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Hi,
i’m new here, though i’ve read and navigated this site before.
Eleven years ago i’ve entangled myself with and later married a man whom i believe to suffer from a combination of two cluster B’s: NPD and ASPD, which would result in malignant narcissism. To my knowledge he was never properly diagnosed, and i am very clear about only using my “homemade” diagnosis for personal purposes.
We have a son together who will soon turn 11. My relationship with his father went from the classic, idyllic love-bombing stage to pure nightmare as soon as i announced him to be pregnant. He didn’t need to pretend anymore and, since he felt that i was now depending on him, began revealing other facets of his personality. Abuse was omnipresent, in every form. By the time my baby was a few months old i was fully aware about the toxicity of our relationship and knew that staying would lead to my death. I found the strength to leave.
My departure brought along heavy consequences. He found legal loopholes that he very fondly used to his advantage, without wasting a thought on what his actions would mean for our child. He became a golden crusader, a victim of child abduction (he depicted me as crazy and smeared me as much as he could). This new Persona allowed him to harvest abundant social admiration and compassion, of which he fed like a starving ghost. He nourished his fragile ego with this new mask and openly promised to destroy me in every possible way. He tried every trick in the book to fetch my baby from me. He spared no lies, manipulations and frauds to reach his goal.
It has been a bloody fight. I gave my everything to protect my boy. We were forced to go back into the wolf’s lair and fought our way out of it. Reports were made. We’ve seen psychologists, social workers, judges and lawyers. The preliminary outcome resulted in an unanimously supported full custody for me and a supervised visitation right for him. I only regained a relative freedom from the legal traps he had set when my boy turned 4, but the battle wasn’t over.
He has a new SO with whom he had a daughter. They are pregnant again. His girlfriend also has two children from a previous union.
That was a long, though synthetic introduction to what is to come.
Two years ago, due to his new life situation and to the fact that my boy was in desperate need of building a more intimate relationship with his father (who came once a month for two hours of supervised visitation right) i decided to propose a negotiation. I believed that i was stronger, and that he was stabler. There was literally no indicator of trouble during the years of supervised visitation. I was told that no judge would ever grant the continuation of supervised visitation rights given the “very positive results”.
The by then “kafkian” complexity of our legal situation was another motivator to try and seek other ways to resolve our conflict. He accepted.
We decided to slowly but progressively augment both the freedom and time of visitation rights, up to one unsupervised week end per month (with sleep over). My boy seemed to thrive at first, but the last visit has been devastating. He came home crying, asking to not spend the nights with his dad anymore, being utterly confused and depressed, displaying symptoms of verbal and emotional abuse. His distress lasted for over a week and i have never seen him in such a state. Useless to say, i am deeply worried and triggered into trauma and memories that i thought were pretty much buried.
The love-bombing stage seems to be over for my boy: welcome into a new world of dread.
Why am i writing on here? Because i desperately need to get this out of my system. I am alone, dealing with a prepubescent kid, a household and abundant work. Because the chance of finding someone who could relate to this in my immediate surroundings are meagre. Because i am afraid that the anxiety will take over and lead to panic. I am in fight or flight mode, once again.
Any feed back and suggestions are most welcome.
Best,
runa
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Runa,
I assume you cannot ‘walk back’ these weekend visits at this point? Short of that it looks like, to protect your son, you may have another legal fight on your hands, unless you are willing to allow him to be abused. This is terribly sad, and I am so sorry the two of you are going through this hell.
They never become more stable, no matter WHAT it looks like on the outside. A new girlfriend and more children is no indication of change. It is more like changing a shirt for these types. Under the new ‘clothes’ is the same monster.
My gut tells me that you should pack up and get away. I know, not realistic. So I don’t really have any good advice. All I have is empathy.
I hope you can protect your son. I hope you will keep coming back and letting us know how you are.
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Runa,
I am so sorry for your situation. What you have experienced is the classic manipulation of a sociopath. They are capable of maintaining the charade as long as necessary in order to get what they want. So he was the “perfect father” for years of supervised visitation. He pretended to be stable with the new girlfriend — to keep her on the hook, and to get you to lower your guard.
The truth of the matter is that he will never change. He will never stabilize. You have seen that now. And perhaps your son has seen it also.
Hopefully you can use this incident to prove to the court that the man is toxic to your son. Perhaps you can bring your son to a counselor — if so, make sure it’s one who understands personality disorders. If the counselor sees the father, he will charm him/her – put on the act again.
I am so sorry. But you are once again seeing the reality of your ex. It will not change.
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Protect your son.
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runa,
There are bunches of articles about co-parenting strategies. They can be found in the large red bar on the bottom of this page. Search archives by category. I am not co-parenting, but plenty of folks here at Lovefraud are.
Glad your son is in therapy. I hope you will consider it as well. I found talk therapy helped me process lots of my anxiety and worry. I also suffered from pronounced PTSD (not only from my adult experiences, but from being raised by a narcissistic parent). Having a safe place to express my feelings, fears, ideas, and needs was SO helpful. My therapist knew about narcissism, but it was not a primary focus for her. Despite this she was able to help me navigate to safety and security.
Slim
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Runa – Claudia Paradise, a therapist, just posted an article about how to talk to children about a disordered parent. It may help you:
Claudia Paradise, LCSW: How to talk to kids about an absent daddy
About talking to the ex – maybe say that your attorney advises you to stick with the parenting agreement. (If you haven’t spoken to your attorney, perhaps you should.) Your ex isn’t going to like whatever you say, so just say as little as possible. Don’t try to convince him to do the right thing for your son. To him, that’s irrelevant.
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I’m so glad I held on, until the younger 2 kids were seniors in HS, and the oldest in college, before I went to court and got a divorce. It was years of additional misery; but I knew I could NOT win a custody fight, child support, etc when the boys were younger. He would have put me through a wringer, got every dime he could and gloated about it. I hung on, as long as I could. Psychopaths are NEVER done hating you. I outsmarted him by hiring the attorney I did. My ex was put under a ‘financial guardianship’..which likely gave him more fuel for his hatred of me. I’ve avoided him like the plague in the years since the divorce. He’s brainwashed the boys; it may still be going on; as I seldom see any of them or their families. I miss them, but I had to save myself.
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I am so glad that you and your son had space for a long while. You did really well in getting that space via the courts. So, remember your accomplishments and capabilities as you move forward.
I’ll add to the above with document, document, document. Be sure you can show how well your son was doing before increasing visitation and how he was doing after increased visitation. Congrats on having a therapist. of course, it is a last resort to bring that therapist into court, so be sure to do your own documentation.
For example,
– send an email to the child’s therapist after your phone call. Briefly note/confirm your discussion. The therapist should NEVER respond via email about anything other than logistics. So, don’t expect a response. This email is thus time and date stamped…and NOT refuted by the therapist. Good evidence.
– If your therapist refuses such emails, then get in the habit of sending such to yourself as a “file note”. This time and date stamps your thinking at that time like a journal would.
– Ensure the pediatrician’s clinical notes capture the child’s and your reports of concerns, behaviors and incidents.A favorite BIFF line of mine is:
– I do not agree to vary orders for _________. (Optional: It has not worked well for our kids.) I prefer to follow court orders.That’s usually the end of it. If the ex keeps pounding you to vary orders, you reply:
– Please see my email response on (date)…and then don’t add anything else to that email. Be a broken record until the ex stops asking for that variation.Good luck.
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