Our daughter got involved with a boy that displayed all the classic signs of narcissism. As the weeks turned to months, his behaviour became more and more puzzling to us. Always keeping to himself (except for a few naive and innocent friends), he eventually forced our daughter to also withdraw from her ministry groups, other school-related social groups, caused her to doubt her reasons for being in sports activities, and would even draw her away in seclusion from our family gatherings in our own house. We were completely clueless for the first six months, and looking back, there are so many red flags we completely missed.
The basic mentality and manipulative mantra of a narcissist is: "I'm the victim, your friends/family are terrible people, and I'm the only one that loves/cares about you." We don't claim to be perfect parents or the perfectly bonded family. However, we strive to be the best godly parents we can be to the children God Almighty has given us to steward. We are deliberate and intentional with safeguarding and nurturing their mental, emotional, physical and spiritual well being. By God's grace, we actually are a close knit family, but 2019 presented us with a storm that stretched our familial bonds to near breaking. It was a five-alarm fire, an all hands-on-deck effort to protect our child from a very dangerous relationship. There's nothing like the painful reality for a parent of realizing how many red flags you missed. There's the constant whisper of, "if only we had known, we would've done this and/or that instead". It's brutal.
A glimpse into the downward spiral:
Once a bright light in her social circles and on school campus, our daughter became withdrawn and less involved. Her behavior became unrecognizable to her teachers. One teacher said, "You don't have to tell me what was wrong with the relationship. I saw when the spark left her eyes." Her friends struggled with this new relationship because it not only infringed on their relationships with her but because it made them non-existent. While discussing her desire to reconnect with her friends the boy vowed, "I will trample over everyone's feelings to get to you."
Narcissists practice obsessive communication to keep their supply (victim) under as much control as possible. The late (often past midnight) online chats and early morning wake up chats kept our daughter tired and exhausted. With phones at the ready under their pillows, they took turns falling asleep on each other and checking to see when the other was up in the morning. They spent just about every waking moment connected either in person on school campus during study halls and in between classes or with phone calls, texts and facebook messenger. Like a predator stalking his prey, he used technology to keep a watchful eye and listening ear on her every move.
One of the first things our daughter discarded was leading the campus worship team. Since taking Guitar and later Creative Worship classes, being part of worship leadership became a passion fueled by her growing walk with the Lord. But unlike the year before, after we gave approval for them to spend time together (and promised to re-evaluate the relationship in six months), she almost immediately developed disdain for being a part of that. Her first complaints served as a foundation for what soon followed. She felt the group was leading songs that were not appropriate for corporate worship. I agreed that maybe some were more performance-oriented than corporate worship. When she approached her peers to address the issue, there's no doubt she knew the team wouldn't agree with her. This eventually became her basis for leaving the team. She and the boy both quit. Soon after she also wanted out of our church's worship team. According to the narcissist she was in it "for the wrong reasons." He convinced her that her life was about performing to please people. This was followed by her insistence that she be allowed to leave the church all together. The boy literally coached her on how to start her conversation with us. "Tell them how they react before they do. I do it [with my parents] all the time. Tell them... 'You probably think I'm over reacting and that I'm not the *daughter* you knew....' you want to get out of your church because it doesn't fit with you..." followed with the assurance that the tactic should work. He was proud of her for finally deciding to talk with us on this issue. He further expressed his approval with, "that's my girl....we're getting you out." This was the first red flag I didn't dismiss. With my heightened concern, the Lord prompted me to start digging and eventually lead me to one of her devices she used for communication. Still logged in to her account, I began to read and the tears and heartache that have become our everyday existence this last year were soon to follow.
Like most Christian parents, we taught our children that God's plan for sex is intimacy and procreation within a loving and mutually exclusive relationship between husband and wife. But in narcissism, sex is a bonding tool for the narcissist to use as another means of control over their supply/victim. As the moral character that had been nurtured in our daughter since childhood eventually resurfaced, his response was nothing short of horrific. All permanently captured in the black and white of facebook messenger screenshots, our daughter's renewed desire and conviction to honor God and parents by abstaining was met with his "What will be left?" if he agreed to her convictions ...that voice (conscience and Holy Spirit) she listened to. "I have nothing to carry me through and make me feel comfortable."
Learning your little girl has become promiscuous is heartbreaking. However, the lies, manipulation, and coercion that lead to it and have remained until now are far worse. Our daughter was coerced into dismissing her "immature insecure friends." Unfortunately, we were not aware for the first six months of their relationship that he was grooming her to not only discard her friends, but also her family. She eventually accepted his narrative as her truth. Lies that she grew up mentally and emotionally abused, raised to please her parents and everyone else (teachers, coaches, worship team members) for approval, and lived in constant fear of disappointing people. "I'm tired of trying to change unchangeable things. Trying to have discussions that look like they went somewhere and then find the next week they didn't work at all... It's hard for me to watch you play anymore...because all I see is desperation for applause. And an unstoppable urge to prove yourself. And especially now that I know you don't even want to play anymore. It hurts even more. All of this fear of disappointing people is holding you there. I tolerated you playing basketball because I thought that you were doing it for fun... I tolerated the play (she was in a high school musical). I tolerated everything. Every event. Every time our time together was taken away from something else." (The truth to polish it off). Looking back, he was not only projecting his own deep rooted and visceral childhood wounds on to her, but he was also coercing her into taking on his preferred resolve. She was never allowed to dismiss any of it. He was never satisfied until she finally did as directed and then he would proceed to the next thing as he continued to groom her.
The mental and emotional abuse that comes with a narcissistic relationship usually comes in the forms of love bombing (overwhelming someone with signs of adoration and attraction), triangulation (bringing a third person into their relationship in order to maintain control - in our daughter's case, the narcissist brought another girl into the relationship), gaslighting (a form of persistent manipulation and brainwashing that causes the victim to doubt themselves, and to ultimately lose one's own sense of perception, identity and self-worth), and discarding (dismiss, deem irrelevant, or dehumanize). Throughout the first six months our daughter would share snippets of their arguments. On several occasions he confided his true intent which helped to make it all clear for us, but sadly after the fact. "The one thing I know is that I'm gonna displease everyone and I kind of like it to show how stupid they are. Because by pushing on me so hard to be a certain way or to behave a certain way they made me hate them all the more. And I will become the opposite. They are making me who I am. If they want evil let's just say I can be that... I can become that for them. I can prove them right to prove their selfish desires. Make them feel nice and warm inside and watch them destroy themselves. I sound like a demon don't I. lol"
After the poop hit the fan (when we first discovered the promiscuity, lies and manipulation), there was confrontation, forgiveness, grace was given, and other protective measures were put into place. Four months later it became clear that there had to be some geographical distancing. The situation was entirely out of control, and his parents refused to see it. So, we bought plane tickets. One month before her graduation date, I boarded a plane with our daughter bound for the U.S. in efforts to get her free from the insanity that had ensnared her entire senior year in the Philippines.
After the poop hit the fan (when we first discovered the promiscuity, lies and manipulation), there was confrontation, forgiveness, grace was given, and other protective measures were put into place. Four months later it became clear that there had to be some geographical distancing. The situation was entirely out of control, and his parents refused to see it. So, we bought plane tickets. One month before her graduation date, I boarded a plane with our daughter bound for the U.S. in efforts to get her free from the insanity that had ensnared her entire senior year in the Philippines.
In the weeks after distancing her from the boy, our daughter asked that he honor her request of no contact for six weeks so she could again hear from God. The immediate reaction was an onslaught of abusive emails and chats from the boy on a daily basis. None of which she responded to. At the time we were not in full understanding of how narcissists induce conversation (for regaining control) and just how powerful it truly is and we unfortunately made some of our biggest mistakes: allowing her to again have a phone, and then allowing her to have a skype session with the boy and his parents to address the abusive emails and break the relationship off. Unfortunately, the boy took control of the entire conversation and redirected as an attack on me and my husband. He boldly announced, "Technically, I don't have to honor your parents" to which our daughter responded with her desire to honor us. To my great shock, his father interjected with, ".....what do you mean, you want to honor your parents? Because if you say you still want to honor your parents, that means they still have a say and influence in your life." When I heard those words I was immediately taken back to a conversation we had with the parents (five months earlier) in which the mom said, "we don't want you to think that we're grooming her."
From that point forward, the narcissist's grip was again firmly in place. They resumed the obsessive communication practices of the past and the narcissist resumed his grooming. In September, the boy and his parents flew our nineteen year old, fresh-out-of-high-school daughter cross country from the trusted family environment where she was settled to join them in Seattle for counseling said to be initially just for their family... and they talked her into going along. There was no communication sent, no consideration allowed, and absolutely no consent given by us for our daughter to participate. A few more red flags: MRI (Ministry Resource International) sent our daughter several preparatory entry documents to sign. One was a consent form in which the family's mission director, the MRI team, the MRI director and three individual family members were listed to receive her counseling information (the 18 year old boy and his two parents). The second form was a disclaimer that she had not been coerced or manipulated to be part of the counseling.
These are just a few classic examples of the most bizarre characteristics of narcissism. The narcissist is all about grooming and brainwashing the victim into believing they (the victim) have been groomed and brainwashed (by someone else) to be someone that they're not their whole lives. The narcissist presents themselves as the knight in shining armor and the only person that truly knows the victim. They vow to love them more honestly and fiercely than anyone else ever has. The boy thinks he has won because he has managed to accomplish what he had told us, in a separate flexing email, after he had her back in his grip ...he threatened to remove any chance of a relationship with us. Yet, in His mercy, God put people in place who kept us informed of what was going on. Today, as I type, they have just finished the counseling in Seattle and we have no idea where she is or where she will be during the rest of the holiday season or into the new year. His parents continue to be tight-lipped. But we are not in a panic. We continue to trust the Lord for her safety as dangerous as the situation is.
There may be some who come across this and find much of the above too familiar and too close to home. My intentions were not to create nor be part of an already existing commiserating community. An empathetic ear is an awesome gift, but my goal was higher than a virtual shoulder to cry on... so, please keep reading. This Thanksgiving Day was the first one without our daughter. Not because of college or a strategic gap year before college. No, this was the first without her because we have a prodigal. We have a prodigal involved in a dangerous narcissistic relationship. We do not see good things in her future. We see great potential for more mental, emotional and who knows, maybe physical abuse. The world of narcissism is very dark and evil. While there are some that escape and eventually are able to live a healed, restored and full life, there are many who remain because they see no hope. They stay because they fear that leaving puts their children and/or parents and siblings in physical danger (as threatened by a narcissist).
We woke up this Thanksgiving Day not "feeling" like it was Thanksgiving. For months we've been utterly absorbed by the situation while trying to restore stability and an opportunity for healing in our home for our four younger kids who also experienced the pain of losing their sister (for now). On top of that, life doesn't stop just because trials and hardships show up. Fortunately, the Lord gifted us with an occasion for pause, for reflection, and even gratitude in the midst of our pain as we were invited to join some dear friends for Thanksgiving celebrations. Before surrendering to the night, I sat and wrote in my journal of the emotional journey the Lord had taken me on that day. My day did not end on threatening, shaky ground or shifting sands of emotions. It ended with a heart full of gratitude for God's grace and mercy. Please allow me to share some of my unedited journal entry with the great hope and prayer that it might be an encouragement to parents in a similar situation...
Grief and loss can enhance one's ability to appreciate God's steady hand of security, peace and comfort sprinkled with many other tangible blessings. That's the essence of a victorious life. For from His victory carried out and gifted to us.... that is how we can confidently live in total obedience and surrender (aka FREEDOM) to Him. Because of that we celebrated our freedom in Christ with good friends over deliciously shared food. The enemy would like nothing more than to see the unwarranted signs of our defeat and destruction. But fortunately we live with profoundly satisfying comprehension and wisdom that victory is already ours. We've allowed ourselves to acknowledge grief and loss... and the understanding that neither one of those are permanent. They are strictly temporary bearing NO impact on the hope of glory before us and *daughter*. She is a child of the king and she will join us on the other side of eternity. The evil lies and manipulations that have taken forefront for her stand NO CHANCE of taking her out of the Father's hand. She's secure and so are we. Thank-you, Father.
27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. -John 10:27-28
No comments :
Post a Comment