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[quote=Anonymous]I'm so sorry that you find yourself in this difficult place with your family relationships. Narcissists can cause a great deal of pain for their families. It's truly an awful thing. I'm not an expert by any means, just a person who has also tried to negotiate these difficult relationships in a way that feels healthy and fair for me. I'll try to explain my understanding of the "by the book" way to cope.

Your MiL, like all narcissists, is using other people to feel better. The histrionic displays to her sons help to focus attention on her. Externalizing blame on you means that she does not have to consider the conditions she has created in her own life that contribute to her feeling upset. If you all choose to play along, you may be able to temporarily calm the waters. (Sometimes it's very, very temporary before the next explosive bit of anger comes.) However, none of the three of you caused her pain, can cure it, or can control it. At best, your interactions with her are a temporary balm. The cost of soothing MiL is allowing her to direct emotional abuse at you -- even if it's indirectly through conversations with your husband. (By the way, you may want to set a boundary and ask that your husband not relay the content of his communications with his mother to you. It allows his mom to achieve her end goal, manipulation and control by upsetting you.)

It is completely rational to say "I quit" in response to being on the receiving end of abuse. Healthy relationships are a two-way street. Without the obligation and guilt of a family connection, you would never maintain a connection with someone else who called your husband to lay blame on you for things that happened five years ago. "Larla called to say that she hasn't forgotten how you made her cry that one time. Also you seem to favor your other friends over her. Would you like to go to dinner with her on Friday night? Maybe a movie afterwards?" You wouldn't think twice about turning down that invitation. Similarly, you can let yourself off the hook for Easter. You never have to volunteer for abuse. And you have experienced enough to know that it i[i]s[/i] abuse. But be aware that people who behave poorly don't like new boundaries, so they tend to lash out when they are put in place. MiL may try to send the message that she has been generous, kind, or even a martyr in the past, which should cancel out the negative interactions. You know that these small kindnesses do not excuse or cancel out the abuses.

It sounds like you understand well that you cannot control your husband's reaction to his mom. If you haven't already, learn about the abusive cycle. It can explain why some people are not ready to abandon their abusers, parents included. I have heard it said that cult deprogramming might be a better approach than therapy to help some people break off relationships with their abusers. Given this understanding, I think you already know that you have to let DH make his own choice about attending Easter dinner. DC is a trickier question. Personally, I've seen how personality disorders affect families through generations, and my bias is toward whisking children away from exposure as soon as possible. Even when the child isn't targeted by the abuser, I think there are too many twisted lessons learned by observing the tension between the abuser and her victims. Other people feel differently for other reasons. If it helps, here is a guide with age-appropriate ways to talk to children about personality disordered people in their family: [url]http://outofthefog.website/what-to-do-2/2015/12/5/talking-to-kids[/url].

When you dig into it, there are a lot of good resources for dealing with N's. Have you tried [i]Disarming the Narcissist[/i]? Also highly recommended is [i]Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare[/i]. Both books have strategies you can use to protect yourself. You may also want to learn about the covert passive-aggressive narcissist, which is the category that many high-functioning parents who weren't physically abusive fall into. There are many YouTube videos on the topic, including this great one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAybjXhcVc0. [/quote]

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