If he has to actively work to destroy the family members in order to indulge his heroic fantasy, then that's just the way it is. Narcissistic supply is far more important than the real needs of other people.
About the time my father was going through a "mid life crisis" and started claiming to be completely unhappy and unfulfilled in his job, all of a sudden there was a shift in the way he related to the FOO. Even though I was in my twenties at the time I started getting the "parenting by mail" letters and other infantilizing treatments. I was kind of bewildered at the time but now it makes sense... He had no where else to go to feed his fantasy life. 
Instant recognition there, tjr... as though he made
you his career... you, who were to be his coup d'grace (sp?)
That's what I was supposed to be for my mother, I guess... when my brother (10 yrs my senior) failed to be moldable.
And it's never clicked with me till I read you here, but "infantalizing treatments" .... yeah, I think I've done some of that myself, at times.
Maybe that's what is really going on with people who come across as "mothering" types, I dunno. There's mothering and then there's interfering and controlling.
But that's all I'd ever seen modeled, and it's what was presented to me by my mother as "the way to be" in order to accomplish anything in this life. Yikes. Will give this more thought... but yeah, I wonder whether we all don't do this to a certain extent... and sometimes think it's a form of intimacy... when in actuality it's nothing but an attempt to control?! Sheesh... making a human being our "mission" in life is just another way of objectifying him/her.
Thanks!
Carolyn
