Co-Parenting with a Narcissist

You come to realize that co-parenting with a narcissist is a wishful fantasy and that fantasy will dispel quite quickly after divorce. I naively thought with a little distance and time we could have an amicable relationship regarding our daughter. I quickly realized that was never going to happen; just wishful thinking on my part. To him I committed an act of treason by leaving him and my retributive punishment is trying to take the one thing that means most to me, my child.

During the marriage he never supported me as a part of a parent team. Anytime I laid down some form of punishment for our daughter’s bad behavior (timeout or losing an object and/or privilege); instead of supporting me he would look at our daughter and say “I don’t agree with your mother.” What kind message did that send to our child? Basically, it told our child that my voice didn’t matter and she didn’t have to listen to me. He constantly eroded at my character with our daughter by telling her since her memory serves her that I was a bad parent, crazy, loser, that I never wanted her and many other derogatory names. He knowingly was trying to alienate and sabotage my relationship with our daughter. Now, after being divorced for almost 4 years, it hasn’t stopped. Every time she visits, he constantly belittles and berates me to our child. What he doesn’t realize is he’s destroying any relationship he will have with his daughter in the future. As she said in her own words “She’s slowly disconnecting herself from her father.” I think she’s watched him for far too many years portray himself to the general public as a friendly, caring and nice person, but behind closed doors she has witnessed something else. He is the master at lying, manipulative, deceitful, and his only purpose is to hurt others to get what he wants and he will sacrifice anyone including her to save face. I think our daughter has learned the hard way that what she wants has never been important to him; he only cares about the outward perception. It’s hard to watch what he does and only offer support and unconditional love; forced to bite my lip as not to say anything that could be construed as negative in regards to her father. I will not play his parental alienation game and my only concern is what’s in the best interest of our child. My daughter has had to mature faster emotionally than most children because of abuse and it’s not right and I can’t change it, but I can give her as many life tools as I can so that she isn’t left permanently scarred by her father.

You don’t co-parent with a narcissist. I learned the hard way that you can’t communicate with them, it’s like pounding your head against a brick wall which will only leave you upset, frustrated and with a large headache. They will try to provoke you at every turn and I've just learned to take the punches without retaliation. The only thing you can do is set your personal boundaries even though he will not respect them; it’s for you. I've learned to limit communication to email and texting. I've learned not to react to his threats and attacks. I will admit I have on occasion reacted and learned very quickly that it will only leave you with the short end of the stick. I've come to terms knowing he will not change and it will never get any easier; I just hold on to the fact that in 3 more years my daughter will be 18 and my legal responsibility to him in regards to shared custody is done and seeing that light at the end of the tunnel is what keeps me silent most of the time.