APX-V-0043
“I'm tempted to use the kids to hurt my ex, and they'd never know why.”
The divorce gave you a weapon you swore you'd never pick up: the children. A pointed comment, a withheld weekend, a loyalty test, each one lands on your ex and detonates in your kids. They are the ones beneath you, the ones you exist to protect, and they cannot defend themselves against being used. Whatever your ex did, becoming the parent who weaponizes the children makes you the thing you resent.
Your Practice
- Name the specific way you're tempted to use the kids. Drag the impulse into the light where it loses power.
- Run every co-parenting choice through one filter: does this protect the kids or punish the ex?
- Never make them carry a message or a verdict about the other parent. Shield them from the war entirely.
- Vent your grievances to an adult, a friend, a counselor, never through or near the children.
The Architects
“It is our conviction that if we are to live in a world with this kind of continuously mutating cyber offense, so too should we live in a world with continuously adapting cyber defense.”
Nik Seetharaman, "Adapt or Die: Generative AI & The Revolution of American Cyber Defense," Wraithwatch blog, October 25, 2023 (co-authored with Grace Clemente and Carlos Más)