During my divorce, the one thing my ex insisted on was fighting me for full custody of our sons. This, of course, meant me fighting back for what I felt were my rights as the mother who had spent most of my time caring for and raising them.
You see, my ex was never interested in them other than in peculiar ways. He never went to any of the athletic related games, never went to a parent/teacher conference or a doctor’s appointment. When his lawyer asked him what grades they were in, he couldn’t remember.
He did, however, want the boys front and center to show off to his parents. It was my job to make sure they were properly dressed and behaved and his job to take credit for what great kids they were. It was the same with any career functions that included family. He showed them off as if they were a reflection of him.
Our fight over custody became so heated and he was so certain that he was the better parent that he asked his attorney to request a psych evaluation for both of us via the court. That is when things got interesting and he cost himself any small amount of custody of our sons.
According to the psych evaluation, he was a malignant narcissist with anger issues. Not only did that diagnosis mean full custody for me but, it also helped me understand what I had lived with during our marriage.
Narcissism is one of the most toxic personality traits a person can have and can do untold damage to the people around them. Their lives revolve around their own wants and needs, how much other people love them, admire them, and show deference to them, and how best to manipulate other people to get their own way.
After some research, I realized there were things I’d never gotten from my ex and, although, I longed for them. Being married to a narcissist, they would never have come.
6 Things a Narcissist Will Never Be Able to Do:
1. Care about your feelings.
A narcissist will do horrible things and not give one hoot about how their actions cause you or their children to feel. They lack the ability to empathize or own their own bad behavior. They are literally incapable of giving a f*ck about the pain or discomfort they cause other people.
And they become quite arrogant and offended if you even hint at them that they’ve done something you find objectionable. If you’re attached to a narcissist in any way, your job is to keep him happy with no return on the investment you’re making into his emotions.
You are responsible for THEIR feelings, they are in no way responsible for YOUR feelings.
2. Be interested in your problems.
Not unless your problems impact him in some way. Telling them about things that are bothering you or hurting you in your personal life will be shrugged off or ignored, and they’ll immediately launch into a diatribe about all the crappy things they’re dealing with.
Your problems are boring.
The narcissist isn’t someone you can go to for comfort or understanding about life issues you may be struggling with. Having problems at work? Expect him to roll his eyes over your menial issues. The kids driving you crazy? Expect him to tell you a better way to parent. They belittle you and your problems but, when they have a problem, expect you to be all ears and compassion.
After all, it’s all about them, all the time.
3. Say “I’m sorry.”
During my 9-year marriage, I never heard my ex say he was sorry about anything. Even when caught red-handed his response was to try and make me doubt myself. The narcissist will try to convince you, you didn’t see what you saw with your own two eyes. Or that you aren’t recalling it correctly.
They don’t apologize for wrongdoing, they try to turn it around and make it about a problem with you.
Remember, they never do anything wrong. They’re perfect and wonderful and if you have an issue with something they’ve done, then that’s all on you.
4. Offer you emotional support.
Not unless it suits their agenda, anyway. Example: It was very important to my ex that my parents viewed him in a positive light. When they were visiting, he was husband and father of the year. When they or someone he was trying to impress weren’t around, he treated me with contempt for being “too emotional.”
In fact, the more off-kilter I was emotionally, the more he liked it. The more he could dismiss me and treat me as if I were helpless and nothing without him. You see, the more emotional or fragile you are, the better they look.
Suffering from postpartum depression? Don’t expect empathy. Lost a parent or friend? They’ll belittle you if you don’t “get over it” on their timeline…a very short timeline.
5. Appreciate what others do for them.
The narcissist only cares about his wants and needs. For that reason, anything you do for him is expected, he has earned it by the mere fact that he exists.
My ex was fond of say, “I don’t owe you anything.” Our good friends helped us move across the country and then flu home after we got settled into our new home. I suggested we buy their airline tickets home to return the favor. His response to my attempt to show them appreciation was, “We don’t’ owe them anything.”
The narcissist has a grandiose sense of self. Grandiosity refers to an unrealistic sense of superiority, a sustained view of themselves as better than others that causes them to view others with disdain or as inferior, as well as to a sense of uniqueness. My ex didn’t feel he should express appreciation because whatever someone did for him, he was owed.
6. Love you.
They will treat you kindly as long as your presence fits into their agenda. They form an attachment to others but only based on how you can better their lives. There is no give and take, only take, take, take.
A narcissist can seem to love you. A narcissist can make it look like love. A narcissist can say the words of love. A narcissist can think it’s love. Unfortunately, when involved with a narcissist, you are enmeshed but not in love. You can be enmeshed and mistake that for love. But enmeshment and love are not the same things.
You exist for the purpose of the narcissist. You are an “extension” of the narcissist. He doesn’t view you as separate from himself with wants, needs, and desires of your own. You are part of him, there to do his bidding.
You, as a separate, distinct individual cannot be appreciated, you can’t be loved because if he viewed you as autonomous, he would also view you as a threat to him getting his needs met.
If you’re in a romantic relationship with or married to a narcissist don’t expect too much when it comes to getting what you want or need from the relationship. In fact, you need to either resolve to do the relationship their way or get out before they do too much damage to you.
I just signed up for this site today and I’m so glad I did! Yours is the first article I’ve read. Spot on! I’m married to but will be divorced from an extremely narcissistic man. Everything you wrote is so true. Scarily true. Mine brainwash and manipulated me into believing thet I was crazy. Now that I’m finally kind of out of it I can’t beliebe just how horrible it really was! I want to say to any woman reading your post or mine…if any of this sounds familiar to you please tell someone you trust and work to get help or to get out of your relationship. THEY WILL NOT CHANGE! No matter how hard you try. No matter how hard you change. No matter what you do. I literally almost gave my life to this man! Thankfully I’m finally getting out! Thank you for your story. ❤️
Yes I went through all of this I have custody but wasn’t allowed to leave the state and am 1,000 miles away from my family. My ex took me back to court three months after finalizing everything because he didn’t want to pay child support. He filed a petition stating he was making less money than me so now we went for 18 months getting no child support. Now I will finally get it but it is 1/6 of what was agreed on at time of divorce. Narcissistic ex husbands are also very vengeful.
I’m so glad to have read your article. I, too, am in Birmingham – maybe it is in the water? Just kidding, but I did have a very similar experience to you, but I was not as smart or knowledgeable as you. He had been diagnosed as a narcissist just a few months before we separated – a result of him having been fired from his job and a SWAT team coming to the house when he was home with the kids. However, the divorce didn’t occur for a year and he was on his best behavior during that time and my lawyer never advised me to get a psyche evaluation. I just wanted a divorce so bad that I even told the judge “I want their father to be involved in their lives.” If I had only known what that meant – we were granted joint custody and he turned back into the monster he was before and began an entirely new campaign to alienate the kids from me, avoid child support, and engage in a smear campaign about me to anyone who would listen. To make a long story short, many years later, my kids are grown and after they left high school, I married a wonderful man. My ex could not handle this and manipulated my daughters into disowning me, because he told them they could not have a relationship with me AND my new husband. Thankfully, my son is not so easily manipulated and we have a good relationship. If you are divorcing a narcissist, just know that once you have your divorce hearing, you are never able to bring up anything that happened before that hearing again….even if it is horrendous. I was naive and wanted to divorce in a low-conflict manner for the kids, which I now know is NEVER possible with a narcissist. I just hope that this information may help some young woman who wants to “play nice” for her children’s sake. In the end, it will hurt you and your relationship with your children and your ex will feel like he has masterfully played you. In my case, he did.
I am so glad that im not the only one out there with the same problem. I married somebody who is 9 years younger than me, everything was fine from the beginning but as soon as my daughter was born everything changed. He would never help me with her, but during divorce he was and still is father of the year. I could see the signs of his narcissist, manipulations, lies about me, my family , telling everyone that im the one who is lying, screaming all the time, saying all kind of stuff and all infront of my daughter who was 5.5 at that time, telling me that i will never see her again, making both of cry. this kind of people are also psychopaths, i never in million years would imagine that he will turn into this monster, that does not give a f..k about you and the child. I also did not have a very good luck with my attorney, i saw the problems with him, his mental problems, i wanted to do psych evaluation, but she told me that it will be hard to do and that judge will not accept it, i told her that im very concern when he is with my daughter alone, that did not work ether. Now, 10 months later im divorced…50/50 timesharing, paying child support because i make more, still worried about my daughter that cries all the time when she has to go stay with him. When i was talking about my concerns at mediation, it was a joke, my attorney and mediator were just jokes, did not fight for me nore my daughter, they got their money, cleaned they hand and called it a day. What do i do now? Get another attorney and keep fighting? Is there even a hope to win the fight with narcissist? All i want is my little girl be happy and worry free, but having him as a father i see it will never happen. How can proof to judge that he has mental problems and get my girl full time? Thank you for listening.
While it is better to be out of a relationship with them, keep in mind that you will never be rid of them. They will make it their mission in life to destroy you. And they will honestly come up with every possible reason that you left them other than their narcissism. You are at fault, you are crazy, you are ruining his life, you are the reason the kids don’t want to be with him, etc.
I spent years in therapy after my 20 yr marriage to a Narcissist completely blew up! His deep disrespect, lack of support, extreme workaholism, serial affairs with no remorse and his complicated financial secret life finally did me in. I’ve finished raising our 3 kids to the best of my ability during the last 10 yrs -and they’ve turned out well-now in their 20s. Standing up to this bully has shaped me into the gritty, resilient and courageous woman I am today!
I’m in the middle of a divorce from my narcissistic abusive alcoholic husband of 30 years. Everything about this article describes exactly who he is and then some. Especially the emotional part, I recently lost both of my parents and with each loss he was never there for me in fact he told my children to get over it when they were grieving days after. It’s so hard to grasp the reality I was married to my worst enemy who’s only mission was to destroy me. but I have to move forward for my kids and live my authentic life
I can relate to what you went through as I just divorced a malignant narcissist alcoholic ex husband. Throughout our marriage He became Increasingly verbally
And physically abusive, made constant death threats,Cheating ( giving me lifelong dangerous stds), negligent ,and abandoned the family many times ..at one time moving out leaving me with three young children under 2,5,8 alone for months while he ran off suddenly with no notice with a married co worker saying he was moving away to San Francisco he didn’t want to be a dad anymore leaving us with no money Destitute
Scared and so so traumatized
He would always verbally and physically rage, gaslight, deny, Pathologically lie, blameshift, project all of his uncovered guilt and shame back onto me or one of my children as his easy target or skapegoat and run away playing the imposter victim smear campaigning my name spreading lies and conspiracy theories about me
To everyone including my children in his constant sadistic efforts to triangulate,demonize , alienate , and destroy me because I uncovered his true self
The raising and care of my children was all left up to me as he was never (unless I forced him )….present (especially emotionally),involved ,concerned, prioritized, or cared about their welfare as they are as he yelled out many times “burdens, in his way , and coattail riders”on his self serving destructive reckless life he lives for himself .He sure did master the performance of being “The father or husband of the year “ to his manipulated audience drinking his koolaid.taking credit for all of my parenting as a single mom
He coercively controls his trauma bonded children who also have abuse amnesia
He only views them as objects and pawns to use as skapegoats and manipulates them to have transactional conditional relationships with him They are discarded or cast to side when they are no use to him
everything is his way or no way , he is right everyone else is wrong and morons in his fantasy world he is the center of. In his delusional paranoid mind he is always the victim against the enemies of the world out to get him, that everything is a competition for him to win at all costs so he diabolically plots and plans to counter parents , maligns, undermines, and sabotages all my efforts at being the best mom and person I can to my children as I’m the one looking out for their best interests and welfare
I sadly discovered that I married a calculated malevolent sadistic evil person
My worst nightmare
My worst enemy
A wolf in sheep’s clothing
Are there any numbers to call that will talk to you and let you tell them what you are going through even if you’re not ready to leave. Just someone who can listen and help you understand what it is happening. I cant believe this.
You need to contact a local therapist. I don’t know of any one number to call other than that of a therapist. If you have health insurance, the cost of talking to a therapist will be covered.