Narcissistic infidelity can be particularly painful, and the narcissistic person may be unapologetic, blame you, and quickly fly into self-preservation mode. Photo / Getty Images
Tales from the divorcee trenches: how to co-parent with an emotional abuser
Emily* had been married for 10 years when she discovered her husband was having an affair. It had been going on for a year, since their youngest child was a newborn. Sure, their marriage was beyond repair but she knew that once he apologised for the hurt he’d caused, she could eventually forgive him.
“But there was never an apology, not a sincere one anyway,” she says. “It was like he felt sorry but only for himself. He wasn’t actually apologising for hurting me and for hurting us and our children, or for destroying something that was so precious.”
Emily didn’t suspect her husband was a narcissist until much later – it’s a buzzword that gets tossed around all too easily, she says – but she would soon come to realise he fitted the bill, and that his extra-marital indiscretions were to be the least of her concerns.
In the 2024 book, It’s Not You, How To Identify and Heal from Narcissistic People, Dr Ramani Durvasula says narcissists expect others to honour their boundaries even if they don’t always reciprocate the respect - the trust inherent in a solid marriage included.
“The lying and the betrayal typically occur together,” she writes. “Narcissistic infidelity can be particularly painful, and the narcissistic person may be unapologetic, blame you, and quickly fly into self-preservation mode so they do not look bad to others.”
Post-divorce, Emily’s ex still hasn’t expressed remorse, but she has healed from the injustice and moved on with a new partner, a man she says treats her so well she now feels grateful to have finished with her ex. But of course they haven’t finished, not really. With three children, now aged 11, 7 and 5, their paths will forever cross, or at least, until the kids are old enough to look after themselves. Emily knows of other “normal” couples who’ve negotiated the perils of divorce and managed to co-parent peacefully, if not perfectly. But raising children with a person who has shown her so little regard has been an exercise in constant frustration.
It didn’t take long for her counsellor to suggest she read up on narcissism, as her ex displayed several classic traits, the most telling being a lack of empathy. Then there were the other telltale signs: a sense of entitlement, (a busy medical practitioner, his business supported them both so therefore he could work “late nights” if it suited him) arrogance (he often spoke down to others), his manipulative manner. While Emily says she’s always strived to prioritise the children, her ex will often go out of his way to make life difficult for her for no discernible reason other than the possibility it gives him an outlet to offload his discomfort, treating her as though she’d been the perpetrator of their marriage’s demise.
“He’s always the victim - always,” she says.
This naturally has had repercussions for the kids. A polite text sent to let her ex know what she’d bought their son for his birthday - essentially to avoid double-ups - resulted in him buying the same gift, “because he knew he’d be the first to give him a present and wanted to spite me,” she says. “In the end it’s our son who misses out -what’s he going to do with two identical toys?”
Emily has custody of the children for most of the week and her ex has them for a few days each fortnight. Still, simple questions such as what time she can pick them up, or to let him know about things coming up at school, medicines they might need, tweaks to the kids’ routines to mitigate their wayward sleep patterns or anxieties (which crop up particularly when the children are heading to his house, she says), are either met with radio silence or the suggestion she is being “irrational”. Requests to speak to the children when they’re in his company are ignored. Suggestions they go into mediation as a last resort are rebuffed. It’s meant that co-parenting has been extremely difficult when it hasn’t needed to be. Emily says she’s tried to keep things civil, but has resorted to tactics that appeal to his ego - making out that any changes to the kids’ routines will benefit his lifestyle. “It’s almost like you have to suck up a little bit,” she says.
Narcissists can be charming but they are also excellent at playing on people’s vulnerabilities, capable of using emotions against them, something Emily has begun counteracting with a practice called “grey rocking,” whereby she communicates with her ex using just the bare-bones facts and as little emotion as possible.
“It is a slow process, gradually disengaging from sharing important things about yourself and avoiding sharing feelings, emotions, aspirations, or negative moods with the narcissistic person,” writes Durvasula.
But the benefits are to diminish the narcissist’s hunger for drama, their undying need for “supply,” the constant drip-feeding of external attention and admiration a narcissistic person needs to stroke their fragile ego. By turning that off, it also has less impact on Emily, despite the sinking feeling that all hope has been lost that one day, he might change. There’s just the small problem of needing to appease him enough to know their children’s needs will be met. The last thing she wants is to hand them off to someone who doesn’t treat them with nurturing love and empathy.
“I’ve never wanted this to be a blame game but he’s often so hostile towards me. For a long time I didn’t recognise his behaviour for what it was. It’s taken me years to accept that he’ll never co-parent on a level with me - he’ll always do things the way he wants to.”
Becoming an entity devoid of personality is a skill she’s slowly mastering in his company, while ironically, fostering a deeper sense of herself, through continually reinforcing her boundaries and standing her ground for the kids. Refusing to let him take them “a day earlier just because he feels like it”. Packing their overnight bags with secret communication devices so she can converse with them if they want or need her. Continuing to message him, plainly, if she believes it will benefit the children, even if he refuses to reply.
Often, she’ll picture her ex as an 8-year-old, the age she suspects he might have been when his sense of unworthiness was first made conscious, a feeling he’d regularly lob at her, during the darker days in their otherwise steady marriage. The effect, she says, is less anger and more compassion, of feeling a little sorry for him. (Fighting for her kids in mediation has historically required a different tool to make it through with dignity intact, she adds drily, as she’ll visualise him as a naked mole rat, “the ugliest creature on Earth”).
Having some distance from the marriage has shed some light on the manipulative tactics he used against her when they were together, the times he’d often take advantage of her tendency to be a people-pleaser.
“The majority of folks affected by narcissistic abuse are not just dealing with the distraction and annoyance of a narcissistic adult who is obsessive about social media nor are they managing violence and coercion,” writes Durvasula. “Rather, they’re dealing with moderate narcissistic abuse: systematic invalidation, minimisation, manipulation, rage, betrayal, and gaslighting with periods of ‘normal’ and ‘good’ thrown into the mix.”
Emily agrees this describes what she went through. “It’s an amazing feeling when you realise, ‘I don’t have to make that person happy anymore’,” she says. “Everything revolved around him. I didn’t really do anything for myself. I’ve got a lot of wonderful friends and family but I missed out on things, important things, and I do have regrets now.
“But I’m a much freer person. I’m growing as an individual and becoming much more confident in myself. I have a partner who has shown me what true support is. I love that I can focus on myself and the kids and I don’t have this other weight on my shoulders.”
*Name has been changed
It’s Not You: How to Identify and Heal from Narcissistic People by Dr Ramani Durvasula, published by Penguin Random House, is out now.
Let’s take a look at the science.