{"id":262709,"date":"2025-08-29T07:58:26","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T07:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/?p=262709"},"modified":"2025-08-29T07:58:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T07:58:26","slug":"family-advice-how-far-should-i-push-my-mom-to-divorce-my-narcissist-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/family-advice-how-far-should-i-push-my-mom-to-divorce-my-narcissist-dad\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Advice: How Far Should I Push My Mom To Divorce My Narcissist Dad?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Family Beef is our family advice column at HuffPost Family. Have a beef you want us to weigh in on? Submit it here<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Dear Family Beef,<\/p>\n

My parents have never had a \u201chappy\u201d marriage. My dad was always the loud, life-of-the-party, at least in public, and my mom is generally more reserved and quieter with him \u2014 mostly because it seems like he bullied the life out of her. It\u2019s been that way for as long as I can remember. I don\u2019t have much of a relationship with my father for a lot of reasons \u2013 but how he\u2019s treated my mom, my sister and me over the years is a huge part.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll call anyone who disagrees with him names and insult their intelligence. I grew up hearing him call my mom a \u201cdumb bitch\u201d to her face and behind her back. He\u2019s never been physically violent but when they fight he will say really cruel things and then debate, berate and \u201capologize\u201d his way out of accountability later.<\/p>\n

In recent years, my mom has grown so much though. She\u2019s gone to therapy. She\u2019s agreed in separate conversations with my sister that our dad fits the bill of a narcissist. And she told both me and my sister that she wishes she was more assertive when we were growing up, that she wishes she stood up to our dad more and \u201chas some regrets\u201d about how we were raised. She sees friends more and has even joined the community garden and has her own social life that my dad is not involved in at all. I\u2019m so proud of seeing her start to step out into her own life.<\/p>\n

So I finally asked her something I\u2019ve wondered for years, if she was ready to just leave him. It felt like years of progress just disappeared in a second, like she shrunk into herself.<\/p>\n

She started crying and saying that we don\u2019t understand the person she married or what it\u2019s like to be married for so long and that they have been talking about going to therapy together. This isn\u2019t the first time he\u2019s said he\u2019d go. He never does.<\/p>\n

I hate that I\u2019m rooting for my mom\u2019s marriage to end\u2026 but I\u2019d hate to see her continue this cycle of him getting in her way for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n

\u2015 Son of a Narc<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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First, it is clear from your write-in how much you love your mom and want to see her thrive. These should be the golden years of her life and the fact that you\u2019re advocating so fiercely for that, even when it essentially means rooting for the demise of your parent\u2019s marriage, shows how much you care for her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s quite a task for you to take on alone, though, so it\u2019s not surprising that you feel so conflicted and heavy about it. It\u2019s also not surprising that your mom is shaken up by your proposal, even if you thought she was ready for it; family systems \u2015 the way a family acts as a unit and influences each other\u2019s well-being, for better or worse \u2015 are not easy to change. (Think how hard it is to enact change in your own life. Now apply that to a whole grown-ass family. Rough.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It may have been dysfunctional growing up, but it \u201cworked\u201d\u2015 at least if the barometer of success we\u2019re using is your parents staying together. For too long, the idea was that being married is something you have to endure, rather than enjoy, and your mother may have subscribed to that. Shaking things up so late in the game is bound to meet some resistance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There\u2019s so much we could explore with your predicament, from narcissism survival skills to boundary setting and the need to make peace with another person\u2019s decisions \u2015 even when they\u2019re terrible ones.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To help you with what you\u2019re going through, we reached out to the big guns in this space \u2015 aka therapists who specialize in parental narcissism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Appreciate the progress your mom has made at this point.<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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From your email, it\u2019s clear that your mother has made some moves to become independent from your dad\u2019s toxicity, but it sounds like she\u2019s not ready for a larger leap. Lauren Maher,<\/a> a marriage and family therapist in Los Angeles, told us that making a decision to leave a relationship \u2014 particularly a trauma-bonded one \u2014 is more loaded and challenging than outsiders realize, even adult kids who had a front-row seat to the turmoil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYour mom might have intellectual awareness that your dad is a narcissist, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that it erases what her heart wants, her hopes for the relationship, or the practical, financial or legal realities of a divorce,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Not to mention \u2015 as you\u2019re probably well aware from personal experience with your father \u2015 narcissists are masters at manipulation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As Maher explained, \u201cthey make people doubt their own realities and have an uncanny ability to manipulate others right at the moment when others try to set boundaries, ask for change or make a decision to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Since your suggestion to leave seems to have greatly unsettled your mom, try to get back to a calmer place by acknowledging how much you appreciate her having shared what she has with you, said Ami B. Kaplan,<\/a> a psychotherapist in private practice in New York and Florida, who specializes in treating adult children of narcissists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cTell your mom that you appreciate and respect the progress she\u2019s made so far in establishing her own interests and friends, while reminding her of the various ways in which you\u2019re eager to support her going forward,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Kaplan said that might mean making yourself available to chat, offering her some rides to and from an event she\u2019s going to solo (especially if she usually goes to things with your dad or he drives), or even offering space in your home for a period of time, should she want it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Accept that your mom needs to make her own decisions. <\/strong><\/h2>\n
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If this is the prelude to your mom\u2019s \u201cEat Pray Love\u201d moment \u2015 feel free to sub in any movie where a woman leaves her husband \u2015 think of yourself as part of the supporting cast, not the director.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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You\u2019re well-meaning, but it\u2019s important that the idea of your mom leaving your dad comes from her, not any of her kids, Kaplan said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cShe needs to feel her own agency in being able to make her own decisions and carry through with them, and secondly, anything that comes from her directly is more likely to be something she\u2019s able and prepared to do emotionally,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Look after your own mental health, too. <\/strong><\/h2>\n
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As a child of a narcissist, the best advice for you may be to seek out help for yourself. Witnessing bullying can be a traumatic experience, even when it\u2019s a stranger you see getting bullied, let alone your mom. Find a therapist you can talk to or an online support group for children of high-conflict parents (r\/narcissisticparents<\/a> has over 136,000 members, so clearly you\u2019re not alone), and focus on what you do<\/em> have control over, said Karyl McBride, a family therapist and author of \u201cWill I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYou\u2019ll need support and help addressing your feelings about both parents, but also working on your own development of self,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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McBride said that she\u2019s seen how children with a narcissist parent tend to get caught up in the dysfunctional system where they\u2019re triangulated into their parent\u2019s messiness and aren\u2019t encouraged to develop their own authenticity and who they are, separate from the family of origin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhile it\u2019s sweet and loving you want to look after your mother, it\u2019s not your job to fix the situation,\u201d she said. \u201cTrying to be the family \u2018fixer\u2019 never works and usually backfires on the child.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Practice \u201cradical self-acceptance.\u201d <\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Radically accepting something \u2015 in this case, that your mom may very well choose to stay with your dad \u2015 doesn\u2019t mean that you condone it or are OK with it; it just means that you acknowledge and accept what the current reality is, Maher said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI\u2019d encourage you to try this basic exercise: Take out a pen and paper, and write out two columns \u2014 \u2018things I have control over\u2019 and \u2018things I have no control over,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cIt seems basic, but sometimes seeing it in black and white makes us able to reflect more clearly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So, for instance, you can control your attitude and your own actions, but you cannot control other people\u2019s emotions, values or behaviors, Maher said. Then, set a boundary for yourself about it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cRemember: Boundaries are about what we will do, not telling other people what to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n