Reply to Can a narcissist ever stay married and be a good enough spouse?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Reading these messages -- I'm terribly sorry for all who are going through this, but I'm also grateful to find that I am not alone. What I am reading mirrors what I am experiencing, and it is hell on earth.

A couple posters have mentioned therapy/therapists. Is there any posters in NOVA who can recommend a good therapist for this, especially in the case of a going-nowhere divorce from a narc?

Thank you.[/quote]

Wish I had a rec for you.

Unfortunately it seems that many professionals are not only skeptical of the covert narcissist type but even unaware or vulnerable to their tactics. I came out of an attempt to seek help being told that I needed to adapt my expectations and communication style and that I wasn’t being sufficiently accommodating of my STBX’s different learning style. It set me back many years and was in its own way something that compounded the abuse I experienced.

I want to also add that if you anticipate a contentious divorce or custody fight, your spouse can and will use both your own therapy and their therapy against you. [/quote]

Would a narcissist be able to use content from these therapies or just the fact of being in therapy?  Are therapists ever brought into court to make a statement?[/quote]

This is complicated and probably very specific. Regarding court, we have only been able to subpoena frequency and existence of visits and a psychological diagnosis from other providers.

How my STBX used therapy:

-secretly went to therapy and shared what appears to be a very distorted/edited history of our shared life. Maybe with some kind of manipulative future plans but more likely just to get validation and supply
-used the fact that he went to therapy to show during the custody evaluation that he was in touch with his feelings and “doing the work”
-I refused therapy when he begged for couples counseling the day he filed for divorce; he is trying to use this against me (but I still feel strongly that you do not go to therapy with a person like this)
-used the vocabulary and therapeutic language he picked up from his therapy first to manipulate me during our marriage and then to manipulate psychological testing and conversations with the custody evaluator

Basically someone with this level of disorder is going to use anything in their favor and against the healthy person. You have to remember that they’ve made it through decades of their lives using people and situations to their advantage, and with very little concern for the gap between their made-up version of events vs. the truth. [/quote]

I am so sorry this happened to you, PP. Yes, true narcissists can be very skilled at using the framework of therapy to their own ends. I have thankfully never been married to a narcissist but worked for one and this is exactly what she would do -- used the language of therapy and her own background in therapy to manipulate situations to her benefit, portray others as simply "unevolved" or over-emotional, or dictate how a scenario was described or portrayed after the fact. I would never go into couples therapy with someone like this. They are scary.[/quote]

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