My counsellor keeps encouraging me to write a book about my journey with Narcissistic Abuse Syndrome (NAS). She tells me that a first-person perspective, especially with the victim being male, is a needed piece for survivors and therapists. The primary challenge I have with such an activity is that NAS leaves me with such huge levels of self-doubt that it is hard for me to put words to paper to try and articulate the emotions with which I continue to struggle.

My ex-wife continues to be controlling and manipulative in every aspect that she can find. I am currently facing yet another lawsuit and trial, because she is incapable of recognizing that the needs of the children are different from her own needs. British Columbia has a child support recalculation service, which will calculate how much child support should be paid, and by whom. Last year I engaged this service, and was pleasantly surprised that they determined that based upon my income, and her income, they reduced my monthly support payment by $155 / month. I knew that she had received a raise during the year, and I had not, so I was hoping for a small reduction in my payments, but the reduction I received was far larger than I had anticipated. My ex-wife is taking me to court, claiming that the housing subsidy she receives from a local women’s shelter should not be counted as part of her income, and is also claiming Undue Hardship, because she is having difficulties making ends meet every month. Her primary argument is that my household is a two-income household, and she is a single mother, therefore I should be paying her more. Unfortunately, something that she seems to have forgotten is that because my fiancé did not give birth to the children, she is not financially responsible for them. Also, due to the economy, and inflation, life is expensive, and most people are having a challenge making ends meet.

We found ourselves in court a month ago, for a Family Management Conference (FMC), and the judge was very quick to question my ex’s lawyer as to the rationale behind the claim that the housing subsidy not be counted as income. It was entertaining listening to the lawyer dance around the issue, and avoid giving any type of logical answer. Ultimately the judge moved the question to a formal trial. During an FMC, the judge is merely trying to mediate a deal between the parties, and is not supposed to give a ruling.

During all of this, I have been trying to change the parenting time arrangement from our current 2-2-5-5 cycle, to a simpler 7-7 cycle. Their mother and I have not been able to agree on a formal parenting time agreement since we separated. The current schedule was arrange during a 6.5 hour 4-way meeting three years ago, and was agreed to as a desperate attempt to have some arrangement. At the time, we agreed to review the schedule after 90 days, and that was in addition to the separation agreement stating we need to review any parenting time arrangements every six months. It has now been 3 years, and their mother refuses to discuss changes because she claims that the current arrangement is working ‘for everybody’. The closest I got to getting her to discuss altering the arrangement to 7-7, was her giving me the reasons why changing was not in the best interests of the kids, yet all of her reasons circled back to what she wanted.

Her two biggest reasons for why it was not in the best interests of the kids, was that the 7-year-old was going to be enrolling in Embers (formally Brownies) in the Fall, and the meetings fall on Tuesday evenings. The current system gives her every Tuesday evening, and if we moved to 7-7, then the 7-year-old would only be able to attend every other week. I agreed that this was not in the child’s best interest, and offered for mother to pick up the child on ‘my’ Tuesday and transport the child to and from Embers, dropper her off to my house after. I did not receive any response to my offer. I also suggested that if we switched to the 7-7 arrangement, the child could be enrolled in the Wednesday evening (currently my parenting day) Embers unit, which is where the child’s best friend attends. It was approximately seven months ago that I made this offer, and just last week, whilst talking to the 7-year-old, she told me that she did not want to switch to 7-7, because her mother had told her that if we switched, I would not permit her to attend Embers during my parenting time, and she really wanted to attend Embers. When I told her what I had offered her mother many months ago, the child was visibly angry and confused. She realized that her mother had both lied to her, and manipulated her, and was very upset about it. When she realized that the opportunity had been available for her to attend with her best friend, she became quite angry at mother having deliberately cheated her of that opportunity. When I asked her about why she had previously always insisted to me that Embers was not something she really enjoyed, and she was now telling me how important Embers is to her, her reaction was a very simple, “Mother asked me to lie to you”. I was then forced to point out to the 7-year-old, who has in recent months received several weeks of grounding due to lying, that her mother had lied to her, and additionally, her mother had encouraged her to lie to me.

The other primary reason their mother has for fighting 7-7, is that it would severely interfere with the 10-year-old attending daycare. While the boy used to attend daycare full time, I pulled him out, during my parenting time, mid last year, for several reasons. Primarily it was a financial decision. I was needing to cut my costs, and paying $210 / month for the boy to attend daycare for 2.5 hours a day, 2-3 days a week, just wasn’t financially logical. Also, I was noticing that his emotional development seemed to be stunted, and was concerned that much of the way he is treated and viewed, might subconsciously encourage him to act younger than his actual age. I hoped that by giving him greater responsibility, I might be able to get him to grow up a bit. Lastly, by his age, it did not make sense to me for him to still be attending daycare. He was 9.5 years old, and I worked from home. Since that time, the daycare has updated their policies, and indicated that all children, once they complete their grade 5 year in elementary school, would become ineligible to attend the daycare, after the complete of the summer. Their mother insists that the boy attending daycare is absolutely necessary, and has told the children that she will be attempting to get a special exemption for the boy to continue in daycare after the completion of 5th grade. The only stated reason that I have heard as to why daycare is necessary for the boy, is because his mother is unable to control his screen time usage when he is at home, unsupervised. The boy is currently happy attending daycare, because he loves to hang out with his friends. When I pointed out that by end of Summer this year, all of his friends will no longer be attending, he was very quick to say that he did not want to attend either. In regard to monitoring the child’s screen time usage, my suggestion is that their mother utilize a screen time monitoring application. We use one in my household, and the annual subscription is ~$90/year.

For a quick mathematical recap, my ex-wife is claiming undue hardship, because the child support payment she receives was reduced by $155/month. In these economically challenging times, that can be a significant amount of money. However, if she were to pull the 10-year-old out of daycare, she would gain ~$210/month. Net gain of $55/month. The screen time monitoring software is $90/year. That subscription would be covered by 2 months of her net gain, leaving her ten months of net gain, totaling ~$550/year. I haven’t even gotten into her monthly food budget. Her monthly food and supplies budget for her house of 5, is ~$300/month greater than the budget for my household of 6. If she cut back by $250/month, that would be an additional savings of $3000/year. A narcissist is almost incapable of accepting that they might be responsible for something, or that they might be the one that is wrong.

Most of what I have written today does not even deal with the stress and anxiety issues that can result from NAS and C-PTSD. For those not familiar with C-PTSD, it stands for Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since the disorder of PTSD was first diagnosed many years ago, psychologists and psychiatrists have realized that there is a distinct difference caused by the original cause of the disorder. PTSD is primarily caused by a singular traumatic incident. If a person is violently assaulted, it can cause a traumatic effect on the individual’s emotional state. However, if the trauma is less significant, but last for a longer period of time, the traumatic effect on the individual’s emotional state is very different, which is where C-PTSD is diagnosed. For myself, 15 years of mental and emotional abuse left a deep trauma, that is very slow from which to recover. While no single incident of abuse was significant, the damage done by the cumulative effect is similar to water erosion. A single drop of water on a stone causes no noticeable damage. But if that single drop continues, constantly, for many years, the damage to the stone becomes very noticeable. Perhaps someday I will have the emotional strength to truly start writing about my journey.