Psychopath and Narcissist Survivors Support Group

Legend · Joined: 15 Feb 2007 Posts: 124 Location: Southeast USA

Hey,

Here is the second post from NewWings4Me. The original post is found on the divorce/custody board.

Hi. I'm sorry for you and glad for you that you've found this forum. It could save your sanity. It saved mine, and perhaps my life too.

==> I second every syllable Delivered has written. Your N is at war and has been planning his strategy, with help, for some time. He's counting on the fact that you are not versed in dealing this way. His help is probably his family, close male friend(s), lawyer(s), accountant(s).

Married 11 years/together 12.5, a SAHM and primary caregiver to S-9, apart three years and D'd two, I share 50:50, every-other-week custody with XNH even after what you are about to read. Why? Because, ultimately, nobody outside your family really cares.

I went through D with a midlife N/P and experienced the following abuse and crimes -- BEHAVIORS I'D NEVER SEEN OUT OF HIM BEFORE IN ALL OUR YEARS TOGETHER -- XNH as a high tech VP engineer-marketer type:

- Phone threats to damage our home
- Phone threats to not bring S back from visitation
- Defiance of visitation instructions
- Phone threats of him entering the home whenever he wanted
- Attempted breaking and entering/property damage
- Theft of marital property
- Threat of physical abuse to me in person
- LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES
- E-mails stating exactly the opposite of real-life situations that had just happened
- Hiding $ for a year before he filed
- Turning off all our joint bank accounts and credit cards
- Using credit cards in my name during the separation
- Forgery of my signature on a financial/loan/mortgage instrument
- Use of others to illegally enter our community and home to take furnishings
- Tapping of my/my father's phones
- Attempt, with his parents' help, to take full custody of our S (then 6, after 6 years of "You're such a good mother"
- Ongoing threats of frivolous lawsuits
- Phone reference to after my death
- Emptying out a *frozen* 6-figure investment account (this required me to threaten him with the DA -- the $ reappeared in 24 hours)
- 3 days of D&D
- Aggressive behavior and skin palor change suggestive of drug use (he has a long recreational history)
- Paying mortgage late
- Paying no support during separation
- Falsifying a mediator's report and sending it to me stating I was delusional, then filing something different
- Teaching S-6 to say cruel things to/about me to the psych evaluator (e.g. I was a "demon," S was adopted etc.)

NONE OF THIS IS CASUAL ADVICE. THIS IS SERIOUS CRIMINAL BUSINESS.

I STRONGLY ADVISE TO YOU THE FOLLOWING:

1. Get a lawyer well versed in personality disorders and criminally abusive D situations. DO NOT SETTLE. GET REFERRALS. DON'T GO TO SEVERAL AND PAY THEM RETAINERS BEFORE YOU FIND THE RIGHT ONE. IT WILL DRAIN YOU. If your lawyer truly understands PDs and can prove it to you by examples of their other casework, then follow their lead.

2. Empty out all the money you can from every source you can starting now. ATMs, cash back on purchases -- every day multiple times. Put it in your safety deposit box for now, but be prepared to empty that box out in short order when N's lawyer has it frozen.

3. Any/every item you own could disappear by tomorrow. This even includes your wedding rings/diamonds. Store any/all personal items/valuables/mementos/furnishings/souvenirs/irreplaceables/all legal records/credit/medical/investment/banking info in a friend's garage -- plan for 6-12 months. (After XNH left I found that six months of check stubs from that year were missing.) (2.5 years after XNH left and I'd given him all our photos to copy and he'd kept them for a year, he returned them to me taken apart and disorganized, including our wedding album. Destruction in every direction. Ongoing.)

4. Take time/date stamped photos of the inventory of your house, close-up. Store those photos off your property. Those items could disappear from your house one-by-one and N could claim he's never seen them.

5. If your kids have cell phones, get those phones into your name. Expect that those phones could suddenly be "missing" unexpectedly. I got S a phone after he was reporting frightening treatment by XNH; that phone disappeared within the first two weeks.

6. Get yourself whatever credit cards you can NOW in just your name. I did not do this and I regretted it later.

7. DO NOT SIGN any documents in N's presence without a witness/second pair of eyes looking at it. What you sign could be something very different from what you think you've signed.

8. XNH left our home and tried to return three days later, stating financial reasons. His *lawyer*, OTOH, told *my lawyer* that his reason for returning was "to force a violent confrontation [with me] so he could take full custody of S." My lawyer advised me to have the locks changed on the house that hour. I did so.

9. Do not talk with N alone in a room. At any time. He is probably recording you already and will use anything/everything against you.

10. Do not accept if N asks you to attend joint counseling *after* he leaves. He's looking for evidence which can be subpoenaed from a therapist's records of any weakness you may divulge.

11. Assume that only your lifetime friends will stay by your side, but 90% of whom you know will drift away quickly. They may never return or it may take years. They weren't your friends to start with. Actions of an N are frightening to normal people, and they don't want to hear about it. (Mostly, they're glad they're not you.) My so-called best friends who promised to testify against XNH several months later called me crazy and said that XNH wasn't any of the things I'd told them he'd divulged to me himself.

12. Don't assume that people will rush to write affidavits for you. They'll be afraid of N coming after them -- and with good reason.

13. Keep a portable digital recorder on your person and on at all times when you are in N's presence. Get one at Radio Shack. If this evidence isn't admissible in court, it is admissible to attorneys, therapists, psych evaluators, mediators etc. I'm telling you this straight up: I did not do this and spent two years in tormented, abused HELL because my lawyers told me not to tape XNH. Finally, this past fall, his verbal abuse flared up and I've been taping him ever since -- with his and the mediator's knowledge. Save your life's time and do it now. ALSO: Keep that recorder in your pocket for any conversations you have with your kids. Don't need to tell them, unless you all agree. They might experience abuse that they want to tell but then they balk at doing so because *he's dad* -- and the abuse just gets worse.

14. The bad stuff hasn't started yet because your N is still in his castle. Once he's leaving/has left that's when the power and control issues really rage. I had to call the police to my home four times.

15. If you negotiate a parenting plan, expect N to try and change it immediately. Every part. Ongoing. Every week. Times, locations, conditions. I urge you to renegotiate NOTHING with N -- use it as your excuse and your bible, your Higher Authority. I engaged XNH for a year over this and was constantly backed into a corner and threatened. Once I stopped negotiating, he stopped asking for more.

16. Mediators, psych evaluators, guardians ad litem -- court satellite people and judges -- are all paid by somebody. They respond to whomever that somebody is who's paying them. AND if N *files first* you will be on the DEFENSIVE throughout the entire proceeding, in their eyes. IT IS CRITICAL THAT YOU FILE FIRST. LIKE, TOMORROW, if that is your intention.

17. Go see a therapist yourself now. (I saw two on one day and they both said they thought XNH was a pathological N. I'd never met them before. Told both, separately, the identical story.) Have yourself examined now by a psych hospital outpatient facility. Have them write about your psychological condition. At the height of our psych eval XNH was threatening me during it. I was so stressed I did this, as I didn't know where else to turn. The hospital told me that, aside from depression, I was dealing with a man "not firing on all 8s," and they were surprised I was still standing upright. That letter helped a lot in the psych process.

18. Expect N to run the business into the ground. After he's pilfered the till. XNH shut his partnership tech consulting practice down *the day my financial investigator showed up at his office.* Then claimed $0 income -- which had been by plan. (The investigator told me that he thought XNH was the biggest con man he'd seen in 25 years of financial/family law practice. He told me to take the deal and get away from XNH on every level. He saw XNH as someone who would take a fall, and he didn't want me near him when it happens.)

19. XNH was on Match.com before he left our home. Started dating within weeks. Had replaced me with gf by that fall. They bought a home together (with only her name on the mortgage) five days after our D was final. CHEATERS CHEAT AT EVERYTHING. People, money, business. He has pushed gf in my face all this time. I made it clear she was never to communicate with me. Ever. He (and she) have violated this.

20. Separate yourself financially, physically, emotionally, communication-wise from N as quickly and completely as you can. Take losses to get away, even to bifurcate and end the legal marriage and settle the $ later. (I was advised to do this by a seasoned police detective.)

21. Do you have a safe house for your kids? Several former neighbors offered me and S their homes and storage of our things. They could see XNH for what he was. The whole neighborhood had comments to make about XNH, I discovered after he left.

22. Depending on your local attitudes, TROs may be easy or hard to get. Here court folks wanted to see my bruises, burns or bullet holes and otherwise rejected my pleas as the squabbling of "rich" people (we were not).

23. If N stops paying the mortgage on the family home (if you have one), YOU call the financial institution and tell them plainly what's going on. Go on record about your situation and separate yourself from N's actions. Work out a plan with them for your survival. They *will* respond to you and, in my experience, help if they can and explain procedures.

24. Your mutual friends and neighbors may start to get very inquisitive asking you lots of detailed questions. This information will get back to N, as they are being used as proxies. Do not trust these conversations as being in your best interest. Learn to be quiet (if it isn't in your nature as it wasn't in mine, until now) and keep your own extremely protective counsel.

25. N's family. Your call. XNH's family started lying to me immediately (and, I believe, had been doing so for a year before XNH left), wrote me e-mails copying judges, wanted time with S during their visits on my time, then volunteered to fly in and care for S so XNH could travel while he had full custody of S. I have nothing to do with any of them. Depending on your past relationships, they are N's family and human nature says they will side with him. Which then makes them Not Your Friends. Tread carefully/watchfully.

26. READ READ READ. Sam's book. This forum. Any books/sites on abuse you can get your hands on. Barnes & Noble stocks Patricia Evans on verbal abuse. I suggest you get Lundy Bancroft's "Why Does He Do That?" about angry and controlling men. Put all the pieces together for me. There are probably lots of other great reading recommendations on this site.

27. RECOGNIZE THAT THE MAN YOU WERE MARRIED TO IS A STRANGER. PUT IT INTO YOUR MIND THAT HE VIEWS YOU AS "THE ENEMY". FIND IT WITHIN YOURSELF TO BECOME EMOTION-FREE, A STONE WHEN YOU HAVE TO COMMUNICATE WITH HIM. UNDERSTAND THAT ANY EMOTIONS HE SHOWS ARE ALL FOR SOME PURPOSE, MOTIVE, GOAL. NOT OUT OF ANY TRUE FEELING OR CONCERN. This is critical as he is *feeding* off any emotions you betray. Your business is no longer his business. Share nothing. Volunteer nothing. Answer legally required facts only.

28. Expect your N to use e-mail, TMs, VM as weapons -- to communicate, to stay in your face/mind, to play old tapes, as a response of exactly the opposite of what you insist on, to make power and control demands about how you talk, act, what you say, where you go etc. Be prepared to go to No Contact, to through-attorneys-only contact (he'll hate this and will defy it), to block electronic messages.

29. Expect that D does not end this and learn to put processes in place to keep yourself from continuing to be sucked back in, from being engaged, from being baited, from continuing N's dance of wanting any attention from you/your kids that he can get, no matter how grotesque. Even the police detective who advised me for six months told me to expect this treatment for years. He was right. He said it was about power and control, not about love and marriage. He described XNH's treatment of me as "mob-like". This past fall, during a round of mediation, I presented XNH with the Power and Control Wheel and talked of his need to create chaos with me as giving him a drug-like endorphin high like any other addiction. (XNH's father is a recovering alcoholic.) He was silent.

30. Don't be surprised if, while you read this horror story, your reaction is, "No, my N isn't/won't be as bad as that," and then have your situation deteriorate as you go through time. Happened to me when I first joined the forum 2.5 years ago.

31. CPS. Keep them away. Unless your kids have physical/sexual abuse to show with proof. In my exposure to this forum the case workers use any psychological abuse ultimately against the mother. This happened to me. A case worker sat in my living room and complimented me/commented negatively to me about XNH/gf's behaviors (including her being naked in front of S and boy/girl cousins and showing them her tampon string hanging out), then several days later came a letter saying that I was the problem. If poor parenting isn't a crime, don't get them involved. At all. DO NOT TRUST THEM.

32. N's move-out could be messy business. XNH had 5 hours and two men helping him. When I returned to the house his personal items (from clothing to family heirlooms) remained in every single room. On purpose, of course. I piled some 15 garbage bags of his stuff outside the front door. It sat there for weeks. He said he'd come. He didn't. Then threatened a lawsuit because his things were outside (covered). It was like he was a dog leaving his scent in every room so he could keep coming back over and over. And so I'd have to see his things in front of me.

33. Rely on the observations/opinions of *men* around you (family and friends). They know what is/is not "normal" behavior for a mature man/husband/father, and don't have time for bullsh*t. Watch their reactions to what you tell them, and listen to their words. This will help you gauge how serious are the experiences you're having, and determine protective/assertive stances to take. (My uncle and cousin have been advising me for three years. My father, abusive himself and 80+, told me, "THIS MAN [XNH] IS TRYING TO HURT YOU," and "Anything you can think of that is the *normal* way for someone to act/react, you can be certain that XNH is going to do exactly the OPPOSITE.")

NO MOVE, NO ACT, NO STATEMENT OCCURS WITHOUT PRIOR PLANNING AND MOTIVATION. THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS. EVERYTHING IS ORCHESTRATED. JUST LIKE A BATTLE PLAN.

What you are facing will be all about criminal evidence gathering. Heresay, written notes, journals will mean nothing. An N's lies, as you already know, are pervasive and flow like water. (I live with XNH's lies, selfishness and sabotaging of me and S-9 every day, even today.) Physical evidence is what counts. Just like it's a criminal matter.

I've come to learn that XNH has really been an N/P all this time. Looking closely back through time, the statements, clues and indicators were all there. I just didn't know what I was dealing with. XNH was described by his family as a "cheater." He'd set eco-terrorism fires. He'd worn a mohawk and lived an alternative lifestyle. He said he was done with drugs, but was lying. He admitted prior (and possibly current) homosexual experiences. In the end, XNH was someone, I had to conclude, whom I didn't really know. Now that my eyes are open, it's an amazing thing to learn. He has been my lesson about *all the other N/Ps in the world out there* that I've come upon and ID'd in these past three years on my own. And THAT knowledge is the gift I now give to myself, and to S.

We are here to help you if possible, listen well and provide perspective if it's of use. In my life experience few people have known better than the folks on this forum, who've lived it, what we go through in moving from being victims to being survivors of N/Ps.

I wish you courage, calm, strength, protection and good advice,

NewWings4MeNow

PS: A year before all this XNH had given me a diamond on our 10th and asked me to spend the next 40 years with him.

Hugs,
Legend
_________________
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." Anais Nin

"Realize your personal legend." Paulo Coelho

lemondroppr · Joined: 10 Feb 2007 Posts: 1464

http://stopfamilyviolence.org/ocean/host.php?page=16

OxDrover · Joined: 13 May 2007 Posts: 1465 Location: Arkansas USA

Legand, that is one powerful, insightful post--whew, I am sitting here breathless. Shocked

I was married and divorced 7 years before I married my late husband and I thought my divorce was "bizare" and "weird"--kind of like an Alfred Hitchcock movie (for allyou younger people--substitute Stephen King Movie) Laughing

My former husband wasn't an N/P but I just this minute realized that my ex-father-in-law was...and after all these years I never realized it at all. Idea

My XH was screwed up somewhat, but he wasn't mean, just the victim of his N/P father. I knew he was the victim of his father, but it just this minute dawned on me that his father is/was a CLASSIC N/P--retired military officer with CONTROLLER OF THE YEAR awards and Mid-South distributor exclusive franchisee of GUILT to his 2 kids who were so guilt-ridden of displeasing father that they wouldn't go to the bathroom if they didn't has him how to wipe--front to back or backk to front.

My XH went along with the divorce rip off, but I know his father planned it all. The thing about the "ownership" of the dog was what threw me off. Before the divorce my husband and Ihad bought a dog for the kids, it was young and registered. Since I thought we were moving to another city where he had been liiving for a couple of months while I got the kids out of school and sold the old home, and we had put adown payment on the new house, his parents nicely took the pup to keep at their house. When I found I was being "dumped" as I approached the real estate agent and SHE informed me that "don't you know he is divorcing you? He called and canceled the buying of the house." Here I was with 2 kids, a cat, a truck, a few changes of clothes, almost no money, and my H and my possessons, in fact our entire household was who knew where.

Later I had to get a court order to get the dog returned, and the dog they actually gave me 6 months later was the same breed, but was in such horrible condition from malnutrition that it had almost no hair. I didn't have any photos so couldn't prove anything, and didn't let the kids know, because they would have been hurt--

I lived through all this chaos, in 1979, and I can't believe the thing Legend said about the dog triggered the latent truth about it all. But though all that stuff is a remote memory now, at least it "explains" it all--I never did understand it all, but now it is as clear as a crystal bowl. WOW--haven't thought of this crap in YEARS...got closure wihtout understanding it all, but looking back, whew!

Legend, and to all posters on this forum thread, very very good--Wish Ihad seen it 28 years ago and known what was going on then, might have helped me get closure a lot sooner or foresee a bunch of what happened. Cause I didn't see any of it coming at all.
_________________
Life is lived forward, but understood backwards.

skittish_kitten · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 51

wow, there is a lot of invaluable advice on here...i wasn't married with children, but did wear "a wire" for about a year until i got free of my xNPbf, just to have documented proof of his rages/disassociative episodes, threats, etc...i also kept every email and taped all phone coversations...while they may not be admissible in court, at least my lawyer, and hopefully the mental health association, can put an end to his smear campaign and acquire a restraining order if necessary...thanks for all your help and insight, kitten