The N Spouse (who is not an N)

[gratitude28]

Hi All,
I know we have brought up this topic before and, Storm, I just read your reply to Hops and saw your story about your dad.
I am having a hard time accepting the fact that although my father is not an N (He does experience emotions), he is not a very nice person. I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt because he was raised by an evil woman and is married to an N, but I can't excuse the fact that as intelligent as he is, he has conformed to her nastiness. And, the truth is, he has his own brand of superiority and contempt too. In a way, I find him more vile right now because I feel that he shoudl know better.
On the other hand, it is only because of him that I have a shred of self-esteem and have learned any respect for other people. It's like sometimes the sane person shows through.
Can anyone add to this and help me sort this out a bit???? Do you have a non-N parent that has adapted to his/her spouse???????
Thanks.
Love, Beth

[Hopalong]

Hi Beth,
This isn't a very direct answer but a thought:

I think children love their parents so immensely that it is almost death-defying to face facts, when a parent truly isn't kind or nice or good.

Maybe it's even wired in. In a way, the way parents love and protect their babies...the same is returned. It's terribly hard to face a parent's not-niceness.

The first place it takes me, when I face it, is into examining my own. It's there all right...sublimated into a personality that's more like my father's, but dealing with reality about her has led to dealing with reality about myself.

I am much LESS nice than I was 9 years ago when I moved here. I'm also more real, less full of fantasy. But I don't like myself as much.

Well, it's weird, but the best way I can describe how I feel about my mother is that I love her but I really don't like her. And I think I have almost come to feel the same way about myself. Self-love, but with a painful reckoning.

Does that chime at all with how you feel about your father?

Hops

[gratitude28]

Wow, Hops,
That was such a different answer than I anticipated.
Are you saying you love your own self but you don't like your own self? And that is because you are like your dad? Why do you think you are less nice now? Because you no longer pretend to go along with everything? But, as you know, that is much better. And it should be more fulfilling for you in a way. If you mean fantasy the way I think you do, I think you mean pretending all is fine and dandy in your world and keepiong up that pretense.
I guess for a long time I thought my dad was so wonderful. And in some ways I still think he is.He is smart and has smart wit... But he is as much of a jerk in so many ways as my mother. He puts people down (in him, though, I believe it is out of a lack of self esteem). But some of his way of being "funny" is also by trying to 'dumb me down.' He likes to say that I don't know how to do things that I do know how to do. Or to "joke" that I am a certain way when I am not. He does that to my mother and it's one of their "games."
Blech. I hate this whole topic. But I relaly need some help.I hope in some way it helps someone else.
Love, Beth

[gratitude28]

To avoid the agonizing realization of his failed, defeat-strewn, biography, the narcissist resorts to reality-substitutes. The dynamics are simple: as the narcissist grows older, his Sources of Supply become scarcer, and his Grandiosity Gap yawns wider. Mortified by the prospect of facing his actuality, the narcissist withdraws ever deeper into a dreamland of concocted accomplishments, feigned omnipotence and omniscience, and brattish entitlement.

This is what I am totally seeing in both of my parents. But my fatehr rides the coattails of my spoiled mother. He didn't used to put up with her nastiness to this extent.

[isittoolate]

Hi Beth,

Quote from: gratitude28 on March 25, 2007, 10:47:40 PM
On the other hand, it is only because of him that I have a shred of self-esteem and have learned any respect for other people.
Love, Beth

I have an idea what you mean. and can go only by example of my eldest sister: what she told me. (Remember we are 5 kids and I've never had a voice and I never loved/liked my parents, as you?

Jean spent a lot of time with Dad, she said. Mom was home with the next baby, then the next etc. so she would ride to town with Dad and he would talk to her about farming, and raising cattle and fields lying fallow, and anything and everything. She was out in the barn with him and he nattered on and on about things so there was some kind of a a bond between father and daughter that NONE OF THE REST OF US HAD...... and he would have talked regular too, not baby talk.

Say this went on for 5 years and she has Daddy all to herself--then all of a sudden she doesn't as all these other little lazy bastards started walking and cut in on her formative years. She was beaten too as time progressed for her but 'first and foremost she bonded with the opposite sex parent' which is what is supposed to happen/

She loved Dad right up to when he died and never had the emotional problems that I have.

Does any of this make sense?

Love
Izzy

[gratitude28]

Hi Iz,
Yes, it makes sense. You do need that approval from the opposite-sex parent. And, yes, I am very grateful that he was kinder to me as a child than my mother was. He did and does like me. But he is so warped now. I think with him he either had to adjust to her or leave her. And I don't believe he could bring himself to do that (it would be wrong).
Yes, I can see that you would have terrible self-esteem problems, Iz. In your case, I guess I would be asking the reverse. How did your Mother behave (your dad was the N, right????) Was she like him? Did she become more like him?
(((((IZ)))))))))

[isittoolate]

hi Beth,

Glad you understood.

Dad was not a diagnosed N, but I don't see empathy when he's beating his children and animals, and appeared 'removed from us emotionally'--whatever he was, I see my mom as having withdrawn and putting up with whatever she had to keep the peace, but she was withdrawn too so I never knew her either.

She did get 'bossy', 'nosy' when I left Joe and came back home with a child. I had disgraced the family and I guess it was her job to make sure I didn't do it again. (That was just a 3 month stay until I found a job and a place for A. and me.)

love
Izzy

[Hopalong]

Thanks, Beth.
That was a caring, interested reply when I'd hijacked like mad.

I think I don't like myself as much as I used to because I've been face to face with feeilngs of hatred for my mother at times. (Like this weekend, because I'd had 3 weeks of freedom. It was so hard to accept that she was back, demanding this and that and that I had to go back into chambermaid role. I felt like an ox kicking over the traces.) Then again, with time I always manage to calm those feelings, get my spiritualometer going again, and make peace with my situation. As Stormy said, I need to ride it out just because of the way life is at the moment.

But before I moved back here, I never knew I was capable of such thoughts as: my life will be so much better when you die. It's pretty shocking, when you've always perceived yourself as loving and sensitive and kind. Plus which, some (not all) of my feelings about the house are pure entitlement. And we all know where that comes from. Ick. Ooo ick.

My Dad was so dear, in contrast to her, that I've put him on a pedestal. But it's also true that he was controlling in an OCDish way, and bigoted in some thoughtless ways that came from upbringing. Overall, though, he comes out pretty near saintly in contrast. He was much loved.

Your Dad must be tired.

I think we all want Jimmy Stewart for a dad. But they're just people. Guys. Stuck in whatever they're stuck in, just as we can be.

love
Hops

[Brigid]

Hi Beth,
My parents are both dead now, and my dad, who was the true n in my family, died 3 years before my mother.  My mother and I were very close after I got through my difficult teenage years, and became close friends and companions.  I was living in another state, but would call her several times per week to discuss everything that was going on in my life.  I would rarely have any conversation with my father, and if he answered the phone, he would say hi and hand the phone to my mother, without so much as asking how I was doing.

After I moved back to my hometown, I was spending more time around my father and he was getting older and even more difficult than he always had been.  I was older, stronger (emotionally) and more confident in my ability to stand up to him and defend myself verbally.  I would not only stand up for myself, but also to the constant attacks he made on my mother.  She was always a weak woman, who completely deferred to my father and his wants and needs.  The more I tried to defend her, the more she took his side and made me out to be the bad guy.  I finally had to give up on both of them to save myself and my children from being subjected to my parents' constant bickering and my need to fight with my father.

So, I completely understand your dilemma and conflicted feelings of wanting to stand by the non-n parent who has learned to adapt to the life of misery of living with the n, by becoming more like them.  My response was to totally walk away, so I don't have any better coping mechanisms to offer you, I'm afraid.  I have spent most of my life searching for Jimmy Stewart.  I don't know that I will ever find a father replacement--no matter how hard I try.

I wish you well.

Brigid

[mudpuppy]

I think every person who comes into the orbit of a true N is eventually forced to choose.
Either they will tolerate the behavior or they will not.
At first they are sucked into a world where they are constantly given tests of loyalty and subservience. Often they are sucked into this world with no conception of what they have entered and by the time they know something is wrong they have a hard time even figuring out how to leave. If they do try they are often too weak to withstand the hell that ensues.
If they decide to tolerate it, for whatever reason, there are certain regimented and bizarre behaviors that have to be adhered to. They must accept the supreme dominant position of the N and they must demonize anyone who rejects that dominance. These people might have been perfectly decent outside of the influence of the N but once they have entered that world and sold their soul, so to speak, they take on the trappings of the N. They become invested in the system. They made their choice for their own security and it was a very bad one, for themselves and for the innocent victims of the N they serve, but they will often defend it to the death.

Those who choose not to tolerate the destructive behavior of an N end up at a place like this or at a therapist wondering why the world, and especially those who are not Ns and are supposed to love them, tolerates the insanity of these people.

mud

[axa]

Mud,

Thank you for putting all the reality of life with an N in a nutshell........... very impressed.

axa