Navigating Divorce from a Narcissist

This week, we’re diving into one of the most challenging experiences a parent can face: navigating divorce from a narcissistic partner. Sharing insights from leading experts like Dr. David E. Clark, along with my own journey, we explore the devastating impact of narcissistic parenting and how it can dismantle relationships with your children. But don’t worry—you’re not alone, and there is hope.

If you’ve been through the heartache of co-parenting with a narcissist or are struggling to find your footing in the midst of it, this episode is here to help. Together, we unpack strategies to regain your strength, build connection with your kids, and reclaim your life. 

Episode Highlights:

[3:25] - Reading Dr. David E. Clark’s insights on narcissistic parenting and its devastating effects.
 [8:45] - The power dynamics of narcissistic abuse: control, smear campaigns, and spoiling children.
 [14:10] - Personal stories: witnessing the loss of connection with my daughter.
 [18:00] - Rebuilding relationships with your children despite narcissistic interference.
 [21:15] - Finding hope and clarity in the long-term journey to healing.
 [25:00] - Closing thoughts and how to share your own story or connect for support.

Links & Resources:

Dr. David E. Clark’s website: https://www.davideclarkephd.com/ 

Be sure to follow, share, and leave a comment if this show resonates with you! Send me a message at podpage.com/themusicoflife to share your experiences, or to leave a comment. I'd love to feature it in a future episode.

Transcript

Caryn Portnoy: 0:06

Karen, hi everyone, and welcome to the music of Life. I'm your host. Karen Portnoy, before I get into this episode, please comment, ask questions, share some of your experiences, and don't forget to subscribe. You. I wanted to start off this episode by first saying that this is going to be really tough to listen to. It's going to be just as tough for me to talk about. But if you're a parent going through a divorce from a narcissist, it's going to be excruciating. There are many experts in the field, leading experts that talk about narcissism. I know Dr Ramani, I believe is the the leading expert, but I know that there were many beyond her that I've listened to, that I've resonated with, I seem to be connecting, at the moment with Dr David E Clark, PhD, who I've referenced in earlier episodes. I have two things I want to read from him that I thought were appropriate for this episode. The first one, he says, the narc calls you crazy and will tell others, many others, including your kids, that you're crazy, you're unstable, mentally ill. You're bipolar. Come to find out, your hormones are all out of whack. You have dementia. You're not the crazy one. He's the crazy one. Anyone who tries to tell you you're the crazy one is the crazy one. And I went up against this for three whole years. It's truly amazing. The second one that I want to talk about, this really ran deep for me, and I may comment on what he's saying after I read what he says. There were many, many things here that ran true for me, and I will just say that for three years that we lived together, and I watched him systematically dismantle my entire relationship with my daughter right in front of my eyes, with no ability to do anything about it. And you'll hear why again. This is from Dr David E Clark, PhD, the narc hurts your children. The narc is far worse than a bad parent. He ruins your kids and he turns them against you. Here, I'll describe the MARC five abusive parenting patterns. The content here comes from my new ebook. My marriage hurts. Am I living with a narcissist? If you know someone living with an arc who doesn't realize she or he is living with an arc, get this ebook and send it to them. It could save the person years of abuse of her and her children. You can only get this ebook in one place. David E Clark, phd.com, and Clark is spelled with an E. Let's look at the narc and his abusive parenting. The narc intensely pursues three goals in his parenting. One, first, he wants to completely win over your children. He wants them to love him, adore Him, worship Him. Second, he wants to control your children. To control you isn't enough. He certainly wants that. But that isn't enough. He wants to be the sole authority in your child's life, making all of the parental decisions and Xing you out. God, did I see this loud and clear, we have 5050, joint legal custody, and he still went rogue and made decisions without my knowledge or consent. Third and most important of all, the narc wants to turn your children against you, since he's a narc, being preferred by them, being their favorite parent, even though he wants that isn't nearly enough. He wants your children to reject you and ignore you and to have no relationship with you, and he'll spend years and years making that happen, turning them against you. I can't tell you how many ladies I've talked to in my phone advice sessions who have lost their children pre teen, teen adults. He's won them over. Now to achieve these three goals, the narc will use five abusive parenting patterns. All narc use the first one with the other four patterns. It depends on the individual narc how many he chooses to employ. Number one, first of all, Mr. Smear campaign, the narc openly, right in front of you and your children, abuses you. In fact, he wants the children to watch while he tears you down. He criticizes you, mocks you, yells at you, falsely accuses you. He gives you the. Silent treatment. He gaslights you. Your children watch you being abused and you doing nothing about it, so they lose respect for you. They lose love for you. They don't listen to you. They begin to abuse you too, which is exactly what the narc wants. The NARC, privately, when you aren't present, tells your kids lies about you. You may find out about some of them later on. Here's what he's saying to your kids right now, if you're with an arc, mom isn't smart. Mom is too hard on you. Mom doesn't love you. Mom told me you're a difficult child. Lies. Mom told me, You will never amount to anything. What a devastating message. And he convinces them that you said that mom is not stable. You know what? Mom is mentally ill, mom is crazy. Mom is having affairs. Mom is bipolar. The narc is relentless and tells these lies over and over, for years, eventually, your children believe his lies about you. Next, Mr. Spoiler, this narc spoils your children by giving them gifts, toys, clothes, a later bedtime, the ability to watch TV, play video games, watch all the content they choose on their screens, do social media till their hearts content. It is just wide open how he's winning them over. He gives them the choice to drink alcohol, use drugs, date whoever they want, have premarital sex, change their sex. He doesn't care by giving them total freedom to do whatever they want, the narc is the good guy. And guess who is the bad guy? That would be you. He is the hero and you are the villain. He is the generous and loving one, and you are mean and rigid. He trusts them and you don't. Number three, next, Mr. Harsh, this type of narc abuses your children just like he abuses you. He doesn't spoil them. He's vicious to them. He's critical, demanding, verbally abusive. Cannot be pleased, and applies harsh discipline for small, trivial mistakes, just like you, your children become trauma bonded to him because you cannot stop his abuse of them. They resent you. Your own children resent you and blame you for his abuse. You've got nothing to do with it. They identify with him, the abuser, and keep trying to please Him, win his approval and change him. Your children side with the parent who has the voice and the power, no matter how mean and abusive that parent is. Number four, next, Mr. Golden Child. Some of you are living this nightmare, this narc chooses one child to be his special favorite one. If it's a son, he'll groom the boy to be a narc, just like him. If it's a girl, he'll groom her to be a pseudo wife to replace you. Boy or girl, the golden child basks in his approval, loves him unconditionally, sees him as perfect and works hard to please him. I remember throughout the three years we were living together. He treated her like a surrogate wife. I always said that she was his surrogate wife. He discussed things with her. She's 15. He should not have discussed things with her, about me, about the divorce, anything like that. She's still a child number five. Finally, Mr. Scapegoat, this narc chooses one child to be his scapegoat, his enemy. This child, who could be a boy or a girl, is usually the child most like you in looks and personality. So of course, he hates them. The narc hates you, and he hates this kid too. Mr. Scapegoat, ignores this child, rejects this child, mocks this child, shames this child spends no time with this child erupts in anger at this child on a regular basis. Everything this child does and says just triggers him, just like you, despite being mercilessly rejected, this child becomes closely tied to the narc in the trauma bond, this child will spend years, well into adulthood, trying to get out of the scapegoat role and win the narc approval. Sad, our ministry at David E Clark Inc, is not just about saving you from the narc, even though it obviously is, it is also about saving your children from the narc and saving your relationship with your children. If you haven't subscribed to my YouTube channel, do it. Join our team. Help us save spouses and kids from the narc to protect. Your kids and keep the narc from turning them against you. Get my video series from CO dependent to independent, a theme throughout the entire video. Most of the videos is building respect in your kids for you, love in your kids for you, respect and keeping them close to you, even though the narc is turning them against you. This video series is only on my website. David E clark.com, again, it's Clark with an E. So I want to just go back for a second and just point out the things that were directly affecting me based on what I've just read, yes, he wanted to completely win over our daughter, and he worked very hard at doing this, and stopped at nothing until he got her. He definitely wanted to control her. He controlled everything in her life, including her schedule and where she was and who she was with, and where he took her and who picked her up, and he had total control over her life and completely shut me out of it, like I said, he also made parental decisions that should have been by both of us, and he X me. Out of all of that, he went rogue and made decisions that, you know, we still had 5050, legal custody, and it didn't matter to him, he ignored all of that. The entire thing about turning her against me was just brutal, brutal. She and I had been so close. We could not have been closer for the first 12 years of her 15 years alive, and for three years, she just slipped further and further away from me, exactly the way he wanted it to. You know, I said in an earlier episode that he made me insignificant to her and irrelevant and invisible. And that's exactly what he set out to do, and he was successful at doing that, the part where Dr Clark says that he wants your children to reject you, ignore you, and have no relationship with you. I mean, that was so apparent. It was It was unbelievable. The things that came out of her mouth that were his exact words. It was heartbreaking. I remember at one point, I forgot what I said specifically, but I made reference to the fact that I get enough abuse from him. I don't need more. And I didn't even get to finish the sentence before she cut me off and said, he doesn't abuse you. It was the most shocking thing that I heard come out of her mouth that she he had normalized it so much to her, you know, like Dr Clark says, you know, they repeat it over and over again until your kids actually believe it. That's exactly what happened. His favorite line was saying that I would be living in a cardboard box on the street. And even though she said and admitted that she thought it was mean that he said that she was unfazed by it. He said it so much and normalized it so much that she didn't bat an eye after a while. So the Mr. Smear campaign part was like, I mean, I was sick to my stomach when I read this, because not only did he abused me in front of her. You know, I talked in again, in an earlier episode, about this massive smear campaign he took against me, to our friends, to our community, to his family and to her. You know, it's one thing to stand up against all the people outside of my family, meaning the three of us. You know, it wasn't comfortable, it wasn't pleasant, but I stood up against all of them and cut them all out of my life. What am I supposed to do about my daughter, who jumps on board too? I was never going to abandon her in any way, shape or form. Like I said earlier in another episode, I went home every day. I went home every night to be there for her, whether she wanted me there or not, whether we were talking to each other or not. I had to swallow so much shit from both of them, the abuse, the lies, the accusations, the criticisms, the disrespect and so much more. It got to a point where she gaslight me exactly the way he did. She manipulated me just like he did. And for anybody who was married to a narcissist, you know, you have no power, no control, no ability to go up against them and make any change, they're just that overpowering and that overbearing and God, all they want to do is destroy you. And what better way than to use the one thing that that you value and treasure and love the most in your life, your children best way to hurt you and destroy you? I can only imagine the lies that he has told her about me. Me the lies that she believes. So the Mr. Spoiler one was a doozy for me too, as I saw him buy her loyalty and love. I mean, this is a guy who Penny pinched our whole marriage and her whole life about, do you really need that? And it's too much money, and I'm not spending that. And you know, all kinds of things. And now all of a sudden, Mr. Moneybags is spending tons and tons and tons of money on clothes for her, on makeup, on toiletries, you name it, this man says no, and then two seconds later, says yes. So that's a confusing message to any kid, is it No, or is it yes? Eventually, she figured out that that the answer would ultimately always be yes. So she never even listened to the No. You know, we expanded her closet a bunch of years ago into a double wide closet. You know, it wasn't a walk in closet, but it had double the amount of storage that it had originally, and since he was on this quest to spoil her, her closet tended to overflow into other parts of the house because she had no more room in her closet, so we had a bench in the hallway, and her clothes would inevitably overfill the bench. And then the laundry room became another spillover area. So she had the laundry room and and she would hang up clothes, and have clothes hanging all over the drying racks down there. And then also we had a ping pong table, air hockey table and and all of her stuff would be strewn about there too. So it was like there were four different sections of her clothes, just clothes. And she would constantly say to me that she recognized she had too many clothes. What teenager says that? But yet he just kept spending. And when she was 13, and it was around her bat mitzvah time, he bought her a pair of Alexander McQueen designer sneakers, which I don't even know exactly how much they were. I'm gonna guess they were, like six to $700 for sneakers for a 13 year old. I just came to understand that for Hanukkah this year, he's buying her Prada sneakers, which I believe are somewhere around $1,200 for a 15 year old, he buys her clothes as a reward when she gets a good grade. I mean, what happened to just being proud of your kid and praising them and loving them and encouraging them and supporting them because they're doing a great job and working hard in school. Why does it have to be a material item that you spend gobs of money on? I'll never understand that. And that is not how I raised my daughter for the first 12 years of her life, I used to always say to her, there are always going to be people that have more than you, and there are always going to be people that have less than you. You have to be happy with what you have. That's the key to being happy and satisfied in life, the idea that he just does not care about how much screen time she has and social media. He made sure to load her for her phone up with Instagram and Snapchat and Snapchat plus and Spotify. And you know, what else do you want on there, dear. There are no limits. There are no restrictions. There was no monitoring her apps and her social media. He had no clue how to keep her safe, how to adjust her privacy settings, how to adjust her security settings. He just cared that she had a social life on the apps and could communicate with her friends, and he didn't care about safety or anything like that. So when my daughter was in first grade, I remember there was a social media expert that came to present at the middle school, and she was ex law enforcement, and she spent her career going around the country and talking to parents about what these apps are all about, and how to keep your kids safe online and all of those things. And when she was in first grade, I wanted to check it out and see what I had to look forward to and what things I needed to know about, and how these apps worked, and how kids got around their parents, and all those things. And I was, you know, a parent of a first grader in the midst of hundreds of parents who had middle schoolers. So when I would raise my hand and ask questions, you know, the front row of moms would all turn around at the same time and look at me like, What the hell is she doing here with a first grader? But that's how proactive I was. I wanted to know what. What I had to to know about. He had no interest. He had no clue. He had no no interest whatsoever in learning anything about this. So it just, you know, was a good example of of where we each were in the parenting realm in terms of how to keep our kids safe. She'll walk out the front door and he'll let her just kind of walk to a nearby shopping center and no clue about anything. Just, you know, I was not comfortable with that. I would, you know, I would go after her with my car, pick her up, and take her where she wanted to go. I wasn't comfortable with her walking alone outside at night to the shopping center with no money, and at that point, I don't think he even knew how to track her location. But I'm the bad parent. I'm the villain, and it's interesting how she would manipulate her phone so that I couldn't track her location, and she would shut it off at convenient times, until it got to the point where I would say to her, Look, you don't have to have your location on for me when you're with with him, but when you're with me, I want your location on for those times that I did offer her freedom and independence. I wanted to make sure that I could tell where she was and if I was, you know, sending her somewhere to, you know, if she wanted to take a walk somewhere, and I knew where that place was, and I knew that she would be safe. I still wanted her location on so if she wanted to continue doing those things. She needed to make sure it was on. But I was clear with her, when you're not with me, you don't have to have it on for me, and you know, when you're with him, that's, that's his responsibility. So she's come to respect that, that that's a boundary that I have, and she's been abiding by it thankfully. I was fortunate in that I had her for Thanksgiving this year, which also coincided with my parenting weekend with her. So I asked her if she wanted to go away and be with my family for the holiday weekend, and she was thrilled. So she was all on board, and we left Tuesday night, and we came back Sunday today, and while her main priority was to tan, while we were away in the sun, I was getting something out of this too. She was with me. She was with my family, and she hasn't been with them in three years. So, you know, it was a win win for both of us. We got along for I would say, the majority of the time we bonded, we had fun. We, you know, did things that both of us wanted to do. It was a nice time for us to to be close. And there was even one night where we were saying good night to each other, and she said, I love you to me first, which was also a first in three years. So that was an added bonus. I recognize that our relationship is mostly two steps forward and one step back, but, you know, I'm hopeful that the trajectory of our relationship will continue to move forward, at least, and as she matures and gets older, I do have faith that she will ultimately see the truth for what actually happened over these last three years, and maybe she'll get some clarity, and maybe she'll see the truth. And who knows? It could take a year. It could take five years. It could take, you know, not until she's a mother herself. I don't know, but you know, a mother's love runs deep. My patience is spot on. Finally, I've mastered that. I'm willing to wait as long as it takes for her to see the truth, the truth about me, the truth about him, and not by me telling her anything. I am very intentional in the fact that when I'm with her and when I'm connected to her, I want her to see me for who I am, honestly, truthfully, transparently, authentically. This is who I am, and it's not about trashing him, and one day, she'll be able to look back and recognize that. I'm sure of it. No time soon, though, please join me next Thursday for another episode. Please Like, follow, share, comment if there's someone that you think could really benefit from this episode. I would love for you to share it with them. I know of so many people who are going through this and are suffering so badly, just screaming for a life raft, somebody to help them navigate these waters, because it is just unbearable. I went through a two and a half year. Healing journey, a very intense healing journey. At the same time I was being abused, and it's not something that most people could go through. And the fact that I survived it, and I'm now on the other side of it, I want to be the voice to help people, to help bring them out of the suffering that they're going through. And if I could go through this and heal from it. So can anybody out there? I appreciate your listening, and I'll see you next week. Please join me every Thursday for a new episode. I invite you to comment, like, share, subscribe. You can reach me at the music of life, five. Five@gmail.com with any questions or stories or experiences or anything that you want to share with me, I'd be happy to talk about it on another episode. You can check out my website@podpage.com slash the music of life. You