Yes, my husband. It’s honestly shitty a lot of the time. The only things making it work are that I don’t get hurt feelings, have good self control, and I’m a good actress. It is exhausting though, and confusing for the children when his mood changes so rapidly. I hope I am a good enough mother that they don’t get all fucked up.

I generally deal with him by just staying pleasant and nice and not being reactive. When he gets upset with the children over stupid shit, I take them to their bedrooms and we read books in there. He’s harsh with them and criticizes a lot; they don’t want to talk with him, which upsets him. He doesn’t understand that conversations are impossible with him. He literally cannot see it. I have given the children some methods to use when they talk with him and the methods seem to help the children get some emotional distance from him while they talk.

A while back I found this article , which describes a visual technique in which you imagine the narcissist in a snow globe, trying to heard and understood. It’s helped the children a lot. I got them snow globes to help them remember that their dad is kind of locked in his own world that we don’t understand.