That’s some good stuff, Cobra. I especially like the idea of using the NPD diagnosis as a tool. When I discussed telling W about the diagnosis, the C just said that it wouldn’t do any good. She would deny it and the C would lose all credibility in her eyes. I still believe that to be true, but I hadn’t considered that telling her about the diagnosis would put her on notice that I view things differently now. She won’t believe it, but she’ll have to know that I believe it. She’ll be royally POed. I’m just guessing here, but I would estimate about a 30% chance that she’ll choose to leave rather than live within the new structure. But I can live with that. That’s one thing I’ve gained throughout this whole episode: I’m not scared of that any more. Bottom line: I haven’t come to any conclusion, but I am giving this idea some very serious thought.
I do have another issue I want to bring up though. There are certainly many reasons why I’ve let things get into the sorry state they’re in, but one of the biggest reasons I’ve let W become such a tyrant is that I don’t want to be one. Lets use money as an example – a very real-world example. W drove us into bankruptcy not long after my A. We were still in MC at the time. (That’s one of the reasons the C did so much pro bono with us.) He told me to take away all the credit cards, take away the checkbook, remove W’s name from the accounts, and put her on a strict allowance with specific bills for which she was to be responsible. I eventually did that, but I had real problems with doing it. There’s a lot more I could say, but to cut to the chase, I didn’t want to be a dictator. I wanted to be her H, not her father. I didn’t want to control her, I wanted her to learn to be responsible.
That’s still a big issue with me and the NPD. I can see that the only possibility for changing the current sitch is for me to become something I don’t want to be. I see the necessity of telling W that she’s no longer allowed to discipline D14, but that whole idea just rubs me wrong. I don’t object to being the disciplinarian, that’s not it at all. It’s just that what I really want is for W to learn to control her own behavior to the point that I don’t have to be the sole disciplinarian. I don’t want to tell W that I will dispose of any animal she brings into the house without express permission from me. I want her to behave reasonably and limit the number of animals to something that doesn’t completely overwhelm the entire family without my having to become the dog-dictator. There are many more examples I could cite, but I think you can see where I’m going with this.
So I can see that these are things I need to do in order to have any hope of changing things, but I fear turning into another W. That, and I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life having to keep my wife under control. I want to be a partner, not a parent. It’s kind of like HP saying that she didn’t want to have to be the R cop. She wanted it to be a two-way street, not something that she had to constantly stay on top of to keep things on track. I wouldn’t mind if I thought it would be a temporary thing, but I don’t. And I have both experience and book-learnin’ telling me that it won’t be temporary. I can use the money example again here. I don’t remember what the issue was at the time, but about a year and a half ago I let W get her hands on our finances again. And once again, we’re on the very ragged edge of being able to pay our bills. IOW, she didn’t learn a thing. There has been no improvement in her money management skills. Everything, I have seen, heard, or read about NPD tells me that they never change, they never recover. She’ll never be able to govern her own behavior, which means I’ll have to do it right up until the day I die. And that’s not a pleasant prospect.
