I may have had the wrong impression of the shadow your A was holding over the relationship and your assertiveness, so thanks for clearing that up. But my impression that you sit back and wait for others to tell you what to do didn’t come out of thin air. This matter of whether to kick your wife out or not was just full of indecision on your part. And your posts then and now still sound more like your running to the defense of your wife instead of setting your resolve to draw a line in the sand.
My impression is that if you ever did draw such a line, she would simply smudge it out, then look to see what you would do about it. She seems to be very confident that you will do nothing. This latest episode is just another notch in her belt. This seems to be what GEL is saying too. You may think telling your wife that her behavior is unacceptable, and by doing that you are being assertive, but my guess is that for a NPD, your “threats” are irrelevant. It seems the history in your home bears this out.
I think you need to significantly ramp up the level of your confrontations with her, set some strong boundaries, and do so at a much quicker pace. The surety as well as the severity of those boundaries is important to her. And she will test them, without a doubt.
In spite of not working, she does have considerable power. She can get a lawyer, run up legal bills, force you to pay half, get half the assets, etc. This in itself is quite scary and enough to hold many people back from divorce. It was a major consideration for me. But your wife is different. As an NPD, I wonder if she already has in her mind the segregation of assets except for the actual execution of that. In other words, does she have the sense of loyalty to you that you seem to have toward her, which seems to keep you in check? I would doubt she does and that there is anything you can do to change that either.
What I am trying to say is that she may already be set in her “battle” position, but you have not come to face this, so you avoid the matter. She won’t move off of those positions until you make her, so avoiding the battlefield plays into her hands, to the detriment of your kids. Letting D18 confront your wife is letting her do the dirty work for you. You need to drop the hammer and let your girls see it, so they know, feel and experience the sense of protection from YOU (not each other) that they have never had. There is no reason you can’t do this after coming home, well after D18 has done her part. It will tell your wife she has no place to run or hide.
Like everyone says, the girls need help. I am not surprised that you take the comments of D18 and D20 as the final word of counseling. It is simply avoidance on your part. What makes you think they have anywhere near the maturity, knowledge or experience to know whether they need counseling or not? Our counselor says the more kids resist coming to counseling, the more they need it. If they have no issues, fears, vulnerabilities, going to counseling would be about like going to the doctor. They may prefer not to go, but there is not such a strong emotional opposition to it. Listen to what everyone here is telling you. All three need help. The two older ones have simply learned how to bury it. They could actually be the ones in more need of help. At least the youngest is letting her anger out.
I think your thinking is completely backward on this and I think your defense against taking them to counseling sounds like more denial. It sounds to me like you could have a lot of shame issues under the surface, coupled with a lot of ego and fear, that is making the foundation for your denial. My dad is just like this. He always tries to be the nice guy, to not confront anyone until backed into a corner. Once there, he will come out fighting, so he convinces himself that he is not pushed around and does stand up for himself.
As long as he surrounds himself with passive people, everything is fine. Bring the NPD into the picture and he slowly backs away until the consequences are life and death before speaking up. But that is not how strength should be used. Protection of others means standing up before things reach that point, keeping the environment safe at all times, or as much as possible. Everyone else has already commented on the mental anguish these kids are going through because they never know when the next shoe is going to drop and when they will have to stand up to their mom.
If you’ve not had to deal with this as a kid, then you’re lucky. But that also means you have no idea what your kids are experiencing. Sorry to be so harsh. Again, I don’t mean to be offensive, just laying out the feelings I get from reading your comments.
