important to you and I appreciate that you this children are important to both of us." So expressing those things to your to your parent,

it not only meets them where they're at, but it also says, "let's get back to what we have positively in common." And, by throwing in the sentiment back to, I know you care about the child as much as I do, doesn't mean that you agree with how they parent the child and their methods. But if you can at least

genuinely believe that they care about the child and maybe, it's questionable how they do that, then you're on some common ground. And that's the most powerful thing that the two of you share.

If a parent says, "I'm not gonna be able to pick up Joey this weekend, I've gotta first knee-jerk reaction might be, "you always do this." And maybe they have established a pattern of behavior

which can make it more difficult to dig yourself back out of wanting to say that. But in that moment, rather than saying that, what if you were to say, "that must really be disappointing for you" because they're going to miss out on the most magical experience of life, which is parenting.

Most parents can probably relate to that, right? gonna have to miss out on that.

Sol (27:08)
What

I'm hearing from you here too is that this is not like a kumbaya sort of thing, let's all just get along. It's a difficult situation and you have a choice about how you hold it and that actually matters to your experience. So by adopting these techniques in your co-parenting relationship, you might change things, but at least internally, you might be feeling a little bit better.

Teresa Luse (27:31)
Yeah. something that some divorced and separated parents agonize over is the fact that their life isn't like they thought it was going to be, or it isn't like the other parents around them. "My life's so much more difficult than theirs." Yeah, it's It does have its drawbacks being a divorced or separated parent.

You know, it also has its positives, which may sound crazy. Your choice was to have stayed in this situation and demonstrated to your child that this is what love looks like. If that's not the picture you want them to hold in their mind,

them continuously exposed to ongoing conflict isn't a better choice for them.

Sol (28:13)
So Teresa, if a listener today would like to reach out to you and learn more about your book or your coaching ⁓ or what you have on offer, how can they reach you?

Teresa Luse (28:23)
You can reach me at a couple websites, but I'll go with the one that's really geared to the co-parents: Coparent-Coach.com. If that's too hard to figure out, because the dash and all that, TeresaHarlow.com will get you there.

Sol (28:37)
Great, yeah, we'll put that all in the show notes. And now finally for our Lightning Round. I'm gonna say a few sentences and you just fill in the blank with whatever comes to mind first. You ready? Exactly, yeah. Okay. So the one word to eliminate from your co-parenting vocabulary is...

Teresa Luse (28:47)
This is like doing flashcards.

Narcissist.

Sol (28:57)
Hahaha, love it. The best time to respond to a hostile text is...

Teresa Luse (29:02)
when you're calm.

Sol (29:03)
Hmm. How does someone get there?

Teresa Luse (29:05)
Step back from it, give it some time, let yourself cool off.

Sol (29:09)
The hardest boundary to set, but the most important one is...

Teresa Luse (29:12)
not being hostile in response to hostility. So not responding in kind.

Sol (29:18)
The single thing that helps a child most when they feel guilt about a divorce is...

Teresa Luse (29:24)
reminding them that it was between the parents and it was not their fault.

Sol (29:28)
If you want to feel more in control, stop focusing on your ex's behavior and start focusing on...

Teresa Luse (29:35)
what you can do to change how you interact with them.

Sol (29:38)
Hmm. Do you have any parting words of wisdom for our listeners today?

Teresa Luse (29:43)
think the biggest thing is if you feel hopeless right now because your co-parenting relationship sucks, you're in a moment in time. It doesn't necessarily mean it will always be that way. Remember earlier in this podcast, I mentioned it took me 10 years to get to a better place with my husband's ex-wife, and she's part of my co-parenting circle,

my co-parenting team. There's always an opportunity to develop where you have a window you see open and just stay vigilant and look for those opportunities, that potential to present itself. And when it does, step through it, step through that door, go through the window, whatever.

Sol (30:26)
Teresa. I appreciate your words of hope and peace.

Teresa Luse (30:30)
Thank you, Sol. I appreciate the conversation. It was awesome.

Sol (30:33)
Thanks for joining us on the Coparenting Beyond Conflict podcast. To support our show, please subscribe or leave a rating. Links for all books and resources mentioned on today's podcast appear in our show notes or on CoparentingBeyondConflict.com. See you next time.