Do you also think to yourself from time to time that this is all very tedious with your toxic ex and that you don’t have the strength to fight anymore? Give up?

Then you look at your sweet child and think – but I have to do it, for my child!

You are also encouraged again and again by other mothers: Hang in there! Just this one more time! You can do it!

Of course you can do it. 💯 I certainly don’t ask myself this question when I look at the mothers and experience them in Zoom coaching sessions.

It’s really, really impressive what moms with a toxic ex can do!!!

And not one of them had the slightest idea at the beginning of their journey what they were capable of!

Everyone, really everyone knows that moment of the deep, deep hole – the unwillingness to get up in the morning, questioning the meaning of life, and struggling with the decision to have ever been with this man and then not even having quickly pulled the ripcord before getting pregnant.

Is this undignified life supposed to go on?

You look at your one-year-old and think with horror of the coming 17 years in which you will somehow have to constantly hammer out agreements with this man about important decisions for your child until then.

Since by now you can already name off the top of your head situations with your presumably narcissistic ex that were far less important, it dawns on you that the next few years may push you to your limits.

Oh, what am I talking about. You’re already standing there, aren’t you?

And you have zero stomach for the prospect of that lasting for decades to come. At least, that’s how you read it in various moms’ forums, all of whom have toxic narcissistic exes.

Is there nothing you can do about it? Other than hope something happens to the man?

Sweetheart, let me assure you: The problem you currently have actually has nothing at all to do with your toxic ex.

Sure, as long as he’s currently overburdening you with lawsuits and making one crazy request after the other, that would be a thing of the past if he were no longer around.

But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the next tox is already waiting for you on the corner.

No, it doesn’t have to be your next lover. It can also be a family member who suddenly comes to the fore. Or a new toxic neighbor who makes your beautiful home miserable. Or a new toxic boss.

Wouldn’t it be much, much better if you took this opportunity in your life and learned once and for all how to deal with toxic people and how to keep them out of your life and your well-being?

And show your child in passing how this works?

Yes, your child will grow up with this father and will be manipulated 99.9% of the time. He will have unpleasant experiences with him. By the way, you will also have the same experience!

That was the deal back then between you, when your child was born and thus made you the mother: I will protect you to the best of my ability and accompany you with all my love, but I am not without fault and I am only human. I will learn together with you what it means to be a mother and recognize what is right from the things I will do wrong.

Making mistakes and bad experiences are part of life. It’s the only way we learn to deal with unpleasant events so that nothing knocks us down so easily later in life.

You see, a big part of the solution is the attitude you take when you look at your child:

Does he or she have a chance in your eyes to become a happy adult, or is he or she doomed to live under a bridge one day with a broken heart?

Do you trust your child to learn?

Do you trust your child to learn the alphabet and basic arithmetic?

That he will be able to write essays and express himself in English abroad?

Yes, of course!

And he will also learn to deal with the toxic people in his life. It will learn that anyway with this father alone, but your child will have it easier if you are already in your clarity beforehand and help him with it, because you model it for him.

You will most likely save your child some very precious years of awareness and agonizing questions and unpleasant experiences.

You have so many chances and opportunities today to acquire new knowledge and seize new possibilities – much more than our own parents’ generation had.

Your education was already more elaborate than that of your parents. Or were there PCs in every household back then? Let alone the Internet?

Your knowledge, however, is not finished and barricaded and “done” with your AB, your diploma, or whatever certificate.

Sweetheart – you know only a fraction of what is possible!

The tip of the iceberg! And that is indeed good news for you and should give you a lot of courage.

By the way, when I talk about knowledge you can acquire today, I don’t mean knowledge about narcissism in all its facets.

Also, what good does it do you to be able to describe exactly what is going wrong in your toxic ex’s brain?

That you can give an off-the-cuff reading to the judge?

Forget it.

He is the father is the father is the father.

The knowledge I’m talking about is the knowledge of how you can get closer to yourself more and more

Your toxic ex found you through certain triggers – or points of attraction – or gaps – inside of you.

You magnetically attracted him.

Side note: This is what I mean, by the way, when I tell you that your problem would not be solved if he were suddenly no longer there. As long as you still exert this negative attraction, the next one is just around the corner.

So it is much, much, much better for you to learn how to change this attraction.

The sooner, the better.

For one thing, by learning to set boundaries – in other words, by setting up a kind of protective wall that no one is allowed to cross – and by letting go where it doesn’t make sense, in order to bring the energy between you to a standstill.

I always compare this to a rope.

Whenever your toxic ex opens a barrel, he throws you an imaginary rope with it. If you catch it – for example, by going into the subject intensively, answering him in long, justifying emails, or discussing it at length with other mothers and pouring lots of excitement and emotion into it – an enormous amount of energy flows between you over this rope.

Your ex can enjoy feeding himself energy through this rope and has full control over your emotions, depending on how he flaps the rope at his end.

But what if you learned not to catch that rope in the first place?

Now that would give him a look!

Can you imagine what a difference it would make to you if you no longer felt dependent on him?

In summary

No, giving up is really not an option.

Your option, however, which is always available to you, is to simply stop picking up the rope from the toxic ex and realize that it’s your own attitude that determines how you feel – be it helpless or self-empowered.

Because there’s a huge difference between feeling “I’m helpless and can’t do anything about the toxic ex” and “I’m finding ways to make myself more emotionally independent from his antics. I’ve already learned so much – I can do THAT!”

Now one is to adopt a new attitude and have hope that you are not quite as helpless as your ex would have you believe after all.

In everyday life – especially when contact is forced and takes place in a form that no person with a heart has ever wished on a child – there are a lot of questions, for example:

• What boundaries suit me and my child?
• What is the best way to behave if the child becomes ill shortly before contact?
• What is the best way to answer his or her emails?
• How do I protect my child?
• How do I deal with my fear?
• How do I get a grip on the alternating model in everyday life?

Screw your ex!