JUst FYI though LC- D's wife is the number one most likely to be seriously mentally ill/drug addicted WAS on the boards (and I've been here a long time and seen it all).
This generous description of factors that D laid out may be triggering your wife is certainly likely. On the other hand, if she's a narcissist, some narcissists (the sociopathic kind) would simply bow out of seeing dying relatives in the hospital because they don't like it and they don't want to do something they don't care to do. (My exH was not a sociopathic narcissist, but more of an insecure narcissist - he really really cared how he looked to others, and by extension, how his wife and kids made him look to other people. He would go see the dying relative so long as other people were going to see it, so he could play the big man. But privately he lacks empathy for the troubles his adult kids are going through, griped endlessly about it when we helped my younger brother out of a jam that was not his fault, etc. Publicly he's the great humanitarian but privately - not so much.)
Only you know, if you look back, if this was a pattern before the crisis of her only doing the things that she enjoyed, and bowing out of things you might have wanted to do. Or bowing out of things that might have required her to put herself out for other people. If any of this resonates you might want to read The Sociopath Next Door - quick and easy read.
Yeah that's what I am trying to figure out. If it is MLC there would be some hope, if I am willing to wait it out, continue to show love and compassion etc. No guaranteed by any means, but hope.
But with narcissistic personality, there really is no hope. There was no real "love" there in the sense that you or I think of love.
If she has that, it would be some covert/vulnerable narcissistic personality disorder. She doesn't have the overt, very manipulative version. Which makes me think, maybe I am splitting hairs here looking for a label. Depression/MLC seems very likely.
Also divorcing someone can be incredibly selfish, and so is MLC, so right now all of her behaviors so seem more narcissistic but as far as how that paints the history of the relationship, I don't want to re-write with a wave of the hand like she is doing. If I cherry pick here and there-- I can probably find a pattern but I have to weigh that fairly here.
There was also a wonderful person in there that I loved very much who by all accounts seemed to be on my "team", cared for me, was there for me in ways a person with overt malignant narcissism would or could not be.
I did see that she went to see her friend's baby the other day and I know she does not care for babies. So this would have been one as a "show". OR, I mean it all depends on how you frame things, maybe she did it in good faith to support, even though she doesn't like babies.
We all do things for social reasons sometimes in order to "do the right thing" that maybe we truly don't want to do. So what is the difference between doing it for appearances and doing it for support? I want to be fair here, we can all be REALLY selfish from time-to-time and we aren't all narcissists.
I am ruminating too much here.
In review:
Depression fueled MLC: Very likely. Vulnerable Narcissism: possibly, very hard to discern
