My name isn’t Harry. My wife’s name isn’t really Barbie. I’m writing this on December 4, 2017. I’ve changed the names to protect the innocent. And the guilty.
I’ve walked through a kind of Hell no one should ever have to go through. Ever. My married life was driven so far beyond the point of normalcy that now, even I can hardly believe I tolerated it for as long as I did. While in the throes of the most egregious verbal, mental, and emotional abuse imaginable, I was forced to find the strength and courage to repress a panoply of emotions—anger, fear, hurt, even pity and compassion—to act firmly and decisively, and put an end to the absurdity. I had to draw a line in the sand. For me and my children, it was a crucible of heartbreak.
This is my story.
In the spring of 2017, I made the difficult decision to end a twenty-one year relationship. My wife and I have two children, aged 10 and 13. They’re both boys—intelligent, thoughtful, polite—the results, I think, of me being the primary contact parent for nearly fourteen years. Sadly, for the children, that’s going to change. But they know I was a dedicated, balanced, kind, and attentive father. No amount of manipulation is going to change that.
There were good reasons for me being the primary parent, not least among them my own strong Irish Catholic, family-oriented background. It differed markedly from that of my wife, whose childhood family life was likely abusive—her father left when she was very young—and in constant disarray.
Although our property settlement assigned me more than fifty percent of the marital assets, I failed to attain more than fifty percent custody of the children.
Not for lack of trying. No one in the family law system, it seemed, was willing to step up and make the call to designate me as the primary parent without some kind of “smoking gun,” like a DUII, or drug arrest—or a domestic violence conviction. I understand the reticence—assigning the children to one or the other parent assumes a huge amount of responsibility for children still in their formative years. What if you picked the wrong parent? I’d probably shy away from that decision, too. But having fifty percent custody is now unfortunate, because I’m contemplating a long-distance relocation, and I’m not sure how that’s going to work. The children would be much better off with me, surrounded by my large extended family. However, I predict Barbie will fight to keep the boys for most of the year. Anything else, to an outside observer, would look like she’d “lost” the children to me. And in her world, that just wouldn’t be tolerable. What happens to the kids, in the mean time, doesn’t really matter. Not to her, anyway.
Presently, we own a nice house together in an affluent neighborhood. Barbie is trying to scare up enough money to buy out my half of our estate. Her motivation is clear—I literally threw her out of the house with restraining orders last March. A judge then affirmed that, allowing me to retain the property and the bulk of the time with the children. My Petition for Divorce cited three main causes for the action: (a) her excessive use of alcohol and/or drugs; (b) being a disengaged, absent parent; and (c) serial infidelity, of which I held indelible proof. Barbie launched a bloody backlash, and even tried to have me declared in contempt of court twice. Both efforts failed. Now she’s clawing to get it all back—the appearances, I mean. To her, it’s important that to outsiders, it’s made to look like she “won” the divorce, like her unacceptably bad behavior was somehow vindicated or exonerated. I’m going to let her have that, although there is no logical defense for any of her behavior. She was shown to be lacking in conscience, empathy, shame, impulse control, and basic human decency. She was selfish, malicious, and vile. Barbie repeatedly demonstrated an absence of the wisdom, maturity, and moral acumen to instill good values in our two male offspring. She was dysfunctional, and behaved with insufficient integrity to continue acting as a maternal role model. It took me a while to recognize it for what it was, and that contributed to a year—367 days—of conflict in our household before I put an end to it.
In a divorce, there are no winners. Only losers—and in ours, those who’ll lose the most are the children. Especially with her fighting over them like they’re possessions, not people. Her sudden interest in the children is all about outward appearances. That disturbs me because her behavior is, at its core, morally wrong, and I expect that to continue. Either way, it’s not good for the children. At the ages of 10 and 13, they’re still developing. They need both paternal and maternal role models. But despite what she may say, Barbie has clearly demonstrated she doesn’t care about that. I’m not worried what the children think of me; they know what I brought to the game. I was always the Pillar in their lives. Meanwhile, she was free to do whatever she pleased, and I enabled that. My bad.
Everything Barbie does is about outward appearance. The people and things with which she surrounds herself have all become integral parts of her fake persona. What she wears, what she drives, where she lives, what she drinks, and so on.
My suspicions were piqued when I first attended a group for men in abusive relationships in early 2017. After two hours, I was overcome by a powerful sense of commonality among all the men present. At the next session, the group organizer, a male family therapist with a background in psychology, began introducing concepts like “borderline,” “histrionic,” and “narcissistic” personality disorders. I was immediately alarmed—I recognized far too many behaviors and characteristics. I’d already had a strong sense that something at the core of my wife was very wrong or even missing. And that’s what spurred me to begin further research. My uneasiness soared when the new concepts I was learning could be used as predictors of my wife’s behaviors and reactions.
Betrayal & The Unmasking
I initiated divorce proceedings against Barbie in late March 2017 after 367 days of sheer hell. I documented my experience in detail, and learned a few things along the way. Once I’d unmasked her true self, everything changed immediately, and she became downright vicious. Once I knew the truth, she had no further reason to maintain the charade. So she didn’t. It was as simple as that.
In the spring of 2016, Barbie began living a life of absentee parenting, frequent late-night partying, and heavy alcohol use. And probably other drugs, too. These were risky and dangerous behaviors. I was gripped by a constant fear she’d hit someone while driving intoxicated, because many of the establishments she visited after work were in parts of town with large pedestrian and bicycle zones. My concerns worsened when I learned she was slipping out of the office during the day in favor of taverns and infidelity. The prudence of my fears was further underscored the day I took her car to Paul, a Portland Audi specialist, who told me he needed to replace the passenger-side front wheel bearings. Paul then asked if the vehicle had sustained an impact, because, he explained, the mileage was “far too low for the bearings to go bad on their own.” My fears were highlighted again one evening when Barbie called me from the Interstate Bridge too drunk to speak clearly. I asked her to pull off the road and wait for me, but instead, as I listened, she vomited red wine into her lap and the instrument panel, and kept driving homeward. To this day, it’s a wonder she never got pulled over.
I frequently objected to Barbie’s absence from our family life, as well as her behavior and judgment. When I did, she’d predictably fly into a rage. One day in particular, she began shrieking with the pitch and volume of a train whistle. You know—the piercing kind of scream that could peel the skin off your comfort level about the sanity and balance of your life partner. “YOU’RE DRIVING ME CRAZY!!!” I’d simply asked where she was going, and to please explain her whereabouts the night before. The entire night before. “I owe you nothing.” So grandiose was her sense of entitlement.
In March 2016, Barbie had entered into a brand new relationship with “Jake Oliphant,” a male co-worker. I’ve nicknamed him “Beavis.” I believe Beavis had become her enabler with regard to drugs and alcohol. I was never able to identify specifically which drugs she was ingesting, other than edible marijuana, w
hich she admitted, but I’d sometimes see text messages on the face of her phone featuring a small yellow-and-red “pill” emoticon with cryptic text. The motif appeared enough times to raise my concerns. Barbie’s erratic behaviors seemed to be the result of more than a couple of triple Ketel One-and-soda cocktails. My process of discovery also yielded irrefutable proof that she and Beavis would separately slip out of the office in the afternoon, only to rendezvous for drinks at dive bars where no fellow employees were likely to show. Nearby places, like Crackerjacks, Joe’s Cellar, Nob Hill. Then they’d return to the office before close of business. She always drove, and was careful to let him out of the vehicle far enough from the office to conceal their secret. I know that because I had access to on-line credit card transactions. We even experienced a “near miss” one day when I innocently showed up downtown at lunchtime—Beavis had to jump out of the car a block from her office as I spoke with her on the phone.
Often Barbie and Beavis drank at the office as well, and I’d seen proof of that, too, in text messages. After work, other bars furnished a meet-up venue. The Marathon Taverna, Knob Hill, Broadway Bar & Grill, Maui’s, Vendetta, and many others. Barbie appeared to be kiting funds from her generous corporate expense allowance, or simply using family funds, to pay for her illicit outings. Sex probably came afterward, just before she got on her way home to her doting husband and children. What a lovely picture. Barbie always did the paying, which made her activities with Beavis ridiculously easy to track.
On average, Barbie was absent from our home and family life for fourteen to sixteen hours per day—and often more. By the late spring of 2016, she’d begun returning home from “work” thoroughly inebriated on a regular basis. If she returned home at all, that is. If she wasn’t already with Beavis after work, he’d pressure her for a “drive-by” to his North Portland apartment. When she stayed out all night, she’d sneak in just before five o’clock in the morning, being sure to allow the boys to see her when they awoke. It’s all about appearances, remember? But Eldest knew something very wrong was going on.
At the outset, I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with Barbie, but I knew normal people don’t treat their significant others the way I was being treated. The little voice in my head was getting louder and louder, and it was screaming “dysfunction!” like never before. The more I observed her behaviors, the more I recognized that “marriage breakdown” was not a good descriptor of what was happening.
The situation began to get out of hand by the end of 2016. Beavis committed two acts of harassment in separate jurisdictions against me and my elderly father on December 22, 2016, and February 4, 2017. That was not enough of a pattern of unlawful behavior to obtain a Protection Order against him, although I tried. These experiences are detailed in another post. I correctly recognized the purpose of the harassment, and I became persuaded that it was the beginning of a plot to accuse me of domestic violence, have me arrested, charged, and removed from our family home. I couldn’t allow that, and I filed a petition for divorce. The abuse—both spousal and substance—had to stop. Barbie was served on Friday, March 24.
Beavis subsequently attempted to engage one of my children in my marital conflict, in early April 2017. A minor child. WTF?! I believe his deliberate action—curiously, conducted at 1:10 AM—is tantamount to child abuse. Together with the stalking and harassment, I believe it paints a fairly clear picture of his character—we used to call it “Bad Seed,” back in the Day. As a judge told Beavis, he simply had “no lawful nor legitimate reason” for contacting my elderly father or my thirteen-year-old son.
By the end of February 2017, when I suspected Beavis and Barbie might be planning to frame me for domestic violence, I noticed that unexplained bruises began appearing on her arms and legs. There was even one on her left deltoid in early March with a bite mark in the center. I had to ask. Her explanation disgusted me: “a guy on the elevator in Vegas said I looked good enough to eat.”
Lovely.
By that time, Barbie had become physically more aggressive toward me when she arrived home at night. Her level of aggression had a positive correlation with intoxication. One night, she made the mistake of texting me photos of her bruises as a way of threatening me. I understood it as a foreshadowing of what she and Beavis were likely planning. That threat was real to me. I was afraid of falling victim to false accusations of physical assault of my wife, or even sexual assault. The situation had gotten so crazy that anything seemed possible. The next morning, I went to Christine H., an attorney I’d hired, and showed her the photos with which Barbie had threatened me. Christine’s position was, “let her bring it.”
A divorce—the last thing in the world I’d wanted—had suddenly become the thing I wanted most.
Christine’s response emboldened me. I dared Barbie to go to the police with the photos. Please, I thought. Go ahead. File a false police report. I believe she’d been collecting photos for some time, at different times and places. But I’d also been making notes in my journal when I saw any new bruises, and recorded where she’d been, if I knew. There was at least one long stretch where she stayed at the home of friends for more than a week, and returned with new bruises—particularly bad ones. My planned defense was going to rely on my journal, plus the electronic timestamps and geotags embedded in the photos. Electronic geotags from photos posted on social media sites like Facebook, and its Russian counterpart, VKontakte (ВКонтакте), known as “Veh-Ka,” were how Western investigators discovered active Russian troops had invaded Ukraine in early 2014, when Vladimir Putin openly denied their presence in that country. I was certain Barbie didn’t know anything about geotags.
She immediately backed down. A real victim of abuse, I believe, would have and should have used the opportunity to turn me in to authorities. But she’d learned not to play around with false accusations where I was concerned—I might already have evidence supporting truth and reality, which I’d had numerous times before, when she’d lied to me.
Throughout February and March, I’d become increasingly afraid Barbie would attack me and then claim I’d hit her. I never raised a hand against her throughout all the years of marriage. Ever. My children are my witnesses. Barbie also assumed I wouldn’t act against her because, I believe, she felt she had me financially trapped. She’d even cockily announced privately to a mutual (female) friend, “Harry will never leave me.”
WRONG. I’d been contemplating and planning legal action for some time, particularly as my fear of false accusations rose. My attorneys urged action, while I wavered on the timing. Rick Osborne, a Clark County Sheriff’s Deputy, even advised me to take action for my own safety. “Somebody’s going to get hurt if you let this continue,” he said, “and it could be you. You’re at a disadvantage here.” I trusted Deputy Osborne’s advice; he was well-acquainted with the situation in our household, including the day she tried to seize the kids from my custody and drive them to a movie while visibly drunk. And I’m not talking “a couple o’ beers” here—this was drinking to the point of speaking in tongues. Eldest even noticed the pronounced slurring that day. “What’s wrong with Mom’s voice?”
If the framing plot went forward, I planned to involve Deputy Osborne as a key player in my defense. Still, I wavered on taking action. I simply couldn’t find the resolve to initiate it. I knew it would be a one-way path. I’d loved Barbie for twenty-one years, I was committed to family, and I assumed what I was observing was a drug- or alcohol-fueled aberration in her behavior.
But I was dead wrong. It was something much, much deeper.
I changed my mind the night of March 19, 2017, a Sunday, nearing midnight. I was working 
in my home office with the double-doors tied with network cable in anticipation of Barbie’s arrival. Who has to do that? The situation had acquired that degree of absurdity.
Barbie eventually came home. I bid her good night without opening the office doors. She was like a raging bull. I wish I could have taken a video, but I needed my hands and feet to brace the doors. Using her body as a battering ram, she tried to force the doors open. I struggled to hold them closed, hoping she wouldn’t crash through the glass. She was undoubtedly angry I was dragging Beavis into court for a Protection Order hearing on Wednesday that week (March 22). She finally relented, slumped to the floor with her flannel blouse against the glass {camera click: that’s her against the door in the photo below}.
A few minutes later, Barbie crawled off to pass out on the bed. That’s when I made the final decision. I had to do it. I had to act. I called 911, reported the incident, and saw my attorneys the next morning. In retrospect, I still wonder whether the framing plan was supposed to go down that night. I’ll probably never know for sure, because I struck first.
For me, the line in the sand had been drawn and crossed. By the end of that week, I managed to have Barbie removed from our family home. The apparent plan to frame me for domestic violence especially galled me. I’d given her and our children nothing but love, kindness, and care over many years. I didn’t deserve to be treated like she was treating me. It was pure avarice. And I certainly couldn’t let the framing go forward. As they say in government, good decisions are based on good intelligence—and I had it. I’d been pushed too far. Way too far.
A divorce—the last thing in the world I’d wanted—had suddenly become the thing I wanted most. I gritted my teeth and moved the process forward.
Two weeks after filing for divorce, Barbie and I found ourselves on opposite sides of a Vancouver Family Court. Two people who’d once embraced a loving marriage (or so I’d thought) now bore the cardboard titles of Petitioner and Respondent. My family was in the Midwest, and I only had Matt K., my capable legal gun, at my side. Barbie had a young, blondish male attorney named Jordan T., who stood stiff as a soldier preparing to charge the enemy. “Your Honor,” Jordan said when it was his turn to speak, “we believe the husband to be mentally unstable.”
What?! I was stunned. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But despite my disbelief, I’d come prepared to hear something like that. Jordan’s statement was the first salvo of the backlash that my Portland counselor-cum-divorce coach, Joel Taylor, had predicted not even a month before. He’d told me truth and honesty wouldn’t matter to her; that she would demonize me to the court and friends alike because I had the found the courage to strike out against her, and end the charade. I had rejected her and her unacceptable behavior—and whether deserved or not, it enraged her like never before.
Joel was a psychological professional who regularly convened a group for men in abusive relationships. Joel interviewed me in early February to assess whether I belonged in the group. I must have said something “right,” because he admitted me. At the first group session, I sat in a room with six or seven other men in a circle. And Joel. I listened attentively as the others introduced themselves and related their stories. I was the last to speak. Based on what I’d heard, all I could muster was, “are you guys kidding? Are we all married to the same woman?!” Afterward, when I told Joel I was about to file for divorce, he advised me to speak with him about my situation first. I did, and that was a good move. He talked about how males are naturally at a disadvantage in our nation’s family courts, and that documentation would be absolutely critical.
In the backlash that came after I filed, Barbie assumed no ownership of her behavior whatsoever. And it was bad behavior—really bad behavior—the kind that’s completely incompatible with child-rearing and family life. She reacted as if I’d thrown Holy Water on a vampire. Barbie denied absolutely everything of which I’d accused her—even in the face of documentation—excessive use of alcohol, being an absentee, adulterous parent, and behaving abusively in front of the children. All of it was lobbed right back at me. One thing became clear: things like truth, reality, facts, and evidence were mere trifles to be tossed out the nearest window. She’d become like a cornered, panicked cat, lashing out with extended claws and bared fangs, trying to draw blood any way she could. I took comfort in the fact that the children knew the truth, but Joel had warned me—that wouldn’t matter in the divorce proceedings. He was right. As a male, the battle was uphill, no matter what had happened. No one in the court system wanted to be the one “who took children away from their mother.” I don’t like it, but I get it.
Barbie’s mendacious response was exactly as Joel had predicted. Exactly. I was astonished by the stream of lies. Joel urged me to relax. He knew I’d already been keeping a daily journal of events in my household for months, and the level of documentation made my case different. He encouraged meticulous documentation because, he explained, it could tip the scales in what he predicted would be a high-conflict divorce. Barbie would do whatever it took to protect her false self, he said, her false persona, to prevent exposure. He was right. I don’t know what I’d been thinking. Somehow I thought she’d never use her well-honed fabrication skills against me. But she did.
Also at Barbie’s side stood my sister-in-law, Kim, an officious and meddlesome woman who’d submitted a perjured statement to the court in support of my wife. I could hardly believe I’d trusted Kim so much that I’d gone to her first when I needed help dealing with Barbie’s excessive partying and infidelity. What the hell had I been thinking?! Incredulously, Kim betrayed me and the boys that day without batting an eye. After saying she wouldn’t take sides, Kim did just that—the morally wrong side, in view of the facts. She had listened to me, but by her actions, Kim made it clear that Kim cared only about herself. She exposed herself as a user. But Kim would never see it that way, of course. Instead, she would see loyalty. She believed she owed Barbie because Barbie had helped her land a decent job a few years before. In Kim’s sworn statement, she had the brazen audacity to declare that I’d even kidnapped the children one day in July 2016 and held them from my wife incommunicado. What?! Kidnapped my own children?! Kidnapped?! Strong words, but not just that. It was perjury, and I knew I could prove it. Still, Kim’s betrayal cut me deeply. She turned out to be Nikko, the head of the winged monkeys from The Wizard of Oz.
As a quick aside, I need to say something about Kim’s husband, David. David is Barbie’s half-brother from the same mother. He is the only person on her side of the family who sent a private condolences message to me when my mother passed away on March 24, 2017, the same day I had to eject his sister from our family home. The message was truly heartfelt. To date, he has not taken sides.
The boys were left in my constant care and custody during Barbie’s long absences, and I frequently took them on adventures to entertain them and get them out of the house. I never knew what condition Barbie might bring home, so I also helped the children avoid her alcoholic binges. On the day in question, I had taken the boys hiking on Mt. Hood, and to Timberline Lodge. Kim previously knew Barbie had turned off my cell phone service that day in July because I’d told her just after it happened. She submitted the false sworn statement to the court anyway. I contacted AT&T Wireless’ legal department and obtained confirmation that my phone service had indeed been turned off on the day in question, and not by me. Fortunately for Kim, I never got the chance to present evidence of her perjury to the court.
Over the next weeks and months, a Court Commissioner and an appointed custody evaluator reviewed the intimate details of our family and our very different family backgrounds, attempting to make the most reasonable decisions for our separate futures. From the outside, it looked like an orderly process; after all, their rulings would directly affect the future care and psychological development of our children. However, our case seemed to receive rather perfunctory treatment because of the extraordinary level of conflict and the backlash of unbridled deceit Barbie unleashed. Her responses to my legal Declarations amounted to nothing more than a massive smear campaign against me. Truth clearly didn’t matter, even though these were “sworn” statements. Everything I had detailed about her behavior was flung right back at me as if I had done it. She held nothing back. I now know why—in her eyes, I’d committed the greatest crime anyone could have. I’d dared to unmask her, and expose her true self. In her world, that was tantamount to a capital offense. I hadn’t expected her response to be what it was, but Joel, a specialist in Cluster B personality disorders, had predicted all of it with astonishing accuracy.
I’d invested my faith and trust in our family law system, but I was disappointed by the outcome. My attractive, charismatic, and polished wife had clearly charmed the court-appointed custody evaluator, Dr. Kirk Johnson, a psychologist in his late sixties. However, Jennifer Snider, the Court Commissioner, seemed more suspicious. And rightly so. I think she looked at my educational background, my documentation, and saw credibility in my account of events. And it was, after all, supported by strong evidence.
At the first hearing, the Commissioner ruled that I should remain in the family home with custody of the children for the bulk of the time, over Barbie’s objections. Because of the mutual accusations of drug and alcohol abuse, the Commissioner ordered both of us to submit to regular drug and alcohol testing for the next 120 days. Very fair. I was attending my mother’s funeral with the boys that week, but through my attorney, I asked that the testing would be a randomly-administered ethyl glucuronide (EtG) test, an aggressive alcohol metabolite test with a 72- to 80-hour retrospect. I was certain Barbie would have tried to cheat a less aggressive test. In fact, at that first hearing after I discarded her, her attorney showed up in court with the results of an EtS test. That test showed she hadn’t been drunk in the previous 24 hours. Big whoop.
The brutal, high-conflict process I’d initiated schooled me about what I’ve come to call the “divorce industry.” One person’s divorce, it seems, is another’s opportunity to make a few bucks. I discovered the people involved in our case lacked critical knowledge and experience with Cluster B personality disorders, particularly unhealthy narcissism and full-blown Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), which is characterized by a dysregulation of emotions, thinking, and behavior. She easily were easily misled. A personality test administered by Dr. Johnson (the MMPI-2, I believe) showed that my former spouse had scored high for characteristics of not only one, but two of the four distinct Cluster B disorders—Narcissism and Histrionic Personality Disorder. But those important clues to the truth were either missed or ignored. My thinking on Cluster B disorders is in line with Dr. Sam Vaknin, author of Malignant Self-Love (1995), that the Cluster B disorders are all facets of the same pathology; a sort of Cluster B kaleidoscope. Many of the characteristics of the disorders are in common, such as entitlement, erratic, often impulsive behavior, and dysregulated, labile emotions.
The divorce and custody evaluation alarmed me. I felt like it was shaded by some kind of bias. Was it gender bias? Can a father not be an effective primary parent just because he’s male? In our family, history said otherwise. The court-appointed investigators seemed preoccupied with one thing: if there was abuse in the relationship—and indeed there was—then how was it possible that the male was not the abuser? Dr. Johnson’s report, for example, struggled as he described my successful discovery of Barbie’s infidelity as “coercive control”—a “form of abuse,” he claimed. Really? Had I no right to the truth? As aggrieved spouse, I believe I did. And in seeking it, that made me an abuser? What if I’d been a woman, and hired a Private Investigator? Would that be tagged as “abuse?” I think not. To me, Johnson’s report reads as though he believes abusive women—if there are such creatures—are themselves the victims of “patriarchal oppression.” This is an anachronistic point of view.
In addition, some of the “professional” participants in our case were flat-out incompetent. My wife was ordered by our judge to complete an updated domestic violence assessment, for instance. The report was submitted to the court, but the assessor never bothered to contact me, the “victim” of two documented assaults! No one seemed to be asking the right questions. With Barbie absent from our home for long hours during the day, evening, and night—including weekends—when the hell would I have had time to be doing all the things she claimed? I was cheating and partying, too? Laughable. Children require time. In fact, they demand it. And raising them demands sobriety and focus. Dr. Johnson, I believe, was just another cog in the local divorce industry. He didn’t really take any interest in what was going to happen, or the outcome, or, perhaps, he was simply so charmed and manipulated that he allowed himself to be misled. That was highly possible, because Barbie is slick. Either way, he was another person in the queue to get paid. I expected a trained psychologist to see through her veneer, or at least to suspect that something might be awry. His professional specialty was something else: most of Johnson’s work focused on sex offenders. Perhaps he was an inappropriate choice as custody evaluator.
In my first interview with Dr. Johnson, he noted my multilingual prowess, then smugly bragged about how he’d managed to sneak through his PhD program at Arizona without having to satisfy doctoral programs’ traditional language requirement. Psychology would favor German. He’d “learned the computer” instead. Good for him. In my written response to Dr. Johnson’s Forensic History Questionnaire, when describing Barbie’s outlandish behavior, I had prominently used the phrase “sense of entitlement,” well before I’d done any research into narcissism and NPD. I even depicted her entitlement as having alarmingly “epic proportions.” As Harvard psychologist Dr. Craig Malkin has pointed out about unhealthy narcissism and NPD: “… it all comes down to one word: entitlement. It’s the most salient characteristic of the subtle narcissist” (Malkin 2015). Johnson had completely missed it. Or had he ignored it? I can’t be sure which. And where does his misjudgment leave my children? Stuck in the middle. German would have served Johnson well. A most conspicuous concept in German psychological literature on narcissism is selbstzentriertes Anspruchsdenken. “Self-centered sense of entitlement.” Maybe he would have recognized it. Shrug.
A Growing Penchant for Violence
In September 2016, seven months before I filed for divorce, Barbie physically assaulted me on two separate occasions with blows to the face. The first assault was in public and independently witnessed; I called the sheriff the second time it happened, which was in our home. She was arrested and charged with domestic violence. (I’ve detailed that experience here. I regretted it the instant it happened, but I look at things differently now.)
Barbie was not convicted. And that was my fault. She’d sucker-punched me with a promise to work on keeping our family together. I fell for it, and lobbied the county prosecutor to drop the charges. Hope can be a powerful motivator. I worked hard on the prosecutor, and accomplished my goal. But still, the assault had taken place, and she’d admitted to it to the arresting officers. After I filed for divorce, the court inexplicably ignored this experience, and instead turned to a closer examination of me as a potential perpetrator of “coercive abuse” because I had tracked Barbie’s whereabouts for a brief period in 2016, when I suspected rampant infidelity, and again in 2017, when I began to suspect the framing plot.
My attorney labeled the tracking activity my “process of discovery,” and said it would be reasonably defensible. After all, I was simply verifying my suspicions about her partying and repeated infidelity. Is that not fair? The Court Commissioner, a woman, thought my actions were tantamount to stalking, yet it didn’t to rise to a level where she would issue sanctions against me. Did I have the right to seek the truth or not?
I had questions, I sought answers, and I aggressively applied my skillset to get them, and in short order, too. Because of the allegations of domestic violence in my divorce case, court officials and court-appointed officials alike seemed to be searching for every reason to show why it was me—the male—who had to be the perpetrator, despite my wife’s violent track record. We’ll dig deeper into that set of issues later. The good thing is that my children still know who their father is. And I’m certainly no abuser.
The Reality of Narcissism
This blog will contain the story of how Barbie and I arrived at the unenviable point of divorce, how her shift up the narcissism spectrum toward full-blown NPD contributed to the high level of conflict between us, and how it is likely to cause significant developmental issues for the children going forward. I will sketch the key characteristics of unhealthy narcissism in the hopes of giving you a set of benchmarks against which to measure your own relationship experiences. In the psychological community, there has been some useful new thinking about the nature of narcissism, and I will present that as well. It offers a compelling framework to help me understand what went wrong in my marriage.
I’ll discuss my personal journey through narcissistic abuse, physical assault, and even the alarming and unlawful harassment by the man I call “Beavis,” Barbie’s new narcissistic “supply.” He’s also a Portland attorney. (I find that shocking.) I also take full responsibility for getting myself into this abhorrent situation because, alas, I’d ignored some gigantic red flags. I’d witnessed the same cycle in her relationships twenty-one years hence, when I had been the shiny new object the crow had desired. More on that, too.
Finally, I’ve described my decision to plan and initiate the forcible breakout—how I arrived at that decision and why. I will also make note of things I could have done better. If you’re living in this kind of situation, I hope my analysis will help you plan your escape, and discard your narcissistic partner with less pain than I suffered. Narcissistic manipulation can turn reality on its head. It gaslights you into questioning your own sanity and sense of reality, but in the end, knowledge is still power.
Breaking Free of the Control & Abuse
When a romantic relationship comes to an end, many counselors use the seminal Kübler-Ross Five Stages of Grief to describe the emotions we experience (Kübler-Ross 1969). I’ve thought of the process a bit differently.
Over a period of many months, I moved through four distinct stages. These stages represent a progression from an initially shocked and angry reaction through despair and other sentiments related to helplessness and self-pity, toward a fully proactive interest in deliverance from the psychological turmoil that is infidelity, narcissistic abuse, and divorce. My anger phase, admittedly, was prolonged, but it was prolonged because my values, as I continued to remain in our family home and focus on our children, were repeatedly and violent transgressed as my wife openly flaunted her cheating to me, as if there were nothing wrong with it. Somewhere along the way, I developed a full readiness to turn the tables on Barbie, and to prosper from the negative experience she’d served me. If you’re going to discard your narcissist successfully, that’s where you need to be, too. I will have some suggestions about getting there. It’s all about State of Mind.
Anger
In the first stage, my sense of anger and betrayal were both profound and crippling. That’s all I’m going to say at this point. After the unmasking in the spring of 2016, the daily emotional abuse became vicious and grotesque. Barbie verbally mistreated me in front of the children, causing the elder to side with me, and the younger to become combative and sometimes acutely disrespectful to his father. This experience is essentially what spurred me to focus on myself, fall back on my advanced education, and begin researching narcissism and NPD.¹ I also arranged ongoing professional counseling for the children. At the outset, I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with Barbie, but I knew normal people don’t treat their significant others the way I was being treated. Something was wrong, and deep down, I knew it wasn’t me.
Despair
The second stage encompassed a deep sense of despair, underpinned by fear, resentment, and regret. “What a big fucking mistake!” thundered in my head day and night. I’d wasted twenty-one years of my life with an abusive narcissist. I could have seen it coming, if only…. My marriage had been a total fraud—some kind of contrived virtual reality. And I now had two children with her! Shit! What the hell was I thinking?!
In retrospect, the red flags were all there; I’d simply chosen to ignore them. For years. I felt stupid. The last couple years of the relationship were particularly bad—filled with emotional pain and trauma as the narcissistic abuse cycle crossed the line from Idealization to Devaluation and began to proceed toward Discard. The process ground to a crawl, however, because Barbie thought I wouldn’t move against her, legally speaking. Discarding me was too costly, so she asserted and reasserted her overblown sense of entitlement. Horribly, she expected me to tolerate her perfidy and abuse! We entered a limbo of daily verbal and emotional abuse, and her continued substance abuse only amplified it. I felt powerless. After trying to ride the tiger for 367 days, it became abundantly clear I had to take action to end it for the sake of my own sanity, safety, and well-being.
Introspection
I entered a third stage just after I ejected Barbie from our family home on March 24, 2017. It was the same day my mother passed away from complications related to Parkinson’s Disease. Although Barbie knew of my mother’s death that morning, she expressed no condolences as she left for work. She was unaware that I was serving divorce papers that day, and she wouldn’t be returning home. The thud of the garage door that morning filled me with a sense of relief. It was a sound of finality. A sound of tranquility. A sound of freedom.
After March 24, I found calm. I sank deep into introspection. I discovered that I still had intelligence, honesty, integrity, commitment, and compassion—all the things I’d first brought to the relationship, to my family, to my children. I rediscovered my intellect. I came to realize that during our marriage, Barbie had gradually broken down my personal boundaries—a little bit here, a little bit there. I’d allowed her to walk all over me. I allowed it. Why? Probably my strong sense of commitment and obligation to family. No more. This phase had to be about rebuilding strength and resolve.
I took my two children and flew to the Midwest to bury my mother, with the haunting German lyrics of the 17 Hippies’ song, “Adieu,” playing over and over in my head. Ich bin gekommen, um Adieu zu sagen …
I was saying goodbye to so many things.
Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it—don’t cheat with it.
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Deliverance
Now, my sentiment is one of gratefulness. Simply put, I am grateful to have had this horrible experience, to have survived it, and to have learned from it. It awakened me in ways I never expected. I am also grateful that the circumstances under which I’m exiting the marriage are not dire. Things could have been much worse, and were definitely heading in that direction. It’s what made me realize I’d best take action to protect myself. My fear of being wrongfully accused of domestic violence was very real. Also, among the people I met through the divorce support group at the Mt. Tabor Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon, were people whose financial status became very strained by their marital strife. Mine isn’t, and I’m grateful for that, too.
Deliverance from the horror of the experience is my fourth stage, and, as of this writing, I haven’t fully arrived. But this blog has been a great start. I’m developing a solid understanding of what I’d allowed myself to get mixed up with, and why. I now see a light at the end of the tunnel. As I move forward in my life without Barbie, I have a need to share my traumatic experiences. How can I use my unique talents to turn this patently negative experience into a healing positive—not only for myself—but for others who’ve found themselves in similar situations? That’s my question, my focus.
I can write. I can research. I can analyze. And I can share my story. There’s no reason why my experience can’t become a springboard for continued self-improvement and service to others.
My deepest concern remains. With court-assigned fifty/fifty joint custody, for my children, the challenges are only beginning. My greatest fear is them being subjected to an emotionally underdeveloped, dysfunctional mother who is bent on controlling their lives’ destiny, distorting all their future relationships as well as their own senses of self-worth. And she’ll launch into their destruction with all the wild abandon of a value-free adolescent without an ounce of comprehension about the threat she poses to their future well-being.
In life, there are no mistakes. Only lessons.
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¹ I had the honor of working with the renowned political psychologist Margaret G. Hermann, PhD, when pursuing a doctorate at The Ohio State University’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies. Dr. Hermann’s focus was leadership and personality; thus the study of personality types is not virgin territory to me.
References
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth S. On Death and Dying. Scribner, 1969.
Malkin, Craig, PhD. Rethinking Narcissism: The Secret to Recognizing and Coping with Narcissists. Harper Collins, 2015.
The summer of COVID-19. I had planned to fly my two boys, now twelve (almost thirteen), and sixteen, to Arizona to spend some quality time with me over their Spring Break. The Coronavirus ruined that.
As I’ve looked back on my experiences of the past two years, I find myself returning to a single core question: how can I gather up the scattered, blood-spattered emotional shards of this horribly negative experience, and reorganize them? Reshape them into something new, something positive? What the Landmark Forum people call “creating a new possibility?”
. Until the day my father alerted me to harassment by her boyfriend, “Beavis.” Good Lord. My Dad lived 2,500 miles away, yet he was still a target for disparaging text messages. What’s more, I later figured out that Barbie was with him, sucking down booze at Hazel Dell Lanes in Vancouver, when the texting occurred. I’ve detailed that shameful episode 
I’m deeply touched by their kind thoughts, as well as the implication of the nomination—that the intensely personal experiences I’ve shared on my blog has been helpful to others. That significance of that implication isn’t lost on me. I’m very grateful to both of them.
I knew what to expect. She’d been off drinking with Beavis all afternoon and evening, abandoning the children to my care and custody for the day. I’d gotten used to it. I wrapped the knobs of the office’s double doors with a stout network cable and tied myself in. She came to the doors and demanded that I allow her in. I refused. “You’ve been drinking. Go to bed,” I said. She was raging. She attempted to ram the doors in, but the cable, as well as my hands and feet, held them closed. After multiple impacts, she slumped to the stone floor with her back against the door. That’s her in the photo, sporting plaid flannel. She got up a few minutes later and renewed her effort to force the doors open. It was to no avail. A hundred and fifteen pounds was no match for me and the cable.
As you contemplate taking action against your wayward, abusive spouse, one of the most important things you can do is begin a journal. Make sure it’s daily. Note down the times of comings and goings, and any stops at stores, restaurants, etc.—anything a bank statement might corroborate. If you’ve already sought counseling, you should periodically share copies of your journal with your counselor. That way, when your angry spouse unleashes the predictably vicious backlash of deceit when you finally do file for divorce, your counselor can corroborate your account, because he or she has already seen it.
In my case, discovery of my wife’s serial infidelity—the fact that she was living a parallel life—dragged me kicking and screaming into a harsh reality. It was a gut-punch. A stab in the back. I couldn’t believe she was doing that to me. I couldn’t believe she was doing that to our children. She was blowing off her responsibilities to her family, running around town, drinking excessively, and even taking business trips with another man while using corporate and family funds to support it. But she believed she was entitled to do whatever she wanted. She seemed driven by some weird delusion of grandeur. Barbie’s actions violated all sense of fairness, obligation, and responsibility.
{ Despair to Deliverance } 