The Narcissistic Father

[Guest guest]

All of you are familiar with the " Aha! " effect when you read the BPD

books or the messages on this board and realize they are describing your

parent to a T. Now I am having that same " Aha! " effect regarding my

father and narcissistic personality disorder. I had heard enough about

narcissism to be intrigued, and started researching it online. Wow! A

lot of questions have been answered. I used to think my father was

passive and just going along with BPMom's behavior. Wrong! He has his

own distorted world view that happens to overlap hers. He splits people

as all good or all bad like my mother, but for narcissistic and not

borderline reasons. BPmom's drama has overshadowed his behavior, but

the more I learn about narcissism the more my father comes into focus

with his own well-defined character and not just a tag-along to BPmom.

My father never spoke up or defended his children when BPmom was

attacking them verbally. I wrote this off as self-preservation, but

guess what?! Narcissists lack empathy. My father has always been a

little " eccentric " -- always asking for special treatment from store

clerks and waitresses. Guess what?! That's a narcissistic trait. In

his old age, my father has started making strange speeches about how he

isn't getting the respect he deserves. Guess what?! You get the idea.

Let's just say it all fits and I totally get what motivates my Dad now.

Something else that has been a question mark for me is-- why have my

parents stayed together for 45 years? There is actually a book on the

subject called " The Narcissistic/ Borderline Couple " . Answer: The

borderline sees the narcissist as a charismatic, caring, and loving

hero. The narcissist feeds off of the love and admiration of the

borderline. They see in each other things that they are lacking, and

they use each other to continually try and resolve childhood issues.

Their issues cause them to respond in unhealthy yet complementary ways

to each other, resulting in a dysfunction dance. It is complicated, yet

totally believable that two mentally ill people might actually need each

other.

A helpful tip I picked up in my reading is that narcissists respond

negatively to criticism. Their defense is to demean the person with the

criticism. Now there's a lightbulb in my head telling me, " You are not

ever going to get a compassionate response from your father about the

issues you have with your mother. He is going to get defensive and

attack you instead. " Narcissists are not nice, sweet pushovers. They

can just seem that way in contrast to a borderline. The reality is that

I have TWO parents with personality disorders. Yikes! I'm not sure the

BPD mother concept had really sunk in yet.

Now that I've had to reevaluate my " normal " childhood and realize my

parents were anything but normal, I feel like I've been living the

Truman Show. Truman asks, as he's about to exit his fake world, " Was

nothing real? " I find the answer he got comforting, " You were real. " I

was real, but boy, was I clueless! I should write a book called, " The

Protective Bubble that Was Allgood's World, and How it Burst at Age 36,

But in a Good Way. "