My ex and I don't agree on much anymore. Different values, different priorities, different visions for how life should work. We ended our marriage because those gaps became unbridgeable.
But we still have kids together. And kids don't care about your ideological differences.
The Forced Collaboration
Co-parenting is an exercise in radical pragmatism. You can't ghost someone who shares custody. You can't unfollow them. You have to keep showing up, keep communicating, keep finding workable solutions with someone you chose to stop building a life with.
It's the opposite of how we handle disagreement everywhere else in modern life.
What I've Learned
Three years in, I've learned things about cooperation that I couldn't have learned any other way:
Separate the person from the position. My ex isn't wrong about everything just because we disagree on big things. Sometimes she's right, and I have to be able to see that.
Optimize for the outcome, not the argument. I don't need to win. I need my kids to thrive. Those are different things.
Good faith is a choice you make, not something you wait to receive. I can't control whether she approaches me generously. I can only control whether I approach her that way.
"The skills that make co-parenting work are the same skills our society has forgotten."
The Broader Lesson
I think a lot about how different our discourse would be if we approached political opponents the way decent co-parents approach each other. Not with agreement. Not even with warmth. But with a recognition that we're stuck with each other, and we have shared stakes in outcomes bigger than our disagreement.
We don't have to like each other. We just have to keep showing up.