MadeMad's comments

Should You Confront a Narcissist about their Narcissism? - Blog Entry

05 Sep 2008 02:55 AM

I gently suggested my wife may have copied some of her mother's ways and is now facing an acrimonious divorce where everything that never did happen is happening now! I have been having for years a 'drip drip drip...' subtle control by my wife ever so nicely suggesting everything is wrong with me through her incessant moanings about everything not going right, not happy with anything... to the end of the world. My wife was never a happy person, clingy, demanding, ... and I always thought had a lot of similarities with her more aggressive manipulating 'lady of the manor' mother who has in recent time gone absolutely potty - mad with her grandiosity, delusion, denials in the shops, restaurants and even in the streets!

I have two children boy aged 13 and girl 8-and-half, both seem normal to me, the older one was undermined in his effort to become himself now he is not wanted - felt no affection (in fact feels despised) by his mother. Both children want to be with me I was granted interim custody of the children. My daughter was taken away for a period of about 8 weeks in which my wife showed little interest in her, neglected her and 'dumped her like a dead puppy' on her grandmother who showed even less bother about her. My daughter made her escape during her communion (which her brother and I were not even invited to) and has been with me since.

It is a long story, but I have some questions: 1. Whenever my wife comes to pick up the children during their contact meetings (3 times a week) she has to pick a fight and she always deny she was doing that even seconds after having started that. There seem to be a compulsion to argue, and she seem to have the need to speak aggressively and be downright self-righteous. It is really irritating and bothers the children a lot. Is this a 'normal' behaviour of a narcissist? 2. My wife regresses to a childlike level with her mother doing same, playing 'Teddy Bears' Picnic', 'Elves and Pixies' with attendant childlike babble and squeals. They have a vocabulary of their own in any case, and while they are like 6 year olds they can snap back to being 'adults' just like that! Is regression like this 'normal'? 3. Both my wife and her mother 'mirror' each other and act out dramas of panic - each copying the verbal and physical actions of the other as if perfect mirrors! Both are very tensed, my wife is becoming more and more like her mother - even does her mother's trademark 'Huuuuuh...?!' whenever she wakes from her dreamy trance when she thought someone was speaking to her. And she copies the 'hard' aggressive posture of her mother since my wife took a turn suddenly last December, got into a mania and became a completely different person since. My wife has never really detached herself from her mother even if she had at one time acknowledged her mother was definitely narcissistic, a 'witch', 'evil'... Now it is me who has all the nasty attributes and not her 'darling mother'! Appreciate comment. 4. Though most posts here suggest problems between mothers and daughters/sons, there isn't such a thing with my wife - her mother spoils her crazy, sees no fault in my wife (nor herself!) and sides with her to even bring down her own grandchildren. My wife, althoug in court and to friends professes great love for our children hardly cares about them when they are together. It is as if they are strangers to her and the chldren feel the same of her. My MIL help pays for the divorce proceeding though claims to her son she 'wasn't involved'. My wife pleas poverty though she has plenty of money - and now refuse to help pay for our son's private school. 5. The father tags along when my wife and her mother play 'grand ladies', shout and yell at him, blame him for everything, order him around... he just says 'Yes, Darling...' in a trance-like manner (for a highly-educated soul!). Only when his own interest is threatened in which case he would go on a yelling match with his wife, he doesn't care much about the destruction his wife wreaks all over. His son says a psychiatrist friend thinks the father has BPD... It appears that when the threesome of mother daughter and father get together it is back to childhood - '1964' as my brother-in-law likes to put it (he steers clear of them and is highly critical of his sister abandoning her children and returning to the 'worse there i' - to their mother!)

Sorry to be so lengthy, Beth, it is a desperate situation - I am in London, but I would like to hear from you and others here.