Narcissist or not? Does the label matter? Can people change?
In my case the label does matter a lot, because it explains so much of the dysfunctional behavior regarding our children since the divorce. It also makes it easier to deal with or maneuver around him knowing this about him. For instance, I don't bother anymore to go to him for help with anything to do with our adult kids because it's going to a dry well; the best I can do is try to maneuver to make him think something is helpful to HIM or would make HIM look good if he did it.
Can narcissists change? Not impossible but the change rate for personality disorders is very low because they don't usually think they have a problem.
However - it IS important to note that many previously normal spouses can LOOK like they have a personality disorder during MLC. It's important to base your assessment not on how they are NOW, but on an honest look at how they were before. My ex definitely had a midlife crisis, but prior to that he was chronically dissatisfied, critical of others, intermittently unfaithful (probably more than I knew at the time, now that I look back at certain suspicious incidents that I rationalized away at the time). And as stated, things in our life together always revolved around what HE wanted to do, in part because he would whine about it if I made plans, say, with a couple he didn't enjoy (or think were cool enough) or to take the family somewhere he didn't enjoy. (He couldn't suffer through a day at Disneyland with the kids without whining about it so eventually I just took then without him - seriously, it was one day a year, only 60 minutes away, but you would have thought he was being tortured.) I'm not rewriting history - I still can see and appreciate the good things about our relationship - but I'm seeing what should have been obvious to me but I couldn't see with the rose colored glasses on.
