Narcissistic Revenge

What can’t the narcissist let go of needing revenge.  It has been over 5 years since I left and divorced him.  He has remarried and moved on, yet it seems he cannot let go of his incessant need to prove to the world I’m a crazy ogre so he can be devillainized and all in the world will be set right again; his tarnished armor will shine bright and the mask of illusion will be firmly back in place.  I have read and been told that narcissist don’t forget, they like revenge, and that my “outing” of him added to his narcissistic injury.  My “outing” was what I shared with family and a few close friends as to why I left and 4 years of sharing with a domestic violence support group.  I feel the real “outing” to him was my education in understanding the narcissistic personality disorder; how they think and having the vocabulary to call by name the tactics he uses to abuse.   I exposed him not to the world but to myself.  I saw beyond the illusion and façade; he was unmasked and vulnerable and that is not a position a narcissist likes to be in.  

I was reading all of the email exchanges between us and the one common thing is that his anger is constant.  They contain blame, threats, character assassination, and he always refers to the delusional realty I live in.   I’m delusional and crazy so anything I say can have no truth or fact.  It is interesting how everything he ever did has been diminished or erased and our history re-written.  I am the villain and he is the poor victim. 

His plot for revenge will be through our child; it is the only thing still connecting us.    I have been told I’m an unfit mother since the day she was born.  He has used parental alienation since our child’s memory serves her.   My daughter is 16 and I’ve been struggling with her for 4 years and he’s using this struggle to extract his revenge.  I asked for help in getting our daughter to see a therapist and his reaction was an email to our daughter “You don’t need counseling, your mother is poisonous and you need to get a way from her.  She lives in her own reality, lies, and is a miserable person.”  The irony is that he told me in an email I would have to live with myself for destroying the the father/daughter relationship with lies and manipulation and yet that's exactly what he did!

So, how many years of wasted energy will he put into discrediting me to our child, my family and a few select friends so that he can wear the crown of “the wronged, hurt victim?” 

Passive Agressive

The definition of a passive aggressive personality is “A personality disorder in which aggressive feelings are manifested in passive ways, especially through stubbornness, procrastination, and inefficiency so as to resist adequate social and occupational performance.” My first experience with passive aggressive behavior was with my ex husband who was clinically diagnosed as a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I have always associated that behavior with a narcissist. I did not know that passive aggressive behavior can be a disorder all on its own. The difference with a narcissist and a person with passive aggressive disorder is that the narcissist knows what they are doing and the passive/aggressive person does not. This does not excuse the behavior because both are very abusive whether they know what they are doing or not. 

I believe my daughter is passive aggressive. I feared she was narcissist because the way she treats and interacts is so parallel with the way my narcissistic ex treated me, but she has empathy and compassion so how could she be a narcissist. I ended a friendship a while ago because it was toxic and I even used the words passive aggressive to describe it, in my head I still associated it with narcissism and I knew she was not a narcissist. The conversations with my sister regarding her boyfriend’s behavior were the key to my understanding of passive aggressive disorder. My sister’s description of her boyfriend was very narcissistic from my experiences, yet my sister also described a very loving, gentle and giving man; how could he be both? I started to research passive aggressive behavior outside of a narcissistic personality disorder and learned it’s a disorder all on its own. When I shared the information with my sister it helped her understand his behavior although it did not save the relationship. It allowed her to let it go emotionally, because she realized it was not going to change and it was unhealthy for her to stay. 

There is no cure or treatment for narcissism, you can’t teach someone to have empathy and compassion other than to mimic it. Passive aggressive disorder on the other hand can be treated and cured, but the individual has to want to get help; directly or indirectly. They have to learn how to deal with anger in more healthy ways and address and change the way they react. I believe my daughter’s experience growing up in a home with abuse that she has developed ways of avoiding feeling or confronting her anger. She does not know how to talk about conflicts, frustrations, hostility and anything else she thinks is unfair. Our home environment while I was married was one where we walked on eggshells, we both were not allowed to communicate our anger without retaliation and only he was allowed to rage at us and we were to remain silent; both our voices silenced and paralyzed.

The common denominator between a narcissist and the passive aggressive is that they use bullying tactics both covert and overt to control, manipulate, divert, project, blame and to gain power over. The problem I’m having with a passive aggressive child is how it is affecting my life. “Bullying is not limited to physical violence. It is a prolonged pattern of negative and repeated behaviors that overwhelm the target, degrading him or her to the point of powerlessness. It is an imbalance of power that, over time, wears down the intended target.” 

I'm at my wits end. I desperately want my daughter in therapy and when I reached out to my ex husband (narcissist) as a last resort for support it was just an opportunity for him to prove once again that his hate for me is stronger than his love for her.