Hold My Halo and Pass the Wine

If you have ever been in a relationship with a narcissistic person, then the experiences I write or will soon write about should sound familiar, specifically the next experience I am about to share. Before I started on my journey of discovery into what was happening in my marriage, why was it ending, who was this person I was married to, and why was he so cruel, I thought I was on an island, isolated and alone. No one else seemed to get this “wife thing” as poorly as I did. Why were things so hard? Why were holidays hard, family plans, vacations, even birthdays always ending with my husband upset with me? Okay, fine I will be honest. He was not just upset with me, he was usually raging at me once we were alone. And why was I never getting it right?

Soon after starting that journey, I read a book, Healing from Hidden Abuse. That book led to many other books. Those books led to a few social media posts. The posts led to content creators sharing their stories of survival. This introduced me to large support communities. I was shocked to discover I was, in fact, far from alone in what I was experiencing. I was amazed to find not just one person but many people who had lived and understood what I was experiencing. Hundreds of people who knew what I was surviving.

Let’s talk special events.

Pre-Divorce

I did not know what I did not know. (Yes, I know I have said this many times, but here we acknowledge the truth.) Throughout the relationship with my ex-husband, both during the dating years and the married years, the pattern never became clear until I started to learn about the reality I was living.

My mom liked to have family dinners, and so she would schedule these around our schedules; okay, really it was his schedule. She would plan to make foods that my husband liked. Yet every time, he would cancel. Unexpected late night at work, a migraine, or had to mow the yard. There was always something that would suddenly come up. On the rare occasion that he did attend with me, we would have to leave as soon as he was finished eating.

Birthdays. For his birthday, I was expected to plan what we did. Yet, no matter what I planned, he would find something wrong with it. The restaurant is too busy, it’s too hot outside to eat wings, or he just doesn’t “feel like eating that tonight”. I was always reminded how we were on a budget, but he would ask for days before his birthday what was I buying him for his birthday. All of this, every year, I would then be told how I ruined his birthday because I did not care enough to plan something for him, or I spent too much money on his gift followed by an onslaught of name-calling and degrading comments.

For my birthday, I was expected to plan what we did. If he bought me a gift, he never forgot to make the comment that we had a joint bank account so him buying me a gift was really me buying something for myself. But, if he did buy a gift for me, it was last minute, usually just flowers from a grocery store. Not they were not appreciated, but the lack of planning was hurtful. If I would bring this up to him, he would brush it off, and then start asking me what I had done for him? Was I too stupid to understand that he works all day and he didn’t have time to go to the store? The conversation was never successful in him hearing my feelings. Instead it would turn into how hard he worked, how lazy I was, and all I had to do was tell him what I wanted to do on my birthday, but I purposefully set him up to fail. I would start crying, he would storm outside to his garage, and the night would end with my apologizing and him responding with the silent treatment.

Holidays were not different. Every holiday there was complaining, arguing, and sometimes even pouting. I would muster through the day, put on a happy face, but nothing ever seemed to just go “fine”. My family lived two hours away from us, while his larger family all lived within twenty to thirty minutes of us. For my family to celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving together with us, schedules had to revolve around what he and his family had available. He would complain the entire drive how he had things to do at home, it was too much for the girls to travel like this, it was too much work, or he was just not “feeling well”. Once there, he would sit on his phone the entire time, talk to no one, and then on the way home rage about how my family completely ignored him by not talking to him, they never made him feel welcome, and if they were going to continue to treat him like this, I would be attending their holidays myself.

I do not remember one holiday, one vacation, not one special event that did not include some argument, silent treatment, perceived conflict, or him just simply being absent. My favorite time of the year became the time of year I dreaded the most. I wasn’t sure why these arguments were happening. What was I doing so wrong that I constantly would upset him? What was I not doing that was upsetting him? I later learned it had nothing to do with me as what I was experiencing is very typical behavior of a narcissistic person. I would also learn that this behavior and treatment not only occurs during the relationship, but if you have to co-parent with this person, it will continue well after the separation.

Post-Divorce

Narcissistic people will always try to ruin your special events, and this happened as recently as two days ago, almost five years after our divorce. I received a message from my ex in our parenting communication app. The message was very basic – he needed to drop something off at my house for our younger daughter and no one would be home, so he would leave it under the doormat. I responded with the expected “sure that will work” and went on about my evening. About two hours later I received another message. I was expecting a follow-up from our earlier conversation to make sure that our daughter had retrieved her envelope as it contained money for her field trip the next day. Instead, I was met with a paragraph of a message on the topic of our eighteen-year-old daughter whom with he has a very strained relationship.

“I’m reaching out to you here for the last time and respectfully asking and I will not bother you again. [Our older daughter] won’t speak/text to me, I’d like to talk to her and be apart of her life. I won’t bother either of you if I don’t get a response from you or [her]. I’ve messaged her since the middle of August, without a response. I’d like to spend time with her. I understand if I don’t get a response either way.”

I was sitting in the driver’s seat of my car getting ready to drive home when I received that message. This was typical. Their relationship was strained due to physical and psychological abuse while we were married and it escalated after we separated. The court inevitably removed his visitation rights with her and ordered “reunification” therapy, which he inevitably sabotaged and quit going.

I closed the app, started my car, and began the thirty-minute drive home. I would re-read it once I got home, and assess if his message required a response.

I never got the chance to respond. As I pulled into my driveway, our younger daughter’s phone rang with a phone call from him. She answered, and had him on speaker. We were both still sitting in the car, and mouthed to me to stay. His first question to her, “Are you by yourself?” She responded that she was and had just gotten home from her volleyball game. The next words to come out of his mouth felt like punch in the chest. “Well I messaged your mom about your sister, but she got shitty with me.”

Five years. Five years I have been out of our marital home. Five years I have not stood in this man’s presence alone. Five years and I was still healing from what he put me through. And now after five years, I had let go of a lot of pain, fear, and honestly anger. Now here he was blatantly lying to our daughter! I had not been “shitty” with him! I had not even had the chance to respond yet, and I definitely was not going to now. I sat the rest of the conversation and listened. For about nine minutes, the only topic he talked about was going to see an attorney first thing in the morning. He had to make changes to his will. He was only leaving money to her and his girlfriend. For nine minutes, he never asked her about her volleyball game that night, how here day went, was she excited about the upcoming Homecoming Dance, nothing but how he was writing her sister off and it was her mother’s fault. She eventually told him she needed to hang-up and get ready for bed, and ended the call.

She looked at me after, made a comment to me to not get upset about what he said, and got out of the car. I sat there for a few seconds, then picked up my phone and called my mom. I needed to vent. Why was I so angry? I mean, I was beyond angry – I felt rage! I told my mom the conversation that had just taken place, also shared with her how slurred his speech was so he was obviously intoxicated at 8:30 at night. But I was angry and why was I so angry?! She listened to me finally burst into tears. I was “being good”. I was “staying in my lane”. I was not initiating non-vital communication with him. I was leaving him alone. And yet I was the one being “shitty”. All the feelings I had felt when we were married were flooding back full force and they were not letting me push me them back down. The feelings of not being good enough, never doing anything right, and the ultimate debilitating feeling that I was going crazy. He was lying! Then my mom said something to me, something I should have seen, that snapped me out of my near mental breakdown.

“You know what he is doing. Tomorrow is your birthday, and he is just trying to ruin it.”

Suddenly everything came into focus. I felt calm return to my brain and my body. How did I miss the obvious. It was his pattern.

• My first birthday out of that house he had scheduled a vacation with our daughters and his girlfriend on one of my weekends that was also my birthday. [He of course canceled one week before his “trip”.]

• My second birthday out of the house there were events the girls’ had and he called to tell them they were not going because it was his time and he never agreed to them continuing in their activities after we divorced, but he then canceled his time that weekend the next day.

• The third birthday out, he sent messages insinuating that I was not complying with court orders and I would be served within the next few days. No paperwork ever came.

• The fourth year out he took a reverse approach. He actually had parenting time on my birthday, but messaged me hours before his scheduled time to say that he was going to “allow our daughters” to stay with me since it was my birthday and he would not be using his parenting time that evening. [It was later shared with me that he had in reality been out of town for the past few days two hours away with his girlfriend and not even available to access his parenting time, but I enjoyed the extra time so that was his choice.] His last minute cancellation was simply an effort to interfere with any plans he hoped I had made.

The pattern was continuing. He was now trying to bait me into an argument about why he should not “write-off” our older daughter. An argument with zero odds of me “winning”, and was only going to open the door for him to then play the victim.

It was in this moment I realized that yes, this was probably going to be at least the next three years of my life until our youngest also turned eighteen. I also realized in that moment that if this pattern was going to continue, I was in control of how I chose to handle these situations. For years I was robbed of cheerful holidays, happy family memories, the simple joy of spending time with both my family and his. I couldn’t have nice things when it came to the holiday season and any other special events for years. Learning this pattern of behavior and how it relates to special events in my life has allowed me to navigate these situations better, to set healthy boundaries, and to not get so caught up in his attempts to create conflict and chaos.

I will never be capable of controlling how he treats me, speaks to me, his involvement with our children, or his actions. But I am completely capable of controlling how I respond to his behavior, his accusations, and his attacks. I am also in control of seeing the patterns of behavior and learning to simply expect what will be coming and mentally prepare myself to not take anything he projects at me personally. I have regained my power by refusing to give him the tiniest bit of power over me. I am in control of my happiness and so now, I enjoy all of the nice things.