The Emotionally Abusive Personality: Is She a Borderline or a Narcissist?
If you’re involved with an emotionally abusive woman, at first you probably wondered, “What’s wrong with her?” If you’ve been with her for a significant length of time, you probably now wonder, “What’s wrong with me? Why does she treat me so bad?”
Emotional abuse grinds you down over time and leaves you feeling depressed, anxious, helpless and worthless. You don’t deserve to be treated badly. People who are emotionally abusive typically fall into specific personality types and by types, I mean disorders.
The emotionally abusive cluster B disorders, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD), Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), and Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD), lie on a continuum. Depending on the day, hour, minute or second, your wife or girlfriend may exhibit different characteristics of these personality disorders. They’re all similar flavors of crazy.
So how can you tell if your emotionally abusive girlfriend or wife has Borderline or Narcissistic traits? The following are general rules of thumb I use when trying to tease out the difference.
How do they approach relationships?
The Narcissistic Woman: “Love me–or else.” If you don’t unconditionally accept the NPD and all of her horrible behaviors, you are, as one of my readers describes it, “unforgiving and mean.” She initially charms and then bullies you into loving her. If you reject her or she thinks that you’re criticizing her, you’re treated to a narcissistic rage episode or cold sullen withdrawal and the death stare.
Every now and again, a narcissist will be nice to you, even affectionate. This is because she is:
- about to manipulate you into doing something for her;
- making a public display in order to be seen by others as magnanimous or loving;
- celebrating because she’s duped or tricked you about something; and/or
- lulling you into a false sense of security because she’s about to clobber you again.
In other words, if she’s being nice to you, be afraid. Be very afraid.
The Borderline Woman: “Please love me. I didn’t mean it. Don’t leave me.” Initially, the BPD will mutate into the woman she thinks you want her to be. This ideal fantasy woman has nothing to do with who she is in reality. She’ll do everything in her power to please you in order to make you love her and then the mask starts to crumble.
Can you feel sympathy for her?
The Narcissistic Woman: The NPD woman is a very unsympathetic creature. It’s damned near impossible to feel sorry for her. If she manipulates you into feeling sympathy for her, it’s to get you to let down your guard so she can steamroll you again. They invented the term crocodile tears for NPDs. She cries when she’s terrified of losing control over her half dead mouse–that would be you–or of having her true self exposed.
The Borderline Woman: Even when she’s off the charts crazy, there’s still something sort of pitiful about her. It’s easier to feel sympathy for a BPD, but pity and guilt shouldn’t be the glue that holds a relationship together. Intention does not negate consequence. In other words, even if a BPD woman can articulate, “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” it doesn’t absolve her from the responsibility of having inflicted harm whether it was intentional or unintentional. A person with these issues has a very hard time understanding this.
Is she capable of accepting personal responsibility?
The Narcissistic Woman: She rarely, if ever, admits she’s wrong unless it’s to zing you with a thinly veiled insult. For example, “I thought you were a kind and generous man. I see now that I was wrong.” She never ever takes personal responsibility for her hurtful actions. If you call her on her bad behaviors, she claims it was your fault for pushing her into it (i.e., you deserved it) and you’re a bad man to make a good woman like her act that way. You should be ashamed of yourself!
Alternatively, she’ll use dime store psychology or dogmatic religion to justify her inexcusable behaviors. For example, “A true christian practices forgiveness” or “You have unresolved issues with your mother” or “My therapist said I should do what’s in my heart.” How do you not respond, “You’re kidding, right?” to these kinds of statements.
The Borderline Woman: The BPD will admit what she did was wrong, BUT she’ll follow it up by blaming you for triggering her. That’s not real personal responsibility. It’s what a 5-year old says when they get caught doing something wrong. “Yes, what I did was wrong, but it wasn’t my fault.” The NPD won’t acknowledge any wrong-doing–that’s the difference. The NPD believes she was right to hurt you.
Is she capable of empathy?
The Narcissistic Woman: The NPD is virtually incapable of feeling empathy for others. She is 100% ENTITLED, which means other people’s feelings don’t really matter. There is one exception. If someone else is giving you a hard time, the NPD will say, “Well I never had a problem with ‘Joe.’ He’s always been nice to me. He must be really stressed. You’re probably bringing this on yourself.” The NPD woman shows empathy for others at your expense. She’s a real gem.
The Borderline Woman: BPDs can be guided to feel empathy by reminding them of specific instances when they felt bad, but it’s usually pretty fleeting. Bottom line: A BPD’s emotional distress takes precedence over everything and everyone else, no matter how empathic she may seem to be from time to time.
Is she capable of giving?
The Narcissistic Woman: That would be no, no and no. NPDs are all TAKERS. It’s definitely a one-way street when you’re involved with a narcissistic woman. She may make a show of being kind and generous in front of others, but that’s only because she wants to protect her highly controlled public image. Alternatively, if she does something “generous” it’s because she believes “those are the rules” of etiquette, society or her religion. NPDs are big rules and regulations types. She will then expect to be lavishly acknowledged and praised for her act of generosity (or something as minor as cleaning up after herself in the bathroom) and never lets you forget it.
The Borderline Woman: BPDs are givers, but it comes with a price. It’s part of what I mentioned earlier about doing anything to please you to get you to love them.
Most of the behaviors I’m describing are entirely unconscious. They’re learned at an early age and some of them may be hardwired. Whether she’s more NPD or BPD, both traits are extremely painful and damaging to the people who love them.
by Dr Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD
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Dr Tara J. Palmatier holds a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology and M.Sc. in Counseling Psychology. She has over a decade of experience delivering direct services to diverse populations in a variety of settings. She left the clinical field in 2005 to begin a career in multimedia editing, writing and consulting. Dr Palmatier is presently the principal clinical writer and editor for the Mastering My Life program, which provides confidential guided therapy sessions on a variety of life issues. She also runs her own blog, A Shrink for Men, and a private relationship consultation practice for individuals, primarily men, who are suffering emotional abuse in their relationships. Dr. Palmatier has a strong interest in the application of psychoanalytic theory to the Arts. Her dissertation, Ceci N’Est Pas Une Thèse: An Applied Psychoanalysis of René Magritte (May 2004) examines early childhood parental object loss, incomplete mourning, repetition compulsion and creative outcomes. Dr. Palmatier is a member of the board of directors of the Hospice Education Institute, a member of the American Psychological Association, a former graduate member of the British Psychological Society, and past coordinator of Jungian Seminars in Switzerland. | More from Dr. Tara J. Palmatier
Stumble It!
November 7th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
LR,
***”He is one of the hemophiliacs infected with the Aids virus, via blood products,”****
This must have been a challenge and a half to deal with. My neighbour across the road from my family home was a haemophiliac and he got AIDS when we were just teenagers through blood.
Very sad.
***How do you spot them? A good question. From my limited but real live experience, there are sighs that give them away.***
This was a one and only experience for me (a few years back) so I think it is good to discuss signs to be better prepared.
**** They are very controlling and jealous of your time. Control is paramount to them.*****
I think it is already too late once it gets to this stage.
**** Watch out if they try to keep you from family and friends, because of some perceived challenge to them.*****
Oh yes! Watch out if they try and use your family and watch out when they set you up against your friends and society at large. But not even friends can believe this IMO and if they do, I think they want to stay out of it.
**** They are never wrong, and even in a general discussion, if you present another idea, they feel assaulted. They are always right. Their response is a dead giveaway. They can not discuss things.***
I didn’t get into a intimate relationship in any way so I think this is something it may progress into. Yes? No?
**** They are extremely manipulative. ****
I like the way others here have mentioned threatening suicide. We had a couple of friends we shared and all seemed normal to me. Infact, he seemed to just joke with me and he was chasing another female. We seemed to just be friends as we shared friends.
But he phoned me one day and invited me to his home town with one of my sons. He made out that he was contemplating suicide and somehow I got sucked into this and agreed we would go.
His parents raised his son and the family was lovely. We also spent a night at his friends house for a party and that’s how I met his mates. They were a terrific group of ordinary people to me. On the second day of staying at his mate’s house his mate and another guy were playing with me in a flirtatious way. It was harmless and I felt his friends had considered me a sensible female and mother and I didn’t feel unsafe. I was flattering if anything.
Anyhow ,he attacked one of the guys and the guy hit him pretty hard where he almost lost his sight in one eye. He also starting acting in a very strange controlling way as if he was angry at me. But his friends just ignored his behaviour as if this was normal for him.
When we returned home I wanted to lesson our connection because that is when I realised this was creepy.
He played my son, he played our connected friends and he stalked me.
One of the female friends we both knew kept hounding me to go to the police but I wouldn’t because I felt that would be feeding him and I thought if I just ignored him, it would pass.
But I did go after a few months to enquire what I could do. They phoned him up saying to me, “It will cost you over a $100 for an order but we could just have a word with him”.
Anyhow, the cop came back and told me I had to leave him alone and that he had already gone to the police saying I had threatened to kill him but had decided at this stage he wouldn’t press charges. So now, I was the baddie and he was slowly setting me up as a possible killer.
So I decided I would take a holiday, y’know, have a break; get away from the situation.
When I arrived back home children’s services came to my door and told me they had received one of the worst reports on me as a mother. They told me it was really bad and that because of the seriousness, they were going to have to investigate all my friends to decide whether they were suitable around my children and whether I could be trusted to have my children in my care.
They said they would be accepting to clear this up because of the way the complaint was given. They said, “We get ex partners doing things like this sometimes and we can tell by the way they tell us how to do our job that it is a revenge complaint.”
The most annoying thing was that I had not been in a relationship with this man. He was not a ex anything because he had nothing to be an ex to. I had not even held his hand let alone kissed him or slept with him. Nor had I been out on a date and nor had I given any inclination I was interested in him.
Now all my friends were afraid and I was having to keep them away else they had to have police checks and all sorts. And there was no-one I could turn to.
When he realised I was onto him as the complainant (through the grapevine gossip) he went back to his home town to hide and on Christmas phoned my son offering him more gifts.
That’s when I had to tell his friend what he was doing to me. His friend said, “Don’t think we are all like this”.
That was that. They dealt to him and I never heard from him again and was able to clear my name and save my family. But I lost a few good people in my life over this.
Last I heard he died a couple of years ago. Sad that he was young but I can’t feel sorry for him.
*** And if you ever feel you have to walk on egg shells around them to prevent their anger and manipulation, watch out.***
Yes, I agree. You have to be careful not to get angry because they use it against you.
………
I think I have learnt a valuable lesson and have no problem believing men when they tell me they have been set up by their ex female partners.
I can now imagine what it is like to have orders put on you when they are false accusations and what it is like when the system is set up against you.
And I can understand someone thinking suicide is the only way out and appreciate the work others do to help men and women get away from these people and move on.
November 7th, 2009 at 12:06 am
LR, I must comment on your point, “Watch out if they try to keep you from family and friends, because of some perceived challenge to them.” That statement is true if you include the AND (that is, if they try to keep you from family AND friends, in other words, pretty much in isolation) but bear in mind that there are reasons why a guy (or a woman) might try to keep their SO away from one or the other.
In the case of family, most often it’s a meddlesome or controlling in-law. For example, in the case of my ex-, one of her favorite tricks whenever we had an argument was to jump in the car and go running to her mother. Momma not only did not have sense enough to tell her daughter to try to solve her own issues, but actually seemed to encourage this, and then the two of them apparently had a nice sit-down to discuss what a rotten louse I was. So finally, at one critical point when we’d been separated for a couple months and she desperately wanted to get back together (and I, fool that I was, did not run the other way), my one condition was that we move far enough away from her parents that she couldn’t just jump in the car and go there every time we had a fight. To my surprise she actually agreed to this (I guess I had hoped that would be a deal-breaker and I’d be free of her) and we moved across the state, but you who are wiser can probably guess what happened – she resented me for having made her move (even though she had freely agreed to do so) and every time we had a fight, she reminded me that I had “moved her away from her family”, despite the fact that no one had picked her up and carried her, and that she had her own car and was free to go back to them any time she wanted. And she did, she took two or three “vacations” every year to stay with her folks. I actually appreciated those, because at least during that time I had the house to myself and nobody was attacking me or tearing me down – it was like R&R away from the battlefield! But in two decades we never once had Christmas at home; she always had to drag our kids down to her mother’s (of course I had to drive them there because she was afraid to drive that distance in the winter, but then I had to go stay with my parents, so Christmas was an especially dysfunctional time).
So in a perverse way, your statement is correct but I just wanted to point out that there may be a good reason that one person doesn’t want the other to see his or her parents — not because he or she is a control freak, but because there is an actual history of one or both causing problems in the marriage. That in and of itself may be sufficient reason to end the relationship, but my mistake was thinking that if I could just get her to where she couldn’t run to her mother every time we had an argument or she wanted to trash me behind my back, things might improve. When you get older and wiser you realize how stupid that sounds, but at the time it somehow made sense in my brain, and the fact that she agreed so readily to the move sort of led me to think maybe she was sick of their interference too (which, in fact, I think she was to some degree, but it turned out that her mother’s interference really had very little to do with the way she was emotionally abusing me).
I should add that when we originally got married we decided to elope (that should have been another big red flag, that she would even want to do that, since we’d only known each other about four months) and even though it was her idea as much as mine, when we got back and told her mother, she (the mother) burst into hysterics and went on and on about how she’d always dreamed of her daughter having a big church wedding and now she’d never get to see that. Of course in her eyes it was all my fault, I was the devil that had seduced her daughter in to denying her mother’s happiness. Never mind that her daughter could have told her in advance but didn’t (we started making plans a couple weeks beforehand), never mind that the reason we did it was because neither family could afford a big wedding, of course I was the bad guy and that’s why whenever my ex wanted someone to agree that I was scum of the earth, she only needed to run to momma and cry on her shoulder.
And that reminds me of one other thing. Before we got married, she had invited me over to her mother’s for dinner (so yes, her mother had known about me before we eloped) where she served this WONDERFUL meal, I guess to impress me that she could cook. Well, after we got married, never again did I get a meal that good, and finally I found out why – she had lied about cooking it; her mother had actually done it all. So it’s almost like the two of them were in cahoots to reel me in, yet then her mother acted like her entire world have been destroyed because we eloped! CRAZY family (and I haven’t even mentioned her aunt and uncle and their kids… hoo boy!)
Moral: Guys, get to know your girlfriend’s family, especially her mother. If her mother and her father are divorced, that’s a red flag. If the two of them (mother and daughter) both badmouth her father, that’s another BIG red flag. And if her mother acts like a raving loon every now and then, well… guess who your girlfriend’s probably going to emulate if you marry her!
November 6th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Julie,
One further comment. Women, I think, more than men, have gut feelings when things are not right.
Pay close attention to those gut feelings that tell you something is just not right. Let them alert you. And education is power. If you see further signs that you are not comfortable with, get the heck out of Dodge before it is too late.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Julie,
How do you spot them? A good question. From my limited but real live experience, there are sighs that give them away.
* They are very controlling and jealous of your time. Control is paramount to them.
* Watch out if they try to keep you from family and friends, because of some perceived challenge to them.
* They are never wrong, and even in a general discussion, if you present another idea, they feel assaulted. They are always right. Their response is a dead giveaway. They can not discuss things.
* They are extremely manipulative. They can not discuss anything, they constantly turn things around when backed into a corner, totally controlling the conversation and keeping you totally confused.
* And if you ever feel you have to walk on egg shells around them to prevent their anger and manipulation, watch out.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Julie,
Lying and secret as they are with their public faces, our son married her, and after many years, discovered she was having an affair. He not only confronted her but alerted the man’s wife also. This was the line in the sand for my son. He filed for divorce.
He is one of the hemophiliacs infected with the Aids virus, via blood products, and both he and my husband, appreciated the fact that she stood by him, even if it was perhaps to get her share of the settlement money, which he and we felt was fair too. Through safe sex, she never converted, however he had much fear he would ever find a woman who would be able to accept this, That was a large part of his staying.
But he, rightly so, gave her 50% of what they had. However she, seeing his resolve, she, began to want to come back, putting on her nice public face.
He handled that in an interesting way. He says, ‘When a dog is chasing a car, and the car stops, the dog does not know what to do’. So when she began to try to manipulate him on the phone, wanting to come back, he simply told her the decision was made, and refused to talk to her about it.
When she tried to again engage in in her manipulating ways, he simply hung the phone up and refused be lured back in. Her response, ‘you’re acting like a child.’, to which he responded, ‘Bit that is what you do when you hear something you do not like. My decision is made and I will not talk to you about it’.
And it stopped her cold, for by not being pulled in to engage, the car had stopped. And there was nothing she could do.
Most interesting of all, is that the woman he married had been briefly married to a man, who likewise put on his public seductive face, and his mask quickly vanished, and he physically abused her. She got out with her year old young son.
Because of the violence, we believe he was actually BPD, which includes NPD, She reported his assault, and it is now on his record, she was smart to leave before something horrid happened. He physically abuse his first wife as well, and she pressed charges too.
Like so many, my son’s fiancee, and her extended family could not see the forrest for the trees, as we could not until I researched Narcissism and showed this list, which had helped our son understand her personality disorder.. However, when my son showed she and her family this list, it became crystal clear. All except one characteristic was dead on.
In the blind reality of her former husband’s vision, he of course, after 4 years still believes she loves him.
My son is teaching how to stop the car, and not be drawn into his drama. When he threatened to get custody of their son, she responded, ‘You could never do that, you can not even pay for child support.’ Guess what, the car had stopped, and he hung up the phone. She is refusing to be drawn in to his drama and manipulation.
Because of his record of abuse to two wives, he is unable to gain good employment. My fear as that what we hear so often now, of a father killing his family and then turning the gun on himself, when everything is falling apart and they are put in a corner, he will do this too. I live in fear of this man. And he has no real relationship with his son. His son is simply a power play in his mind. It is not surprising that he is not able to emotionally relate to anyone but himself and his convoluted view of reality.
These personality disorders affect both females and males alike. The damage they do is truly horrific.
This list somehow crystalized the personality disorder, not only for our son and us but for her family as well. I hope it can for others as well.
I do not know of the credentials of the woman who prepared this list, but for us, it was dead on target.
As for me, it is NOT difficult to see how people can be like this. I have seen it up close and very personal. Not only with the above mentioned, but with a life long friend, whose son is in the process of divorcing a woman with NPD/BPD. At age 4, she had her daughter counting calories, because she is chubby. Age 4! And she has not only slapped her daughter in the face, felt her rages were so out of control that she went to a counselor, which of course she abandoned.
She complains that all her husband does is ‘play’ with the kids. He assumes all caregiving, while she obsessively cleans. He can never do anything right. When she demands he starts dinner, she slams him for not doing it right. When she complains that he does not help with the laundry, he responds, ‘But I never do it right to suit you because you have to refold everything again. She is incapable of relating to her children in a loving motherly way. She even, in a rage, beat her husband with a belt. Thank God he did not hit her, but reported it.
Talk about hell. He is living it. And if she gets custody, his children will suffer in ways not even we can imagine.
It is not pretty. It is awful. Whether you can imagine it or not, it exists. Both for men and women. But the purpose of Dr. Tara’s piece was to help men. Please understand that.
Women abused by men get the headlines. But the men out there who suffer from this kind of emotional abuse, and their children, deserve this help and spotlight to be shown on them too. They are the forgotten ones in these tragedies.
I am happy to report, that my son is one of the few that survived Aids, that wiped out most that were infected through blood products. And he is also healthy, and one of the few that work. He has a good job and is very happy with his new family.
His experience crystallized the kind of woman he needed, as did hers.
And at last, he is safe and very happy indeed.
My advice to you Julie, is that if it is hard for you to believe someone can be like this, be they female or male, do you research. Knowledge is power. These personality disorders exist, and the sooner you learn about them, the better.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Thanks LR for the list. It is hard to believe someone can be like this when you put it in writing the way you have.
I have come across a person like this. They are very dangerous.
But I don’t know how you can pick this upfront. I knew a male like this and he did heaps of really bad stuff to me without me leading him on in any way. I carried the load alone for many months but in the end I had to turn to his mates because he was out to destroy my family just to destroy me.
His mates broke both his legs. I felt really bad about that but I had to protect my children and he was out of control.
….
How did you son get free?
November 6th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
We did not rescue him, he rescued himself.
http://www.narcissisticabuse.com/characteristics.html
1. Self-centered. His needs are paramount.
2. No remorse for mistakes or misdeeds.
3. Unreliable, undependable.
4. Does not care about the consequences of his actions.
5. Projects faults on to others. High
blaming behavior; never his fault.
6. Little if any conscience.
. 7. Insensitive to needs and feelings of others.
8. Has a good front (persona) to impress and exploit others.
9. Low stress tolerance. Easy to anger and rage.
10. People are to be manipulated for his needs.
11. Rationalizes easily. Twists conversation to his gain at other’s expense. If trapped, keeps talking, changes the subject or gets angry.
12. Pathological lying.
13. Tremendous need to control situations, conversations, others.
14. No real values. Mostly situational.
15. Often perceived as caring and understanding and uses this to manipulate.
16. Angry, mercurial, moods.
17. Uses sex to control
18. Does not share ideas, feelings, emotions.
19. Conversation controller. Must have the first and last word.
20. Is very slow to forgive others. Hangs onto resentment.
21. Secret life. Hides money, friends, activities.
22. Likes annoying others. Likes to create chaos and disrupt for no reason.
23. Moody – switches from nice guy to anger without much provocation.
24. Repeatedly fails to honor financial obligations.
25. Seldom expresses appreciation.
26. Grandiose. Convinced he knows more than others and is correct in all he does.
27. Lacks ability to see how he comes across to others. Defensive when confronted with his behavior. Never his fault.
28. Can get emotional, tearful. This is about show or frustration rather than sorrow.
29. He breaks woman’s spirits to keep them dependent.
30. Needs threats, intimidations to keep others close to him.
31. Sabotages partner. Wants her to be happy only through him and to have few or no outside interests and acquaintances.
32. Highly contradictory.
33. Convincing. Must convince people to side with him.
34. Hides his real self. Always “on”
35. Kind only if he’s getting from you what he wants.
36. He has to be right. He has to win. He has to look good.
37. He announces, not discusses. He tells, not asks.
38. Does not discuss openly, has a hidden agenda.
39. Controls money of others but spends freely on himself.
40. Unilateral condition of, “I’m OK and justified so I don’t need to hear your position or ideas”
41. Always feels misunderstood.
42. You feel miserable with this person. He drains you.
43. Does not listen because he does not care.
44. His feelings are discussed, not the partners.
45. Is not interested in problem-solving..
46. Very good at reading people, so he can manipulate them. Sometimes called gaslighting.
I hope these are as illuminating to others as they were to us.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Hi LR,
“I am glad and hopeful that you now understand what Dr. Tara’s piece was about. I am female, and you seemed to be the only female who was confused.”
I think my confusion is working with a different type of emotional abuse and that is probably what threw me off.
I am shocked that I was being defensive now that I get it.
Can you tell me of these “characteristics of NPD, all 46 of them”, please. I would like very much to write about this for single women and men who have children. It is horrifying that children get mixed up with these people too.
………
I am so pleased you were able to get your son away from this type of female.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:54 am
When our son was married to a Narcissist, knowing nothing of NPD, it was difficult to see the forrest for the trees. Once we read the characteristics of NPD, all 46 of them, it was like the light had been shined in a very dark place. Suddenly everything made sense. And I am sure other families and men feel this way too, overwhelmed by all the negative drama and manipulation. Not being a professional, just one of the leagues of wounded, it seems easy now to spot and identify the warning signs in both men and women. And seeing the NPD in action, even easier still. That list of characteristics was like a light bulb going off in our brains.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:45 am
julie,
I am glad and hopeful that you now understand what Dr. Tara’s piece was about. I am female, and you seemed to be the only female who was confused.
November 5th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Dr Tara J. Palmatier, I have myself starting reading your website. Gosh, I am totally off the mark what you are about and what this disorder is about. My bad.
I am thinking you must get a lot of confused women challenging you. (I am hoping I am not the only one)
When I read M’s comment ***“Would you be able to recommend a resource to help women who are married to men who have BPD/NPD?”**
…….. I read it wrong and thought he/she asked for you to recommend a site for women with this disorder and I was going to comment that I wouldn’t have minded a resource either to help women. That’s what made me get of this site and check out yours.
Phew,…. now that I have looked over your website I can see clearly what this disorder is about. Oh, for sure this is shocking.
November 5th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Hi M,
You wrote, “Would you be able to recommend a resource to help women who are married to men who have BPD/NPD?”
You are a sweetheart IMHO.
You could have gone to feminists and asked this question which would have encouraged you or a female friend or a client to become nasty to men but instead you asked a healthy professional. That shows you want a healthy outcome.
Good for you and I hope who ever needs the information heals well and is able to get into back into life in a healthy way.
But then I am not sure if men’s sites are ready to help the women. They need to help themselves first. (it is the only way)
November 5th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
@Mike
I’m all too familiar with how women like your ex use therapy to further abuse and shame their husbands into submission (often with the help of a colluding and enabling therapist). In fact, I wrote about it last month on my site (http://shrink4men.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/why-couples-counseling-rarely-works-with-narcissistic-and-borderline-women/).
An abusive family background is a potential warning sign, HOWEVER, not all people who were in an abusive family as children grow up to abuse as adults.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Dr. Palmatier, in response to your comments in #28, I did see some of the behavior you described, but for the most part my ex-wife seemed to be in denial. Because the psychiatrist that diagnosed me with ADD was referred by a friend, she accused me of finally finding someone who’d tell me what I wanted to hear, and that the psychiatrist must be a quack if my friend knew him, etc. (I should add that the psychiatrist was old enough to be her father, and had a successful practice in a fairly affluent suburb of a major city – not what I’d think of when you think of a “quack”). So initially, her way of coping was to deny that I actually had any condition and to assert that I was perfectly normal (and, therefore, presumably deserving of the abuse she was dishing out). After it sunk in that maybe I’d actually been struggling with a disorder all those years, that’s when she really got all the more abusive. I am fairly sure that had it not been for her selective religious beliefs (I say selective because she, like many fundamentalists, sort of picked and chose the ones she thought actually applied to her), she would have divorced me much sooner, but in the end I guess she decided it didn’t matter (and then remarried anyway).
There’s been some talk about marriage counseling. In my experience, that doesn’t work in cases like this, for several reasons: First, she won’t even go unless she likes the counselor, and by “likes” means that she thinks she can manipulate that person to see her as the victim. If she does go, she will try to dominate the sessions by telling the counselor all of her man’s faults, in great detail, often holding him up to some mythical standard that is much higher than she has any reason to expect based on his past behavior (even while dating). If the counselor sees through this and digs deep enough, they will usually suggest there is room for improvement on both sides (and let’s face it, no guy is without faults, so that is true and it makes the counselor sound diplomatic) but this is where the woman develops both selective super memory and amnesia. On the car trip home, the guy will be reminded of ever single way in which he should improve, while she totally forgets every way in which she might improve.
Now let’s say that later on in the week the hapless guy notices that she hasn’t put one word of what the counselor said into practice, and suggests maybe one thing she should do (or more likely, stop doing, such as stop belittling him in front of the kids). Instant nuclear! She will bring up every possible way that anyone – the counselor, her mother, the busybody neighbor across the street – has ever said that he could improve. She will dredge incidents out of her memory that happened 20 years ago and use them as ammunition (these women NEVER forgive – if they pretend to, they’re really just putting the incident back in their quiver, to be launched again when needed). She will unfavorably compare her man to another male family member or neighbor (”Why can’t you be like Bob? He never treats his wife as bad as you treat me!”). She will tell you how everyone in her family, everyone in the church, your second cousin twice removed, etc. thinks you are crap. She will turn into a screaming banshee. In short, she will to whatever it takes to make sure the poor guy never even thinks of daring to bring up anything that awful quack counselor might have said ever again. And at the end, she’ll likely say something like “If you like that counselor so much, you go see him/her, you’re the one who’s nuts anyway, but I’m not going back there!” (And if it’s a her: “If you like her so much, why don’t you just marry her, then she’ll find out what a louse you are.” And I’m using “louse” as an euphemism for the belittling profanity that is really said). And even after that, she’ll still remind the man of the ways the counselor said that HE could improve. It’s as if she thinks that her only reason for going was to make sure the counselor knows what a piece of s-— her man really is, and that she’s right up there with Mother Teresa in perfection.
There is one thing I maybe should have mentioned that might help guys spot SOME of these women before it’s too late, although maybe you can confirm or deny how applicable it really is. One psychologist determined that she had a father who was an alcoholic (who was out of the picture by the time we met) and told me that very often, when women have suffered emotional or physical abuse at the hands of an alcoholic father, they get revenge by taking it out on their husbands. I don’t know how true that is, but before we got married she had told me that her mother had remarried in her teenage years, and that the father she had grown up with had often come home drunk, and was a “mean drunk” that was abusive to her and her mother. Since nobody in my immediate family ever drank more than an occasional beer (and I never saw either of my parents drunk), that did not set off any warning bells for me, but maybe it should have.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Dear Dr. Palmatier:
Thank you for this excellent resource. Would you be able to recommend a resource to help women who are married to men who have BPD/NPD?
November 5th, 2009 at 9:45 am
I’m in the midst of divorcing my wife who was diagnosed with PTSD by one therapist and BPD by another. The key theme in many of the posts here seems to be that we all saw the warning signs before we got involved or married, but we dove in head first anyway. Before my marriage I saw her intense jealousy, the way she was so distant with her son, her many relationships (including 3 prior marriages) where the men were always at fault, her bankruptcy, her bulimia, her attempts to control my time away from her, her house that looked like a disaster…She had told me that her parents abandoned her at an early age (3-4) and that she thinks she was sexually abused as a child. I felt sorry for her.
Before we were married she was as sweet to me as could be (except for the jealousy and time control issues) and we made love several times per week. Nine months after we were married she left me for another man. Nine months later she came back and I gladly took her back. During those nine months she had abandoned her son (who was 8 years old) and hasn’t seen him since. He has called the house a couple of times and left messages asking for her to call him back, but she never has. Somewhere in all of this she told me many times that she always leaves everyone that she gets close to. Even after hearing her words I STILL thought that she wouldn’t leave me again.
For the next three years she kept me at arms length and we made love maybe once a month (except for the last 10 months in which she’s completely cut me off). The intimacy we shared before our marriage was long gone. She claimed that if we were intimate again that she’d be jealous again and that I couldn’t handle it (how does that make sense???). When I attempted to discuss our lack of intimacy she put the blame on me saying that I only wanted her on her back with her legs wide open.
We argued a lot. I’m ashamed to say that I allowed myself to get sucked into the arguments and say things that I never thought possible. She threatened suicide on many occasions. I ended up in counseling so that I could cope with our marriage. We attempted marriage counseling several times, but she always stormed out if the therapist pointed out anything she might be doing wrong. She attempted solo counseling twice but left each time after a few months because she thought she was better.
In Jan of this year she moved out and stayed with her mother for four months until her mother kicked her out. Yes, you guessed it…she came back to me and I took her back again. She slept in our spare bedroom until 2-1/2 weeks ago when she moved out again.
In my career I’m very successful, am told I’m good looking, and that any woman would be lucky to have me. So why did I ignore all of the warning signs, marry this woman in the first place, stay married even after she left me twice, had an affair and was emotionally abusive? In a nutshell, I suspect it’s a combination of lack of self-esteem and having a codependent nature whereby I think that I can fix everything. I think that’s the common theme with most of us who get into these damaging relationships, despite the huge warning signs, and then refuse to get out even when we’re confronted on a daily basis with abuse.
I hope this is helpful to some of you. I’m still in counseling and probably will be for a very long time to try to figure out my own insecurities and codependency, and then to make some changes so that I don’t ever go through anything like this again. I’m still in a bit of denial that any of this happened. It’s still difficult to understand the differences in her before and after we were married.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Dr. Tara,
The topic here is how men and their families can recognize women with these personality disorders and the collateral damage they can and do inflict on them. And it is indeed horrendous.
Thank you so much for shedding light on this and I hope you continue to address this issue. It is so important to know the warning signs. And your writing was right on target.
As for me, and others as well, I hope you continue to address this. For those men, those especially young children, they need to know how women with these personality disorders can affect their children. Furthermore, how they can gain custody in courts as they exist today.
Certainly these personality disorders are not gender specific. Both men and women can exhibit them. But I hope the focus can be kept to the men involved with women who have this spectrum of disorders. Again, thank you.
November 4th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
To Dr Tara J Palmatier,
Thank-you for letting me have my say on your article. You might not know this but you can moderate the comments and you can decide what is acceptable and what is not.
I do like you and apologise for saying I don’t.
And I think it is great the MRM has another professional like yourself. This has been a valuable experience for me even though it would have been draining for you and others.
Sorry about that too.
I have taken a lot on board. Thanks for the opportunity.
PS. Feel free to send me the bill.
On second thoughts, I very much appreciate generosity. 
November 4th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
@Mr K
I think that Massachusetts judge’s ruling is obscene as well as criminal. His name should be made public and he should be disrobed or defrocked—whatever they do to judges. I sincerely hope that Mr Taylor wins his appeal so this very unjust and dangerous precedent isn’t set.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Dr. Palimatier:
I had seen this link on your site, but didn’t have the time to comment. Now I had to search for a while: Link: WST, The New Art of Alimony, Quote
“Paul and Theresa Taylor were married for 17 years. He was an engineer for Boston’s public-works department, while she worked in accounting at a publishing company. They had three children, a weekend cottage on the bay and a house in the suburbs, on a leafy street called Cranberry Lane. In 1982, when they got divorced, the split was amicable. She got the family home; he got the second home. Both agreed “to waive any right to past, present or future alimony.”
But recently, more than two decades after the divorce, Ms. Taylor, 64, told a Massachusetts judge she had no job, retirement savings or health insurance. Earlier this year, the judge ordered Mr. Taylor, now 68 and remarried, to pay $400 per week to support his ex-wife.
“This is insane,” Mr. Taylor says, adding that the payments cut his after-tax pension by more than one-third. “Someone can just come back 25 years ”
I had never heard of such a ruling. While in our state the cusody of children and child support remain in constant jurisdicition of court. It had been my understanding that once alimony is waived or the recipient remarries the alimony stops. However, if the payer is in arrears, the courts can come after you for payments even if the recipient had not requested. In one case in another state the children had grown, both spouses remarried, but when the collection agency noticed arrears, he was arrested and made to pay.
I hope in the WSJ story the ex-huspand appeals and the judgment is reversed, otherwise previously married men are in constant danger because other courts may cite this precedent.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:14 am
@ Different Mike,
***You seem to have issues. If you wish to write an article about why everything is men’s fault and how it’s the men’s fault for trusting crazy and manipulative women I am sure there are plenty of places that will publish it.****
Please don’t get me wrong. I am not naive!
I do believe women can manipulate men and I do believe they do. I think in a funny way the word, “Conman” is sexist. Women con and there are lots and lots of us out who have fallen to a conperson so I wouldn’t say men should have known better because they are men. In fact, I think women have a greater advantage in conning men because of men being naive to women. They only get away with it once I hope.
***I think this is a very important article Dr. Palmatier has published, and I think it’s important for everyone’s son’s to be made aware of these crazy and manipulative women.****
I think it is an important topic. (The definition of emotional abuse in the article is too vague for me).
Emotional abuse is a terrible thing to have to go through. IMHO, usually someone who emotionally abuses also Psychologically abuses and this could turn into physical abuse. But I am not the expert. I only know a few things like “what it is like to be on the receiving end” and “the victim going back on average 9 times to try and fix a situation that they can’t fix”. And that the illness “makes everyone else ill”.
………….
I understand that the Psychology profession has to become man friendly for the men’s movement and for the benefit of males. Unfortunately, I already see the profession being ‘non female friendly’ when it comes to mothers. The number of women losing their children to the state for emotional abuse and possibility of emotional abuse is extremely high which tells me women are already copping it big time.
If children are being taken off mothers by the state for this then there is no reason for me to beleive men can’t use it in court…..
I really do get what is going on here. It is just that my own political position is narrowing down as I read and challenge articles like this. (which is good because I am on a deadline for a plan).
November 4th, 2009 at 9:27 am
@Linda & LR
Here’s a link to a post I published this summer re: watching your child, sibling, family member about to marry an emotionally abusive and controlling woman. Perhaps the support/advice in the comment thread will be helpful at least in the sense of knowing you’re not alone.
http://shrink4men.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/request-for-help-what-advice-do-you-have-for-a-father-whose-son-is-about-to-marry-an-emotionally-abusive-controlling-possibly-bpd-andor-npd-woman/
November 4th, 2009 at 8:08 am
@Mike
Interesting theory re: feeling guilty about treating you bad after receiving your diagnoses. Most of these abusive personalities use a legitimate psych diagnosis/diagnoses to further clobber you. For example, you try to tell her something she’s said or done that upset you or set some other kind of reasonable limit. She responds, “Did you forget to take your meds again? I think your doctor needs to increase your dose” or “I see you ADD, GAD, depression is flaring up again. You need help.”
Alternatively, if your diagnoses means they have to change or adapt their behavior in anyway such as not raging at you unexpectedly when you suffer from panic attacks, these individuals will often tell you “it’s all in your head” or accuse you of being an addict if your doctor prescribes psychotropics that actually help you.
NPD and/or BPD like to keep their targets in a weakened state. It makes you easier to control. This is why they become incensed when you engage in self-care activities that make you healthier and stronger. It’s kind of like how a lioness susses out the gazelle with a limp in the herd to hunt down and turn into lion lunch.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:49 am
@Julie
You seem to have issues. If you wish to write an article about why everything is men’s fault and how it’s the men’s fault for trusting crazy and manipulative women I am sure there are plenty of places that will publish it.
I think this is a very important article Dr. Palmatier has published, and I think it’s important for everyone’s son’s to be made aware of these crazy and manipulative women.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Another outstanding article by Dr. Tara!
Almost everyone at some point in their lives will be affected negatively by one of these people either directly or indirectly. I myself was in an intimate relationship with someone who was Borderline and had a familial/live-in relationship with a woman who was a pathological narcissist. Both played havoc upon my life. The NPD is much worse though. They have an uncanny way of manipulating not only you but your entire family, and they always use your family and friends as a way to abuse you through proxy. The ambient abuse is intense as well; you never know when the next attack will come. When you finally come to your senses and realize that you made a mistake it is impossible to get out of the relationship unscathed. It is not that you are dumber than the narcissist or that you are weak and deserving of being damaged it is that this is just what narcissists do! Every relationship with a narcissist is not about communication or sharing or companionship, they are about control- the narcissist’s control.
It was long believed that men were the ones that predominantly exhibited these behavioral disorders but now I am so glad that more and more mental health professionals are acknowledging the fact that this kind of mental problem is by no means gender specific. All men definitely need awareness of the potential to get involved with one of these people. They always do tremendous harm to the lives of their victims.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:51 am
@Harry,
I don’t know if there’s a correlation between specific sexual fantasies and personality disorders—although, it would make for an interesting study. Perhaps one has been conducted and I’m not aware of it.
However, in S & M role play, it’s not unusual for the high-powered controlling personality person to want to be dominated in the bedroom . . . or dungeon. Most NPD individuals are controlling and sadistic, but I don’t know if one can make the assumptive leap and say they would be into rape/bondage fantasies or otherwise.
November 4th, 2009 at 4:14 am
I think divorce laws and the family courts come in to play more than one may think as well. One may not even realize it pre-wedding, but I honestly believe many women are swayed in their demeanor by the options and level of security afforded to them by the law of the land.
I remember Paul Elam speaking of how Joe Biden’s sister abused him with impunity because the parents always sided with her in any conflict. It is obvious that she did it more often, and likely at a worse level wil more certitude than she would of had she been held to the same rules of conduct.
It’s the same with wives. Now, there are many reasons for marital conflict, and emotional abusive and narcissistic tendencies are clearly causes, in addition to financial disagreements, sexual conflict, parenting disagreements, etc. However, the added security of family law reduces ones tolerance, and any conflict or problem will be magnficied when one party refuses to compromise.
I solidly believe a surge in all these complex marital problems can be correlated in changes to family law. They always existed, but we have removed the incentive for wives to compromise and be tolerant of minor differences. Why control themselves and fulfill their wifely obligations when they can take the house, kids, and sue their husbands into fulfilling his obligations while liberating herself from hers?
And the government now wants to do for health care what it has done for marriage and the economy…God help us.
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Mike # 17, you have made an extremely valid point IMHO. I just want to use and hope you don’t mind.
***What’s REALLY bad is when you (the man) are dealing with your own issues ****
What I am thinking is the same thing but from a females point of view.
“What’s REALLY bad is when you (the woman) are dealing with your own issues”
I would say you would have fitted into an unhealthy person in a relationship with your issues. And I would say you would have definitely been unhealthy for the women’s movement with your issues. (no biggie, eh?)
Your life seems like many to me for many people I see in relationships are dysfunctional one way or the other. I kinda like the cartoon where a meeting place has a sign on the right, “Dysfunctional families” and on the left it has a sign, “Functional families”.
In the cartoon piece it has the right hand side seating packed and on the left hand side it has one man and woman.
The joke of the cartoon is that one in a hundred families are functional.
Since I have been in the MRM I can honestly say that I have not coped well with the war of the genders. I fit into every description of a borderline disorder as a female in the MRM.
I realise that all old school addiction counsellors and even teachers are being made redundant this very day and have been for a few years as a new breed of Psychologists are taking over. They are even in the primary schools to catch every possibility a parent isn’t functional.
There has even been a small protest from council members and group facilitators in New Zealand over Psychologists being paid big money to teach parents how to deal with teenagers and the ground people and parents wanting to hear from those who walked the walk.
The governments have spent decades funding the teaching of professionals so that society gets the best leaders in their opinion and even groups say to me as a leader of a ground group, “Don’t get into the mainstream if you can help it” in a last attempt to let the community have a greater say than the governments.
But gone are the days of therapeutic environments when people relate to each other and help each other through experiences. Even here on this board having empathy for relating to your own experience and having fleeting moments of it are a borderline disorder. At least, thank God it is just borderline but in years to come it will be something far worse.
This doesn’t fit well with me and I can understand why clearly now. I can’t help this movement or any movement with an issue of my own for being emotionally attached makes you a non-professional.
I stand by my words. And even if that makes me a Narcissistic Woman, I will wear it with pride.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Gosh, I know another mother who married a man after his wife died and raised his 2 girls as well as had a son and daughter of her own with him.
The eldest daughter was trouble from the start. She was and is a very, very, very clever woman and she deliberately targeted wealthy married men so she could take them away from their families so she would be set up financially.
The mother I know would get letters from the wives asking how she dared to raise such a horrid woman.
The women did end up having a baby to a wealthy man who was married but he was onto her and put all his wealth into his wife’s name so she could not take from him and his family. The women bragged to everyone how she had it made before she had the baby and was horrified when she found out he was onto her.
The women basically held her own father under her control and years back before he died he disowned her to his own sadness that he could never see his own grand daughter.
Just a year back the mother (she didn’t adopt her but raised her after her mother died) had to phone the police and put an order on her because she threatened to burn the house down with her in it.
The woman was so good at manipulation that she was able to turn everything back onto the mother. But the mother after decades of her behaviour taped her phone threats and the police had no choice but to take it seriously.
The courts go through a system of mediation but the mother refused saying, “I won’t come. She needs to be told she can’t do this to people anymore and I have had enough”. Sadly in NZ, the one who won’t work with mediation (even in the family court) is the one who comes off second best.
The real victim in this is the daughter this woman had. That child has no-one else but her bitch of a mother. No family, no friends. Isolated from the world because her mother thinks all that matters is herself.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:54 pm
This is an article about manipulative people. Manipulative people cause tons of problems and this topic deserves attention.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:15 pm
I know a mother who has a son who married a woman that has total control of him and she is right with everything as far as she is concerned. The mother and father are furious at their son for bringing her into their family.
The son works long hours, up grades his schooling and when home takes care of the children while she does no housework, no cooking, no working, runs a breast feeding group and tells everyone else on the net how they should do life.
But they are wealthy and basically buy her. That’s all they think they can do to keep their grandchildren in their lives while she has them blackmailed all the time.
My sons and I have a close relationship and I am hoping I get a say in who they marry to the extent I want to be a grandmother. I hope I also get along with her parents.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Our son’s first wife was a narcissist, and she kept him from his family for 15 years. And over nothing. All it took was one simple meaningless statement that She interpreted as wrong.
Almost as though reading from a script, these people manipulate many families like this as they abduct a family member. This woman also quit job after job if anyone corrected her in a way that in ‘Her’ narrow eyes, insulted her. It is as though they see the world through different lenses than the rest of us.
This is the distorted reality John spoke of. And trying to understand their blurred distorted reality is absolutely impossible. For it ever changes and they are always right, never wrong. Best to get out while your own sanity is intact.
November 3rd, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Dr Tara
Would you say that a woman who has fantasies of being raped/or abused (e.g. in bondage-type sessions) and/or who enjoys such things in reality is likely to be Narcissistic in nature?
Or would you say that the opposite is true?
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:11 am
What’s REALLY bad is when you (the man) are dealing with your own issues (in my case is was ADD that was not diagnosed until my mid-40’s, although I’ve started to suspect that may have actually been a misdiagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome – and in addition I’ve had severe prosopagnosia all my life, and while that may not sound like much of a limitation to most people, imagine meeting someone for the first time (particularly someone important, like an employer) and not being able to recognize his or her face until you’ve been around him or her for a month or so, and maybe never being able to recognize some of your co-workers. Imagine being in school snd not being able to recognize most of your fellow students on sight. And I did not even realize this was a known condition until a few years ago.
So anyway I got married to a woman who seemed like a very sweet person (there WERE warning signs, but as they say, “love is blind”). But once we got married she turned into the most judgmental person on earth. On the occasions when I had trouble keeping employment – and who wouldn’t with a package of conditions like I have – her idea of a motivational speech was to scream at the top of her lungs and say things like “I flush stuff down the toilet that is better than you!” And after a while of that I pretty much gave up and went into a deep depression.
What made matters far worse was that we had children (who, amazingly, didn’t turn out as bad as you might expect, partly I think because we never pretended that we were a “normal” family, and encouraged them NOT to follow in our footsteps) AND we belonged to a fundamentalist religion that basically taught that if you divorced your spouse you could never remarry, but if they divorced you, you were off the hook. So I think we both wished the other would start a divorce for a long time, but neither would.
The funny part is, once I was officially diagnosed with ADD, she really turned on me. Instead of being somewhat sympathetic, she really turned into the wicked witch of the west, and divorced me a couple years later. A friend speculated that it was because as long as I didn’t have a diagnosed condition, she could treat me like crap and not feel guilty about it, but once I actually had a diagnosed condition she must have felt at least some guilt about treating me badly all those years, so then she just wanted to drive me to divorce her. When that didn’t work, she finally filed for divorce. After she found out I wouldn’t contest her on it, she reverted back to her former semi-sweet self (I think we had about the most amicable divorce ever, partly because I wanted out so bad I pretty much let her have everything she wanted).
The really bad thing was she could at times get physically abusive (and she was large enough to inflict severe damage) and not just toward me, but also toward our kids. On more than one occasion I had to get between her and one of the kids, which of course resulted in me getting the physical abuse. I’m told that after she divorced me she then proceeded to make life hell for the kids (naturally she got custody, because I had virtually nothing), with the result that they all moved out just about as soon as they turned 18 and could secure other housing. She remarried, and also drove her new hubby’s kids out of the house, from what I’m told.
So two words of advice for all you guys out there: No matter how in love you are, heed the warning signs – if she’s a little bit off now, she will be at least ten times worse after you get married, and another ten times worse after you have kids! And, don’t get involved with right-wing fundamentalist kooks that will try to use the Bible to trap you in a horrible marriage – they are lying to you about many things anyway (you can research that on the ‘net) but they often actually reinforce unhealthy and abusive relationships.
I have to add this one thing: After we got divorced, somehow the subject of sex came up, and she demonstrated total cluelessness when she said “sex was never our problem.” Yeah, it’s a real healthy relationship when your wife only consents to sex about five times a year and acts like it’s a forced effort each time! Granted that given the horrible state of the marriage otherwise, I would not really have expected anything else, but it was the total cluelessness of that statement that shocked me. Talk about distorted reality…
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:54 am
Dr. Tara,
Thanks for another powerful and informative piece.
It’s tough to avoid that which you can’t, or won’t, see. You are helping to open men’s eyes, and to remind them that it’s ok to refuse to suffer even though the women who “love” them seem to want it that way.
On the personal front, after reading your clear exposition of this continuum of crazy, I am ever more grateful for my own loving wife! (Her more volatile moments I chalk up to her being part Sicilian!) However, my wife’s cousin and her husband did “lose” a son to his new wife; he no longer attends family functions, and has basically cut off all contact. Her rationale? His devout Catholic family isn’t “Christian” enough! His loving parents, who have not ever been allowed to see their first grandchild, are devastated, needless to say.
By the way, I of course realize that you are not insinuating that toxic personality traits are limited to women, and that in this case you are merely speaking to a male audience and addressing the male perspective. Nor do I understand you to imply that men have reason to suspect that MOST women harbor a personality disorder — even if we do find them to be “mysterious” and emotional creatures some of the time! (We all have to be SO careful to avoid any appearance of “misogyny”, now don’t we? After all, we HAVE been led by feminists to expect that women are so pure and guileless that their digestive indiscretions waft like the scent of a Spring bouquet!)
I look forward to your next article.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:14 am
Mr.K Says:
***@ julie,
Have you ever met Dr. Palmatier to say”I don’t like you” or do you separate ideas from the person? Late Dr. Albert Ellis, founder of REBT was a strong advocate of separating actions from the individual.****
No, Mr.K I have not met Dr. Palmatier. And I do think I am being unfair. I do have a sensitive side even though it doesn’t show much and I do feel guilt and remorse when it is appropriate.
I also think as with anything; if something hits a nerve with me, I have to ask myself “Why am I affected by this?”
I realise I do have a personal issue with what is going on here and that is something I have to deal with.
But I like the way the good doctor is encouraging men to look at why they are choosing women who are not healthy for them instead of this being women’s fault. I think that is a major plus for all involved. In NZ women’s groups are doing the same. They are trying to encourage women to choose the better men.
I get that this is about healthy relationships and no matter what my personal issues are with what is happening out there, I understand the benefits.
………
As you can see, I am giving a lot of thought to this and I am sure I will come out the other end with all the pieces together making a nice little picture.
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:26 am
Dr. Tara,
I hope you address recognizing the early warning signs soon. This is such an important point. All too often men, and their families are in the middle of the storm before they even noticed the dark clouds of warning. And it is not easy because people with these disorders are Supreme manipulators. It is often difficult to see the controlling, selfish, ‘Only I am right.’ personality that lies beneath their “Public Face’.
Also, the damage done to the children of these women is horrific. Those children will be used by the mother and have life long scars from that. Addressing the damage to the children would hopefully crystalize the true picture in father’s eyes.
And unfortunately, the police and the courts do not understand and too often the mother, with her ‘public’ face is given custody. How does a father fight this in court? The courts say that it is not unusual for both sides to point to the other and say they are crazy, but surely there must be a way. I hope in the future you will address all these issues.
Only who has lived close to these individuals could ever imagine what hell it is.
Thank you, Linda
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:37 am
@Paul
It’s like one of my former professors used to say, “People will give you warning signs very early on. All you need do is heed them,” or something to that effect.
Hindsight is 20/20. Many of the men I work with noticed or felt that something wasn’t quite right early on in their relationships, but ignored, minimized, rationalized or made excuses re: the early warning signs.
This is an important topic and one I will write about in the future. Thanks, Paul.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:29 am
Dr. Tara,
Another great piece. I hope at some point, if you haven’t already, that you do a piece examining this statement:
“One would think that would give the soon to be groom enough insight as to how his children will be used.”
My observation is the frequently with men insight doesn’t count for anything when it comes to women. I think there is a very substantial number of men that when in the depths of “love” could be told by the woman:
“This will be really good for a while but I will eventually turn on you, rob you of everything you hold dear, turn your children against you, and drag your name through the mud in front of the world.”
Many guys would respond to that by saying “Oh, no, not my sugarplum. She would never do that.”
And then they would take her hand and traipse off toward their own doom. And will indeed be shocked and devastated when she finally makes good on her words.
November 2nd, 2009 at 8:56 pm
@Linda
The collateral damage individuals with these issues cause is staggering. I’ve heard one too many stories of families who have lost a brother, son, etc., through a relationship/marriage to one of these women.
They all seem to use a version of this veiled threat, “Don’t forget I’ll be the mother of your future grandchildren.” One would think that would give the soon to be groom enough insight as to how his children will be used.
Best,
Dr Tara
November 2nd, 2009 at 8:21 pm
@ julie,
Have you ever met Dr. Palmatier to say”I don’t like you” or do you separate ideas from the person? Late Dr. Albert Ellis, founder of REBT was a strong advocate of separating actions from the individual.
http://www.rebtnetwork.org/
Dr. Palmatier,
I agree with Keith and Linda that your article was one of the best description of personality disorders. It’s often too late when one discovers these symptoms and lay person does not understand the patholgy. But police and courts are not experts in behaviorl disorders and many men end in prison because they don’t know how to deal with an irrational person. Also, thanks for your magnanimous response to julie, I don’t claim to understand her reasoning and there was an another poster from New Zealand who was a rather harsh critic of her.
November 2nd, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Uh Oh, I didn’t realise you reply Doc.
***@Julie
Okay. ***
I do stand by my words and yet, I do respect you. From the outside I think Psychologists look like they have a healthy way of doing life. Maybe if we could get all the lower class becoming Psychologists the world would be a better place and men and women would be better people.
Until then, I am afraid many marriages will break up and many children will be taken off parents.
I am reserved on Psychiatrists though. They don’t seem to have the happy lives Psychologists do. lol
Good luck with your work.
November 2nd, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I have read many articles on these disorders and this is one of the best I have read. My son was married to a Narcissist and a goof friend’s son is divorcing her BPD/Narcissistic wife and save his kids, and believe me these women are EVIL. Your observation that they wear men down is the understatement of the year. Thank you for this very helpful article.
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:39 pm
@PanickedDad
Yikes. PPD and NPD must have been the perfect storm. I can only imagine what you went through and will continue to go through since you share a child together.
I wish you the very best as you put your life back together and safeguard your child.
Kind Regards,
Dr Tara J. Palmatier
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
@Julie
Okay.
Best,
Dr Tara J. Palmatier
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:12 pm
I was married to a BPD woman. Clinically diagnosed, on multiple meds BPD. These descriptions are shortened, but spot on. Part of my excuse is that I was young and stupid, but I also didn’t think very much of myself. I knew before we married that life with her was pure hell, but I didn’t think I could do any better. I know, I know, but as I said, young and stupid.
Men, if you see even a hint of these signs, do some deeper investigating. Then run away, flee! There is no working with this type of woman, and your life will be pure hell. I’ve known men who stayed, and subjected themselves to it, others like me, who try to ride the storm, then finally get out with your sanity.
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:42 pm
lol Julie is a crazy woman.
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:58 pm
BTW, the site looks great. Very impressive.
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:57 pm
I don’t like you Dr. Tara J. Palmatier. I just want that noted. And I don’t think I should have to explain myself although I will tell you I have tried to keep an open mind. Anyhoo, this is the world of the professionals and there is nothing I can do as a lowly human being except become one of you so I too can challenge the way things work in a narrow field of possibilities, for all the theories have to be abided by.
I can attend the radical feminist meetings for a few hundred dollars a pop and I have said the same thing to them. I don’t like what you are doing but I hope you make lots of money off the misery of others.
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Yeah- great. My wife was fine until post-partum depression after the birth of our second child unleashed a torrent of toxic emotional sludge. When it receeded, NPD stood gleaming in the sunlight, proud and empowered (by our “family law” system). Stuck with an NPD mother/wife, trying to keep our children from falling into the same pit, these past several years have been challenging. Learning to not care (about her and her confabulated problems) helped. Oh- did I mention PAPD and depression remained after the PPD drained away? Sorry. Yeah, PAPD and NPD are a really neat 1-2 combo.