I wish my Ex were with the one he had cheated on with me. They deserve each other, but that ended, at least I think so, before I finally left. But you can cheat on your spouse with a lot of other things besides a woman. Friends, drugs, partying…these things can be more compelling than a mistress. In fact, these are the things he liked doing with her. I don’t do them.

My daughter started to see her dad for what he is when she started to come into her own. When she started to grow from an adoring toddler/preschooler/kindergartner and started to develop her own personality apart from what he wanted her to be, that’s when he started invalidating her.

Invalidation of her feelings, her thoughts is not a good thing to do. I’m afraid I’m the culprit to a very large degree. Validation is a very big thing to me. She likes it. She’s used to it from me. She knows it’s synonymous with respect. She started to see very early on that she is, essentially, invisible to him unless she’s being what he needs or wants her to be.

It must be hard that your daughters believe their father’s lies over your truths. But 2 and a 1/2 years is still soon. My daughter, also, believed his stories to a good degree in the beginning and even was angry with me for a while. That’s another post.

But the good news is that narcissists eventually reveal who they are, if you’re close to them. They can’t help it. The bad news is that those closest to them often are the ones who make the most excuses for them.

But you keep being true to who you are. There’s power in that, and it will not go wasted.

I take it that even though you are in different states, you are still close enough for your daughters to easily see and be with him? That’s another thing. If being with him is always going to be like a lovely weekend visit or a vacation time, then he will have the advantage of being on his best behavior.

Still a narcissist is a narcissist, and you can count on them to be inconvenienced by your presence at one time or another, and then their true colors will show.

And I do understand how frustrating it is to still be abused by him after so long…after you’re divorced. I know I get frustrated and sometimes overwhelmed by the feeling that I’ll never be free. But then I find my center again, and I focus on being detached – not denying what I feel, but making a conscious choice as to what to do with it and putting things into perspective.

And then I realize just how strong I really am, and that makes me feel good.

You know, it took me a while to learn how to not let him see how he can still get to me, and it took even longer to finally make that pretty real. I don’t react anywhere near like I used to…with or without him around. Half the time, I don’t even have to hide my emotions from him, because I don’t have them! He’s really become that much more and more unimportant to me.

And when I do, I can always rant here or with a friend or who knows.

And it’s this nonreaction to them, that drives them the craziest! LOL, yeah, you do have to stand up to bullies, and it sounds like you’re doing a great job!

You are wise to be committed to giving her a voice in her relationship with you and honoring her choices. And you are wise to not push her into seeing what she’s not ready to.

You might want to try asking her how she feels about a thing when it happens. If she says, okay, a “Does that work for you then?” in a nonchalant kind of way, and then an “Okay”, when she says “yeah”, might at least give her space or opportunity to reassess what’s going on in the safety of her own time.

Another idea might be to focus on healthy relationships, dynamics for healthy interactions in other relationships. To discuss them or take the opportunity to make a comment on them as they present themselves in the media or in other people other than her father.

As you begin to more strongly define what is healthy and honoring and what isn’t in safer space, she may make that transference over to her father when she’s ready…thereby lifting her expectations on how she should be treated by other males in her life.

It hit me like a brick wall when I realized how my EX *was* my father. I knew there were some similarities here and there, but though the details changed, the psychological dynamics, the emotional environment and ensuing pain was identical. It made me sick…but it was freeing.

I understand the fear you feel for your daughter. I am fortunate in that my daughter is very aware of her father’s game playing and lack of integrity. She started seeing this at an early age, because we split up when she was quite young, and she began to see this morphing from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde early on.

She really struggled with it and it brings her great pain, but it is a price I’m glad she is paying – since she has to – for her empowerment and knowledge.

How long ago was it that you were able to leave him?