So there I was being asked for a divorce, but nothing is standard especially with a covert narcissist. He had decided to get divorced because I did not love him anymore!

The more I tried to explain that I still cared for him and had been trying to tell him for years that he had been treating me badly – emotional and verbal abuse (did not acknowledge to myself until much later that there had actually been a little physical violence as well) and that we could try counselling first. He wanted none of that. I actually received a printout of what I could do and what I could not and how we were going to dissolve the marriage!

This list included the fact that I was not allowed to tell friends or family that we were getting divorced, I was not allowed to retain a lawyer and was threatened with everything – telling me I will be left with nothing if I did not obey him. The fact that is even worse was for 3 months I listened to him, it was just too embarrassing to tell anyone because then I would have to talk about the reality of the abuse I had endured for 22 years.

For this narcissist everything is black and white, there is no gray in between and he stayed in our home even in our bedroom after asking for divorce and within a month of his asking for divorce I received a divorce agreement from his lawyer. Everything in his favor of course. I was the one to move out of the bedroom. It is only long after this that I discovered he was a narcissist and it all made sense. You do not try and get the better of them. Everything is a game that they want to win at ALL costs. It was a rude awakening for me to find myself being harassed daily to accept his terms and of course the children were affected by this fighting in the house.

He would not listen and felt completely justified. He even started telling me he wished I was dead and did this in front of my children! He would tell me he wished a bus would run me over. Later on he even said he would hire someone to kill me and all because I was not obeying him without question.

This horrific nightmare situation carried on for 9 months until I finally became afraid for my life and proceeded to firstly get a interdict against him so he could not enter my bedroom or hurt me and secondly I finally got a lawyer. A narcissist cannot take it if his character is attacked which my interdict did! So he came back with a vengeance and so the denigration of my character began and he started involving my children with all the details as he saw it. My mistake was that I was listening to all the therapists who said keep the children out of it, and so I said nothing. Unfortunately the therapists and I myself were not aware that there was something called parental alienation and so their advice was the worst advice I could possibly have received. I will set a link for Dr Richard A Warshak that wrote the Book Divorce Poison which covers this situation.

It is very difficult when dealing with alienation of your children by the other parent. You need to be careful but you still need them to get the correct story from you before this escalates in other words the truth, I did not. He told my children there was something wrong with me and he made sure this was backed up by a social worker he paid for and got the children to say that I was in an extremely emotional state and that there was something wrong with me. The social worker only saw me for one meeting and she had already made up her mind after 10 minutes. I actually took a colleague a month later and asked for another meeting with this social worker. The colleague came away to say that this women was so one sided and would not listen to me she was flabbergasted. The social worker even had the gall to tell me I could get a second opinion but I had to make sure that if I did that person should not have any empathy just like her! She also proceeded to tell me how well studied she was and that she was an expert in her field! For those of you who know people with narcissistic tendencies – does this sound familiar.

In this way he actually changed our agreement to force the lawyers who had no idea about parental alienation either that he should have the children staying with him. The only reason he wanted this was so that he could ensure that I ended up paying him for maintenance (his salary is much more than mine) and vengeance was his once again.

So be very, very careful when divorcing a narcissist they are liars, deceivers and their manipulation techniques are awesome. They also find others like them to fight with them. Of the many social workers, lawyers and many other role players he surrounded himself with, I identified 3 other possible narcissists in the group.

Isobel

Divorce Poison: How to protect your family from Bad-mouthing and Brainwashing