Out of the Fog

I don’t really think of myself as someone needing support or a support group, yet I find myself visiting the same forum over and over.  Out of the Fog:  http://www.outofthefog.net

Dealing with the Personality Disordered (PD) individual often leads to isolation.  Maybe your friends got tired of watching you deal with all this garbage, or they wanted to protect themselves from spillover.  At the time, you understood.  If you’re like me, you may even have made peace with a solitary existence.  And you didn’t call your parents or your family because you didn’t want them to worry.

It’s so easy to end up alone, filled with self-judgment and sometimes even confusion over reality.   What really happened?  Can someone who is self-reflective be unaffected by a monstrous barrage of lies and denials?  Are you remembering wrong?  Was 50% of the relationship your fault?  You must have done something to cause all this, right?  Maybe not.

Even if you don’t post anything, I recommend a visit to this site and forum.  It’s a calming place.

Coparenting with a Narcissist Cont’d

We finally filed for modification of custody.  Even if we get it, it won’t solve all our problems.  We have to work on maintaining strict rules for NPD mom, and sticking to them.  It is difficult because she uses the kids as a weapon.

For example, we hear daughter-8yrs-old talking to her NPD mom on the phone.  Mom starts with “I wish I could see you” in her sickeningly sweet kid coercion voice.  She then proceeds to demand that her daughter feel the same way, and insist that  she really wants to go over to Moms now.  If daughter doesn’t cooperate immediately, she uses “splitting”.  Daughter must agree that she wants her mom right now, right this instant, or else daughter NEVER wants to see her mom again.

I liked learning that there was a word for this behavior, “Splitting”, which is to turn a conversation into all or nothing.

Then Mom calls us and says that we should do what the child wants.  By then the child is half convinced it is what they wanted.  We should stick to the rules of the custody agreement.  It would help with minimizing contact, if she knew that the answer was going to be No, every single time.  But it is difficult, because of this coercion of the kids.  Tough situation.

Whenever their dad tries to say No, NPD mom and her boyfriend both call to tell him how selfish it is, to want the kids on his days, instead of doing what the kids want.  It is difficult to deny all truth in that argument and stick to your guns, when hearing comments like “It’s always about you”, “everything always has to be your way”.  It then generally progresses into calling both of us filthy names.  It is quite irritating to have a woman who was in remedial classes call me a bimbo, but I suppose that’s better than the rest of her pet names for me.

They like to yell things at us when we drop off the kids too.  Our own little white trash hell.

The truth is, we have to force our son to go there almost every time.  And lately, daughter has been having nightmares that mom and her boyfriend try to set her on fire.  I have never in my life had a dream like that about a family member, not even when I was a child (I can remember my nightmares from childhood).  To have a dream like that about your mother strikes me as terribly awfully wrong.

Here’s to praying that the custody people can hear the truth.

Eggfree Cake

Made with yellow cake mix and vanilla pudding, this egg-free cake recipe works perfectly at low altitude.  Higher altitudes will probably want to increase flour to ~1 cup.

1 box Yellow cake mix (double-check label for no eggs)
1 box (3.4oz) Vanilla Pudding Mix – prefer the non-instant
1 ½ cups ginger ale – measure light, don’t go over 1.5 cups
~3 tablespoons or 1/4 cup softened or melted butter
~1.5 teaspoons baking powder
~6 tablespoons flour
Optional:  up to 1 tbsp vanilla or (preferred) vanilla paste

Preheat to 350 F.  Mix it all together thoroughly, (took me about 3min with a fork), until all lumps are very small.  Pour into 2 lightly greased round cake pans.  Cook 40 min.

Wait at least 20 min before frosting.   I like it served after it has cooled in fridge, tastes better cold.  Note: the butter may be replaced with oil, but butter’s better.  Beware of changing anything which is not specifically noted, since we had a dozen failures with other recipes before settling on this one.  Bon appetit.

 

Defenseless

Today we found out that NPD mom has been calling the police accusing us of harassment.

Yesterday was supposed to be our day with the kids; we always have Thursdays.  But she’s been telling us all week, that we may have them when she feels like it.  She did not send them home.  Instead she called the police about harassment.  The kids told us.  So we looked online and found two police reports, this week alone, from her location.

Narcissists and projection… She accuses us of everything that she does.  She was physically abusive during her marriage to R, to the extreme that he had to go to the hospital once or twice.  He never hit her back, partly because he’s a good man, but also because he knows he’d be instantly arrested.  Now she’s calling the police and telling them how scared she is.  She might even believe it, who knows?  She’s always accusing us of her own crimes.  But who will believe us?  I wonder how many police reports have been filed now without us even knowing it.

Speaking of harassment, she called our house this morning about 10 times in 10 minutes.  I then answered the phone (I don’t usually, I let R handle it), and I asked her to please stop ringing since R was unavailable.  She said, in her nasty mean voice that she always uses with me, “Don’t you tell me what to do.”  I was home alone, what’s she calling me for?  I turned the ringer off,  but she hit that redial for the better part of an hour, probably just to prove to me that I can’t tell her what to do.

This is the day after she’s accused us of harassment.  An hour of redial, redial, redial.  It’s not even unusual for her to do this.  I conclude that Narcissists are entirely incapable of self-examination.  The truth is that our dreams in life have been reduced to speaking to her as little as possible.

I never believed in evil before I met her.  We feel so defenseless, because we can’t prove any of this.  Maybe a lawyer could tell us some legal ways to obtain evidence, if any of them will spare me an hour for free.   We’ll see.

Coparenting with a Narcissist (continued)

Ex-wife is back to her games.  Not that they ever really stopped.  She recently offered us full custody of one of the kids, if we’d let her keep the other.  Her daughter is the “golden child” and her son just has to take what he can get.  We refused the offer, of course. 

Today R went to drop off his son, at the agreed time.  NPD mom wanted the kids for their first day of school.  But then she had a fit because he “can’t just drop him off”.   While denying that she’d arranged the time, NPD mom made R go back and pickup son again.  She confirmed the time twice, but narcissists have no problem denying facts.  Then she and her boyfriend went into a rage about how R was trying to abandon his child.  

Meanwhile, R still didn’t know whether he was supposed to drop son off later today, for his first day of school tomorrow.  His son waited all day, only to be disappointed yet again.  NPD mom took her daughter shopping all day, but didn’t have time to see her son. 

Now we’ll have trouble again tomorrow, because of course NPD mom arranged their bus schedule so that almost all the pickups and dropoffs are at her house.  Nevermind that we had the kids 6 days/week last school year.  It’s very important that the administrator at the school should think she’s a good mom!  So we’ll end up driving around to get the kids off the bus after school, again.

It’s truly amazing, the amount of time we spend scrambling to keep up with the schedule NPD mom arranges for us.   Trying to change it is impossible.  If we suggest any time other than what she says, it turns into a nightmare of screaming phone calls, hang ups, then calling back to scream some more.  Easier to just play taxi every day, because then the narcissistic rage only gets dumped on us a few times a week. 

If you know someone like this, just remember, you are not crazy and it’s not all in your head.  Hang in there; you’ll be free of the ex-wife when your kids are 18!

Coparenting with the NPD mother

At a recent pickup of the kids, their NPD-mom sent out her boyfriend and his 20-yr old son to intimidate the kids’ father.   They started their talk about how he needs to treat her better.  Before they got too far, he told them that they need to listen to his recordings of all the phone conversations before they start judging him.   

We got this idea from the Sam Vaknin videos on Youtube about how to deal with a narcissist.   We aren’t really recording the conversations because it’s not legal in this state, nor is it admissible in court (sadly).  But she doesn’t know that.  So he took the chance to tell it to her boyfriend, who of course told it to her.  Her behavior has improved dramatically since then.  She’s still not pleasant, but we get fewer of the bizarre narcissistic rage calls now.

She still will not commit to consistent pickup and dropoff times, nor will she give us 24 hours notice, nor will she give us any input on these times, nor will she do any of the transportation whatsoever.  We’re at her beck and call, and we’re not allowed to change whatever time she decides, not even by 30 minutes.   Asking for a pickup time is “pressuring” her.   But at least the sheer rage emanating from her is less, now that she thinks she’s being recorded.

I am worried though, that I’ll start to see Narcissism everywhere now.  The other day, one of the neighborhood moms barged into our house and walked right into our bedroom (where I was lying down because of back pain), with an issue about the kids in the neighborhood all having lice.  Apparently it was my fault that her daughter has lice, although I don’t recall having placed any bugs on the child’s head.  This is the same mom who only takes care of her daughter on weekends; the daughter lives with her grandfather the rest of the week.  It’s eerily familiar – the mom who does a tiny fraction of the responsibilities of raising a child, yet feels justified doing anything at all “for the kids”.   What kind of person walks into a total stranger’s bedroom?  I wonder if NPD is far more common than I ever imagined.

 

“Looking to”

The phrase ”looking to” is overused lately.  I hear it all the time now, and in most cases it could be replaced with a shorter and better verb.  It strikes me as unnecessary extra words placed into a sentence.  For example:

Looking to hire = Hiring
Looking to sell = Selling
Looking to find = Searching for
Looking to plan = Planning
Looking to start = Starting
Looking to buy = Buying, shopping, browsing, searching, purchasing, procuring, investing, “in the market for”, etc. 

Every time I hear “looking to”, it just sounds wrong.  I’m not alone – there are multiple entries in grammar pages about it.  Is “looking to” the new “like”?  Will it be randomly inserted everywhere into our grammar? 

It ought to be on this list of the most annoying phrases in English:
http://www.bizarrenews.org/content/view/69/1/
However, I have to agree with Marist’s poll, which says that “Whatever” is by far the most annoying word in the English language (especially when it’s your 10 year old son saying it to you).   Whateverrrr.

Egg-free Ranch dressing

Since I developed an allergy to eggs in my 30s, I created a simple egg-free Ranch recipe.  The kids love it, and I think it’s healthier than the premade.  I also think it tastes better and fresher.  All the proportions are approximate (I almost never measure anything when cooking). 

Ingredients:

1-2 tablespoons of Ranch Salad Dressing & Seasoning Mix
1/2 cup of sour cream
 1 cup of plain yogurt
2 tablespoons of milk for thinning the consistency

Mix it up and you’re done.  Don’t try to freeze this though, since dairy products get weird looking when defrosted.  You’ll want to adjust proportions to your taste, but I find that varying the amount of yogurt and sour cream doesn’t effect the flavor much.  Even the kid who hates vegetables will eat lots of celery and carrots with this ranch dressing.  Sometimes she’ll even eat raw broccoli.

Oh PS – watch out that you don’t accidentally buy the Vanilla yogurt instead of plain.  It tasted very bad when made with vanilla yogurt.

Why no one will believe you

Now that we’re focused on the problem, we noticed that Narcissistic Mother (NM) never rants when someone else is around.  If we can hear voices in the background, her telephone behavior almost approaches civil.  Since we also receive calls from her boyfriend, who is naively trying to resolve issues for everyone, we also know that she lies to everyone in that household to garner support for her position that we are not only abusive, but to be classified as subhuman.  They never see her rants – she makes sure of it.

For example, I have never once raised my voice in anger to the kids.  I have yelled, but it’s only to yell “Stop yelling!”.  It’s to make a point, when the kids are arguing too much, so they can hear how loud they sound.  But I never raise my voice to them if I’m angry.  Instead I lecture them on better behavior, but never for more than 5 minutes since they start squirming after about 3.  So how is the NM’s boyfriend, who has only been to our house once (to yell at me), absolutely convinced that I yell at the kids all the time?  Lies upon lies.  If NM really believed we were abusive, she would watch the kids for her half of the week, which she never does.  The actions betray the lies.  She wants the credit for being a good mother without doing any of the actual work.  It’s a campaign of lies and misdirection.

When NM was married to Rob, the campaign was so bad that their friends had an intervention, to try to get Rob to treat her better.  Later, those same friends moved into the house temporarily, when they had need of housing assistance.   After 6 months living with the two of them, the friends apologized for having been seriously misguided in their opinions, and called Rob a “saint” for putting up with her.  Which he is.  They’ve not spoken to NM since the divorce.  These are the same friends who were deceived enough to call an intervention!   At the moment, the NM’s mother and sister will only talk to us, not her.  But in each case, they had to experience this behavior firsthand, and for long periods of time, in order to know we weren’t the monsters.

There’s another reason that no one would believe us though.  It is generally the case in relationships that no party is blameless.  Or at least people think so.  But I begin to doubt this.  If one party is 99% crazy, then how are the small daily imperfections of the other party even relevant?  But it’s very common to believe that “You must have done something.” 

And another reason.  Psychology is a field that everyone seems to have opinions about.  That makes sense.   We don’t all have an opinion on particle physics, because we don’t have particle accelerators.  But we all have brains.  So, words like Freudian slip, Narcissism and Projection are tossed around in conversations as if everyone truly understood what they mean.  To some degree, we do understand.  However, it’s all a question of degrees. 

Pride and vanity are not narcissism.  Having researched it, I think Narcissism is defined by: 

1. Extreme entitlement: Other’s wants or needs are entirely irrelevant.  This isn’t normal selfishness.  It is instead a lack of empathy to such a degree that you may NOT ask to drop the kids off at 6 instead of 5:30, not ever.  You WILL do it when you are told.  It’s not even a control issue really; it’s that you truly do not count.  Any disagreement, in any form, is treated as a personal attack.

2. Spewing:  The Narcissist will spew out garbage and 2 minutes later will say “Aren’t you over that?” or even deny what they said altogether.  They are fundamentally incapable of examining their own souls.  By the way, the rant is generally composed entirely of Projections, because ultimately that’s all the Narcissist knows, which is herself.  But she doesn’t believe any of it applies to her.   If they admit a fault, it’s just to keep you coming back for more, to give the appearance of rationality.

3.  Blindness: Inability to focus on anything that doesn’t directly reflect on how they are perceived.  Narcissists can be so bad about this, that they may have difficulty with reading comprehension.  They’ll get to the end of a paragraph and not know what it said, because it wasn’t about them.

I could go on, but here’s my favorite page about it: http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/traits.html

Well it’s a lovely sunny Spring day, so I’m off to my pursuits!

Coparenting with a narcissist

Sharing custody with a narcissistic mother is a unique challenge.  When the children were born, their father had to fight to get his name on the birth certificate.  That was in the beginning of their marriage; she denied his right to be a parent.  She was then diagnosed with post-partum depression, as the doctors felt she was too engulfed in the welfare of the children.  In retrospect, hearing this story and knowing what happened after, I now feel that she has tied her entire value as a human into being a mother.

One of the key personality traits of a narcissist is “entitlement”.  I am not talking about Gen-Y entitlement, which is a common malady.  Irritating as that is, I’m talking about entitlement on an entirely more escalated level.  Her justification for her entitlement is that she’s a mother.  Because she’s their mother, we are expected to do everything she demands, when she says so.  She’s never asked for anything, not one time, not ever.  She only demands.

Today she made a dentist appointment for our daughter.   Since we do all of the driving, all of the time, we requested that in the future she make the appointments earlier than 6pm.  She hung up in a rage, and called back later saying, “Fine! My mother will take them to the dentist since you don’t care about them!”    If you’re anything like me, this conversation makes no sense, as we didn’t say we wouldn’t take them.  We have even given up objections when she schedules our time, without any consultation.  And yet that’s not enough.  With a  narcissist, it’s never enough.

I’d love to be able to schedule the appointments ourselves.  But… she goes around and changes the contact information for the kids, to whatever address she’s currently occupying (6 addresses so far in 3 years).  She does this for school, for the doctors and dentists, any institution they interact with; she needs to appear to be the primary caregiver.  So the bills get mailed to her with our name on them, and she marks “Return to Sender”.  Having never received them, we don’t pay them.  Then when she eventually gets a bill from a collection agency, she’ll call up in a rage that we’re always taking advantage of her because we didn’t pay them.  She demands we send her the money immediately.  We instead call the doctor and pay, and she flies into a rage about how we don’t trust her.  It would never occur to her to be glad that she didn’t have to pay half.  Because she’s entitled to that; she’s their MOTHER.

These examples are our daily life.  Several times a day, she’ll call with conversations in exactly the same tone.  Always demands and accusations. 

In my search for more information on NPD mothers, I’ve found there’s very little advice out there for coparenting with one.   Most experts advise stopping all contact with a Narcissist.  But we cannot, because custody cases generally tend to favor the mother, NPD is extremely hard to prove, and the kids would miss her.  So, we’re stuck with her, and there’s almost no advice out there on sharing custody with a Narcissistic Mother.

Thus I’ll keep writing, in case anyone out there is also searching for answers.  You’re not alone, and you’re not crazy.

Narcissism

I’ve come to the realization that my fiancee’s ex-wife has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  It’s a relief to finally realize what’s happening.

I’d thought that I was dealing with someone who was psychotically hypocritical.   She calls us 3-4 times a day with demands or criticisms, regarding the children.  Her justification is always “I’m their MOTHER”… so you MUST do as I say.  She treats us as subhuman, all the time.

One of her common complaints is that we don’t spend enough time with the kids.  We have 50/50 custody.  She quit her job and lives on the charity of her boyfriend, her parents, and the welfare system.  So she doesn’t have a mortgage, or bills, and she has money from the state.  She has no job and therefore no obligations on her time.  And yet she never takes her 50% of time with the kids, averaging closer to 20%.  Sometimes she doesn’t take them at all.  But we don’t spend enough time with them.  It’s a bizarre case of constant enormous levels of hypocrisy.  Irrational.

Another example:  the kids want to call her 2 minutes before bedtime (8:28 pm), and we let them.  She’ll call back raging that we let them stay up late.  A few days later, she calls an hour after bedtime to have us pick the kids up from her home.  It is irrational and contradictory.

This erratic behavior of constant double-standards and daily harassment suddenly makes a little more sense.  The 15 phone calls until we PICK UP THE DAMN PHONE, suddenly makes more sense.  The complete lack of manners suddenly makes more sense.  She has every symptom of NPD, in abundant measure.

It’s nice to finally put a name to this absolutely bizarre behavior.  While it won’t fix our problems, now at least we know not to try to reason with someone who is cognitively impaired.  I will be continuing my research to see how better to protect the kids from inheriting this disorder.

Easy Cooking

One of the easiest recipes ever is roast Eye of Round.  This piece of meat costs slightly more than hamburger, but not by much!  You really just stick it in the oven, and let it sit for 3 hours, following the recipe’s temperature adjustments.  It doesn’t get easier than this.  Serve it with some stuffing or a salad, for a total of 5 minutes of actual work, to create a lovely meal for your family.  If you don’t believe it, read the reviews!

http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/high-temperature-eye-of-round-roast/Detail.aspx

Moral-IQ

Consider an IQ bell curve.  100 is the average IQ by definition.  Half of the population is above 100 and half below.  Now imagine a bell curve for morality.  If there were such a thing, half of the population would be below average.

Considered in that context, it’s not surprising that I’ve often been told that I’m “too good”.  It was one of the major complaints of my ex-husband, but I’ve heard it from friends as well.  I’m not sure it’s entirely possible for me to understand their complaint.  I wasn’t being critical of them for behavior that I considered substandard.  Quite the opposite.  In retrospect, it’s my opinion that I was far too forgiving and understanding. So what was the reason for their complaint?  I can only guess, but I imagine they thought I was either faking, or secretly judging them.  Perhaps both.  It’s impossible not to judge; I was born with reason, and that’s what reason does.  But I didn’t blame them, which is different.  Sometimes they said that they wished I would just get mad – that it would make me “more human”.

When I speak about morals, I am not talking about religion or the 10 commandments or extreme behaviors.  Most people are not serial killers or suicide bombers.  I am also not talking about the morality of telling a white lie, or other minor infractions.

Somewhere in the middle of these, there is the morality that people use in their real lives.  Did you ever kiss and tell?  Cheat on your lover?  Lie to your friends?  Hit your wife or your husband?  Gamble away your savings when it affected someone else?  Break things in anger?  Verbally abuse someone?  Abuse drugs or alcohol?  Quit your job when someone depended on you?  These are the real choices that people make, and I consider these types of choices the definition of morals.

One day while playing World of Warcraft, I met Rob.  We started chatting online and discovered that we had things in common.  We had similar experiences.  We could understand each other so easily.  We even liked to read the same books over and over.  But one thing stood out.  In a conversation about his ex-wife, I found myself asking him if anyone ever told him he was “too good”.    He admitted that he had indeed been called this, many times.  He had the same difficulties understanding it, and felt a disconnect with his ex-wife and friends, because of it.  They’d even sat him down and done an “intervention” on the topic (I find this highly amusing).

Rob and I discovered that we matched up in moral-IQ.  It’s one of the many reasons that I’m crazy in love with him.  It’s such a relief to be with someone who understands you.   I was so tired of being forgiving.   Now I’m with someone that I don’t have to forgive, because he doesn’t and never will do anything that requires it.

“Aren’t you over that yet?”

Everyone has heard the tenet, that you have to “live in the moment”.  Bygones should be bygones.  Forgiveness is a good thing to do, and holding on to anger is bad for your health.  When it’s over, it should be over, right?

No.

There are people who will hold a grudge far too long, but there is now also the opposite behavior emerging.  People say cruel  things, and expect that you should forget all about it afterwards. This principle of popular psychology has contributed to an abundance of verbally abusive behavior.  If you have been in a chat room or forum lately, you know it’s true that a great many people just don’t behave politely anymore.  The anonymity of the internet contributes to this, of course.  But I see it also becoming more and more common in relationships.

I can give you an example from just last night.  Rob’s ex-wife called up and started screaming.  “What have you and that bitch girlfriend of yours been putting into the kid’s heads?”  … Huh, what?  After a long abusive tirade in which she threatened to call DCF again, it turns out that the kids just weren’t behaving well for her.  Not 10 minutes later, she claimed that it was bygones: “Aren’t you over that yet?”

Now, she’s an extreme case, and she does this all the time.  She expects that the moment she’s done ranting, all is forgiven, forgotten.  She truly cannot understand why we’re still mad at her for calling DCF the first time.  In fact, we will never forgive her.  Your behavior defines who you are, and no, I am not going to forget about it just because it was 10 minutes ago and now in the past.  So enough about living in the moment.  I have a brain and I use it; I judge and I remember.  Forgiveness is not instant and automatic.

“Why do you always have to be right?”

This one generally means you are either:

1. Actually right, but they don’t care.
2. Talking to someone dumber than you, so you keep explaining, long beyond the point where it might have been productive.
3. Stubborn as a mule, and pushing for what you want.

Sometimes of course, it could be all three.  Probably it’s all three.  In any case, it means they want you to shut up.  Regardless of whether it’s logical or convenient, the rational portion of the discussion is now over.

“I’m a good person.”

It’s been my experience, that any time someone says they are a good person, they are generally running below average on the moral-IQ meter.  After all, it is exceedingly rare to meet someone who doesn’t think they’re a good person.  Even people who hate everything else about themselves, still think they are “good”.

One instance stands out in my mind.  A woman came to me and said that I need not worry about her relationship with my (now-ex) husband.  She said she was a good person, and nothing would ever happen.  Less than a week later, she was in the sack with him.  This happened again, almost word for word, with 3 more women in the same year.  Each of them came to me and claimed to be a good person.

Now, you may argue that this doesn’t make them “bad”.  I don’t wish to debate the morality of it.  My personal stance is that, if you feel you need to lie about it, you shouldn’t be doing it.

Lest I be misunderstood, I am not bitter about it; I divorced the cad years ago.  My intention is to look at the phrases people use in relationships, and what they really mean.    I’ve known about a dozen people who said “I’m a good person,” and they were, without fail, people ranging from distasteful to horrid.  Not one of them knew it.   Nowadays, if someone says to me “”I’m a good person,” I get ready to run.

“We don’t do anything together anymore.”

In a recent episode of House, a wife said to her husband “We don’t do anything together anymore.”

How many times have you heard this?  It got me thinking – why do people say this when they live together?  You sleep in the same house, maybe you eat breakfast together, you see each other every night.  Maybe you even call each other at work, watch the same shows at night, brush your teeth together.  How then, does this become such a common complaint in relationships?

The first time I heard this was from my roommate in college.  At the time, I thought we saw plenty of each other.  We shared a room, ate in the cafeteria together 3 meals a day, studied together.  Nine years later, I heard it from a different roommate.   Then later again from my husband.

I think in each case, you could reasonably translate this phrase as “Do you still like me?”

In each case, it seems the person wanted more than I wished to give.  After all, if I wished to give more, I’d have been doing it already, without being asked.  The first roommate was bossy, the second was an alcoholic, and the husband was a nightmare.  All three of them were insecure.  So in my case, they were right; I didn’t really like them anymore.

There are so many common phrases used in relationships.  I thought I would write down my translations of a few!