I am a long time lurker first time poster. I really need some advice about how to help my husband see that we need to go NC. I've tried talking and reasoning with him, but he's not understanding where I'm coming from and I need your help. This is a very emotional topic for me and I need some logical approaches that will work for him. Some background: My mother has NPD. I had been going to therapy for years before someone finally said, "Your mother really sounds like she has this disorder. You should really think more about it and look it up." At first, I really thought the therapist was wrong because my mother had always said that my brother had NPD and she always talked about how much she sacrificed for all of us (she was formerly a lawyer, but had to leave her job when my sister and I were around 5 to take both of us and our brother. After researching, it hit me that my mom had so many narc traits. She triangulated my siblings and pitted us against each other to compete for her love. She has always loved my brother more than my sister or I. I would say, as well, that she has loved my sister least of all. My mother and sister no longer talk. It's been a few years, the end was brutal. My mother said some of the meanest things you could possibly say to a person which ended their relationship. My mother blames me for this somehow. My mother also has an obsession with image and always was obsessed with my weight and that of my sister. At one point in middle school I was about 10lb overweight. My mom, when teaching me how to lose weight, basically told me to eat as few calories a day as possible. I think I only ate 800 that day when writing down my calories and she said she was proud of me. I was around 13. This continued and she was happy and willing to buy me clothes if I lost more weight. Luckily I didn't end up anorexic. There were times when she would tell all of us she wished she'd never had us, and how difficult we had made her life. She was and still is absolutely manipulative. She wouldn't let me get my driver's permit for the smallest reasons. One of the pettiest was that I forgot to close a cabinet door, so she reasoned that if I couldn't close a cabinet door, I couldn't get my permit. Even when I was 20 she tried to limit me driving at night. I could go on with examples. When I got pregnant with my now 3 year old son Sebastian, I didn't tell her, but she found out because I was still on her insurance. When she called about an ultrasound bill when I was 13 weeks along and dragged it out of me that I was pregnant (at 25 years old and engaged to my husband) she demanded I have an abortion. She told me I'd live in poverty forever and asked if I really thought my dad would walk me down the aisle when I was pregnant (yes, and yes). She also invited friends to the wedding without asking me. I'm trying to give some background detail but there is just SO, SO much that I can't include here. Financial support that was promised for the wedding was withheld. They came to the wedding and we had a great wedding anyway. But up until I had my son, they were horrible, even after the wedding. Then, when I went into labor, they suddenly cared about the baby. And my dad even told me a story about how he went out to coffee with one of his friends the morning after I went into labor (it was 29 hours long) and his friend didn't ask much about me and how upsetting it was to him. How ironic it was- his friend probably thought my dad didn't care. Also, my parents called multiple times when I was trying to push and were a pain in the ass. I just had my second son in April and set clear boundaries and turned off our phones and none of these things happened in the delivery room (thanks DWIL). But when I told my mom I was pregnant (she guessed already because I wasn't drinking when we were visiting) she said, "Well I hope you are happy and that you can take care of it." That was the death kneel to our relationship to me. That happened August 2014. Since then I've been wanting to go no contact. But my husband won't let me. We had a long conversation tonight about that, and several times before, and he just will not let go. He thinks it's really unfair to keep the kids away from their grandparents and doesn't see the abuse happening. To be fair, abuse doesn't really happen much anymore because I'm 30 and I set clear boundaries and will hang up the phone on them and they know they are hanging on by a thin line... but every time I talk to my mother I get angry and frustrated. I honestly sometimes wish she were dead so I could mourn her and try to remember what little good qualities she had and not have to deal with her on a weekly basis. It's not good for my mental health. I also want to stay in contact with my dad, but I can't do that and not talk to my mom. I should mention my husband's dad is a major narc. But we're not really in contact with him because his dad makes absolutely no effort to be part of his son's life. And he lives in Alaska and we're in Washington. So he's out of the picture. I am going to try to go to twice a month Facetime discussions instead of once a week and then eventually push it to once a month... but can you help me with my husband? How do you make someone see that a toxic person like a narc mom is harmful, and dangerous for your kids?
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