The Narcissist Hated Being Married - Why Are They Attacking Me in Court?
The detached, cold, disconnected narcissistic partner and parent often bring extra fire to the custody fight. But why?
Common sense would dictate that a detached narcissist, one who uses cold-shouldering, neglect, and silent treatments to control a partner, would be just fine with divorce. So why do so many survivors find that the narcissists who were the least involved in working on the marriage or family fight tooth and nail to create chaos and pain in the family court system?
Why Do Narcissists Get Married?
It’s important to remember why narcissists get married.
They do NOT get married to:
Give and receive selfless intimacy
Give and receive comfort through life’s griefs and joys
Share life’s responsibilities as a mature adult in a partnerhood
Grow and blossom as a human
Learn more about themselves as individuals and support their spouse in learning more about themselves
Express themselves romantically and sexually within the safety of a lifelong commitment
Experience deep, trusting friendship.
No, narcissists usually get married because of image management or in order to fulfill a self-imposed societal or familial expectation.
Why Do Narcissists Fight Divorce?
When you divorce a narcissist, you are preventing them from fulfilling the management of their image - the image that was meeting a self-imposed societal or familial expectation. You are no longer doing your job as a prop in the image that they constructed in order to get what they want. You are now enemy number one.
Further, by initiating the divorce, the narcissist may feel that you’re damaging their image. You’re making them look undesirable and they will often get to work at damage control using smear campaigns to make sure that everyone and anyone knows that if you left them, it wasn’t due to anything they did.
What if the Narcissist is Begging Me to Stay?
Sometimes survivors mistakenly believe that a detached narcissist’s reaction to divorce papers - including intense emotions, stalking, harassment, or even violence, are signs that the narcissist can change. They may interpret the intensity of the narcissist’s behavior to mean that they truly love the victim and cannot handle life without them.
But the reality is that the narcissist doesn’t want to lose control. And this becomes evident if the survivor continues to live by the boundaries of separation and divorce.
Narcissistic abusers will switch over from begging the victim to stay, to harassing and threatening the victim for leaving, at a moment’s notice. This is when post-separation abuse begins and survivors absolutely need support at this point if they haven’t gotten it yet.
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Divorcing a narcissist? Welcome, you've come to the right place.
The fine print: I am not qualified to give you (or anyone) legal advice, I recommend consulting with your attorney. Your attorney is your voice and your advocate in the family court system.
About me: My name is Tina Swithin. I am a survivor and I am a mom who "gets it.” While acting as my own attorney, I successfully protected my children in a system that is best described as “inhumane,” I am a blogger, a divorce coach and a fierce advocate for reform in the family court system. I divorced a narcissist and I prevailed. You can read more about me here.
