NPD MIL and Husband

[Jesse7319]

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this as it involves my husband too but I am just at a loss and need some help!!! My MIL is just a horrid woman, typical Narc, treats her now adult kids like complete pieces of trash one minute then professes her love for them the next, long story short when I first met my husband she was completely up his ass, texting all day demanding she know what he's doing, where he's at, who's he is with, FaceTiming 5 or 6 times a day, then we found out we were pregnant and we didn't tell her first and she just lost her shit because apparently she was supposed to be the first to know and that's when he started to realize something was wrong with her.. he read some books about narc abuse and became very enlightened to the abuse he has endured his whole life and stopped talking to her for a while, now they talk on occasion and it's fine, but the last couple of months I have noticed that it seems like he is the one trying to Hoover her back into being a big part of his life, I have also noticed that he has been going on Instagram and being completely rude to people to start arguments with them, it's like he likes that or something and one thing him and his mom always did was fight, constantly argue about every little thing and I think he is actually missing that???? This morning he texted her saying how great she is and how she is so important in his life blah blah and just 2 weeks ago he was going off about how she ruined his life and he hates her because she's crazy.   I am really at a loss for how to deal with all this because it seems as tho they both have NPD and feed off each other and I just want to be done with it all already!!!!!

[Pepin]

This sounds like enmeshment to me.  Your husband is likely feeling guilt about who is mother really is.  He is also in denial because he is embarrassed for her.

As a result, he has to blow off steam somehow....and how is he going to do this? - by going to Instagram and taking it out on other people. 

The best scenario is for your husband to start paying attention to his marriage and also preparing for his new role as father.  Those will be the 2 most important aspects of his life -- not to be a son before those two things. 

Since he is open to reading books, I would continue to provide him with more to read.  He is definitely in a fog since he was raised by her...and it will be very hard him for to see any other way.

[Jesse7319]

This sounds like enmeshment to me.  Your husband is likely feeling guilt about who is mother really is.  He is also in denial because he is embarrassed for her.

As a result, he has to blow off steam somehow....and how is he going to do this? - by going to Instagram and taking it out on other people. 

The best scenario is for your husband to start paying attention to his marriage and also preparing for his new role as father.  Those will be the 2 most important aspects of his life -- not to be a son before those two things. 

Since he is open to reading books, I would continue to provide him with more to read.  He is definitely in a fog since he was raised by her...and it will be very hard him for to see any other way.

Why would he feel guilt for who she is? I definitely think you're right about enmeshment, it's like when they go a while without talking he can't stand it and he has to go up her ass to feel normal again. Thank you for your reply I will try to find some more books for him, although I feel a little discouraged about it because it seems like everything he read resonated for a little bit and now he has forgotten it all.

[Pepin]

Why would he feel guilt for who she is?

He feels guilty that she cannot see how badly she is behaving.  Therefore, he is going to cover for her by claiming that she is the best mother.  He knows she is not the best mother and he also knows that he likely cannot change her.  I guess what will be interesting to watch for is if her behavior changes or not with his newfound praise of her.  If she continues with her bad behavior, then he hopefully can realize the truth and make healthy changes...it really just depends how deep he is in the enmeshment.  Facts are the best way to get him to understand the dynamic. 

[bloomie]

Hi there and welcome! It sounds challenging dealing with the shifting sands of your DH's relationship with his mother. I am adult child of an undiagnosed PD mother and I can sympathize with how difficult it is to hold a consistent view of our uPD parents when first coming out of the fear, obligation, and guilt a life long relationship with them creates in us.

One of the things I am reminding myself of often and work hard to continue to learn is to authentically and consistently communicate respectfully with others as a core value that I have. It is tricky with a high conflict uPD parent and that hot/cold, push/pull, love/hate, mean/sweet cycle got really confusing if I allow myself too close to the chaos.

Here is a really good article that explains that cycle that we can experience in relationship with Narcissistic loved ones: https://pro.psychcentral.com/exhausted-woman/2015/05/the-narcissistic-cycle-of-abuse/

Many of us have something called fleas from having grown up in disordered environments where unhealthy patterns of behavior and emotionally enmeshed interactions were all we knew. Learning to recognize those unhealthy patterns and developing a working knowledge that informs how we can make different choices in our lives has been a long process for me personally and is something I have dedicated myself to working on every day of my life so I can break that abusive cycle in my own family and relations.

I have great motivation when I look into the eyes of my children and I imagine that your DH may very soon begin to think through all of the back and forth and drama and damage this all does and how it could impact you and your child.

Learning about traumatic bonding and how to break the unhealthy bonds I had with my own high conflict uBPD/HPDm was an important step. Here is an excerpt from Information that was helpful to me around this concept along with a link to more:

Intense relationships also tend to hijack all of a survivor's relating capacity. It is like a state of being burnt out. First, while it is very easy to become attached to a very chaotic and inconsistent person, it is simply not possible to form a consistent internal object representation (feeling memory) about them. When separated from the intense partner, the urge to make contact is usually intense because it is a stable feeling memory (or internal object) that makes separation from an important other person tolerable in any circumstance.

http://www.abuseandrelationships.org/Content/Survivors/trauma_bonding.html

The book The Betrayal Bond, Breaking Free From Exploitive Relationships by Patrick Carnes helped me to learn how to recognize these types of exploitive relationships and gave insights in how to break free.

Here is a book review for another book that might be of great help for your DH in relationship with his mother:

Cutting Loose: An Adult's Guide to Coming to Terms with Your Parents" - Halpern
https://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?topic=28162.0

Note that one of our hero members Spring Butterfly suggests reading Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend before tackling this book to help illuminate the concepts laid our in Cutting Loose.

For me, it took validation and talking things through with other adult children of N parents and a wise and savvy therapist, much support from the community here at Out of the FOG,  reading everything I could get my hands on, to really begin to believe myself and trust that I would be okay if I detached from the truly terrible chains that bound me to this cycle with my own mother. I had to immerse myself in healthy, right thinking to formulate stable views and responses to unstable, ever changing loved ones. 

I never acted out in the ways you describe with your DH in recreating the chaos with others, but I did do a great deal of damage to myself by finding myself drawn into relationships with very similar women to my mom for a very long time.

My hope is that you will be able to keep yourself and your little one in a kind of neutral and safe zone in all of this and talk through how to protect your family unit from the angst and potential damage the state of the relationship with your mil could bring into your lives.

It is love to want to help your DH get to the root of the issues and you can offer resources and suggestions, but ultimately you do not have to allow any of his mother's horrid behaviors in close to your family. This is his hard inner work to do as you support him and develop strong boundaries and form agreement around what you allow in your life together and around your LO.

Keep coming back and sharing. This is a lot the both of you are facing and we are here for you!