There’s no such thing as Co-Parenting with a Malignant Narcissist …
Mayday, Mayday — abort the mission — abort the mission! If you’re scouring the internet looking for advice on co-parenting with your sadistic narcissistic ex partner — I’m here to tell you the answer to your burning question — There is NO WAY! At least there is no healthy way to co-parent with him — just like there’s no healthy way to stay in a romantic relationship with a narcissist. At the core, it’s their narcissistic personality traits which make it nearly impossible to navigate a healthy parenting partnership.
In most healthy co-parenting situations, it will require both parents to compromise on some sort of system or agreement founded on the ability to have mutual respect, open, honest, two way conversations maturely. However with sadistic Narcissists this is nearly impossible to do because they’re prone to using silent treatments, stone walling and controlling mechanisms to manipulate situations to their advantage. Since everything they do is self motivated, self interested and set for personal gain — you can be assured that there’s a reason they’re even around which includes possibly using the kids. Narcs are prone to being consistently inconsistent and child like. The other thing to consider is the fact that narcissists lack empathy, so to think that he’s willing to put himself in your parenting shoes and completely understand your feelings, needs, wants or perspective is ludicrous. They’re great at mimicking our emotions but they don’t really feel them which is why they’re actions never match their words.
My experience…
I can’t tell you how many times my narcissistic ex partner would call or text me to have our children ready on this day at this time because he was planning to come and get them. The day and time would arrive and I’d get our children dressed and ready- the kids would be excited as they waited as patiently as they could for their dad’s arrival. Hours would pass with no text, no call and eventually no show. The sound of my children asking where their dad was or what happened to daddy was purely heartbreaking. We’d call no answer. Text no reply. It’s like he’d vanished into thin air. My children’s disappointment was my disappointment. He’s missed birthdays, graduations, parent teacher meetings pretty much every milestone in our children’s lives including the death of one of their grandparents, when I needed help the most with caring for them while trying to plan one of my parents funerals. We even have a special needs son, my ex hasn’t been there for any meetings or doctors appointments. Nothing.
In true narcissistic nature, his disappearances are always followed up with a Hoover. Hoovering is a tactic Narcissists use to suck you back into a relationship after having disappeared or had little to no contact for a long period of time. Days, weeks or months later he always comes back armed with an elaborate excuse, scheme or sad sob story from his life which prevented him from calling, texting or simply being a polite and courteous human being by informing us that he couldn’t make it. Instead he’d pop up or call like nothing was wrong. He had no guilt, no remorse, no real heart felt apology, no empathy for his broken hearted children due to his actions. He was always good at charming us, causing diversion conversations with new promises but his actions never changed and he rarely kept his word.
If he did pick them up, he’d either be partying with friends and family and our kids would just be running around playing while he drank and hung out. They weren’t around for him to create true father and children impactful moments. And always he’d have his new “victim” in the picture, utilizing our children to pretend to be the All Star father of the year to deceive her and create this fake appearance so he could set the stage to do the same thing to her that he did to me. Additionally it served his triangulation efforts too. Triangulation when it comes to a narcissist is an act of abuse that relies on bringing another person into the realm of a relationship with a purpose of hurting or belittling the victim and making them fight for the attention of the narcissist. He would introduce me as a threat or as the crazy ex girlfriend to appear more appealing to his new victim — whatever served his purpose in the narcissistic web. Either way none of it is genuine parenting efforts. It’s still a narcissistic web of lies and deceit with personal gain.
In the end, he’s never really spent quality one on one daddy time with our kids. In doing so he’s essentially managed down my expectations- the only thing I’ve grown to expect is that if I involve him in their life, I should expect them to also be hurt by his selfish narcissistic ways too.
My values, morals and family values vs Reality
My morals and values on family and loyalty are very traditional as I’m sure many of yours are. I was raised in a two parent household and raised by my biological mother and father under one roof. My father believed in always putting his family above everything. Coming from that background has made it hard for me to deal with a narc as the father of my children. My value system is constantly being compromised. The feeling of what I had from my own father vs what kind of father I want for my children vs the reality of who their father really is has been the nightmare of a balancing act, but I had to start with acceptance. It took me a while to ACCEPT the real him after the mask slipped off. But then after I accepted who he really is outside of who he pretended to be -I had the difficult task of the Co-parenting space with him. My children’s father is a man who has no care in the world accept for himself. Our children are victims in his web of deception and abuse. That’s the reality. I had to be honest with myself, that this man was a father by DNA only. He is selfish, self interested and untrustworthy. How can I as a mother negotiate with such poison?
When a person operates from that moral code — there is no compromise or consensus.
Parallel Parenting
There is this one method called Parallel Parenting which involves blindly sending your children off with the narcissist. Basically under the pretenses that as long as the children are safe, not being neglected or mistreated then they should be fine. As long as the other parent has the same end goal as you, then you simply wash your hands of any worry outside of any intermittent danger. But what are the long term affects of allowing your children to go off into the playground of a narcissist? It also almost requires the mom to be willing to compromise your personal values, thoughts and family morals. Essentially you just hand over your children no questions asked, mind your own business as long as the kids are safe and there’s no negligence. The intent is that you and your ex partner will have the same end goal for your children. But come on seriously? With a narcissist, most moms aren’t completely willing to hand over their children without at least being amicable with their ex spouse. My fear was allowing the narcissist full reign with our children without ensuring he upholds certain values, criteria and responsibilities. That’s tough to do and also why it didn’t work for me. Yes, he’s their father, they’re safe to some degree but what examples were being set? What lessons was he teaching and what psychological damage was being done internally? That psychological trauma won’t show up until years later — like it did to you when you realized you were in a Narcissistic Relationship.
The children endure a abuse cycle as well.
It took me a while to realize that the children were just ploys in his game of chess. He strategically makes moves with them, always gaining something. He always hoovered when he was needing a place to stay, a car to drive or something so detrimental happened that he was in shambles scrambling for sympathy. He’d always say he missed his “family” or missed his kids. Early on I’d take him back. But again in typical narcissistic fashion he never meant it or showed it. He simply used us for supply.
My fear now is that I was hurting my children by allowing them to go with their father on the days when he felt like taking them. Reality is he ignores them every single day of their existence accept when it’s beneficial to him. We all experience the discard, the Hoover and idealization when he’s trying to make a way in. He’s gone close to a year without seeing our children. Sporadic here and there’s, but nothing consistent. I then realized that my babies are being put through the same cycle of narcissistic abuse that I was in.
Something to think about…
Ultimately I had to decide whether my children were better off without the inconsistencies, without the disconnection and without the influence of their biological fathers narcissistic personality traits. I had to evaluate my circumstances wholeheartedly. Is it really my decision to cut him out of my life and theirs, or the other alternative? Which is: do I allow him to come in and out of their lives as he sees fit. He has no clear parenting plan, no real examples to set or positive influence to insert into their lives after just unloading havoc and pain. In the end we all have to make a decision that is best for us as the mother and for our children who don’t yet no what their father is doing to them.
The Little To No Contact Route
In the end I choose not to speak badly about my children’s father which will allow my children the ability to form their own opinion of him. I don’t keep him from them in anyway but I am very conscientious about him and his influence. Contact is very limited. If I do allow them to go with him, it’s for a short period of time because they’re too young to understand that I’m not keeping them from him because I personally don’t like it, but rather because I’m trying to protect them. As kids, they just see that their father is not present, and sometimes as Mother’s, we end up taking the blame for a table we didn’t really set. In closing, you as a parent will have to decide what road makes the most sense for your children’s lives and your own.
