July 7, 2022 • 57 mins
Guest Bio:
Tina Swithin's relationship with her ex-husband started off in a whirlwind romance that ended with a fantasy wedding in Hawaii. The author of Divorcing a Narcissist: One Mom's Battle, thought she was in an intense, love-filled, and passionate relationship, but it was actually abusive. Find out how Tina was able to overcome this post-separation narcissistic abuse and eventually help other survivors in similar situations.
#NavigatingNarcissism
Host Information:
Instagram: Dr Ramani's IG - @doctorramani
Facebook: Dr Ramani's FB - @doctorramani
Twitter: Dr Ramani's TW - @DoctorRamani
YouTube: Dr. Ramani’s YT - DoctorRamani
Guest Information:
Instagram: Tina’s IG - @onemomsbattle
Twitter: Tina’s Twitter - @tinaswithin
One Mom’s Battle - Divorce Coaching
Guest Bio:
Tina Swithin is the author of Divorcing a Narcissist (series), founder of One Mom’s Battle, Family Court Awareness Month and the High Conflict Divorce Coach Certification Program. Tina Swithin continues to champion children’s rights through her family court advocacy. Tina is working to raise awareness of the issues in the family court system and to educate the general public on post separation abuse and narcissistic abuse. Tina is remarried and resides in San Luis Obispo, California with her husband and two daughters.
Have a toxic topic you want me to explore or have a question for me? Email me at askdrramani@redtabletalk.com - I just might answer you questions on air.
This podcast should not be used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and/or therapy from a health care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast.
Navigating Narcissism is produced by Red Table Talk Podcasts. EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Jada Pinkett-Smith, Fallon Jethroe, Ellen Rakieten, and Dr. Ramani Durvasula. Also, PRODUCER: Matthew Jones, ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Mara De La Rosa. EDITORS AND AUDIO MIXERS: Devin Donaghy and Calvin Bailiff.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This podcast should not be used as a substitute for
medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek
independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a health
care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue,
or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This
(00:24):
episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering to some people.
The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the
podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do
not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, I
Heart Media, or their employees. And we wrote vows. It
(00:45):
was very important to him that we both wrote wedding vows.
And I thought, wow, that is so romantic, and he
hands me a stack of paper and what he had
actually stayed up all night writing was a pre nup.
But this was not a normal prain up. It had
things in there like if I were to ever get pregnant,
I had to return to pre pregnancy weight within one year. Hi,
(01:11):
I'm Dr Rominey, and this is navigating narcissism. In this podcast,
we'll learn how to heal from the narcissist in your
life from the people who know this territory the best
the survivors. In this episode, we are going to hear
the story of Tina Swidden. Tina is a survivor of
(01:32):
an abusive marriage, post separation abuse, and a painful journey
to the family court system. Her story is one of
perseverance through a relationship that seemed perfect at the start
but went downhill, ending in a long court battle. Today,
Tina is working to raise awareness of these issues in
(01:53):
the family court system. She works with survivors and educates
the general public post separation abuse and narcissistic abuse. Hey, Tina, Welcome, Welcome,
How are you. I am doing well and I'm so
excited to be here. Well, I'm deeply honored because you know,
(02:14):
I not only am all struck by your expertise, but
you know, I very much consider you a friend. So
it's an honor of times to to have you here
on the podcast. So thank you so much for doing
this and for sharing your story, which is incredibly empowering.
But also it's unbelievable that you're able to talk about
it again and again because of how difficult it is.
(02:35):
So thank you. Thank you, So Tina. I want to
start at the very beginning and go back to literally
when you first met your ex husband, and I want
to understand what about the new life with your ex
husband drew you in the most. I think it was
the presentation and what he had to offer me, and
(02:58):
how kind and considerate and caring he seemed to be.
I had never dated anyone that was as thoughtful as
he was, and coming from a very broken home life,
difficult childhood, I really put both he and his family
up on a pedestal. They were, you know, an intact family.
(03:23):
They seemed very healthy, very happy, very involved in the community,
very educated. It was really a picture of stability. Interesting
how compelling that idea of stability was. Let's pause a
second and allow me to break this down a little more.
One of the ways that narcissistic relationships can sneak up
(03:46):
on us is when they represent something we have never
experienced and are an offset to the difficult parts of
our life histories. People who come from dysfunctional families may
be really drawn to what seemed like healthier people or families,
or people who can pretend to be those things. If
(04:06):
a person craves stability or has never had it, then
stability can be really seductive. So from there, Tina, you
chose to go with your therapist advice at the time
by deciding to start dating him because she said you
were not used to people treating you well. How did
(04:27):
following your therapist advice shape where your life ended up? Wow?
You know, when I had taken a full year off
from dating and really put myself into therapy, I wanted
to work through past baggage from childhood, from my upbringing,
and I didn't want to carry that into future relationships.
(04:50):
And I remember going to her and telling her, you know,
this person seems too good to be true, but for
some reason, I'm not attracted to him at all. And honestly,
the thought of even kissing him it felt almost repulsive.
I just could not imagine being intimate with this person.
(05:14):
And I remember her telling me, you're just not accustomed
to a normal adult, healthy relationship, and so you may
have to push yourself a little bit out of your
comfort zone. And when she said that to me, it
actually made complete sense, and I thought, you know, that
(05:34):
is probably what's happening, and so I overrode my instincts
and pushed myself forward, and I thought, you know, I'm
being superficial I'm being vain because I'm not physically attracted
to this person, and that there's more to a relationship
than just physical attraction, and so I really pushed. You know. Now,
(05:57):
in hindsight, I can see that was my intuitions screaming loudly.
That is so wild. You're right, you framed at us.
Was I being superficial? But it does make me wonder
if somewhere there was this instinct that was screaming out
that in some ways you were sort of told to silence.
(06:18):
So many people have asked me, Dr Rominey, how do
I detect a narcissist as early as possible. They're always
looking for a question they could ask or tell they
can look for, but I always tell them listen to
your body. Our brain, frankly, often gaslights our body. Our
body may not feel comfortable when we meet a new
(06:38):
narcissistic person, but we often talk ourselves out of that feeling,
or other people talk us out of it. Tina's body
was telling her something, and most of us often don't
listen to those instincts that we feel about a person
early on. And I have actually stayed in touch with
(07:00):
my therapists from back then and she has read my
book and has said, you know, these are things I
never learned in school, and so she's learned a lot
from my journey, from my experience, you sort of silence
this physical instinct at one point that was trying to
help you. So Tina raises something really important here. For
(07:24):
all the havoc that narcissistic people reak in our lives
and our relationships, not all therapists understand narcissistic relationships because
this stuff isn't taught in school. That can mean that
a person going through a narcissistic relationship is going to
therapy and clearly describing their relationship, and the therapist may
(07:48):
simply just not have a playbook for a narcissistic relationship
to be able to help the client. Now, I love
this quote from your blog quote, red flags are only
seen while reflecting on the relationship in the rear view mirror.
Take us through some of the red flags that you
(08:09):
only realized were really read later and how you weren't
able to see them at first. One of the first
dates that we had, we were driving about an hour
away from our home. He was taking me out to
dinner and he didn't tell me where we were going.
(08:30):
He wanted it to be a surprise. I didn't know
this person. He told me, the only thing you need
to bring is your driver's license in case we go
out after dinner, And so I got into his car trusting,
and after dinner we had had a few drinks and
had the hour drive back home, and I had warned
him I fall asleep in the car. So I fell asleep.
(08:56):
Next thing I know, I heard the tires of his
car pull off into gravel. And when I woke up,
we were up on the top of the mountain in
the middle of nowhere, overlooking a city, and it was
pitch black out. I froze and I panicked, and I
(09:18):
instantly thought, I've made a really bad decision. I put
myself in a really dangerous situation. And I remember asking him,
why why are we stopped? Can we please leave? And
he said, I want to show you the view. I
want to show you the city from up here. And
it made me so uncomfortable. But then again I'm second
(09:38):
guessing myself, thinking you're being too paranoid. This is such
a nice guy. He did all the right things, set
all the right things at dinner. Then he gave me
the silent treatment the whole way home because of how
I reacted and looking back, a healthy, considerate human would
not have put me in a situation like that, And
(10:01):
so that was the very first red flag on our date.
But again because I came from a background where I
did not have healthy relationships and I had a lot
of self doubt, that took over. And so then I
started beating myself up, thinking why are you so critical
of him? You know? So again it's over writing my intuition.
(10:23):
Many people might say, oh, it's a surprise, isn't that romantic?
And yet you saw it as that. It felt unsettling.
And then to be taken in the dark somewhere someone
you didn't know. Again, a lot of people say so romantic,
but not so much. It almost felt like there wasn't
even that much consent. Yes, you were just taken and
you had nothing to say about it. We tend to
(10:44):
over romanticize surprises, being taken somewhere and not knowing what
it's going to be. It all feels very wrong calm,
But when you think about it really early in a relationship,
before you know someone, it may all also be a
bit controlling and even unsettling Because a surprise is supposed
(11:05):
to be so exciting. People will often feel guilty for
viewing a heavily planned surprise as a red flag. And
another red flag popped up here, the silent treatment when
she didn't give him the reaction he wanted for his surprise.
When people are this thin skinned, that is a bad sign.
(11:29):
Were there any other red flags, Tina, that jumped out
at you from not even just the early days, but
weeks months of the relationship that looking back, you're like, Wow,
that was a red banner. Looking back, what I now
know to be love bombing was extreme, and even the
stories I hear now I sometimes reflect back on how
(11:51):
over the top it truly was. The first week we
started dating, I would go out to my car at
seven am to get ready and go to work, and
there would be poetry on my window shield. There would
be a dozen red roses delivered to my office stays
after I met this person. Wow, the poetry, the roses,
(12:13):
and all within a week of your first day. I'm
going to take a moment now to explain what love
bombing is. Love Bombing is this process of seduction and idealization,
and it sweeps a person away into something that feels
like a fairy tale. Now, Unfortunately, while you're being love bombed,
(12:35):
you can easily miss the red flags. Love bombing, though,
is often a part of abusive and narcissistic relationship cycles,
and it is exciting as all of this may seem.
The love bombing should absolutely be a red flag. Absolutely
when the love bombing manifest says stuff being left on
(12:58):
your windshield, on your doorstep, or flowers to your workplace
really early on, once again, big red flag. There's something
sort of surveillancey about it that they're rolling by your
spot and making their presence known in your workplace. It's
like they're marking their territory. I know I sound like
(13:21):
the anti Cupid pointing out these things, but a week
in finding stuff on your windshield maybe a sign of
more obsessive behavior and not just healthy interest. Tina, what
were some of the other ways that he loved bombed you?
I remember after first date he called me a couple
(13:44):
of days later and said, I want you to take
the whole day off of work. I've called in to
the local day spa. I've put my credit card down.
You have a full day of services booked for you.
It was so much that I truly didn't have time
to think or to self reflect. It was just constant
and truly overwhelming. But again, overwriting intuition, I thought, this
(14:10):
is what it's like to date an adult male. I've
only dated I was twenty six years old. I had
a history of dating bad boys and you know, not
the healthiest of relationships. And so I thought, this is
what adult dating must be like, and sign me up.
If if this is what it is, it's amazing. So
(14:33):
let's unpack this. Love Bombing is exciting and it can
be amazing, but as Tina said, it's also overwhelming, and
so we don't even get a second to process all
that's happening. And the tough part of love bombing is
that anyone looking at this relationship from the outside would
(14:54):
think that you're lucky. So calling red flags out while
you are being love bomb may literally feel impossible for
many people, especially for people who may not have had
these experiences in prior relationships. There was another major red
(15:14):
flag Tina that jumped out, which was a pre nup
that you didn't sign. Can you sort of frame that
as a red flag because it certainly seemed to be,
but can you talk to us a little bit about
that episode. Right before we went on this vacation to Maui,
I had lost my mom to suicide, and so I
was in this state of emotional turmoil. You know, it
(15:38):
was very much a fog. And he suggested we fly
off to Hawaii and spend a week there. I had
never been. I thought that was so exciting and a good,
you know, place for me to just take a breather.
A few days into our trip, he proposed to me.
Not only that, he said, let's not tell anyone, and
(15:58):
let's get married while we're here. So I'm away from
friends and family, I can't call anybody. He doesn't want
anyone to know. He planned the wedding within a two
day period of time. He was insistent that it was
a man who married us. He did not want a female.
That should have been a red flag. And we went
(16:18):
to dinner the night before and we wrote vows. It
was very important to him that we both wrote wedding vows.
So we did that, and then we get back to
our hotel and he said, you know, go ahead and
go to bed. I want to continue working on my vows.
And I thought, wow, that is so romantic. And he
hands me a stack of paper and what he had
(16:40):
actually stayed up all night writing was a pre nup.
But this was not a normal prenup. It had things
in there, like if I were to ever get pregnant,
I had to return to pre pregnancy weight within one year.
If our marriage failed with in the first five years,
(17:01):
I had to give the wedding ring back to him.
If the marriage lasted eight years, we split the wedding
ring whatever it sold for. If we made it past
the ten year mark, the wedding ring was mine to keep.
And it went on and on and on, and I
remember sitting there. I walked over to a curb and
(17:23):
I am sitting on a curb, crying and basically some
explatives and and shoved it back at him and said,
I'm not doing this. And I didn't even read. I
just skinned it. But what I did skim was mind
blowing to me. And I told him I'm not marrying
you and this is this is insane. And he ended
(17:47):
up apologizing, begging profusely that we just go on with
our day, go on with the ceremony, and so I
didn't sign it. Yeah, that should have sent me running
for the hills of MAUI. Narcissistic entitlement can often come
out in a pre nup. While pre nuptial agreements in
(18:08):
and of themselves aren't an issue, in the hands of
a narcissistic person, a pre nup can be punitive and
titled and manipulative. In some ways. The devious nous of
a narcissistic prenup is a real hint of what a
mess a divorce from a narcissist is going to be.
(18:30):
Just from my curiosity, if you had gained ten pounds
after a pregnancy, then what did you have to pay
like a penalty? I have no idea, but I will
tell you that was really what put our marriage in
a downward spiral, because I did gain ten pounds and
I didn't lose that that ten pounds right within the
(18:53):
one year mark. But the gifts that I received after
I gave birth were how to get perfect to abs.
I got a new road bike, which I don't bike.
I got running shoes, I got signed up for five
ks and ten k's new jogging strollers. And he ended
up moving into a second bedroom after the birth of
(19:15):
our second daughter because he was repulsed by it was
probably fifteen pounds, but compared to the one and ten
person he married, it was unacceptable and in his mind grotesque.
Now that you talk about it, you know, people would say,
that's beyond a red flag, like you know, that's like
a red like a red cover a football stadium in
(19:38):
one banner, like skin seat from the sun kind of thing.
Narcissistic gift giving can be really messed up. It's typically
quite self serving. They will often give gifts that are
consistent with their lifestyle and their interests, and for example,
Tina getting a bike and running shoes that you didn't need,
or relate to how they want their partner to look,
(20:00):
or give lavish gifts so they can get praised by
the world. Wow, what a great, amazing piece of jewelry
you gave, or something like that. But narcissists really give
gifts from a place of empathy or thoughtfulness about what
the other person wants. In fact, in this case, Tina
got gifts that almost felt punitive. Yeah, get those flat
(20:23):
abs back. But as you were talking about red flags,
you said, so many things were happening so quickly you
almost wouldn't have had the time to notice these things.
As red flags like it was just sounded like there
was an intensity and a quickness to this relationship. So
there isn't even enough time to process the information. No,
but you start going in deeper and deeper, and then
(20:47):
it starts to becoming I couldn't leave even if I
wanted to. I have basically sold everything I owned. I
am dependent on him because he wanted me to quit
work go back to college, and so it was in
a very short period of time he pushed me into
(21:07):
completely being dependent on him in pretty much all areas
of our life. You know this as well as anybody
out there. Tina. This idea of making someone financially dependent
on them, that's one of many dynamics of a toxic
relationship or toxic marriage with a narcissist when you look,
especially at the early days of this marriage, because already
(21:31):
the financial dependency was being created early. What are the
other dynamics of a toxic relationship that you were observing
in your own marriage? Whittling in a way at my
self esteem in a very covert way. It wasn't outright
calling me names or saying negative things about me. He
would say them about other people. My self esteem was
(21:54):
non existent. Everything I had worked for a year in
therapy to build up one is beneath him wasn't good enough.
And I remember any time I would be on a
phone call with someone or talking to someone at one
of his work events, he would then tell me the
whole way home what I said wrong, why I shouldn't
(22:15):
have said this, why I shouldn't have said that, to
where I truly became quiet. So you're slowly being taken apart,
that's what I'm hearing. Absolutely, a toxic relationship is death
by a thousand cuts. These are relationships where a person's
wings are clipped one feather at a time. They mesodically
(22:36):
play upon any existing narrative you have of being not
good enough. They will scrutinize you and belittle you and
criticize you, and all of this is a slow indoctrination
into domination and control. The smaller they can make you feel,
the bigger they believe they are. My mom had bipolar
(22:59):
disorder and ended up taking her life, and he knew
how afraid I was because I had read that it
was genetic. Back then, I didn't know a lot about it,
and he would constantly use that to taunt me because
we had a very difficult relationship because of her addiction
to drugs and just the choices she made in life,
(23:22):
and she wasn't a part of my life. But what
I knew from a distance terrified me, and he used
that to constantly. You know, I can think of one example,
when my mom actually died, I found out, and it
was a phone call. I expected my whole life because
of the path she had been on. I was in
(23:42):
fetal position, crying, and he walked in and he looked
at me and said, I don't understand why you're so upset.
You weren't even close with her. And I started realizing
that any time I had any type of emotional reaction,
he thought I was unhind or unstable, and so it
(24:03):
started creating doubt in me. You know, am, I is
something wrong with me? Doubting and judging your emotion, questioning
your grief, and then portraying you as unstable for having
any kind of emotional reaction. That is gaslighting, plane and simple,
(24:24):
and it's also emotional abuse. Tina, you said something so interesting.
You said were married in secret in Hawaii. We didn't
tell anyone. We know you proposed and boom, you were
you were, It wasn't Usually there's some space which in
proposal on a wedding, And once he was willing to
get rid of the ridiculous pre nup, you went ahead
and got married. Why did you get married in secret?
(24:47):
Can you unpack that for us a little? Just to
understand that the way it was presented to me spontaneous, romantic,
we'll tell everybody afterwards, we're going to have this big party.
And now I realized it would have been a big
spotlight for him. He likes to be different, and I
think there was a part of him who he was
(25:08):
embarrassed by me. His family didn't accept me because educational,
you know, they were very big on college. I had
become an entrepreneur at a very young age, and I
took a different path in life. But all of a
sudden that was a negative And I thought, Wow, am
I that naive that other people judged me this way
(25:30):
when I've always been praised and received awards for my successes. Interesting,
Yet this family who I look up to, would somehow
think less of me or wouldn't consider me to be
appropriate for their family. So let's do a little bit
of a deeper dive. Here right around shame. Narcissistic people
(25:53):
often infect other people with their shame. Narcissism is basically
a shame based pattern, and they will often project that
shame onto other people. So what we see here is
that he may have wanted a secret wedding because his
family didn't want people to know about Tina's education. Despite
(26:16):
her considerable success as a businesswoman. Narcissistic people can leave
any of us feeling like we are just one inch tall,
devaluing our successes and our achievements, and that's mostly because
they are so insecure themselves. I know he would weaponize
your mom's death. Did he do that? Did he use
(26:39):
your mother's death as a way to to sort of
reel you into this long term commitment into a marriage. Absolutely.
I mean when my mom died, he proposed to me
less than a month later, and so I was in
this deep grief, you know, because even though my mom
and I had had in a strange relationship and it
(26:59):
had been very, very difficult, I grasped so tightly onto
hope that she would come through this, that she would
get help. And so I was not only grieving her death,
but the loss of hope of having a relationship with
my mom. We see something interesting here. Pushing fast forward
(27:21):
on that commitment button. Proposing to Tina at a time
of such complex grief when her mother died, it really
exploits her confusion and her anguish It makes it harder
to think clearly about committing to such a momentous decision,
and also takes advantage of Tina wanting to find that
(27:44):
piece of stability when so much has changed in her life.
So you said in your book, you say that survivors
of narcissistic abuse are some of the most intelligent, empathetic
humans I've ever known. Why do you say that and
how did all of this get shaped by your relationship
with your ex husband? I think that narcissists are attracted
(28:08):
to people who are the exact opposite of themselves. So
in some ways, through the work that I do, through
the work that you do, you're able to connect with
and find some pretty amazing humans to surround yourself with.
You know, it's funny here Tina frames it as narcissists
(28:28):
being attracted to people who are the opposite of them
Narcissistic people are actually drawn to empathic people, people who
are willing to justify to cut them slack, to forgive them,
and above all, who are willing to put up with
their stuff without calling them out. So your empathy, the
(28:50):
best part of you, actually places you at risk for
narcissistic relationships. You would think that survivors of narcissistic abuse
would get the the empathy kind of um scared out
of them in a way, and yet that doesn't go
away despite having gone through something so awful, and certainly
(29:10):
your story was very difficult. I think that what you've
really laid out is that at the beginning of a
narcissistic relationship, the narcissistic person in a way has this
sort of dark superpower as the only way you can
designated to be able to find every vulnerability a person
has and use those to control them. And the entire
(29:32):
experience leaves an individual who is in the early phase
of a narcissistic relationship constantly doubting themselves, especially if there
had been a history of sort of difficult or complex
relationships when a person was growing up. So it's as
though the narcissistic person is the ultimate tactician. They get
someone exactly where they need them to be able to
(29:55):
take them apart to be able to control them, and
then they engage in all kinds of tricks to obscure
the red flags. So if you're not aware of what
this is, and most people aren't in one of their
earlier relationships, they get your right where they want you. Yeah,
I describe it as you know, this person when I
first met, who seemed like a sponge, like he was
(30:18):
the stride up sponge, and he was so interested in
everything I had to say, my every worry, my every concern,
my every ailment that I've ever had in life, and
in a lot of ways molded himself to be my
band aid, my savior. And now looking back, he was
(30:39):
keeping a mental spreadsheet of every single pain, every single wound,
so that he knew right where to go to inflict
the most pain the quickest, And it's hard to grasp
for those of us who don't think that way. Something
I've said is that I believe that narcissistic people create
(31:01):
an atlas of our vulnerabilities, so just like a map,
they know exactly where to go to get what they
need from us. And that's what the love bombing is.
It's our walls come down and they get that information.
So let's talk about them having kids. It's interesting in
(31:21):
the pre nup he said that if you gain weight
when you're pregnant, who knows what the penalty would be.
But come to find out that he didn't really want kids.
How would you connect, Tina, his lack of excitement around
having children to his narcissism And how did this affect
you in the beginning, because it sounded like you really
wanted to be a mom. For him, he wanted to
be a jet setter, He wanted to travel the world.
(31:42):
He wanted to excel in our businesses, have this fantastic
life which he felt children would ruin for him. And
he had grown up in a family with quite a
few kids and didn't want to do that. He saw
his parents struggle with having so many children, and for
(32:02):
whatever reason, he was adamant that we would not have kids.
So when I found out in two thousand and four
that I was pregnant with my first daughter, I was
terrified to tell him. Um. I didn't even tell him
that I purchased pregnancy tests because I didn't want it
(32:22):
to be true for fear of his reaction and this
sense of fear as I walked out of the bathroom
and told him, and sure enough, he took one look
at me, and I just saw this look of disgust
and rage, and he walked out of the room. It's
so painful a person is married, you find out you're pregnant.
(32:46):
We often have this vision of this being such a
precious moment in a relationship, and you were met with
the silent treatment. So that's what happened when you found
out you were pregnant, and then you live or the baby.
What was his caregiving like at those times. Well, I
was almost two weeks overdue, and that infringed on his
(33:11):
triathlon training schedule. So he would leave and leave me
home alone for great periods of time, and it was terrifying.
And so he's gone for two hours, and I called
my doula and pretended he was there, that we were
just tying up a few things before we came, because
(33:33):
it had become my role to protect our image, and
I didn't want our doula to be mad at him
during delivery. So I pretended that he was there with
me and that we would be to the hospital shortly.
Once we got there, he became what I needed, and
he was actually presented as very carrying, compassionate, and in
(33:59):
my opinions, because there was an audience do law, doctors,
everybody else, and we were known in the community. So
he really did become a doting dad of this newborn
baby in the hospital. But even in that period of time,
it gave me such hope. I thought that I knew
(34:20):
as soon as he met this baby that it would
all become clear for him how important this was. And
so I I was on this roller coaster of you know,
went through my whole pregnancy without him ever touching my
stomach or feeling her kick, or doing the things a
normal partner would do. And so I I did have
(34:44):
hope after she was born, and that quickly went away.
Right after I got out of the hospital, he let
me know how much I had hurt his travel on
training schedule and that he was really behind. Okay, let's
pause a second so I can break this down. Hope
(35:05):
is a four letter word in narcissistic relationships, and people
give into it so quickly. Tina's ex didn't take care
of her at all during the pregnancy, but when he
showed up at the hospital, the frustration of the prior
nine months was almost immediately replaced by hope. This hope
(35:26):
disappointment cycle is the roller coaster that is every narcissistic relationship.
I'll tell you I almost feel embarrassed to admit. The
day we left the hospital, we drove out to the lake,
which was about an hour from our home, and I
sat in the truck and the parking lot with the
(35:47):
air conditioner on, holding a newborn baby in excruciating pain,
while he went out swimming and biking and did his
whole trathlon run. And then later that week we went camping.
He had trained for this triathlon, and that was the
weekend that it was happening, And so I stood at
(36:10):
the finish line in high heat, holding a newborn baby
with staples in my stomach, cheering him on like the
good wife. I did it for both pregnancies, because both
of my daughters were born in April. During his triathlon,
I couldn't do the things you're describing on a good
day camping, triathlon heat, waiting for somebody to run. But
(36:34):
what's really interesting to me is how you keep saying
I'm embarrassed to say this. You have nothing to be
embarrassed for, you know. It speaks to how much we
internalize these relationships. You were simply doing what you needed
to do to survive in that relationship, and yet, after
all these years telling this story, you still feel that
sense of embarrassment, as though you've done something wrong. I
(36:57):
was in such a deep fog that I didn't see
how horrible it was. Now looking back, if someone were
to tell me this story, I would, you know, probably
look at them sideways, thinking, how you know? That seems
almost hard to believe, but not hard to believe once
we know what narcissism is. It's sort of like every
(37:18):
story has different episodes, but all of it comes down
to it being invalidating unempathic behavior. Stories may look different,
but the theme is always the same. My session with
Tina will continue after this break. So Tina, let's talk
(37:44):
about the weekend that changed it all? Okay, because there
was this moment. Honestly, every narcissistic relationship has this. So far,
what you've been talking about is behavior that's pretty bad,
but a feeling. We haven't hit rock bottom on this
one yet. So Tina, tell us how bad did your
ex husband's behavior get and what was this tipping point?
(38:06):
What did this look like? I started uncovering some pretty
significant financial indiscretions. At one point I found out that
we were one point six million dollars in debt. There
was a reality that I didn't know about, and that
was we didn't really have the money that we were spending.
(38:28):
There came a point where everything was frozen because the
I r S shut it all down. Around that time,
I ended up finding a therapist, and this therapist said,
it sounds like he's highly narcissistic, and that really started
the beginning of the end. He basically waited until I
(38:50):
left on a Friday night to go down south to
visit my sister, and lying in wait was a moving
truck and his face only members. They basically took every
single possession that I owned out of the house and
then replaced it with very cheap furniture. The most disturbing
(39:13):
part was he had gutted everything out of my bedroom
and redecorated it with a toddler bed with little girl decor,
and on the bed he left the book The Proper
Care and Feeding of Husbands. M hmm, that's interesting. I
can get him vindictively taking all of the things out
(39:34):
of the house. I mean, that's staffed but okay, putting
children's furniture in your room? What's that about. I have
some hypotheses myself, But why do you think he did that?
To this day, I have no idea. It was so
disturbing I to this day, I cannot understand why we
(39:54):
could only speculate, Like part of me wonders, is that
how he saw you as a child, because we can
control a child right as a child that he could control,
or is that just sort of how he almost viewed
you within the I mean in the marriage, Like, I
don't think being viewed as a child's being devalued. I think,
actually children are wonderful. But in this case, it implied
(40:18):
like a powerlessness, like I'm going to render you to
be as powerless as a child. You're going to have
no more power than the toddler, basically because there's a
toddler bed in the room. It's such a strange thing
for him to have done. Yeah, And our nanny was
living with us at the time, and she's the one
that called me to tip me off that this was happening.
And she said, when I walked in the room, he
(40:40):
looked manic, and he was terrifying, and he was trying
to show me the photos of you as a little girl,
and and look how sweet she looked. And our nanny
moved out that weekend and I ended up in the
women's shelter, afraid from my life very shortly after that episode,
because I no longer felt safe in the house. You
(41:04):
think about that again. We talked about the weekend that
changed at all. That you went from living in a
comfortable home, married with kids and all of that to
having to show up at a women's shelter just to
feel safe is a remarkable, remarkable shift want something that
you never sounds like in your story, you never would
have anticipated something like that happening. No, I remember my
(41:27):
little girl saying from the back seat, where are we going?
And I said, you know, we're going to a special
hotel for moms and kids and will be there for
a few days hopefully, and then we can go back home.
But very humbling. So, Tina, I honestly think after what
you've been through, you are literally an expert on gaslighting,
(41:48):
something you probably didn't even know what it was before
you got married. Talked to us about what does it mean,
what does it mean to be gaslighted? And how it
showed up in your relationship. I called him one day.
I was home in this brand new house that we
lived in and the roof was leaking. I called him
and I said, what should I do? I'm not sure
(42:08):
what to do. And he said, Tina, I told you
to remind me to have the gutters cleaned. He was
irate and he was yelling at me. And it was
in that moment I literally felt like things became so clear.
I've never in my life had a conversation with anyone
about clearing gutters and how everything in our relationship was
(42:31):
my fault. It's so interesting, Tina, that you should talk
about gaslighting, because your story shows it in its many
different forms. Gaslighting is a process of manipulation in which
the gaslighter denies reality and doubts the mental health of
the other person. Over time, a gaslighted person starts to
(42:54):
not only doubt reality, but they also doubt themselves. For example,
Ball with the gutters, you had a situation where he
yelled at you for not cleaning them and that it
was your fault that the roof was leaking. He expected
you to read his mind about cleaning the gutters, and
(43:14):
because you didn't do that because you couldn't do that,
it was your fault that the roof is leaking. And
I would even argue to Tina that the way he
was reassuring you that your family finances were fine, although
there was one point six million dollars in debt, that
was gas lighting too. You know, you were married for
(43:37):
nine years and it started going downhill to the point
where you had had enough and the only option for
you to get housing was to go to a women's shelter,
and that was the place where you filed the paperwork
for the divorce. At that point, he cut you off
from all financial resources. It's not just about denying reality.
(44:01):
It's cutting you down so much. Now you're already confused
and you've been cut down. Gas Lighting has a few
parts to it. First, you trust him because he is
your husband, or at least you want to trust him.
Then he repeatedly denies reality, denies your reality, he denies
all reality, which confuses you. Then he tells you that
(44:22):
you're impaired or stupid about money, or have a mother
who has mental illness. So this is a systematic process.
It's a systematic process of breaking you down so he
can control you absolutely there it is so you can
see that if you have less power, which in your
case you did, and then he was from this family
(44:43):
that had a good reputation in the community, and you
are being painted as having something wrong with you, all
of this together can make it really impossible to feel
like you can fight back. We will be right back
with this conversation with Tina. So, Tina, your story is
(45:12):
already extraordinary, but what starts happening in court is almost unreal.
One of the most important points you have brought up
over and over again is how the family court system
cares much more about parental rights over child safety and welfare.
Can you talk about that, because I think that's such
(45:34):
an important part of your story. When I first walked
into the family court system, it was two thousand nine.
I was forced to represent myself because of severe financial abuse.
I could not afford an attorney, and I walked in
so naive. I just believed that they would hear the
(45:55):
concerns and that it's it's really common sense you protect children.
That's what I thought that the court system was there
to do. But what I quickly found out was that
his parental rights were truly given more weight than my
child's safety. Talk to us more about what a safe
(46:17):
environment in this situation you're in for a child. If
your children would have meant for our situation. I mean,
I don't believe he should have ever been unsupervised. But
the way the family court system works, if you have
a pulse and you say you want to give parenting
a try, even if you've never parented before, or even
(46:40):
if you could be considered dangerous, they're still going to
give you a standing ovation for having a pulse and
showing up, and they give the benefit of the doubt
to the detriment of the children. What needs to happen
in the family court system. Then, so many people, myself
and Fluted are shocked when they find out that most
(47:03):
family court judges have zero training in domestic violence, and
if they do have training in domestic violence, we're talking
the very one oh one version, and and that usually
involves black eyes, busted lips, broken bones. They don't have
the understanding of the intricacies of these toxic individuals, the
(47:25):
you know, narcissistic individuals, and that the children to them
are possessions, their ponds, their weapons. You know, in the
family court system, it's all about winning and it's all
about hurting the healthy parent. It sounds like it would
make their job harder because right now it sounds like
(47:46):
a very rubber stamped parental rights thinking. It's also a
lot of people making money, Tina, There's a part of
me wondering that the system as it stands, there's a
lot of money going into a lot of people's pockets
that perhaps people, you know, powerful people don't even want
to see a change. But I think at some level
two is that once you have to account for these dynamics,
adjudicating these cases becomes a lot more complicated. It means
(48:08):
you have to take in a lot more variables, And
I just don't know that they want to make their
jobs more difficult. Understanding narcissism isn't just a useful tool
for people in toxic relationships. It is unconscionable that people
making such life altering decisions that should be informed by
this knowledge have almost no working knowledge of narcissism or
(48:32):
antagonistic personalities. In general, narcissistic folks know how to perform
in court and can quite easily trick the various folks
who make the big decisions in the family courts. The charm,
in the charisma that you saw during the love bombing.
They are going to bring that same game into court.
(48:52):
Did your divorce, the finalization of your divorce, did that
provide you with any closure? No? Actually, that two day
trial that we had two years into my divorce proceedings
actually placed my children in a worse situation. Through the
entire trial, I had brought friends into the courtroom, and
(49:13):
when we were on a break, everybody was saying, you know,
this is a no brainer. Instead of protecting my children,
my children were actually put with him even more. It
was such a difficult pill to swallow because the court
had acknowledged that they didn't trust him to pick them
up from school. Yet we're allowing this person to have them.
(49:37):
And you know, I'll tell you my daughters when this started,
we're two and four years old. Had never been away
from me, especially my youngest, not even an overnight, and
the trauma that that alone, Even if he would have
been a healthy parent or a semi healthy parent, it
is so wrong what we're doing two kids, because years
(49:59):
later we are still dealing with that baggage from her
being ripped away from me at two years old. It
didn't provide you with closure. And it sounds a lot
of that is because of the poor decision making within
the system. As you said, they couldn't entrust him to
pick up the children, but they were willing to entrust
him to keep the children overnight. They're not even thinking
(50:20):
about the illogic of that is actually quite striking. Can
you tell us, Tina, where are things now with your case?
Two thousand nineteen, we successfully terminated his parntal rights, which
I was told all along the way that would never happen.
It's impossible. It took almost ten years for me to
(50:41):
get from the starting point to actually terminating his parental rights.
It's an ultramarathon. And the reality is narcissist typically only
trained for a ten k and so it's outlasting them
because these are children and you don't really have a
choice to Your ends are tied by this broken system.
(51:02):
I am remarried to a wonderful man and he's adopted
my daughters and so we we have peace. And I
think that's so important for people to hear on multiple levels.
There's just two things that jump out about what you
just said, Tina. One was that this is an ultramarathon.
Right you fight for your kids. Your story is extraordinary
for your tenaciousness, for your perseverance in the face of
(51:25):
what happened. It's understandable how many other people would not
have that tenacity, who would say I can't do this anymore,
who are so traumatized by these systems. I know in
your work you work with many people who have been
pushed to those limits. So in your case, in many ways,
one could view it as a win, Tina, but I
(51:46):
think that's a risky way to frame it, because it
was a win that left you and your children completely ragged.
Tina's case is unusual in that parental rights were terminated,
and that was after ten years. Many people do not
have these outcomes, and can we really call it a win.
(52:08):
Even when people get outcomes that may ultimately protect their children,
after the children are put through so much chaos and
instability by systems that are so concerned with the rights
of antagonistic parents over the needs of children. These toxic
processes can impact children for a lifetime. You met someone
(52:31):
and you fell in love, and you've created a new life.
I think survivors really need to hear that, they really do.
You're happy, Yeah, that journey though you're exceptional as well.
As we wrap up here, something you've often said, Tina's
that you've chosen to take on or assume the title
of being a survivor instead of being a victim. Talk
(52:51):
to us about how you got to that way of
thinking of yourself as a survivor. Everyone who goes through
this system is a survivor. You're strong, you're a war
you'r whether or not you feel like you are or not.
And I'm going to not only survive, I'm going to thrive.
It's such an amazing journey because I really do it does.
The family court system is almost designed to leave someone
(53:12):
feeling like a victim, like something is being done to them,
versus taking back your power and saying I am going
to navigate through this. And I suppose the next part
of the journey, after being a survivor, as being a thriver,
which is something you really are doing. Please tell us
a little bit about what you are working on now
and how people can find you, because your work is
(53:33):
absolutely extraordinary. Tina, thank you. So. I'm one of the
founding members of an organization called the National Safe Parents Organization,
and it's the top family court advocates in the country
coming together and working really hard to ensure that in
five years we don't have to keep talking about how
(53:53):
broken it is and that changes are going to be made.
But it's going to take a village. And Tina, how
can people find you? One Mom's Battle dot Com and
my books Divorcing a Narcissist are all available on Amazon.
Fantastic Again, Tina, I know you and so you and
I obviously have heard your story over the over the years,
(54:15):
but getting to these pointed questions, and more than anything,
having you tell the story in a way that people
can actually see a story that was worse than most
and the way how long it went through the system,
how many barriers you face, the sort of the harrowing
risks that at times you really had to walk your
children through, and yet you got to where you needed
to get through through persistence. I think it's important for
(54:38):
people to hear this because I have worked with many, many,
many clients wending their way through the family court system
and the sheer amount of hopelessness and powerlessness that people experience.
To hear a hopeful story despite having gone through such
a difficult journey, I'm hoping is something that will sort
of invigorate people to to keep getting up and fighting
(54:58):
another day and being self forgive and recognizing that there
are times that you just need to give yourself a
break because the system is really designed to discourage people
from soldiering on. So thank you again, thank you well.
That was an amazing conversation with Tina. So let's go
over some takeaways after all that we've talked about. First
(55:21):
of all, we learned it's so important to trust your
instincts repeatedly and to listen to your body. From the
very beginning, Tina felt something wasn't right. Don't talk yourself
out of what you feel. If you are going through
a high conflict divorce with a toxic or antagonistic partner,
(55:44):
be sure you educate yourself about how family court procedures
in your region, state, or province work. Many people are
rudely awakened when they recognize that the court does not
account for narcissist sick behavior, no matter how badly it
is harming children and take a page out of Tina's playbook.
(56:07):
Another takeaway to keep in mind that when a person
weaponizes your pain and vulnerability against you, that is abuse
and it's a sign of how far this person will
go when the relationship either goes on the rocks where
finally ends. And always remember that the most dangerous and
(56:31):
abusive time in a narcissistic relationship is often when it ends.
Be prepared for that. Thank you so much for listening. Lastly,
make sure you subscribe on I Heart Radio and please
rate this podcast on Apple Podcasts. This show was produced
by executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith Falon, jethro Ellen, Rackitton,
(56:57):
and Dr Romeny Dr Vassila, Also producer Matthew Jones, associate
producer Maura Della Rosa, and our editors and sound engineers
Devin Donnahy and Calvin Bailiff.
This podcast should not be used as a substitute for
medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek
independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a health
care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue,
or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This
(00:24):
episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering to some people.
The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the
podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do
not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, I
Heart Media, or their employees. And we wrote vows. It
(00:45):
was very important to him that we both wrote wedding vows.
And I thought, wow, that is so romantic, and he
hands me a stack of paper and what he had
actually stayed up all night writing was a pre nup.
But this was not a normal prain up. It had
things in there like if I were to ever get pregnant,
I had to return to pre pregnancy weight within one year. Hi,
(01:11):
I'm Dr Rominey, and this is navigating narcissism. In this podcast,
we'll learn how to heal from the narcissist in your
life from the people who know this territory the best
the survivors. In this episode, we are going to hear
the story of Tina Swidden. Tina is a survivor of
(01:32):
an abusive marriage, post separation abuse, and a painful journey
to the family court system. Her story is one of
perseverance through a relationship that seemed perfect at the start
but went downhill, ending in a long court battle. Today,
Tina is working to raise awareness of these issues in
(01:53):
the family court system. She works with survivors and educates
the general public post separation abuse and narcissistic abuse. Hey, Tina, Welcome, Welcome,
How are you. I am doing well and I'm so
excited to be here. Well, I'm deeply honored because you know,
(02:14):
I not only am all struck by your expertise, but
you know, I very much consider you a friend. So
it's an honor of times to to have you here
on the podcast. So thank you so much for doing
this and for sharing your story, which is incredibly empowering.
But also it's unbelievable that you're able to talk about
it again and again because of how difficult it is.
(02:35):
So thank you. Thank you, So Tina. I want to
start at the very beginning and go back to literally
when you first met your ex husband, and I want
to understand what about the new life with your ex
husband drew you in the most. I think it was
the presentation and what he had to offer me, and
(02:58):
how kind and considerate and caring he seemed to be.
I had never dated anyone that was as thoughtful as
he was, and coming from a very broken home life,
difficult childhood, I really put both he and his family
up on a pedestal. They were, you know, an intact family.
(03:23):
They seemed very healthy, very happy, very involved in the community,
very educated. It was really a picture of stability. Interesting
how compelling that idea of stability was. Let's pause a
second and allow me to break this down a little more.
One of the ways that narcissistic relationships can sneak up
(03:46):
on us is when they represent something we have never
experienced and are an offset to the difficult parts of
our life histories. People who come from dysfunctional families may
be really drawn to what seemed like healthier people or families,
or people who can pretend to be those things. If
(04:06):
a person craves stability or has never had it, then
stability can be really seductive. So from there, Tina, you
chose to go with your therapist advice at the time
by deciding to start dating him because she said you
were not used to people treating you well. How did
(04:27):
following your therapist advice shape where your life ended up? Wow?
You know, when I had taken a full year off
from dating and really put myself into therapy, I wanted
to work through past baggage from childhood, from my upbringing,
and I didn't want to carry that into future relationships.
(04:50):
And I remember going to her and telling her, you know,
this person seems too good to be true, but for
some reason, I'm not attracted to him at all. And honestly,
the thought of even kissing him it felt almost repulsive.
I just could not imagine being intimate with this person.
(05:14):
And I remember her telling me, you're just not accustomed
to a normal adult, healthy relationship, and so you may
have to push yourself a little bit out of your
comfort zone. And when she said that to me, it
actually made complete sense, and I thought, you know, that
(05:34):
is probably what's happening, and so I overrode my instincts
and pushed myself forward, and I thought, you know, I'm
being superficial I'm being vain because I'm not physically attracted
to this person, and that there's more to a relationship
than just physical attraction, and so I really pushed. You know. Now,
(05:57):
in hindsight, I can see that was my intuitions screaming loudly.
That is so wild. You're right, you framed at us.
Was I being superficial? But it does make me wonder
if somewhere there was this instinct that was screaming out
that in some ways you were sort of told to silence.
(06:18):
So many people have asked me, Dr Rominey, how do
I detect a narcissist as early as possible. They're always
looking for a question they could ask or tell they
can look for, but I always tell them listen to
your body. Our brain, frankly, often gaslights our body. Our
body may not feel comfortable when we meet a new
(06:38):
narcissistic person, but we often talk ourselves out of that feeling,
or other people talk us out of it. Tina's body
was telling her something, and most of us often don't
listen to those instincts that we feel about a person
early on. And I have actually stayed in touch with
(07:00):
my therapists from back then and she has read my
book and has said, you know, these are things I
never learned in school, and so she's learned a lot
from my journey, from my experience, you sort of silence
this physical instinct at one point that was trying to
help you. So Tina raises something really important here. For
(07:24):
all the havoc that narcissistic people reak in our lives
and our relationships, not all therapists understand narcissistic relationships because
this stuff isn't taught in school. That can mean that
a person going through a narcissistic relationship is going to
therapy and clearly describing their relationship, and the therapist may
(07:48):
simply just not have a playbook for a narcissistic relationship
to be able to help the client. Now, I love
this quote from your blog quote, red flags are only
seen while reflecting on the relationship in the rear view mirror.
Take us through some of the red flags that you
(08:09):
only realized were really read later and how you weren't
able to see them at first. One of the first
dates that we had, we were driving about an hour
away from our home. He was taking me out to
dinner and he didn't tell me where we were going.
(08:30):
He wanted it to be a surprise. I didn't know
this person. He told me, the only thing you need
to bring is your driver's license in case we go
out after dinner, And so I got into his car trusting,
and after dinner we had had a few drinks and
had the hour drive back home, and I had warned
him I fall asleep in the car. So I fell asleep.
(08:56):
Next thing I know, I heard the tires of his
car pull off into gravel. And when I woke up,
we were up on the top of the mountain in
the middle of nowhere, overlooking a city, and it was
pitch black out. I froze and I panicked, and I
(09:18):
instantly thought, I've made a really bad decision. I put
myself in a really dangerous situation. And I remember asking him,
why why are we stopped? Can we please leave? And
he said, I want to show you the view. I
want to show you the city from up here. And
it made me so uncomfortable. But then again I'm second
(09:38):
guessing myself, thinking you're being too paranoid. This is such
a nice guy. He did all the right things, set
all the right things at dinner. Then he gave me
the silent treatment the whole way home because of how
I reacted and looking back, a healthy, considerate human would
not have put me in a situation like that, And
(10:01):
so that was the very first red flag on our date.
But again because I came from a background where I
did not have healthy relationships and I had a lot
of self doubt, that took over. And so then I
started beating myself up, thinking why are you so critical
of him? You know? So again it's over writing my intuition.
(10:23):
Many people might say, oh, it's a surprise, isn't that romantic?
And yet you saw it as that. It felt unsettling.
And then to be taken in the dark somewhere someone
you didn't know. Again, a lot of people say so romantic,
but not so much. It almost felt like there wasn't
even that much consent. Yes, you were just taken and
you had nothing to say about it. We tend to
(10:44):
over romanticize surprises, being taken somewhere and not knowing what
it's going to be. It all feels very wrong calm,
But when you think about it really early in a relationship,
before you know someone, it may all also be a
bit controlling and even unsettling Because a surprise is supposed
(11:05):
to be so exciting. People will often feel guilty for
viewing a heavily planned surprise as a red flag. And
another red flag popped up here, the silent treatment when
she didn't give him the reaction he wanted for his surprise.
When people are this thin skinned, that is a bad sign.
(11:29):
Were there any other red flags, Tina, that jumped out
at you from not even just the early days, but
weeks months of the relationship that looking back, you're like, Wow,
that was a red banner. Looking back, what I now
know to be love bombing was extreme, and even the
stories I hear now I sometimes reflect back on how
(11:51):
over the top it truly was. The first week we
started dating, I would go out to my car at
seven am to get ready and go to work, and
there would be poetry on my window shield. There would
be a dozen red roses delivered to my office stays
after I met this person. Wow, the poetry, the roses,
(12:13):
and all within a week of your first day. I'm
going to take a moment now to explain what love
bombing is. Love Bombing is this process of seduction and idealization,
and it sweeps a person away into something that feels
like a fairy tale. Now, Unfortunately, while you're being love bombed,
(12:35):
you can easily miss the red flags. Love bombing, though,
is often a part of abusive and narcissistic relationship cycles,
and it is exciting as all of this may seem.
The love bombing should absolutely be a red flag. Absolutely
when the love bombing manifest says stuff being left on
(12:58):
your windshield, on your doorstep, or flowers to your workplace
really early on, once again, big red flag. There's something
sort of surveillancey about it that they're rolling by your
spot and making their presence known in your workplace. It's
like they're marking their territory. I know I sound like
(13:21):
the anti Cupid pointing out these things, but a week
in finding stuff on your windshield maybe a sign of
more obsessive behavior and not just healthy interest. Tina, what
were some of the other ways that he loved bombed you?
I remember after first date he called me a couple
(13:44):
of days later and said, I want you to take
the whole day off of work. I've called in to
the local day spa. I've put my credit card down.
You have a full day of services booked for you.
It was so much that I truly didn't have time
to think or to self reflect. It was just constant
and truly overwhelming. But again, overwriting intuition, I thought, this
(14:10):
is what it's like to date an adult male. I've
only dated I was twenty six years old. I had
a history of dating bad boys and you know, not
the healthiest of relationships. And so I thought, this is
what adult dating must be like, and sign me up.
If if this is what it is, it's amazing. So
(14:33):
let's unpack this. Love Bombing is exciting and it can
be amazing, but as Tina said, it's also overwhelming, and
so we don't even get a second to process all
that's happening. And the tough part of love bombing is
that anyone looking at this relationship from the outside would
(14:54):
think that you're lucky. So calling red flags out while
you are being love bomb may literally feel impossible for
many people, especially for people who may not have had
these experiences in prior relationships. There was another major red
(15:14):
flag Tina that jumped out, which was a pre nup
that you didn't sign. Can you sort of frame that
as a red flag because it certainly seemed to be,
but can you talk to us a little bit about
that episode. Right before we went on this vacation to Maui,
I had lost my mom to suicide, and so I
was in this state of emotional turmoil. You know, it
(15:38):
was very much a fog. And he suggested we fly
off to Hawaii and spend a week there. I had
never been. I thought that was so exciting and a good,
you know, place for me to just take a breather.
A few days into our trip, he proposed to me.
Not only that, he said, let's not tell anyone, and
(15:58):
let's get married while we're here. So I'm away from
friends and family, I can't call anybody. He doesn't want
anyone to know. He planned the wedding within a two
day period of time. He was insistent that it was
a man who married us. He did not want a female.
That should have been a red flag. And we went
(16:18):
to dinner the night before and we wrote vows. It
was very important to him that we both wrote wedding vows.
So we did that, and then we get back to
our hotel and he said, you know, go ahead and
go to bed. I want to continue working on my vows.
And I thought, wow, that is so romantic. And he
hands me a stack of paper and what he had
(16:40):
actually stayed up all night writing was a pre nup.
But this was not a normal prenup. It had things
in there, like if I were to ever get pregnant,
I had to return to pre pregnancy weight within one year.
If our marriage failed with in the first five years,
(17:01):
I had to give the wedding ring back to him.
If the marriage lasted eight years, we split the wedding
ring whatever it sold for. If we made it past
the ten year mark, the wedding ring was mine to keep.
And it went on and on and on, and I
remember sitting there. I walked over to a curb and
(17:23):
I am sitting on a curb, crying and basically some
explatives and and shoved it back at him and said,
I'm not doing this. And I didn't even read. I
just skinned it. But what I did skim was mind
blowing to me. And I told him I'm not marrying
you and this is this is insane. And he ended
(17:47):
up apologizing, begging profusely that we just go on with
our day, go on with the ceremony, and so I
didn't sign it. Yeah, that should have sent me running
for the hills of MAUI. Narcissistic entitlement can often come
out in a pre nup. While pre nuptial agreements in
(18:08):
and of themselves aren't an issue, in the hands of
a narcissistic person, a pre nup can be punitive and
titled and manipulative. In some ways. The devious nous of
a narcissistic prenup is a real hint of what a
mess a divorce from a narcissist is going to be.
(18:30):
Just from my curiosity, if you had gained ten pounds
after a pregnancy, then what did you have to pay
like a penalty? I have no idea, but I will
tell you that was really what put our marriage in
a downward spiral, because I did gain ten pounds and
I didn't lose that that ten pounds right within the
(18:53):
one year mark. But the gifts that I received after
I gave birth were how to get perfect to abs.
I got a new road bike, which I don't bike.
I got running shoes, I got signed up for five
ks and ten k's new jogging strollers. And he ended
up moving into a second bedroom after the birth of
(19:15):
our second daughter because he was repulsed by it was
probably fifteen pounds, but compared to the one and ten
person he married, it was unacceptable and in his mind grotesque.
Now that you talk about it, you know, people would say,
that's beyond a red flag, like you know, that's like
a red like a red cover a football stadium in
(19:38):
one banner, like skin seat from the sun kind of thing.
Narcissistic gift giving can be really messed up. It's typically
quite self serving. They will often give gifts that are
consistent with their lifestyle and their interests, and for example,
Tina getting a bike and running shoes that you didn't need,
or relate to how they want their partner to look,
(20:00):
or give lavish gifts so they can get praised by
the world. Wow, what a great, amazing piece of jewelry
you gave, or something like that. But narcissists really give
gifts from a place of empathy or thoughtfulness about what
the other person wants. In fact, in this case, Tina
got gifts that almost felt punitive. Yeah, get those flat
(20:23):
abs back. But as you were talking about red flags,
you said, so many things were happening so quickly you
almost wouldn't have had the time to notice these things.
As red flags like it was just sounded like there
was an intensity and a quickness to this relationship. So
there isn't even enough time to process the information. No,
but you start going in deeper and deeper, and then
(20:47):
it starts to becoming I couldn't leave even if I
wanted to. I have basically sold everything I owned. I
am dependent on him because he wanted me to quit
work go back to college, and so it was in
a very short period of time he pushed me into
(21:07):
completely being dependent on him in pretty much all areas
of our life. You know this as well as anybody
out there. Tina. This idea of making someone financially dependent
on them, that's one of many dynamics of a toxic
relationship or toxic marriage with a narcissist when you look,
especially at the early days of this marriage, because already
(21:31):
the financial dependency was being created early. What are the
other dynamics of a toxic relationship that you were observing
in your own marriage? Whittling in a way at my
self esteem in a very covert way. It wasn't outright
calling me names or saying negative things about me. He
would say them about other people. My self esteem was
(21:54):
non existent. Everything I had worked for a year in
therapy to build up one is beneath him wasn't good enough.
And I remember any time I would be on a
phone call with someone or talking to someone at one
of his work events, he would then tell me the
whole way home what I said wrong, why I shouldn't
(22:15):
have said this, why I shouldn't have said that, to
where I truly became quiet. So you're slowly being taken apart,
that's what I'm hearing. Absolutely, a toxic relationship is death
by a thousand cuts. These are relationships where a person's
wings are clipped one feather at a time. They mesodically
(22:36):
play upon any existing narrative you have of being not
good enough. They will scrutinize you and belittle you and
criticize you, and all of this is a slow indoctrination
into domination and control. The smaller they can make you feel,
the bigger they believe they are. My mom had bipolar
(22:59):
disorder and ended up taking her life, and he knew
how afraid I was because I had read that it
was genetic. Back then, I didn't know a lot about it,
and he would constantly use that to taunt me because
we had a very difficult relationship because of her addiction
to drugs and just the choices she made in life,
(23:22):
and she wasn't a part of my life. But what
I knew from a distance terrified me, and he used
that to constantly. You know, I can think of one example,
when my mom actually died, I found out, and it
was a phone call. I expected my whole life because
of the path she had been on. I was in
(23:42):
fetal position, crying, and he walked in and he looked
at me and said, I don't understand why you're so upset.
You weren't even close with her. And I started realizing
that any time I had any type of emotional reaction,
he thought I was unhind or unstable, and so it
(24:03):
started creating doubt in me. You know, am, I is
something wrong with me? Doubting and judging your emotion, questioning
your grief, and then portraying you as unstable for having
any kind of emotional reaction. That is gaslighting, plane and simple,
(24:24):
and it's also emotional abuse. Tina, you said something so interesting.
You said were married in secret in Hawaii. We didn't
tell anyone. We know you proposed and boom, you were
you were, It wasn't Usually there's some space which in
proposal on a wedding, And once he was willing to
get rid of the ridiculous pre nup, you went ahead
and got married. Why did you get married in secret?
(24:47):
Can you unpack that for us a little? Just to
understand that the way it was presented to me spontaneous, romantic,
we'll tell everybody afterwards, we're going to have this big party.
And now I realized it would have been a big
spotlight for him. He likes to be different, and I
think there was a part of him who he was
(25:08):
embarrassed by me. His family didn't accept me because educational,
you know, they were very big on college. I had
become an entrepreneur at a very young age, and I
took a different path in life. But all of a
sudden that was a negative And I thought, Wow, am
I that naive that other people judged me this way
(25:30):
when I've always been praised and received awards for my successes. Interesting,
Yet this family who I look up to, would somehow
think less of me or wouldn't consider me to be
appropriate for their family. So let's do a little bit
of a deeper dive. Here right around shame. Narcissistic people
(25:53):
often infect other people with their shame. Narcissism is basically
a shame based pattern, and they will often project that
shame onto other people. So what we see here is
that he may have wanted a secret wedding because his
family didn't want people to know about Tina's education. Despite
(26:16):
her considerable success as a businesswoman. Narcissistic people can leave
any of us feeling like we are just one inch tall,
devaluing our successes and our achievements, and that's mostly because
they are so insecure themselves. I know he would weaponize
your mom's death. Did he do that? Did he use
(26:39):
your mother's death as a way to to sort of
reel you into this long term commitment into a marriage. Absolutely.
I mean when my mom died, he proposed to me
less than a month later, and so I was in
this deep grief, you know, because even though my mom
and I had had in a strange relationship and it
(26:59):
had been very, very difficult, I grasped so tightly onto
hope that she would come through this, that she would
get help. And so I was not only grieving her death,
but the loss of hope of having a relationship with
my mom. We see something interesting here. Pushing fast forward
(27:21):
on that commitment button. Proposing to Tina at a time
of such complex grief when her mother died, it really
exploits her confusion and her anguish It makes it harder
to think clearly about committing to such a momentous decision,
and also takes advantage of Tina wanting to find that
(27:44):
piece of stability when so much has changed in her life.
So you said in your book, you say that survivors
of narcissistic abuse are some of the most intelligent, empathetic
humans I've ever known. Why do you say that and
how did all of this get shaped by your relationship
with your ex husband? I think that narcissists are attracted
(28:08):
to people who are the exact opposite of themselves. So
in some ways, through the work that I do, through
the work that you do, you're able to connect with
and find some pretty amazing humans to surround yourself with.
You know, it's funny here Tina frames it as narcissists
(28:28):
being attracted to people who are the opposite of them
Narcissistic people are actually drawn to empathic people, people who
are willing to justify to cut them slack, to forgive them,
and above all, who are willing to put up with
their stuff without calling them out. So your empathy, the
(28:50):
best part of you, actually places you at risk for
narcissistic relationships. You would think that survivors of narcissistic abuse
would get the the empathy kind of um scared out
of them in a way, and yet that doesn't go
away despite having gone through something so awful, and certainly
(29:10):
your story was very difficult. I think that what you've
really laid out is that at the beginning of a
narcissistic relationship, the narcissistic person in a way has this
sort of dark superpower as the only way you can
designated to be able to find every vulnerability a person
has and use those to control them. And the entire
(29:32):
experience leaves an individual who is in the early phase
of a narcissistic relationship constantly doubting themselves, especially if there
had been a history of sort of difficult or complex
relationships when a person was growing up. So it's as
though the narcissistic person is the ultimate tactician. They get
someone exactly where they need them to be able to
(29:55):
take them apart to be able to control them, and
then they engage in all kinds of tricks to obscure
the red flags. So if you're not aware of what
this is, and most people aren't in one of their
earlier relationships, they get your right where they want you. Yeah,
I describe it as you know, this person when I
first met, who seemed like a sponge, like he was
(30:18):
the stride up sponge, and he was so interested in
everything I had to say, my every worry, my every concern,
my every ailment that I've ever had in life, and
in a lot of ways molded himself to be my
band aid, my savior. And now looking back, he was
(30:39):
keeping a mental spreadsheet of every single pain, every single wound,
so that he knew right where to go to inflict
the most pain the quickest, And it's hard to grasp
for those of us who don't think that way. Something
I've said is that I believe that narcissistic people create
(31:01):
an atlas of our vulnerabilities, so just like a map,
they know exactly where to go to get what they
need from us. And that's what the love bombing is.
It's our walls come down and they get that information.
So let's talk about them having kids. It's interesting in
(31:21):
the pre nup he said that if you gain weight
when you're pregnant, who knows what the penalty would be.
But come to find out that he didn't really want kids.
How would you connect, Tina, his lack of excitement around
having children to his narcissism And how did this affect
you in the beginning, because it sounded like you really
wanted to be a mom. For him, he wanted to
be a jet setter, He wanted to travel the world.
(31:42):
He wanted to excel in our businesses, have this fantastic
life which he felt children would ruin for him. And
he had grown up in a family with quite a
few kids and didn't want to do that. He saw
his parents struggle with having so many children, and for
(32:02):
whatever reason, he was adamant that we would not have kids.
So when I found out in two thousand and four
that I was pregnant with my first daughter, I was
terrified to tell him. Um. I didn't even tell him
that I purchased pregnancy tests because I didn't want it
(32:22):
to be true for fear of his reaction and this
sense of fear as I walked out of the bathroom
and told him, and sure enough, he took one look
at me, and I just saw this look of disgust
and rage, and he walked out of the room. It's
so painful a person is married, you find out you're pregnant.
(32:46):
We often have this vision of this being such a
precious moment in a relationship, and you were met with
the silent treatment. So that's what happened when you found
out you were pregnant, and then you live or the baby.
What was his caregiving like at those times. Well, I
was almost two weeks overdue, and that infringed on his
(33:11):
triathlon training schedule. So he would leave and leave me
home alone for great periods of time, and it was terrifying.
And so he's gone for two hours, and I called
my doula and pretended he was there, that we were
just tying up a few things before we came, because
(33:33):
it had become my role to protect our image, and
I didn't want our doula to be mad at him
during delivery. So I pretended that he was there with
me and that we would be to the hospital shortly.
Once we got there, he became what I needed, and
he was actually presented as very carrying, compassionate, and in
(33:59):
my opinions, because there was an audience do law, doctors,
everybody else, and we were known in the community. So
he really did become a doting dad of this newborn
baby in the hospital. But even in that period of time,
it gave me such hope. I thought that I knew
(34:20):
as soon as he met this baby that it would
all become clear for him how important this was. And
so I I was on this roller coaster of you know,
went through my whole pregnancy without him ever touching my
stomach or feeling her kick, or doing the things a
normal partner would do. And so I I did have
(34:44):
hope after she was born, and that quickly went away.
Right after I got out of the hospital, he let
me know how much I had hurt his travel on
training schedule and that he was really behind. Okay, let's
pause a second so I can break this down. Hope
(35:05):
is a four letter word in narcissistic relationships, and people
give into it so quickly. Tina's ex didn't take care
of her at all during the pregnancy, but when he
showed up at the hospital, the frustration of the prior
nine months was almost immediately replaced by hope. This hope
(35:26):
disappointment cycle is the roller coaster that is every narcissistic relationship.
I'll tell you I almost feel embarrassed to admit. The
day we left the hospital, we drove out to the lake,
which was about an hour from our home, and I
sat in the truck and the parking lot with the
(35:47):
air conditioner on, holding a newborn baby in excruciating pain,
while he went out swimming and biking and did his
whole trathlon run. And then later that week we went camping.
He had trained for this triathlon, and that was the
weekend that it was happening, And so I stood at
(36:10):
the finish line in high heat, holding a newborn baby
with staples in my stomach, cheering him on like the
good wife. I did it for both pregnancies, because both
of my daughters were born in April. During his triathlon,
I couldn't do the things you're describing on a good
day camping, triathlon heat, waiting for somebody to run. But
(36:34):
what's really interesting to me is how you keep saying
I'm embarrassed to say this. You have nothing to be
embarrassed for, you know. It speaks to how much we
internalize these relationships. You were simply doing what you needed
to do to survive in that relationship, and yet, after
all these years telling this story, you still feel that
sense of embarrassment, as though you've done something wrong. I
(36:57):
was in such a deep fog that I didn't see
how horrible it was. Now looking back, if someone were
to tell me this story, I would, you know, probably
look at them sideways, thinking, how you know? That seems
almost hard to believe, but not hard to believe once
we know what narcissism is. It's sort of like every
(37:18):
story has different episodes, but all of it comes down
to it being invalidating unempathic behavior. Stories may look different,
but the theme is always the same. My session with
Tina will continue after this break. So Tina, let's talk
(37:44):
about the weekend that changed it all? Okay, because there
was this moment. Honestly, every narcissistic relationship has this. So far,
what you've been talking about is behavior that's pretty bad,
but a feeling. We haven't hit rock bottom on this
one yet. So Tina, tell us how bad did your
ex husband's behavior get and what was this tipping point?
(38:06):
What did this look like? I started uncovering some pretty
significant financial indiscretions. At one point I found out that
we were one point six million dollars in debt. There
was a reality that I didn't know about, and that
was we didn't really have the money that we were spending.
(38:28):
There came a point where everything was frozen because the
I r S shut it all down. Around that time,
I ended up finding a therapist, and this therapist said,
it sounds like he's highly narcissistic, and that really started
the beginning of the end. He basically waited until I
(38:50):
left on a Friday night to go down south to
visit my sister, and lying in wait was a moving
truck and his face only members. They basically took every
single possession that I owned out of the house and
then replaced it with very cheap furniture. The most disturbing
(39:13):
part was he had gutted everything out of my bedroom
and redecorated it with a toddler bed with little girl decor,
and on the bed he left the book The Proper
Care and Feeding of Husbands. M hmm, that's interesting. I
can get him vindictively taking all of the things out
(39:34):
of the house. I mean, that's staffed but okay, putting
children's furniture in your room? What's that about. I have
some hypotheses myself, But why do you think he did that?
To this day, I have no idea. It was so
disturbing I to this day, I cannot understand why we
(39:54):
could only speculate, Like part of me wonders, is that
how he saw you as a child, because we can
control a child right as a child that he could control,
or is that just sort of how he almost viewed
you within the I mean in the marriage, Like, I
don't think being viewed as a child's being devalued. I think,
actually children are wonderful. But in this case, it implied
(40:18):
like a powerlessness, like I'm going to render you to
be as powerless as a child. You're going to have
no more power than the toddler, basically because there's a
toddler bed in the room. It's such a strange thing
for him to have done. Yeah, And our nanny was
living with us at the time, and she's the one
that called me to tip me off that this was happening.
And she said, when I walked in the room, he
(40:40):
looked manic, and he was terrifying, and he was trying
to show me the photos of you as a little girl,
and and look how sweet she looked. And our nanny
moved out that weekend and I ended up in the
women's shelter, afraid from my life very shortly after that episode,
because I no longer felt safe in the house. You
(41:04):
think about that again. We talked about the weekend that
changed at all. That you went from living in a
comfortable home, married with kids and all of that to
having to show up at a women's shelter just to
feel safe is a remarkable, remarkable shift want something that
you never sounds like in your story, you never would
have anticipated something like that happening. No, I remember my
(41:27):
little girl saying from the back seat, where are we going?
And I said, you know, we're going to a special
hotel for moms and kids and will be there for
a few days hopefully, and then we can go back home.
But very humbling. So, Tina, I honestly think after what
you've been through, you are literally an expert on gaslighting,
(41:48):
something you probably didn't even know what it was before
you got married. Talked to us about what does it mean,
what does it mean to be gaslighted? And how it
showed up in your relationship. I called him one day.
I was home in this brand new house that we
lived in and the roof was leaking. I called him
and I said, what should I do? I'm not sure
(42:08):
what to do. And he said, Tina, I told you
to remind me to have the gutters cleaned. He was
irate and he was yelling at me. And it was
in that moment I literally felt like things became so clear.
I've never in my life had a conversation with anyone
about clearing gutters and how everything in our relationship was
(42:31):
my fault. It's so interesting, Tina, that you should talk
about gaslighting, because your story shows it in its many
different forms. Gaslighting is a process of manipulation in which
the gaslighter denies reality and doubts the mental health of
the other person. Over time, a gaslighted person starts to
(42:54):
not only doubt reality, but they also doubt themselves. For example,
Ball with the gutters, you had a situation where he
yelled at you for not cleaning them and that it
was your fault that the roof was leaking. He expected
you to read his mind about cleaning the gutters, and
(43:14):
because you didn't do that because you couldn't do that,
it was your fault that the roof is leaking. And
I would even argue to Tina that the way he
was reassuring you that your family finances were fine, although
there was one point six million dollars in debt, that
was gas lighting too. You know, you were married for
(43:37):
nine years and it started going downhill to the point
where you had had enough and the only option for
you to get housing was to go to a women's shelter,
and that was the place where you filed the paperwork
for the divorce. At that point, he cut you off
from all financial resources. It's not just about denying reality.
(44:01):
It's cutting you down so much. Now you're already confused
and you've been cut down. Gas Lighting has a few
parts to it. First, you trust him because he is
your husband, or at least you want to trust him.
Then he repeatedly denies reality, denies your reality, he denies
all reality, which confuses you. Then he tells you that
(44:22):
you're impaired or stupid about money, or have a mother
who has mental illness. So this is a systematic process.
It's a systematic process of breaking you down so he
can control you absolutely there it is so you can
see that if you have less power, which in your
case you did, and then he was from this family
(44:43):
that had a good reputation in the community, and you
are being painted as having something wrong with you, all
of this together can make it really impossible to feel
like you can fight back. We will be right back
with this conversation with Tina. So, Tina, your story is
(45:12):
already extraordinary, but what starts happening in court is almost unreal.
One of the most important points you have brought up
over and over again is how the family court system
cares much more about parental rights over child safety and welfare.
Can you talk about that, because I think that's such
(45:34):
an important part of your story. When I first walked
into the family court system, it was two thousand nine.
I was forced to represent myself because of severe financial abuse.
I could not afford an attorney, and I walked in
so naive. I just believed that they would hear the
(45:55):
concerns and that it's it's really common sense you protect children.
That's what I thought that the court system was there
to do. But what I quickly found out was that
his parental rights were truly given more weight than my
child's safety. Talk to us more about what a safe
(46:17):
environment in this situation you're in for a child. If
your children would have meant for our situation. I mean,
I don't believe he should have ever been unsupervised. But
the way the family court system works, if you have
a pulse and you say you want to give parenting
a try, even if you've never parented before, or even
(46:40):
if you could be considered dangerous, they're still going to
give you a standing ovation for having a pulse and
showing up, and they give the benefit of the doubt
to the detriment of the children. What needs to happen
in the family court system. Then, so many people, myself
and Fluted are shocked when they find out that most
(47:03):
family court judges have zero training in domestic violence, and
if they do have training in domestic violence, we're talking
the very one oh one version, and and that usually
involves black eyes, busted lips, broken bones. They don't have
the understanding of the intricacies of these toxic individuals, the
(47:25):
you know, narcissistic individuals, and that the children to them
are possessions, their ponds, their weapons. You know, in the
family court system, it's all about winning and it's all
about hurting the healthy parent. It sounds like it would
make their job harder because right now it sounds like
(47:46):
a very rubber stamped parental rights thinking. It's also a
lot of people making money, Tina, There's a part of
me wondering that the system as it stands, there's a
lot of money going into a lot of people's pockets
that perhaps people, you know, powerful people don't even want
to see a change. But I think at some level
two is that once you have to account for these dynamics,
adjudicating these cases becomes a lot more complicated. It means
(48:08):
you have to take in a lot more variables, And
I just don't know that they want to make their
jobs more difficult. Understanding narcissism isn't just a useful tool
for people in toxic relationships. It is unconscionable that people
making such life altering decisions that should be informed by
this knowledge have almost no working knowledge of narcissism or
(48:32):
antagonistic personalities. In general, narcissistic folks know how to perform
in court and can quite easily trick the various folks
who make the big decisions in the family courts. The charm,
in the charisma that you saw during the love bombing.
They are going to bring that same game into court.
(48:52):
Did your divorce, the finalization of your divorce, did that
provide you with any closure? No? Actually, that two day
trial that we had two years into my divorce proceedings
actually placed my children in a worse situation. Through the
entire trial, I had brought friends into the courtroom, and
(49:13):
when we were on a break, everybody was saying, you know,
this is a no brainer. Instead of protecting my children,
my children were actually put with him even more. It
was such a difficult pill to swallow because the court
had acknowledged that they didn't trust him to pick them
up from school. Yet we're allowing this person to have them.
(49:37):
And you know, I'll tell you my daughters when this started,
we're two and four years old. Had never been away
from me, especially my youngest, not even an overnight, and
the trauma that that alone, Even if he would have
been a healthy parent or a semi healthy parent, it
is so wrong what we're doing two kids, because years
(49:59):
later we are still dealing with that baggage from her
being ripped away from me at two years old. It
didn't provide you with closure. And it sounds a lot
of that is because of the poor decision making within
the system. As you said, they couldn't entrust him to
pick up the children, but they were willing to entrust
him to keep the children overnight. They're not even thinking
(50:20):
about the illogic of that is actually quite striking. Can
you tell us, Tina, where are things now with your case?
Two thousand nineteen, we successfully terminated his parntal rights, which
I was told all along the way that would never happen.
It's impossible. It took almost ten years for me to
(50:41):
get from the starting point to actually terminating his parental rights.
It's an ultramarathon. And the reality is narcissist typically only
trained for a ten k and so it's outlasting them
because these are children and you don't really have a
choice to Your ends are tied by this broken system.
(51:02):
I am remarried to a wonderful man and he's adopted
my daughters and so we we have peace. And I
think that's so important for people to hear on multiple levels.
There's just two things that jump out about what you
just said, Tina. One was that this is an ultramarathon.
Right you fight for your kids. Your story is extraordinary
for your tenaciousness, for your perseverance in the face of
(51:25):
what happened. It's understandable how many other people would not
have that tenacity, who would say I can't do this anymore,
who are so traumatized by these systems. I know in
your work you work with many people who have been
pushed to those limits. So in your case, in many ways,
one could view it as a win, Tina, but I
(51:46):
think that's a risky way to frame it, because it
was a win that left you and your children completely ragged.
Tina's case is unusual in that parental rights were terminated,
and that was after ten years. Many people do not
have these outcomes, and can we really call it a win.
(52:08):
Even when people get outcomes that may ultimately protect their children,
after the children are put through so much chaos and
instability by systems that are so concerned with the rights
of antagonistic parents over the needs of children. These toxic
processes can impact children for a lifetime. You met someone
(52:31):
and you fell in love, and you've created a new life.
I think survivors really need to hear that, they really do.
You're happy, Yeah, that journey though you're exceptional as well.
As we wrap up here, something you've often said, Tina's
that you've chosen to take on or assume the title
of being a survivor instead of being a victim. Talk
(52:51):
to us about how you got to that way of
thinking of yourself as a survivor. Everyone who goes through
this system is a survivor. You're strong, you're a war
you'r whether or not you feel like you are or not.
And I'm going to not only survive, I'm going to thrive.
It's such an amazing journey because I really do it does.
The family court system is almost designed to leave someone
(53:12):
feeling like a victim, like something is being done to them,
versus taking back your power and saying I am going
to navigate through this. And I suppose the next part
of the journey, after being a survivor, as being a thriver,
which is something you really are doing. Please tell us
a little bit about what you are working on now
and how people can find you, because your work is
(53:33):
absolutely extraordinary. Tina, thank you. So. I'm one of the
founding members of an organization called the National Safe Parents Organization,
and it's the top family court advocates in the country
coming together and working really hard to ensure that in
five years we don't have to keep talking about how
(53:53):
broken it is and that changes are going to be made.
But it's going to take a village. And Tina, how
can people find you? One Mom's Battle dot Com and
my books Divorcing a Narcissist are all available on Amazon.
Fantastic Again, Tina, I know you and so you and
I obviously have heard your story over the over the years,
(54:15):
but getting to these pointed questions, and more than anything,
having you tell the story in a way that people
can actually see a story that was worse than most
and the way how long it went through the system,
how many barriers you face, the sort of the harrowing
risks that at times you really had to walk your
children through, and yet you got to where you needed
to get through through persistence. I think it's important for
(54:38):
people to hear this because I have worked with many, many,
many clients wending their way through the family court system
and the sheer amount of hopelessness and powerlessness that people experience.
To hear a hopeful story despite having gone through such
a difficult journey, I'm hoping is something that will sort
of invigorate people to to keep getting up and fighting
(54:58):
another day and being self forgive and recognizing that there
are times that you just need to give yourself a
break because the system is really designed to discourage people
from soldiering on. So thank you again, thank you well.
That was an amazing conversation with Tina. So let's go
over some takeaways after all that we've talked about. First
(55:21):
of all, we learned it's so important to trust your
instincts repeatedly and to listen to your body. From the
very beginning, Tina felt something wasn't right. Don't talk yourself
out of what you feel. If you are going through
a high conflict divorce with a toxic or antagonistic partner,
(55:44):
be sure you educate yourself about how family court procedures
in your region, state, or province work. Many people are
rudely awakened when they recognize that the court does not
account for narcissist sick behavior, no matter how badly it
is harming children and take a page out of Tina's playbook.
(56:07):
Another takeaway to keep in mind that when a person
weaponizes your pain and vulnerability against you, that is abuse
and it's a sign of how far this person will
go when the relationship either goes on the rocks where
finally ends. And always remember that the most dangerous and
(56:31):
abusive time in a narcissistic relationship is often when it ends.
Be prepared for that. Thank you so much for listening. Lastly,
make sure you subscribe on I Heart Radio and please
rate this podcast on Apple Podcasts. This show was produced
by executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith Falon, jethro Ellen, Rackitton,
(56:57):
and Dr Romeny Dr Vassila, Also producer Matthew Jones, associate
producer Maura Della Rosa, and our editors and sound engineers
Devin Donnahy and Calvin Bailiff.
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