“You’re just his girlfriend,” she snarled. “I’m his mother. I want top billing in his life!” When my future mother-in-law uttered those words to me fourteen years ago, I should have listened to what she was truly saying to me. I have a psychology degree, for crying out loud, and those words should have taken on more meaning for me. But back then, I brushed them off, chalking them up to the fact that the love of my life was her first-born son. And of course, no one is good enough for a mother’s first-born son, right? I could not have been more wrong. Fifteen years later, I look back on my relationship with the woman who birthed my husband with sadness, anger, frustration, and grief. Sadly, I am that girl, the one who has a terrible relationship with her mother-in-law. Although time has the ability to heal all wounds, that is simply not the case here. Aaron and I have been happily married for twelve years, and while our relationship is as solid as ever, our relationship with his mother is anything but.
Aaron and I met in 1997 and I was immediately smitten with him. After just three weeks, I knew he would be my husband. We just clicked. Aaron is very laid back, and he had a calming influence on me, the spontaneous, risk-taking recent college graduate. When I met his parents seven months after we started dating, I was nervous yet excited. I mean, these two were my future in-laws! Sure I was the only one who knew it at the time, and I thought they were nice enough. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred, but things quickly turned south. Although I can’t recall exactly how it started, I do recall Aaron relaying to me that his mother was questioning my behavior back then. And so it began.
Over the years, my mother-in-law Charlotte has engaged in behavior and said things that, to put in simple terms, I have found hurtful, demeaning, cruel, and unwarranted. Aaron and I dated for three years before we got married, and just before our wedding, his mother sent him an e-mail that left me in tears. While I mercifully don’t recall most of what it said, I do recall it attacking my character, my own family structure, the idea that I wasn’t cordial to members of his family, and reminding him just how evil women could be.
The pre-wedding e-mail wasn’t my first glimpse into how this woman operated. About a year after Aaron and I first began dating, she made sure to let me know just how much she adored his ex-girlfriend. If you let Charlotte tell it, the ex could practically walk on water. According to Charlotte, “she blended in well” with her family, and she just had to let me know just how much she liked her. She managed to work the ex (and how she felt about her) into a conversation that was completely unrelated. The seed was planted early on that I was not the person she preferred her son to be with, and she had no qualms letting me know about it.
When I would go to my hairdresser, who also happens to be one of the most insightful people I know, he’d come back with the same assessment of her every single time. “Tatum, she’s a narcissist. This is classic narcissistic behavior,” he’d say. I would listen, not giving it much thought. But I’d go see him again, this time with a new story or fiasco. He would respond the same way. Narcissism. Hmm. After fifteen years of what I would classify as emotional turmoil with this woman, I decided to do a Google search. I typed the following into the search engine:
Narcissistic, Mother-in-law
I was blown away by what I read. Some of what I had studied in college was awakened in me and I was again the psychology undergrad, furiously scribbling notes as I had back then. Only this time, the professor was my laptop and the subject matter intensely personal for me. It was as if someone had observed my mother-in-law and decided to craft the characteristics of parental narcissistic behavior to correspond with her actions. For fifteen years, I had never felt comfortable around my mother-in-law but I could never explain why. Now I had a name, a diagnosis by proxy if you will, for what I felt.
Although I knew pursuing the study of parental narcissistic behavior would provide some much-needed relief and answers for my husband, I also knew that going down this path would further solidify my role in the family as the black sheep. Early on in my relationship with Aaron, my mother-in-law said to me, “Everyone got along fine until
you came along.” It wasn’t that everyone got along fine until I came along, and I know that now. I now know what I represented to her back then--a challenge to the roles that this narcissistic woman had assigned to each member of her family. Even though I didn’t have a name for it back then, my husband, in this narcissistic family structure, was the scapegoat. I wasn’t okay with that. I, being fascinated by all things psychological, asked questions. I talked to Aaron about how things were before I came along. I wasn’t willing to accept how Aaron was treated in relation to his two siblings. He is a wonderful person, and I couldn’t stand the fact that he was treated differently. That I was treated differently from his brother and his wife, the other daughter-in-law.
But what exactly is narcissism? Before my research, I always considered this word a fancy way of calling someone selfish. The psychological definition of narcissism is typically seen as self-involved attitudes and behavior where there is little or no empathy for others. The seeds of narcissism are planted early on in an individual’s life, when as a child, emotional needs are not met. According to Dr. Lynne Namka, narcissistic attitudes and behavior come from the ego defenses that function as smoke screens to hide the deep shame and fractures that come from being hurt emotionally or physically as a child. This hurt can come in the form of physical or emotional abuse or neglect—the child simply did not receive the attention they desperately wanted or needed.
Adults with narcissistic tendencies display behavior that can be detrimental to building relationships with the people around them. In an effort to protect their fragile self-esteem, introspection is difficult and thus the blame for problems or emotional distress is assigned to others. Narcissistic individuals:
-Insist on having things their way at the expense of others
-Feel devalued when they don’t get what they want
-Deny and rationalize their own contribution to problems they cause
-Have difficulties seeing issues from the other person’s perspective
-Are extremely sensitive to criticism and will flee the scene rather than admit fault
-Typically project their own inadequacies onto others
-Have a strong need to be right
-Rarely (or never) apologize for their role in conflict
-Do not accept responsibility for the troubles they cause and frequently blame others
-Pout, hold grudges, or give the silent treatment
As I studied narcissistic behavior, it was very clear to me that during the past fifteen years of my life, my mother-in-law has strong narcissistic tendencies. I will not refer to her has having narcissistic personality disorder because I am not a doctor or therapist, and my goal here is not to try and diagnose someone when I am not trained to do so. I will, however, admit that her parental narcissistic behavior (which I’ll refer to has PNB) has had a profound impact on my husband, and thus, our family. Her narcissistic behavior has rendered my husband’s relationship with his father, brother, and sister virtually nonexistent. Parental narcissistic behavior is powerful enough to destroy families and the relationships between family members. I am convinced that is what has happened here. My husband does not have a relationship with his family, one of the classic characteristics of families headed by a parent who displays these tendencies.
There are several characteristics that narcissistic mothers share. One of these is selecting one child (or children) as the “golden child” while designating another child as the “scapegoat.” The golden child is the one the narcissistic mother identifies with. They are the best and most wonderful in the eyes of the mother. This child is the privileged one, the child that is placed on a pedestal, the one that can do no wrong. If there is fancy gift to be given, you can bet that this child will be the proud recipient of it.
While the golden child can do no wrong, the scapegoat, on the other hand, can do no right. The scapegoat is always at fault, and any problems or issues (if the narcissistic family ever admits to them) are blamed on this child. The child selected as the scapegoat did not earn this title at random, either. They may have displayed tendencies early on that reminded the mother of someone she despised, or the child may have earned the role of scapegoat because they were more outspoken or independent. Trust me, independence is frowned upon in narcissistic families because the more independent the children become, the less control and authority the narcissistic parent has over them. And with narcissistic parents, it’s all about control. Ask anyone with a narcissistic parent about that and they’ll tell you—proper boundaries don’t exist in these families.
While my husband is the scapegoat, his younger sister is the golden child. She has never wanted for anything. She is eight years younger than my husband, and in the fifteen years that I’ve been a part of this family, she fits the profile of golden child perfectly. She was given a brand new car when she graduated from high school. When she graduated from college, she was rewarded with a laptop, cash, and a cruise. She has driven luxury cars and currently lives in a two-story, four-bedroom home, courtesy of my in-laws. I have frequently witnessed my in-laws lavishing high praise upon her and her many accomplishments.
I vividly recall an incident early on in my relationship with Aaron. His younger sister said something in front of the entire family that he felt was disrespectful and inappropriate, and so he told her as much. Later that evening, his mother pulled him aside and informed him that he was to apologize to her for speaking to her that way. My husband, who was in his late 20s at the time, was being forced to apologize for what Charlotte saw as the disrespect of her golden child. But the golden child, barely 20 at the time, did not have to apologize for disrespecting her older sibling, the scapegoat. Incidents like this one have continued to play themselves out in this family over, and over, and over. In future posts, I’ll discuss some of the specific tactics my mother-in-law has engaged in, tactics that have destroyed relationships between family members. Oh, and did I mention that my mother-in-law is a Christian? I’ll also discuss how religion can play a role in narcissistic behavior as well. But first, are you or your spouse the scapegoat in your narc family dynamic?
