That’s what a commenter wrote in a comment. This is true for my child, too.
And when he doesn’t feel like it, he doesn’t. It’s as simple…and as selfish as that. Doesn’t matter if he said he would. Doesn’t matter if there’s things that need to be discussed. It’s only what he feels like.
So, my problem has always been with him interfering with my child’s education. Wanting her to fill up his time, meet his needs regardless of whether it negatively impacted her education or not. But he has a girlfriend now. Has for a while. And that’s helped my daughter’s education a bit.
But now, his behavior has taken even another twist. He’s either pissed at me (something did occur a couple weeks back, that to a normal person would have been no big thing, but to him, was a great offense…and yes, it had to do with me respecting myself and setting some boundaries).
Or maybe he’s simply having his needs met elsewhere to the point where his daughter and her concerns are totally irrelevant right now. Maybe it’s both.
So, what does this new twist look like? Well, it looks like just bailing out. We needed to discuss art arrangements, since he told me he did not want to drive her to them while she was taking dance lessons. He said we’d talk about this on a Monday.
But Monday, he did not return my calls and I did not hear from him for the entire week until it was his turn to have her at the end of the week. By then I had to cancel them, because obviously the discussion was closed, and we’d need his driving participation to make it work.
What was strange, is that the entire week passed without a word from him. Usually, he’d either be telling me he wanted to have her, her schooling be damned, or that he had something else planned, like a poker party, so he couldn’t have her. But he’d, at least, show some semblance of respect, if you could call it that, for my own schedule.
The following week we were to discuss what to do for her birthday. I called him at work, like he told me to only earlier that day, to find out that he had called out. And again, for the rest of the week did not hear from him, even though I called several times to his work and his house – no pick up or just busy signals at work, and answering machine at his house.
And once again, I had to make the plans myself.
And once again, another week, and no contact at all. Today he is supposed to get her, because the last time we spoke, he said he wanted to. But that was another thing we were going to discuss, because I did not know what she had on her calendar when he told me that. But we never had that conversation for him to find out.
So what do I do? For me, not having to deal with him is nice. But what do I do with my schedule? Do I keep everything open? I don’t even know if he still wants her today or not.
Quite frankly, I love not hearing from him. Our interactions are usually toxic anyway. Either he will be nice and then just take it back later, like narcissists do, or he will have this attitude from the get go. I don’t need that. But it’s not only inconvenient to have no input into her schedule, it’s also mean to her.
I would not mind if he came out right and said all decisions are up to me and not to expect anything – input or anything.
But it’s not like that. It’s the “Let’s talk about this…let’s plan this”, and then just skipping out. It’s annoying. It’s mean. It’s disrespectful and it’s meant to punish.
It’s his royal “F” you, with no consideration for how that might affect her. Because during this time, not only has he not called me to discuss her, he as not called her.
What else is new? He treats her as if she were unimportant. But to a narcissist, she is. Everyone is. It’s not personal. But that doesn’t make it any less mean or painful to a child…
…You know what I just thought?.
I better be careful. This behavior just might be to incite me to complain, giving him the excuse to go off on me. Because he really can’t fight me about how I offended him, because even though his narcissistic ego takes great offense, even he can recognize how silly it is if he spoke it out loud. So he attempts to set me up.
Paranoid?
Experience. He’s done this before.
And I, naively, taking things on face value, always walked into the trap, committing the egregious crime of communicating my feelings for clarification and understanding. And I, always, got clobbered.
I better be careful. Non-engagement is my best defense. I can complain here. I will be detached with him. It’s the cardinal rule in dealing with narcissists.
Do NOT engage them. It feeds them. It’s what they want.