How about my daughters? I could write a whole dissertation on that one, but I’ll just cut to the chase. D17 and D20 have all but cut off communication with W, and W has all but cut off communication with them. They’re rarely home anymore and when they are, they aren’t around her. I have a good R with both of them, but they seem to have written W off. D14 can’t drive and is therefore a little more dependent upon us, but she avoids W as well. My R with her is good too. D14 has problems of her own and I honestly believe that it’s better for her to maintain the status quo than to disrupt what home life we have. It’s a long story.
Am I truly living a Godly life…? I don’t know. I wish I could answer that; it’s something I really struggle with. You know my religious beliefs and you know how strongly they influence my behavior. But there is always the question of what happens when good qualities are carried to unhealthy extremes. It was clearly not Godly for MrHP to devote himself so entirely to religious activities that he was damaging his familial relationships. So am I damaging mine as well? I just don’t know.
What will W do? How will she react? That’s another question mark. If I confront her, she’ll respond with anger – no question. She’ll also refuse to budge. But if I just continue to disengage and try to stop providing the narcissistic supply, I’m in unexplored territory and really don’t know what she’ll do. My guess is that she’ll just retreat even further into her dogs and her rescue group where she is getting supplied. But that’s nothing more than a WAG.
Karen,
I don’t foresee W ever leaving me. Stranger things have happened, but I just don’t see it. When we split before, the biggest issue to her was that I left. She had less of a problem with OW than she did with the fact that I left her. She’s very big on M being forever - for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, and so on and so forth. It apparently doesn’t matter if you actually participate in the M, you just have to be there. But then again, I’m basing that on me leaving. I can see the NPD saying, “How dare you leave ME?!?”
In any case, were I to leave or were she to leave, I can absolutely, positively, unequivocally, one hundred percent guarantee you that none of it would be her fault. No outside party would ever hear about the problems, only that I abandoned her or that I made such impossible demands on her or made her life so miserable that the M became untenable. She denied any culpability last time, and I have no doubt that she would again. If she were to leave and some legal authority were to press her for details about what I did to make her leave, I’m sure she would come up with a twisted version of the truth in which I was somehow abusive. She already accuses me of being mean to the dogs when I do something as innocuous as say something negative about them or their behavior. I’m sure she would come up with some twisted perspective on how I was mentally and emotionally abusive to her. I suspect that the A would come up and that the other times she accused me of having A’s would somehow morph into reality.
