Control « Surviving Narcissism

Control

Humpty Dumpty and Jack

I brought a fresh cup of coffee to my 8:30 counseling session with my blog today. Seems life continues to hand me more fodder for ‘Surviving Narcissism’. This is where I get to use expressions like, “The proof is in the pudding”, “It’s time to take the gloves off”, and (hopefully), “He never knew what hit him.”

I’m using ALL the narcissism tags for this post.

Mark didn’t get to spend a lot of time with the kids this last weekend. Grandma and Grandpa returned from wintering in Arizona, and the kids needed some serious spoiling time. So when Mark called Monday night, I wasn’t surprised to hear his characteristic what-about-me, martyr voice. He said, “You have told me to make them a priority, and when I try to see them, they are too busy with your folks. How am I supposed to fit into their schedule?” I explained that they hadn’t seen grandma for four months, but that they would be available on Tuesday afternoon.

What I wanted to say was, “I asked you, 11 years ago, to make Will a priority. That’s one helluva ‘To-Do List” you’ve got there. You’re just now getting around to making them a priority?”

Three hours into Tuesday’s visit, I walked out to the front yard with my new spine-enhanced posture and said, “We need to cap these visits at three hours. I don’t like being held hostage in my own house.” He sarcastically said, “I would love to have these visits at my house.” I reminded him that the visits at his house would be three hours in length (no over-nighters) and would include both kids at the same time. He frickin’ asked me why the kids wouldn’t be allowed to spend the night. Continue reading →

Child of Narcissist / Control / Lack of Empathy / Opportunistic / The World Revolves Around Me / You Might Be a Narcissist If ... — 10 Comments
12
Apr 10

As The Narcissist’s World Turns

Dammit. I don’t really want to write about this. I so want to be done with all of this. It is more of what I’ve already written. It is more of what others have already written on the subject of narcissism. But I have made a commitment to myself, and ultimately, to anyone who takes the time to read this blog – that person who, in the middle of the night, when sleep won’t come, desperately searches the internet in hopes of finding answers. This is for those who still cling to the possibility that things could work out, that hope and goodness will prevail.

I have to write for them.

It started Sunday morning when the kids opened their in-boxes. Mark wrote them each an email. In Will’s email, he explained that I had indicated that Will would be calling. Mark twisted things around, again, and made it sound like we were wanting the dust to settle, and would get in touch when we were ready. He forgot the part about the kids expecting initiative and change on Mark’s part. Mark’s email to Jen sounded like he was picking up where he’d left off, and that nothing had ever happened.

So… the kids wrote emails saying they did not want to see him until he made it clear that he was ready to treat Jen like she’s seven years old, and that he demonstrates to Will that he is ready to make Jen and Will priorities. The kids were pretty agitated that Mark would expect that he wouldn’t have to do anything, and that everyone would pick up where things had been left.

We’ve seen this too many times. Continue reading →

Child of Narcissist / Control / Lack of Empathy / Moving On / Seeing My Path / Tools — 10 Comments
13
Feb 10

Narcissism Pisses Me Off

dropping-keys Today we skied like we could be Olympic contenders – in our dreams. We laughed, inhaled fresh mountain air, and got that really good tired. Then we came home and made fajitas, sat by the fire and watched amazing athletes compete on T.V.

It was a stellar day.

Why am I so agitated?

In the last few days, I’ve gotten emails from a woman who is agonizing over the chaos in her daughter’s life. Her daughter divorced a narcissistic man five years ago, and this man is still making her daughter’s life a living hell.

I’ve gotten an email from another woman who found the courage to leave her narcissistic husband, but she doubts her decision on a daily basis, because this man continually tells her that she’s making a monumental mistake. Continue reading →

Child of Narcissist / Control / Moving On / Opportunistic / The World Revolves Around Me / You Might Be a Narcissist If ... — 7 Comments
11
Feb 10

Come And Tell Me Why Yer Leavin’ Me

The first time I set foot in our little house, I got teary. Granted, I wasn’t very emotionally stable at the time. I had decided to leave my husband. I had been living at my mom’s for a couple months. I had to get my kids settled, and the weight of the transition was heavy on me. The realtor unlocked the maroon door and we stepped into the open living room/dining room area. I took one look at the wood stove, glanced at the dark red walls in the kitchen, and I knew it would be our home.

I always wanted a wood stove at Mark’s house. I’m always cold, and I wear layers, even in summer. We deal with a lot of winter, and a wood stove provides a comfort that you don’t get from an electric blanket or forced air heat, or a narcissistic husband. Besides, I love the ritualistic aspects of burning wood. There’s the physical labor of finding and cutting and hauling and stacking the wood. And there’s the continual feeding of the fire. Will and I even cleaned our chimney this year. I don’t care that it’s messy. I love the smell as much as the warmth. It’s basic to survival. It connects me to the process of life.

Mark doesn’t like burning with wood because it’s messy, smelly, and hard to control.

__________

It was our first winter here, and I jumped up to put another log in the wood stove. Without realizing I was doing it, I started singing a song from my college days. Continue reading →

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7
Feb 10

The Proper Care and Feeding of Your Narcissist

Eight years ago on Super Bowl Sunday, I was two months pregnant with Jenny. I had round-the-clock morning sickness. To this day, I tell Jenny that she was worth every trip to the bathroom.

One of my favorite pictures is a shot of me, looking awful from the morning all-day sickness, holding a gallon-sized container of Atomic Fireballs. There’s something about the hot spicy jawbreakers that kept the sickness at bay. They were an absolute lifesaver. I had an Atomic Fireball in my mouth for 7 months.

Poor Will was going on four years old. He got used to me hanging out in the bathroom. In fact, after Jenny was born, I was doing something, let out a cough, and I heard Will say, “Mommy, are you throwing up again?”

Anyway, we had been invited to a Super Bowl Party. I was sitting in a chair, trying to summon up the strength to put on my shoes. I did not want to go to the party, but I didn’t want to disappoint Mark and Will. I looked at Mark and said, “I’m so sorry, but I just can’t go. I feel like all I’ve been doing is trying to simply exist.” He looked at me, let out a sigh of frustration and said, “Well, that is all you’ve been doing.”

__________ Continue reading →

Control / Moving On / Random Observations — 12 Comments
4
Feb 10

His Narcissism and Her Restlessness

She pulls up every day at about 11:30 in the morning. She parks her new car next to the park across the street from our house. She gets out and immediately lights up a cigarette. Her clothes have a kind of urban style. Maybe she’s a professional of some sort — lawyer, doctor, counselor, accountant or banker. I imagine she might be between appointments or on her way to lunch. She usually dresses in dark colors, a leather car coat and delicate, black framed glasses. She’s tall and thin with dark brown hair. She never stands still. Most of the time she’s talking on her cell, walking back and forth, beside the length of her car. She’s trying to quit smoking. She doesn’t want to smoke inside her car.

She promised her partner that she had quit, and she fools herself into believing that he won’t smell it on her, or the car.

When she talks on her cell, she seems excited and happy. She acts like someone who has something wonderful to look forward to. She barely pays any attention to the cigarette in her hand. She’s one of those interesting people who can’t seem to talk without moving their hands. I half expect her to send either her phone or the cigarette flying. Every time she makes a point in the conversation, I see her emphasize with her hand, or look up at the sky and let out a laugh, or sometimes she does all three at once.

She appears to be energized by the conversation.

The mornings when she’s not talking on her phone, she seems like a completely different person. She smokes one cigarette after another. She paces beside her car, head down, with her other hand in her pocket. It’s as if she’s waiting for the phone to ring, or contemplating her next appointment, or mentally ticking off her to-do list. Continue reading →

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26
Jan 10

Apologize

Never ruin an apology with an excuse.

Kimberly Johnson

Control / Lack of Empathy / Moving On — 7 Comments
14
Jan 10

The Insidiousness of Narcissism

I’m tired tonight. I’m that kind of tired where I tell myself, “It’s okay if you go to bed without brushing your teeth. No one will know. You never do that.” Except — I remember telling myself that one night last week, too.

Mark was here for a visit this afternoon. It drains the energy out of all three of us. After he leaves, we snip at each other. We lose patience with each other. We all know that it happens, and yet we have to tell each other to calm down.

On the second day of this new year, I had what I hoped would be a potentially relationship-changing conversation with Mark.

Okay, so I thought I’d had these with him in the past, but this was different. We were going to start the New Year off on the right foot.

The kids had ended a “Goodnight Call” with Mark, and after hanging up, they both started crying. Continue reading →

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11
Jan 10

Noxious Narcissism

bind-weed The other day Will and I were riding home from the ski hill with grandpa. The subject of “Blooming where you’re planted” came up. I don’t think I’d find many people to disagree with the premise — be happy where you are planted. I asked grandpa what he thought about the fact that there might be a lot of weeds where we are planted. He responded by saying, “The best way to deal with weeds is to make sure the plant is healthy.” He is right, of course. The healthier the plant, the less chance the weeds have to take over.

I pretend to be a gardener. I love gardening and flowers and vegies and being outside playing in the dirt with the kids and the worms. I never use any kind of chemicals. That stuff scares me. In fact, for me it is therapeutic to pull weeds.

We have a lot of bind weed where we live. Circling our little garden is a four foot fence made of chicken coop wire. It is just about impossible to uncoil bind weed from that fencing, once it has a chance to get started. And actually, bind weed is kind of pretty when it blooms. Bind weed is part of the Morning Glory family. I usually ignore the bind weed that crawls up the fencing. It looks nice when it blooms, and it’s difficult to get rid of once it takes over. But bind weed needs to be pulled before it wraps its tendrils around young seedlings. I try to get Sweet Peas to climb that same chicken coop fencing. It does well if I can keep the bind weed away from it.

So back to the ride home from the ski hill.

I was enjoying that exquisite relaxation that comes from a day of exercising outside. I didn’t have to focus on driving. My mind was thinking about blooming and weeds and toxicity and narcissism. Suddenly I envisioned Mark wrapping his arms around Will and pulling him onto his lap — the way he has done since Will was a toddler. He always seemed to be restraining Will. He’d refuse to let him run around and play. He seemed to want to pin him down in an effort to control him. And then I envisioned the way bind weed wraps around a vulnerable little Sweet Pea seedling — choking it. The Sweet Pea seedling bends under the weight of the bind weed. It is helpless until someone comes along and pulls the bind weed. I could see my own little Sweet Peas struggling to stand tall, to catch a breath, to reach the sun, to grow and bloom. Continue reading →

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5
Jan 10

People As Holidays

People are like holidays. Do others see you as Christmas, or more like Tax Day?

Ward Elliot Hour

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19
Dec 09

That Stench

I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air.

Margaret Thatcher

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29
Nov 09

When Divorcing The Narcissist Isn’t Enough

Last night Will was so stressed, I actually resorted to giving him a Pepcid. That’s the first time he’s taken anything for an upset stomach. His stomach had been bothering him for two days. Coincidentally, his father had been over both those days.

I’m too familiar with this feeling. I have a stash of Pepcid for myself.

After both visits, Will started pacing, cussing and ranting. I’ve told him that he can write about what bugs him. We’ve lots of cryptic notes around the house.

“My Dad is an A hole.”

“F you dad.” Continue reading →

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13
Nov 09

When A 15 Minute Trick Doesn’t Cut It

I’ve been around the block a few times — sometimes even stomping my feet while I make the pass. I know that, in some cases, a few deep breaths, or a glass of water, or a handful of nuts, or a self-imposed time-out just won’t do the trick. Hell, I’ve even chugged the glass of water, grabbed the handful of nuts, marched outside, and come storming back in to start scrubbing the floor. By then, I’ve gone way beyond the 15 minutes, and it’s still not working.

This is when I get serious. This will sound like a contradiction to the 15 Minute Tricks, but it’s necessary to get inside my head for this approach. I force myself to sort through all the tangled thoughts that are swimming around in my brain.

An aside … One day I’m getting my haircut by this gal that I love who runs a beauty shop with her sister. They are chatting about this book that one of them is reading. It has something to do with “Women are Spaghetti and Men are Waffles.” How can you not enjoy an analogy like that? Besides, I absolutely adore spaghetti. I guess the premise is that women have every thought they’ve ever had wrapped around every other thought they’ve ever had. And all those thoughts are standing at the ready to wrap around any new or potential thoughts. Men compartmentalize their thoughts into neat little boxes, like the sections of a waffle. I’ve got to get that book. Anyway, I find that I’ve been enjoying thinking of female brains as plates of spaghetti, and male brains as a bunch of boxes with lids. (I don’t really like waffles. And I admire a guy’s ability to put a topic or thought into a box, put a lid on it, and return to it later. Sometimes they decide they don’t like, never have liked, that thought, and they never go back. I wish I could do that.)

So I’m going with the plate-of-spaghetti analogy. In that plate of spaghetti, or pile of thoughts, there are usually a couple thoughts that seem to be festering among the other relatively innocuous thoughts. The plan is to ferret out the one or two thoughts that seem to be poisoning all the others. The poisonous thoughts are the ones that do me in. I can deal with all the mundane issues. I begin to sort out the thoughts. I’ll see if there’s anything I can do about them, and take some kind of action.

Maybe your laptop is away for repairs. Maybe your laundry is multiplying and making its way down the hall. Maybe toys are littering every corner of the house. Maybe your mom can’t seem to find a way to say anything without hurting your feelings. Maybe the leaves are piling up and waiting for you to go at them with a rake. Maybe the furnace only comes on when you fiddle with the switch on the thermostat. Maybe the person you want to spend the rest of your life with lives 2000 miles away. Maybe you haven’t the slightest clue what to fix for dinner. Continue reading →

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18
Sep 09

Sunny-Side Up

2009-09-19-009 I love cooking and eating. I’m no slouch in the kitchen. I’ve had several restaurant jobs that I enjoyed. My experience in professional kitchens would indicate that at least I know the technical aspects of cooking.

When I was a kid, if someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I didn’t have a clue. When I was older, I started to like the sound of having my own restaurant, but more than that, I wanted to be a wife and mom.

I spent a lot of years apologizing for not choosing an impressive profession. I went to college and graduated with a degree. Still, when I looked deep inside, it always felt like my calling was in making a fine home, being a loving wife, and being the best mom I could.

Cooking is an essential part of making a fine home. To this day, we eat (some of us enjoy) a home-cooked meal every night. Gathering around the dinner table is the glue that will keep us together when Will and Jenny become teenagers and discover how stupid I am, and how much they hate my guts.

I was not Martha Stewart when it came to meals. I was more of a Rachel Ray. I quickly learned that when you have a picky husband, and even pickier kids, there’s no point in killing yourself to make a seven-course meal. My goal was to put something yummy on the table, that was healthy, and satisfied the tastes of each of us. Scaling Mt. Everest would be easier, but I enjoyed the challenge. Continue reading →

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4
Sep 09

Individual Moments of Peace

This evening I sat for a spell on my front porch. We are enjoying the last few days of our summer, and today was particularly gorgeous. I see an image of me hanging from the letter r in the word summer, by my fingernails. I can’t let go of summer quite yet, there’s still a bit of juice left.