Like many people who have children with a narcissist, I have the misfortune of sometimes having to communicate with the narcissist. I gray rock as much as I can. I don’t take the bait when he falsely accuses me, I don’t defend myself and get pulled into his web of lies, I don’t engage in his mindless arguments. I answer only the questions he needs to know answers for, ignore the things he doesn’t need to know, and keep it to the bare minimum. But still, he is there pushing boundaries. Our court order says he can only email me, so he keeps calling instead. I believe this is because phone calls are harder to keep record of while I can save emails to show his bullying ways. But I also know that ignoring the court order is just one of the ways he tries to show he is always in control. Even though he would like for me to be at his beck and call, I simply will not play along anymore. I don’t live my life just to sit here and answer his phone calls or respond immediately to his email demands. This actually goes fairly well most of the time.
Because he sometimes visits my son, I sometimes have to have personal contact with the narcissist. I hate it every. single. time. I maintain boundaries about when and where we meet, and of course there is no way I will let him in my home even though he keeps gas lighting me by saying there is “no good reason” he shouldn’t be allowed in. Ummm yeah, bullying me viciously, smearing me for years, and nearly killing me is a good reason he can’t come in, but he acts like those reasons don’t exist, and he seems to think that if he tells me there are no good reasons, maybe I will forget reality.
I have arranged visitation weekends so they occur when I have to work. That way, I can minimize my exposure to the abuser and his bullying. It also means that it is often one of my friends who meets him for the visitation exchange. Fortunately, my friends are better at being assertive and standing up to bullies than I was when I was married to narcissist!
Recently, narcissist sent me an email saying he needed my friend’s address to pick up my son. I told him she would just meet him at the police station as usual. (There is no way in hell my friend wants him to know where she lives, and there is no way in hell I’m going to violate her boundaries by telling him!) He continued to push, and I declined to answer his continuing protests. He finally sent me a messaging stating, “don’t ask her if I can come to her house, just tell her I am going to.” That’s how mixed up his head is. He’s so use to demanding and bullying others to get his way, that he started telling me how to do it. Ummm…no. He is perfectly fine going to the police station and it’s closer for him anyway. By now, I am aware that he is only doing this to gain power and prove he is in control. I’m not playing, and I’m certainly not dragging my friend into it!
Last week, he decided he needed my friend’s unlisted phone number in case he wanted to call her. I told him that I could not give him her number, but he could call my number if something came up. (I hate that too, but at least it’s not violating my friend’s privacy.) He was insistent that he MUST have her phone number, so I stopped replying. I’d already answered and the answer wasn’t going to change. So, when my friend met him at the police station, he attempted bullying and intimidating her the way he used to bully me for control. It did not work on her. He continued to tell her that she shouldn’t believe me when I said he was an abuser, and that there was no good reason he shouldn’t have her phone number. She declined and he began raging. She later told me that, despite his raging that I was a liar and he needed her phone number, his bullying behavior didn’t change her mind about believing me ahead of him! 😉
In the next couple hours, he continued to call and harass me to give him my friend’s phone number. I told him no, and he kept using the same arguments over and over. I told him I could ask her, but I was not giving out her information without her permission. He told me that instead of asking her, I should just tell her I was giving him her phone number. Again, no. It’s stunning that he thinks it is okay to just do to people what they have asked us no to do, but that’s a narcissist for you.
Apparently, he had very little interest in seeing my son, because when he couldn’t get my friend’s phone number from either of us, he decided to bring my son home early from the visit. As usual, visits are about controlling me and not about caring for my son. On the plus side, my son was very happy to come home early and told me that all through the next day, so this story had a happy ending.
The amazing part is that you have a friend willing to deal with that.