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My ex wife and I were together for 16 years, married for 12. We share a son who is now 6. I came out of the closet and moved out of our home when he was 18 months. My being gay was the last straw; she had been emotionally, verbally, financially and on occasion physically abusive toward me for most of the relationship. She's a text book narcissist.
The divorce was long, nasty and left me in financial ruin. Since then I have dated and recently got married again to a wonderful man. We have 40/60 custody, with kiddo every other weekend and Tuesdays overnight, plus a number of holidays. I'm slowly cobbling my financial life back together. So.
My ex-wife has fought the entire time for me to be as far removed from my son's life as possible. We just closed our last and for now final negotiation of custody. She actively continued for about 2 years from our separation with her parade of gas lighting, emotional and verbal abuse, and putting our son in the middle of it all. It's never about her, but what he says he wants. He's 6. He wants a flying car that travels instantly. So what he wants, to me, needs to be taken with a grain of salt. She believes it all whole cloth.
I'm struggling to move on even though I have a really good life. I never know what I'm going to get from her, the moments she seems to act reasonably give me a bit of hope but are almost always followed by her returning to her old ways.
The biggest challenge I face right now is that after so many years with narcissistic abuse, one of the main outcomes was losing the trust I had in myself over literally everything.
Our son just spent the long holiday weekend with us, and we had a spectacular time. Lots of activities he enjoyed, lots of time outside, and a wedding for some friends of ours that he also very much enjoyed. Who wouldn't love a pool party wedding?
After dropping him off at his mom's last night apparently he cried for two straight hours and eventually wet himself. He told her he doesn't like time with me, that we don't do anything he wants to do, and that my now husband was mean to him. We're looking at the situation around that last part to make sure we fully understand what he's talking about, but he told us multiple times during the time with us how wonderful the time he was having.
I just don't know where to go from here. It seems he's been trained that he's not supposed to have a good time or enjoy his time with me. Not having any true view into the other household, coupled with a woman who believes everything a 6-year-old says at its face value, is a little bit crazy making for me.
Anybody have any perspectives?
Narcissists are never wrong and the rules do not apply to them. Understand that whatever she is saying is generally a projection of something going on with them. The crying and wetting is probably something directed at her that she’s projecting onto you. When my SD was younger we went through the same with her dad. He was abusive as well as his girlfriend. She would cry before drop off and we’d eventually get a call that she was not calming down. This was where abuse was projected at us. They eventually got CPS involved and that’s where it was found that the abuse was on their end. He quickly dumped the GF and put all the blame on her.
The best thing you can do with a narcissist is document everything that happens. If your child does something out of character, document it. We took a lot for granted in our case and my SD now suffers from a form of PTSD because of her father’s actions.
I also have two daughters from my first marriage and I was able to get their narc mother to walk away. She wanted to adjust custody and I agreed if she sought counseling. Since then she has not spoke to our children in nearly 10 years. Narcissists are afraid of being outed for what they are.
Hopefully something in my rambling makes sense.
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They all follow similar patterns. Each has their own ticks but it’s not hard to figure them out once you know what t look for. It wasn’t until after my divorce and therapy that I knew what my ex was. Fortunately, my wife knew her ex had a diagnosis and discussed that with me early on. The trick to handling them is to be very blunt and business like. Give them either or choices. In our case her ex even when we let him have a win likes to negotiate, it’s his tick. So it always comes back to if you cooperate this way we’ll give you this good option but if you’re going to be yourself we give you a bad option. He just sees it as pulling a fast one on us and goes on his happy way. He’s not as exhausting to deal with because like all narcissists his focus is on another target. Hopefully things get better over time for you.