Divorcing a narcissist can be an incredibly challenging and emotionally draining experience. The manipulation, gaslighting, and self-centered behavior of a narcissistic partner can make the process seem insurmountable. However, it’s important to remember that gaining your freedom from a narcissist is not impossible. I have carefully written this article on how to divorce a narcissist to serve as a guide and offer insights and strategies to navigate the complexities of divorcing a narcissist, empowering you to protect your well-being and security and gain your freedom.
Key Takeaways
- Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental abnormality where a person has a grandiose image or perception of themselves.
- Being in a relationship with a narcissist can be a daunting experience and may leave you drained, emotionally exhausted, mentally overwhelmed, and sad.
- To divorce a narcissist, you need to first identify the problem and then, get yourself financially stable, consider getting a divorce coach, try to stay calm, and have a support system.
- A file for divorce comes off as a challenge to Narcissists. Because they enjoy getting their own way, they will view this as a competition and the aim is to win. Therefore be ready for them to make the procedure extremely challenging.
What is Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)?
Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental abnormality where a person has a grandiose image or perception of themselves. People with NPD crave attention and admiration to an undesirable degree. One of the telling factors of narcissistic personality disorder is a lack of empathy towards people. They are manipulative, egoistic, attention-seeking, and self-conceited.
People with NPD are terrible at interpersonal relationships due to their grandiose and self-conceited ways. Being in a relationship with a narcissist can be a daunting experience and may leave you drained, emotionally exhausted, mentally overwhelmed, and sad. If you are considering breaking free from your relationship with a narcissist, let’s go on this transformative journey together as we provide you with amazing tips on how to divorce a narcissist.
What to Know Before Divorcing a Narcissist
Before asking for a divorce from a narcissist, there are things you should be aware of. One of these is that narcissists won’t readily welcome a divorce bargain. Narcissists are often too self-indulged to notice your unhappiness and oftentimes want to appear perfect. A divorce may be a taint in the image they are trying to keep up and therefore, they will fight tooth and nail to frustrate your efforts.
Some other things you should keep in mind when trying to divorce a narcissist is that they are highly manipulative and as a spouse to a narcissist, you will experience a cycle of manipulative tendencies during a divorce. This is usually called the IDDH cycle.
The Narcissistic Cycle During a Divorce
The IDDH cycle includes:
Idealization Phase
In this stage, the narcissist worships and idolizes you. They make you feel good and shower you with praise. At this stage, you do nothing wrong. They love-bomb you and make you feel like it’s only you that matters in the whole world. If you have ever wondered why you fell for and, married a narcissist, be rest assured you were not stupid. This is the part that characterized the early stage of your relationship
Devaluing Phase
At this stage, you do not do anything right. They begin to devalue your efforts and your achievements and basically lower your self-worth. At this stage, they may not be terrible yet. They will withdraw their initial extreme loving and caring side and would mostly leave you lonely and wanting attention.
Discarding Phase
In the discarding stage, you are no longer useful, this may be as a result of the fact that have begun to complain and see them for who they are. They become horrific and try to do anything to get you to worship and admire them.
Hovering Phase
At this stage, you become a constant supply of their narcissistic supply. So even when they do not need or want you and practically treat you as trash, they want you around to make them feel good about themselves.
Ever wondered why a narcissist won’t readily give you a divorce even when they do not like you? It is because you have become a boost to their narcissistic tendencies. They believe they are better than you, they may have probably damaged your self-worth, and watching you wallow at their mercy makes them feel good about themselves.
10 Tips on How to Divorce a Narcissist
If you are married to a narcissist and you are looking for a way out, it’s safe to say you are in a very challenging situation. However, this challenge is not reason enough for you to remain in a highly toxic and manipulative marriage. So while it is a difficult and daunting task, you can start finding your escape route by reading these 10 incredible tips on how to divorce a narcissist:
Identify the Problem
I might assume that since you are reading the article on how to divorce a narcissist, you probably have identified the problem; which is that your spouse is a narcissist, and therefore a marriage between you two cannot work. However, that might be a very wrong assumption. Hence, I will let you know that the first step to divorcing a narcissist is to identify the problem.
If you are wondering why your spouse is fighting tooth and nail to nip the divorce proceedings in the bud when they clearly don’t like, want, or even love you. It is because you are obviously married to a narcissist and the only thing as difficult as being married to a narcissist is divorcing a narcissist.
Know That You Are Not to Blame
With the manipulative nature of narcissists, it would not be a thing of surprise that they make you feel guilty for the challenge in your marriage and therefore make it feel like the failure of your marriage is all your fault. When going through a divorce with a narcissist, always remember that you are not the problem and you never were.
While it is easy to go about wondering how the sweet person you married turned out the way they are you and ruminating about what you did wrong and where you went wrong, bear in mind that a relationship cannot work when one of the partners is narcissistic despite the effort you put in.
Get Yourself Financially Stable
Getting financial independence is important before filing for a divorce and even more important when you are seeking to divorce a narcissist. Chances are that during the course of the marriage, your narcissist spouse may have been financially abusive. Therefore, when you make up your mind to leave the marriage, the first thing is to begin the journey of stacking up enough cash. This money will help you get by, provide for yourself, and be comfortable when the time comes. If you work, you could open an account that your spouse has no knowledge of and begin your savings right away.
Consider a Divorce Coach
The pressure that comes with divorce is enormous and under all that pressure, it’s difficult to make judgments that will alter your life. It is advisable to work with a divorce coach for extra support during these trying times. It comes even handier when you are going through a divorce with a narcissist. A divorce coach can assist you in remaining rational and making calculated judgments, free from emotional pressure, and in the situation of divorcing a narcissist, help you with clear strategies on how to divorce a narcissist when you begin to become emotionally influenced.
Try to Stay Calm
To disarm a narcissist, it is important to remain cool and maintain your composure. This might not be easy to pull off, however, with extra intentionality, you can. As much temptation as there might be, try to suppress the urge to fight back. Be as neutral and impassive as possible. This may attract even more horrific behaviors from your spouses. However, to be able to divorce a narcissist, giving off very little is highly essential.
Have a support system
During the course of a divorce, it is often very easy to get disconnected from your loved ones. This is a result of the emotional turmoil that accompanies such a life-altering decision. It may equally be a result of the fact that you feel guilty for your supposed unsuccessful marriage. When divorcing a narcissist, they might even work extra hard to cut you off from the people who love you. They might bully and manipulate you into believing you are a failure and that’s how everyone sees you.
When going through a divorce with a narcissist, connect with the people you love and the people who love you. They will act as your strongest support system during these trying times. They’d equally reinforce the knowledge of everything good about you. This will help you not self-sabotage and victimize yourself.
Get a Lawyer
One pro tip on how to divorce a narcissist is to get a calm lawyer. Contrary to popular belief, these divorces are frequently settled more amicably through non-adversarial legal procedures like mediation and negotiation. Additionally, it will be best to find a lawyer who is aware of the tricks your husband might employ to get an advantage in court.
Have Self-Care Treatment Regularly
If you are going through a divorce with a narcissist, you would probably have an idea of how mentally distorting that can be. Maintain a self-care routine. Get away and give yourself weekly treats where nothing else would matter aside from you. If you have children, bond with them during these treats and let them see how much you love them. It is very important to prioritize your mental health at all times and more, particularly during a divorce.
Seek the Help of a Mental Health Professional
There are mental health professionals who understand the concept of NPD. These people will be incredibly helpful in getting you through the journey of divorcing one.
Seeking the Right Legal Services for Divorcing a Narcissist.
Getting legal representation when divorcing a narcissist can be another major challenge on its own. Normally, divorce cases are extraneous, and finding the right lawyer to take on this case may be a hassle. A high-profile case like divorcing a narcissist will prove more challenging to find a legal representative. A lawyer taking on your divorce case for divorcing a narcissist should be ideally calm and knowledgeable about NPD.
Understanding the Mind of a Narcissist
I am sure we have, on many occasions. wondered what goes on in the mind of a narcissist. You may have thought of what makes them act the way do. Why do they lack empathy? Why do they not see the world the way we do? Understanding how the mind of a narcissist works will be significant when trying g to implement the tips on how to divorce a narcissist.
For narcissistic personality disorder, the victims have an inflated sense of self. They feel themselves to be superior to people and therefore expect admiration and attention. However, since they are not more important than the rest of humanity, getting this admiration and attention may not come naturally. To get their narcissist supply of adulation, excessive admiration, worship, and attention, they become manipulative, and arrogant, and would most often flaunt their overinflated self-image around.
Arguably, narcissists are people who have high vulnerability levels and low self-esteem. Their inflated sense of self becomes a defense mechanism to get by. And this subsequently turned into a disorder. A narcissist would devalue people’s achievements and accomplishments in a bid to bring them down. This is because they do not want anybody to seem superior to them. If a narcissist believes you are getting more admiration than they are doing, to feel better about themselves, their first thought is to take your shine and therefore, they feel a strong need and urge to bring the person down.
Divorcing a Narcissist With Children
If you’ve decided that you’re ready for a divorce, a lot of challenge lies ahead. Even more so if there are children present. When going through a divorce, there’s always a question of who gets custody of the children.
Knowing what you know about the narcissistic nature of your spouse, you may most likely not want them to get custody of your children. Also, there is every tendency that if a narcissist realizes you do not want to leave without your children, they’ll use this against you. The question therein lays the thought of how to divorce a narcissist when you have children. To successfully divorce a narcissist with children, you should consider the following;
- Communicate effectively with your children about what is happening. They should understand the reason you have to get this divorce.
- Always try to remain calm for their sake. If you still live in the same house with your spouse and children during the divorce proceedings, try not to get into fights with your spouse
- Keep documents and pieces of evidence; Narcissists do not care about anybody but themselves. And sooner or later, they will show this attribute to people around them even their kids. Be ready to discreetly keep a record of pieces of evidence of these moments. This will greatly help you in court when they try to get manipulative.
How Does a Narcissist React to a Divorce?
A file for divorce comes off as a challenge to Narcissists. Because they enjoy getting their own way, they will view this as a competition and the aim is to win. Therefore be ready for them to make the procedure extremely challenging.
A narcissist would not want to let go, not because they love you or want you, but because, in their controlling nature, they want every decision to be made by them. You making the decision to divorce will greatly hurt their ego and so, will put up a struggle to frustrate your efforts.
In the end, they don’t always back down easily. Their narcissistic behavior intensifies, increasing their propensity to try to bully and exploit you.
How Narcissism Affects the Divorce Process
In more ways than not, a narcissist will want to frustrate the efforts of a narcissist who will anticipate receiving preferential treatment and having complete control over the divorce process, including the judge. They also don’t like to lose, so they will file motions and put up a great effort to prevail. Narcissists use delay techniques, which may not pass the boundary into actual misbehavior.
Many narcissists are adept at knowing rules that when broken can bring serious repercussions and will toe the line of breaching them in order to irritate, infuriate, or provoke you during the divorce process. They will equally use emotions, showy gestures, and pretended sincerity to get through your emotions and then quickly turn the tables when needed.
How to Protect Yourself When Divorcing a Narcissist
If you consider divorcing a narcissistic partner, your emotions are likely high and you may be overthinking the consequences of your actions. This is normal given that you probably are aware that narcissists believe themselves superior to everybody and everything, including the rules and laid down laws. They will go to any extent, including breaching the law to get back at you. That is why this piece on how to divorce a narcissist will be incomplete if we don’t give you effective measures to take when divorcing a narcissist.
- Block the contact of your partner: This is because there are high chances of cyber-bullying. Narcissists would stop at nothing and if they can’t harm you physically, they will bully you via the internet with the hope of tarnishing your image and reputation.
- Put extra security: If you live alone or with your children, expect your narcissists to try to physically harass you. They may stalk you. Add extra security to your homes to gather evidence such as cameras to gather evidence of these. Also, talk to your lawyer as soon as you notice this.
- Practice effective communication: A narcissist will often bad-mouth you when you file for divorce. This will be highly provoking and you may be pushed to react. However, he who lies in the glass house so as not to throw stones practices how to remain calm and not give them the reaction they crave. Be concise and clear when passing information across to them. Please don’t get into protracted arguments with them, it is not worth it.
- Trust yourself; being with a narcissist can be an emotional roller-coaster. So is trying to divorce one. They will say a lot about you and try to manipulate you into feeling guilty. To protect your mental health, never allow their words to rattle you and make you question your reality
Dangers of Divorcing a Narcissist
If you are married to a narcissist, you may already be familiar with some of the drawbacks of being with someone with this kind of personality. You will most often feel used, undervalued, or controlled. It’s crucial to be ready for any difficulties you might encounter if you’re thinking about getting a divorce. Some of the dangers of divorcing a narcissist are that they will try to manipulate and guilt-trip you. They can try to make the divorce process as challenging for you as they can. Additionally, they can try to turn your family and friends against you. They may abuse you physically and threaten you often.
Conclusion
To divorce a narcissist is no easy feat, but as you’ve learned throughout this article, it is possible to break free and reclaim your life. By understanding the manipulative tactics of a narcissist, developing effective strategies for communication, and building a strong support network, you have taken significant steps toward securing a free future.
Throughout your journey, it’s crucial to prioritize your well-being and self-care. Remember to be patient and kind to yourself, as healing from the wounds inflicted by a narcissistic partner takes time. Surround yourself with compassionate friends, family, or even professional support to navigate the emotional challenges that lie ahead.
Warm hugs from all of us.
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