Published on The Huffington Post 2/07/2017 5:32 pm ET
Parenting is arguably the hardest work one can do in life, even with a loving and compatible partner. Coparenting with a narcissist ex is exponentially more difficult—draining, disorienting, divisive, and at times cause for feelings of black anger and despair.
Your Narcissist Ex Doesn’t Love Your Kids the Way You Do
It is painful, perhaps incomprehensible, but your narcissist ex will never love your children the way you do. If your ex has narcissistic personality disorder, s/he may be flatly incapable of loving them at all, seeing them instead as projections and extensions of her-/himself to be manipulated and abused to serve her/his agenda of maintaining a sense of entitlement and superiority. To make matters worse, your narcissist ex’s main objective may be to hurt you, regardless of how it harms your kids.
If you did the leaving, the rejected narcissist is likely to hold a profound long-term grudge, seeking to punish you for triggering her/his narcissistic injury—the repressed feelings of shame and unworthiness that drive the narcissistic personality. If your ex left you, you are still fair game for propaganda and persecution.
Whoever initiated the break up, the narcissist is likely to use every opportunity to bolster her-/himself at your expense. S/he may insult and demean you in front of your children; engage in a smear campaign behind your back to your kids, extended family, and social circle; and undermine your efforts to communicate as coparents.
Forget CoParenting with a Narcissist
Teamwork is outside the narcissist’s playbook. By definition, narcissists lack empathy or genuine feelings of connectedness with others, most poignantly their family members. As painful as this is to accept about the other parent of your children, you need to face reality and move on.
Accept Parallel Parenting
First and foremost, narcissists do not play fair or nice. They will vie for their children’s attention and adoration but also readily cast it away when it loses value (i.e., becomes costly, taxing, boring, irritating, etc.).
Throw out the normal rules of engagement. Embrace minimalist “parallel parenting” to gain control and reduce your vulnerability to manipulation. This is necessary for you and for your children.
Parallel Parenting Do List
- Do limit contact/communication with your ex to absolute essentials.
- Do establish a regular parenting schedule and stick to it.
- Do keep strict boundaries with your ex.
- Do withhold your true feelings/thoughts from your ex.
- Do ignore your ex’s antagonisms, whether passive-aggressive or overtly aggressive.
- Do accept that you cannot control your ex’s parenting, even if it sucks.
- Do have faith in your own parenting (one attuned good parent is more powerful than several bad parents/stepparents—really).
- Do be as honest as you can (age-appropriately) with your kids about your family situation.
- Do modulate but don’t deny your feelings with your kids.
- Do model empathy and resiliency for your kids.
Parallel Parenting Don’t List
- Don’t argue with or try to explain yourself to your ex.
- Don’t make yourself vulnerable to your ex.
- Don’t react to your ex’s barbs or criticisms.
- Don’t demonize your ex to your kids.
- Don’t internalize your ex’s projections.
- Don’t try to explain your concerns about your kids to your ex.
- Don’t ever criticize your kids to your ex, as s/he will use it against them/you.
- Don’t engage emotionally with your ex: Go “gray rock”—boring, flat, monotonous.
- Don’t blame yourself for your ex’s behavior.
- Don’t forget that although your ex may be a jerk, the silver lining is your kids.
Listen to Julie’s audio course “Understanding Narcissism” for free with code JULIE.
Julie L. Hall is the author of The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free from Hachette Books.
Need support? Julie provides specialized narcissistic abuse recovery coaching to clients around the world.
Related Articles by Julie L. Hall
- Dear Therapist: You Missed My Husband’s Narcissism and It Devastated My Family
- The Narcissistic Family: Cast of Characters and Glossary of Terms
- How to Protect Your Children from Your Narcissist Spouse
- Should Your Narcissistic Parents Have Access to Your Kids?
- Big Sissies: How and Why Narcissists Get Worse with Age
- 5 Boundary-Setting Basics with the Narcissists in Your Life
- Healing a Sense of Foreshortened Future in Adult Children of Narcissists
- The Narcissist’s Caretakers: Caught Hook, Line, and Sinker
- What the Narcissist Fears Most
- Narcissist Parents Are Hurt Machines to Their Children
- Identifying the Covert Narcissist in Your Life: A Checklist
- Understanding Narcissistic Rage and Why It’s Not Your Fault
- Why Narcissists Will Never Love You and It’s Dangerous to Love Them
- Horrid and Shocking Things Narcissists Say and Do
- The Overt Versus Covert Narcissist: Both Suck
- Seven Things Narcissists Will Never Do
- The Hidden Trauma of Neglect in the Narcissistic Family
- Enabling the Narcissist: How and Why It Happens
- How Narcissists Torture Others and Believe They’re Right to Do It
- Seven Sure-Fire Ways to Spot a Narcissist
- Maddening and Bizarre Things Narcissists Do Explained
- Behind the Narcissist Mask: The Bully, Coward, Liar and Fraud
- Why You Should Not Feel Sorry for the Narcissist
- Adult Children of Narcissists Face Trauma-Induced Health Risks
- Raised by a Narcissist? 11 Healing Things to Do for Yourself Right Now
- What Raging Narcissists Break: A Real-Life Damage List
- The Burden of the Golden Child in the Narcissistic Family
- Narcissism 101: A Glossary of Terms for Understanding the Madness
- The Narcissism Disease Cluster in Families and How to End the Cycle
- A Daughter’s Story of One Hell of a Narcissistic Mother
- The Narcissist Parent’s Psychological Warfare: Parentifying, Idealizing, and Scapegoating
- Raised by Narcissists? Why You Can’t Afford the Wrong Therapist
- 4 Insidious Ways That Narcissistic Abuse Isolates the Victim
- It’s You and Me Baby: Narcissistic Head Games
- How and Why Narcissists Are Highly Skilled Abusers
- The Strength of the Narcissistic Family Scapegoat
- Life in the Fun House: Narcissistic Mirroring and Projection
- The Paradox of the Narcissist’s Unrequited Self-Love
- A Golden Child Story of Guilt in the Narcissistic Family
- 9 Best of the Worst Narcissist Mothers on Screen
- Understanding the Narcissist’s Disrespect, Envy, and Contempt
Lead photo courtesy of Stephan Hochhaus, Creative Commons.
View Comments (31)
I would add don't compete with your ex. That probably falls under having faith in your own parenting, but all too often the narcissist becomes the fun parent. Kids need consistency more than they need a buddy.
Good point. The day-to-day hard work of reliable, dedicated parenting is often not "fun," but it is what kids need the most, and it is what they will value most as they grow up. If they act out and get angry or emotional with the nonnarcissistic parent, it is precisely because they trust you enough to be real and know that you will keep loving them and not turn on them.
Narcissists alienate their children from the other parent after final discard.. this is called parental alienation in layman's terms.. in short it is a cross generational transference of childhood trauma which is triggered by the seperation.. narcissists be they common garden narcs or ASPD.. they are man made disorders .. they were traumatised in their own childhood which makes them what they are today.. and thus is becoming an epidemic .. look around you at how many fatherless children there are.. parental alienation.. covert narcissism everywhere we look.. and it is being promoted in the media news film and television.. the "victim" role.. the covert narcs top ammunition.. and the whole world is playing it... that coupled with financial incentives, the world "empowering" women while ONLY putting men down.. the materialism , the total lack of apathy and empathy except for self, gender bias everywhere designed to split us up, ( isolate and control), using fear everywhere to do it.. which brings me to my point..
Narcissistic personalities are not a gender thing.. it is a personality disorder thing.. and I have been surrounded by them all my life.. my mother is one, my sister, a couple of ex friends and now an ex. it took the ex for me to see the pattern and to start researching what the hell I was dealing with... she is full on dark triad , manipulative, covert criminal, violent .. the full Harlequin.. so far I have known 9 narcissistic personalities of all different types.. and only 3 were Male.. so my point being.. could you please stop using the term HE when talking about narcissists and stop using the term SHE when talking about victims.. I have seen enough hell and abuse at the hand s of women to know differently.. but the average Joe reading your blogs and articles might not.. and this is not going to be stopped until the world sees that women are doing this too can it be stopped.. use terms such as "they".. "their".. "these personality disorders".. we will not have it seen if half are hidden..
I often alternate s/he pronouns in my articles. If you had read the next sentence you would have found that to be the case. I've changed the wording to avoid further confusion. As so many of us know all too well, both men and women can be narcissists and both men and women can be traumatized by narcissistic abuse. Article after article on my site illustrates that reality. Point of fact going by the most recent data, 6.2 percent of the general population is estimated to have NPD, with 7.7 percent male and 4.8 female, so it is somewhat gendered, just as BPD seems to be skewed toward women.
I wish the term counter-parenting would be used in articles when discussing this topic. I've heard this term regarding parenting with narcs/npd, etc..
Indeed it feels like counter-parenting.
please advise me,, I have a 24 year old,, she is not his biological child,, but she was 8 when he arrived,, he immediately started mocking slandering etc me,, and inviting her to join him. over the years,, it has slowly evolved into a them against me,,he uses her to attack me if I stand up to his abuse. I try to tell her to stay out of it.. to her this feels like I do not care about her feelings. I have been in counselling for a few years and the counsellor keeps telling me to bring her in.. I cannot get her to come. He has her convinced that the counsellor just wants to support me and not listen to her. He takes responsibility for nothing. nothing is his fault,, I made him do whatever it is he claims is the problem. She now thinks like him,,, I am the problem. This is my own child. what do I do. how can I stop this abuse. I need to find a way to stop what is happening so I can cut ties.
I'm so sorry. This is a very painful situation. I am not a therapist, and I don't know your situation beyond the little bit you have described here. It seems to me you may need to cut ties with him first, assert healthy boundaries for your own well-being, and give your daughter a chance to see things in a different light. It sounds like he has done some pretty heavy brain washing on her. As an adult, it is up to her to figure out what the truth is. She may need time, but if she sees you living a healthier life and not putting up with abuse, she is more likely to respect you and consider your point of view. You need to model self-respect for your own and her sake.
Thank you so much. This article is incredibly helpful. I've been divorced 12 years but it has taken a long time for me to understand what exactly I was dealing with.
I'm glad it's helpful, Michelle.
I have parallel parenting with a textbook narcissistic ex. This article makes all of the insanity, make sense. Thank you. I have two children one is the scapegoat, the other is the golden child. All my ex's problems are somehow my fault...The projecting is constant, as is the parental alienation....Luckily during the divorce he didn't want the daily drudgery of childcare so they live with me primarily, he never even fought for them one iota more then the absolute minimum time (but he fought for $$) so that diminishes how much time he spend with them. I wish there was more I could do to protect my kids, but as it is, I just tell myself that they don't spend all that much time with him and because of that it could be worse.
This sounds almost identical to my situation! One point of difference is that the golden child/scapegoat change depending on where the kids are at in age/manipulabilty.
Indeed it could be so much worse. You and your kids are very fortunate that he did not fight you for custody and that you have primary care for them. Be well.
I would appreciate if you could elaborate or even do an article on #8 under Parallel Parenting Do List:
8. Do be as honest as you can (age-appropriately) with your kids about your family situation.
One of the things that my husband and I struggle with is saying anything at all but both of us feel it may be important to speak up to some degree with the kids so they are not left with the ideal or belief that what their Mom is saying is true, accurate, etc. How to do this without sounding like you're running her under a bus.
Thank you.
Hi Melanie. Helping kids cope in this situation is so difficult. There needs to be a book on this subject. My book on the narcissistic family is coming out next year, October 2019, and it will include more info on this issue, which I may post here before then.
I tend to do the don't'
s and not to the do's. I know I'm wrong, I feeded him off so much already. Please help me, how do rectify all of this now. He already probably thinks I weak, crazy and a failure. I stopped replying to his text's when he asks anything related our child. He waits outside when he comes to pick daughter up and if she's late he text's but I ignore it. Then he leaves. So ultimately, this also shows me wrong. :(
My 14 yrs old son called and wants to leave home from his mother and 19 yr old brother, he's very on happy and feels threaten, moon is in the military and has been unreasonably yelling and making false claims and believe s she has the right to keep my son from me and has been very narcissistic.
To the point he dose not want to be in her home and wants to be with me but I have been struggling with sustainable home and work
But have a place you can stay safe part of our church and Mom insists on taking him what can I do ?????
I have a job I have taken the day off to go and find a way to place a stay away until I can afford to go to courtI want my son to be safe and not placed with people he doesn't know not placed in some kind of state or government program I'm fully capable of loving him caring for him and being right financing is a problem at the moment I am working on obtaining a family law lawyer but I need to protect him now