Bizarre triangulation by uNPD cousin

[Unbroken1]

Many years ago, I visited my aunt and cousin over the holidays. It had been about 15 years since we had seen each other and in that time my cousin (male) had gotten married and had a child.

During the visit, my cousin was withdrawn and not prone to socializing. During the main family holiday meal, he spent most of the time holed up in one of the kids' bedrooms playing on the computer. Later, when my girlfriend (to-be uNPD fiancée) and I decided to take a drive to explore the town where they lived, my aunt approached us as we were headed out the door to nervously ask if we didn't want to hang with my cousin. He had told her that he was feeling hurt and thinking we didn't.

At the time the only response I could manage was a surprised denial as it totally came out of the blue. What was a 35-year old doing communicating through his mother? I was baffled and annoyed TBH that a grown-ass man could not do that for himself, but said nothing as it was just too weird to comprehend at the time.

I never forgot that experience, but 30 years later I understand that this was a form of triangulation by someone who has grown into a malignant, passively aggressive individual, and a full-blown overt narcissist. Even my aunt has confided to me that he had been a sweet, loving child and the reason for his behavior was his abusive, alcoholic stepfather who tormented him as a teenager. Of course there was no self-responsibility taken for her passive enabling role of the parental abuse.

As the domineering patriarch of his clan, my cousin has issued a fatwah of sorts on me within the family, and I'm now exiled from contact or gatherings after I called him out on some of his BS. Along with that, he sent a flying monkey in the form of his stepbrother to warn me that I had caused great offense and no doubt to elicit an apology to kowtow to his need to establish dominance in our relationship.

Fortunately, I was already aware of flying monkeys by that point, so I was able to see in real time just what was transpiring and did not take the bait. But  now I can see the weird behavior from 30 years ago in a brand new light.

During my divorce, my uNPDw triangulated me with a mutual acquaintance who had hired me for a consulting job and then neglected to tell me that the job had been canceled before I had completed the first stage of the project. When I called to confront this person, I was met with a sob story about how she couldn't talk as her grandmother had (conveniently, I think) just passed away. I wrote off the experience but as this person was a member of my ex's book group, I had to accept that there was no way I could avoid her altogether. My ex blamed me for the whole debacle, of course, before becoming besties with this person and going out of her way to make sure I knew.

Now I can look back to other times I was unknowingly triangulated and can see what was happening, in retrospect. I would be interested to hear other examples of this very strange and often malicious form of manipulation that disordered individuals engage in.

[Cat of the Canals]

Triangulation is huge in my family. There is rarely direct confrontation. It's the main thing that led me on my Out of the FOG journey.

A few years back, something strange started happening. Whenever I attended a family function, I'd get pulled aside by a friend of the family or family member and told how much it means to my mother when I spend time with her and that it would be everything to her if I visited/called more often. Not being Out of the FOG yet, and having been trained by my PDmother to be a people pleaser, I immediately got the message: mom was unhappy with me and I needed to fix it. I immediately began making an effort to call and visit more often.

But at the next family function... I got pulled aside again and issued the exact same message. Now I was baffled. I'd done exactly what she'd asked of me (through a third party, of course), but she was still complaining to people? That was when I started googling and learned about narcissists and flying monkeys. And over time it became clear that not only had I reinforced her triangulation tactics by responding just as she wanted, I also realized that no amount of calls or visits would ever make her happy. She'd always want MORE.

I can also look back and see the times my mom tried to use me as a flying monkey. Telling me I "need" to get my brother to do XYZ. Complaining that so-and-so is being really nasty to her (translation: not giving in to some demand she's made). Thankfully, I can't think of a time she was successful. Even before I was Out of the FOG, I remember thinking, "Not my circus, not my monkeys."

[NarcKiddo]

My mother engages in triangulation constantly. I was constantly being asked to tell my sister something as if I thought it. She likewise tells me things which I am sure are from mother. I complied for the longest time. She still complies. If all else fails mother tells us our father would like something. Which resulted in a funny (to me) situation recently. She had told me he wanted to visit me after I had an operation. (She had wanted to come and stay but I put my foot down. I don't know why she then tried to impose a visit between him and me.) She told me this before the operation and I said I would accommodate him if I could but it would depend on how I felt.

She then went away to visit someone else. I was well enough to see my father so I emailed him to say I was glad to hear he wanted to visit and I was in fact well enough. It was the first he had heard of it.

[easterncappy]

Even when I was in the FOG, this was one of the things that tipped me off that something was veeeery wrong with a lot of the people in my life.

One example is of someone close to me, not blood related, but we go to the same church. The same two people would always go through him if their feelings were hurt by some nonsense - almost as if PD's can instinctively tell who is vulnerable to their tactics. I'd wake up to some text about how "you hurt her feelings, you need to apologize, she's really upset with you". Both of them had a way to contact me. Both of them consistently had really, really stupid reasons for being upset with me ("you didn't say hi to her after church", "she thought you were making a face at her"). Anyway, he cut it out after I started telling him "wow, I guess they should bring that up with me instead of bringing you into it, plus that's a really weird reason to be upset with someone".

Or my mom and my aunt. I would drop my mom off to be with my aunt (another weird situation I was manipulated into for years). My aunt would tell my mom that I hurt her feelings by not smiling at her or getting out of the car for small talk. My mom would tell me that next time, I need to get out of the car and talk to her for a bit otherwise I'd be responsible for my aunt "putting her through hell that day". I remember thinking "there are like 20 layers of stupidity to this situation - none of this has to be the way it is".

Those are just two examples. The behavior always struck me as incredibly cowardly and childish and just absurd. If you ever try to bring up issues like a normal person would with these people, it doesn't compute in their brains. They are terrified of confrontation. They won't do it themselves, which is why they recruit vulnerable and gullible people to do it (or other narcissists who just think it's fun to stir the pot), and if they're confronted, out comes the severity of their mental illness. Every confrontation with the PD's in my family has ranged from like, suicide threats, screaming and crying, victim blaming, etc. It was quite eye-opening when I moved out with someone who isn't PD and these things were just simple and to the point. "It hurt my feelings that you did X", "I'm sorry, I didn't really think it through well, what can I do to make it right". That's it.

[Catothecat]

I had a NPD friend who was constantly trying to involve me in various triangulation scenarios, mostly with his (now ex) partner but also with coworkers, his ex-wife etc.  He used me to reinforce his lies because for a long time I believed whatever he told me, and it made me feel important, like I was a valuable, trusted friend. He wasn't asking just anyone to help him do his dirty work (I thought at the time, when in reality he was engaging a lot of people in the same manner including at times against me) but me...special friend me.  It flattered my ego to go along with him.

I don't remember what the breaking point was about, but I know that I finally told him no, I'm not going to do that because it was starting to get ridiculous.  Sometimes I think, how can these people not realize the PD is just using them?  Then I remember how easily I was used.  I'm not making excuses or apologies, just acknowledging that it can be very very easy to be used by a PD when you have no awareness of PDs and their manipulations.  It's just...life, the way it is.  Normal. 

Then you get out of that fog and it hits you how dysfunctional it all is! 

[escapingman]

uNPDx always used triangulation to make sure I got the point, she would always tell me about conversations she had with someone else. Very often she and her "friend" had been discussing me or something affecting our joint lives, I was not allowed to have another opinion as they already decided on the subject. She even used people I worked with she never met in her triangulation, she could say "It is no wonder X and Z don't get along with you at work" just out of the blue and go with a long conversation about what I had done wrong almost asking me to apologise to them without there being anything to apologise for. Looking back at it, I wonder how many of these conversations with third party people actually took place and how many was just made up to get her point backed by someone.   

[easterncappy]

I had a NPD friend who was constantly trying to involve me in various triangulation scenarios, mostly with his (now ex) partner but also with coworkers, his ex-wife etc.  He used me to reinforce his lies because for a long time I believed whatever he told me, and it made me feel important, like I was a valuable, trusted friend. He wasn't asking just anyone to help him do his dirty work (I thought at the time, when in reality he was engaging a lot of people in the same manner including at times against me) but me...special friend me.  It flattered my ego to go along with him.

This is crazy. I just now realized that the triangulation I've experienced extends to friends. I guess PD's are naturally attracted to other PD's, or people who look vulnerable and gullible enough to fall for the manipulation. Confident, self-secure people probably scare PD's off. I was friends with a woman who kept trying to drag me into her marital drama, including doing things like anonymously reporting women coworkers who she suspected her husband of cheating on her with or driving past their houses and taking pictures. I thought it was weird, but it didn't occur to me that it was triangulation, the very same childish nonsense my mom and aunt engaged in.

The world is full of strange people.