Almost a year ago, my sixth child turned 12 and on the occasion of a phone upgrade by another family member, landed herself an old iPhone. At that point Paul and I had been separated for almost a year and were still sharing the family house. Giving her a phone was our first run-in with the challenges of co-parenting as separated parents. The first mistake will probably be relatable to most, separated or not: Paul told Sarah she could have the old phone “if mom agrees”, painting me into an instant corner. The second mistake was me agreeing to give Sarah the phone -- against my better judgment -- because I didn’t want to be the bad guy.
Sarah was already struggling with impulsivity and poor self-image, and struggled to fit in at school. She had 5 older siblings and two parents who were showing very poor examples of self-restraint and good manners around tech use. In the shared household, relationships were souring quickly and everyone was living somewhere else in their heads, tethered to their phones and gaming consoles. If you have difficult relationships off-line, the online world offers a place of refuge, for better or for worse.
Soon after getting her phone, Sarah created Instagram and Snapchat accounts without telling her parents. Her father found out and decided to “keep an eye on it” without telling me. Paul didn’t ask her to close the accounts which turned out to be so egregious to her older brother that he told me about it. When I asked Paul for explanations, he didn’t understand why I was so upset.
At the time, I was learning that you may agree to co-parent collaboratively on big life decisions but that you may not agree on what those decisions are. I was also learning that the growing apart that happened while we were married was nothing compared to the growing apart that was happening after the separation. Paul and I were becoming different people pursuing different goals. For me, that growing apart turned out to be something out of a movie… the movie where the guy cuts off his arm from under a boulder with a Swiss Army knife.
In the Spring of 2020, I had come to the separation with an idealized version of what Paul and I could accomplish together as co-parents. I took refuge from the guilt and shame I felt over the decision to separate in the ideal of a shared family house that bore little resemblance to reality. In the shared family home, my children didn’t have to deal with the blunt reality of the separation. Protecting this refuge calloused into a nice fortress of denial in which I sat alone watching a highlight reel of the life I wish we lived.
The highlight reel of the harmonious nesting home was showing some scratches. There was interference, the signal skipped, the image quality wavered. There were signs that I was watching a version of reality, not reality itself, but I couldn’t face it. Have you seen the movie The Truman Show ? To prevent Truman from discovering his false reality, Christof — the show’s creator and producer — manufactures scenarios to dissuade Truman’s desire for exploration. When Truman starts discovering unusual elements of his life, he challenges the charade by acting in unpredictable ways, leading the show runners to send increasingly implausible emergencies to block his way. The comedy turns into drama when Christof nearly drowns Truman in a desperate attempt to maintain his false reality.
When the highlight reel of the harmonious family home started skipping, I reacted like the Truman Show’s producers: I tried to control the outcome, I tweaked and compromised my boundaries to make things work. In December 2020, the dysfunction had reached its apogee and I sat on that rocket until my mental health collapsed in June 2021.
This is a long story to say: my trust in what Paul and I could accomplish together after the separation was broken. My trust was naive and misinformed: I was overly optimistic and my hopes rested on denial. But regardless of the motivations underlying a promise, the first casualty of a broken promise is your trust in yourself: trust in your own judgment, your own abilities, your own capacity to make good decisions. That judgemental turn inward is what Buddhists call “the second arrow”. The first arrow is the bad event that causes emotional or physical pain.The second arrow is our reaction to the pain, the manner in which we choose to respond emotionally. Being shot once is painful, but being shot twice is worse. When my trust was broken, I suffered greatly. That was the first arrow. Then, I judged myself for being naive, I was angry at Paul for his behaviour, I felt unlovable and unseen, I felt profoundly rejected. This feeling of rejection brought me to a place of crippling sadness and despair. I felt misunderstood and unheard, like I did not matter to anyone. I was angry at myself for getting hurt and angry at the world for hurting me. I shot myself over and over with that second, third, fourth arrow.
How much can you attune to your children when you are at war with yourself? How much can you really trust others when you have lost trust in yourself? At the risk of sounding trite, we can only give what we have. And so we can only give others the same quality of love, trust, connection and compassion we hold inside ourselves. We can mimic and parrot actions that look like love, trust, connection, and compassion. But unless we can manifest these qualities toward our own frail humanity, what we present to the world will remain our best interpretation, a representation. A cover of the original.
Coming back to the phone, I could clearly see my daughter fall into every trap the Internet was laying down for her but in the fog of school closures, trying to work from home, and my own mental collapse, I had completely lost trust in my parenting judgment and intuition. I was in the throes of a severe depression and burn-out. I felt like my children hated me and didn’t want to be around me. I was scared of doing anything that would bring conflict and disagreement into my life. I had turned attachment on its ass, living in fear of being abandoned by my children. How well can you attune to your teenagers when you are so profoundly disconnected from yourself? You can only give what you have.
That fear of not being loved, of not being the parent my children would choose now that they had a choice, took centre stage as I watched the hide-and-seek game of phone and computer privileges unfold over the Summer and early Fall, until the phone fried and suddenly died. I was not heartbroken. My personal phone became the tool for texting dad, texting friends, listening to music, and taking pictures. I didn’t mind: it felt like simpler times when we had one landline, and one stereo system, and a camera that everyone had to share. Back when we knew who our kids were talking to, what music they were listening to, the shows they were watching, and how late. For a time, it felt manageable. She would secretly log on to her bootleg snapchat and Instagram accounts from my phone, and probably read some of my personal texts, but by-and-large I felt like I had it under control. Until she forgot to log off her google and Snapchat accounts one day and I started receiving all her texts and notifications. She was using her lap top to contact friends at every hour of the day (or night) and access social media platforms I had never even heard about.
If you could read all your teenager’s text messages, should you?