I am the king! 👑

My son has taken interest in guitar. It started with a ukulele and then an acoustic guitar. He’s been playing those for a few months and is self taught. His musical skill impresses me; especially because I have none. Lol

I love when he comes out of his room just to sit with me and show off what he has learned. He’s always asking me, “what song is this?” It’s pretty comical how bad I am at recognizing songs, and it’s not at all a reflection of his talent.

Today, we were doing just this. We had gone down to the local guitar place that we’d never been to and I bought him some new picks. (sp?) We looked at some inexpensive electric guitars they had for sale as he’s been talking about how much he wants one. He’s especially interested in learned bass guitar. They also offer lessons there. It they’re kind of pricey. You get four 1/2 hour lessons a month for $90. Maybe that’s just my thriftiness showing through. He said he’d really like a bass guitar for Christmas but I told him, if he finds a decent used one that I can afford, he wouldn’t need to wait until Christmas. They had a brand new one there for $199. That’s a pretty good deal but a little above my price range. I told him that if he could get his dad to pay half, we could probably do it.

So, we’re sitting in the living room and he’s playing his guitar and ukulele when his dad got home. His dad walks passed us and does a little chuckle as he’s walking by us. There was nothing to laugh at. Then, he comes out of the bathroom a couple minutes later and goes in the kitchen. My son tells him, “Hey dad, you what I want? A bass guitar.” He was trying to get a dialogue going with his dad. He’s told me before, that is how he gets his dad to EVEN CONSIDER buying him something that he (his dad) is not really interested in as a hobby of his own.

His dad looks at him and says, “No.”

Then he looks over to me and says, “See how I did that?”, with a smirk on his face. Then he went back to going through his papers he has scattered around the counter.

I just ignored him. Grey rock. I was fuming inside.

Then he follows up by saying, “You know what I want?”

I couldn’t hold my tongue. I laughed and said, “Nothing? Because you buy everything you want?”

He ignored me and said, “Someone to clean up the dog poop.”

I could feel the heat rising up in me and caught myself and held my tongue. Grey rock.

Let me say, he does NOTHING around the house! If anything, he could AT LEAST take out the trash and clean up the dog poop. Heaven knows he doesn’t do anything but wash his own laundry. Which, I’ll add, is in a huge heap in our garage, by his own choosing! He barely ever even puts his dirty dishes in the sink, let alone rinse them off! Or hell, even throw his damn trash away! I don’t even GO IN that room because it makes me so angry!

I look over at my son and he hasn’t even moved since he last spoke. I can see the wheels turning in his mind as he stares off at nothing. I know what he’s feeling. I’ve been there. He’s blaming himself; he’s wondering what he said wrong; he’s asking himself if he asks for too much; he’s thinking he just blew his chance of getting that guitar before Christmas. It breaks my heart.

The only thing I could think to say was, “Well, I think it’d be cool if you had one.”

My husband then says, “You know what else I want? …someone to put a trash bag back in the trash can when they take the trash out.” To which I replied, “Oh, that was me.” My son said something like, “Ha! It wasn’t me.” His dad responded with, “Well just blame (our daughter) since she’s not in here.” (Like now he’s light hearted and joking around)

I wanted to yell so badly! I wanted to say one of the hundred responses I had running through my mind.

~”Because why would you have to do anything to help around here?!”

~”Way to crush a kids’ spirit!”

~”Wow!”

I can’t even remember everything I was thinking in that moment. It was all I could do to ignore it. Grey rock.

I’m going to talk to my son when his dad’s not around and ask what he was thinking when his dad responded like that. Try and make sure he’s not feeling like he said something wrong.

Status post – Father’s Day

 So, I ended up just letting the kids decide what to get their dad for Father’s Day. After all, they are old enough to put some thought into it and he is their dad, not mine. I offered some suggestions but they had a hard time finding anything he’d like or want and anything they did find was a few hundred dollars. All 3 of us had completely different ideas from our experiences with the him of what he wanted or would like. We spent more than 4 hours shopping for gifts. 

The day before Fathers Day, we went to my parents house to spend time with my dad. We swam and BBQd and I gave a card and some new tennis shoes to my dad (which he appreciated and thanked us for). I invited my Narc husband to go with us but he declined. ~This really bothers me because he hasn’t had very many male “father figures” in his life and my dad has always treated him like a son. That is a whole other blog post, though.~ 

On FD, our kids gave him cards and gifts in the morning. His initial response to the gift my son chose was, “You guys will use this more than I will.” His response to the gift my daughter chose wasnt much. But you could tell from his bland, blank expression that he wasn’t impressed with anything she chose except the candy. After he opened them he mumbled a weak, “thank you” to them. It really broke my heart because we spent a lot of time going to different stores, spent a decent amount of money and put A LOT of thought into good gifts for him. 

I went to the grocery store and bought steaks among other thing to BBQ for dinner that night. After dinner and having a beer, I asked him if he wanted to watch a movie. Meaning on Netflix or On Demand. ~Totally breaking grey rock. I’m not sure why I did except that I wanted to watch a movie anyway and he was sitting in the other room by himself, pouting i.m.o.~ He said he wanted to go to the theater and so we did. 

The next day, he sent me a text message thanking me for a nice day. He also told me that he paid off the rest of his phone bill. Was that supposed to be a reward for doing right by him on FD? Because I didn’t do anything different than I’ve done every other FD. 

Funny how when a Narc starts trying something different to get a reaction or to see if you’ll match them, THAT IS WHEN they notice what you do for them. 

He finally replied.

More than a week after my original text asking him why he hasn’t been depositing the money that he’d agreed to, he finally replied. Not surprised that it was now a few days before Fathers Day.

Amazing how a simple question turns into a huge back and forth of avoidance and accusations. His first response was “how much is it?” I had just told him in May how much, he knows very well how much and he was avoiding what I had asked. So, I told him how much and said that really wasn’t an answer.

The reason ended up being that he forgot or bought groceries instead. Both reasons are absurd to me. Good thing I don’t ‘forget’ to pay our utility bills or cover the IRS withdrawal every month. Imagine how that would play out. When I am expecting that money to be there and it isn’t, my account could overdraft and/or I might spend money that I wouldn’t have otherwise and the IRS isn’t very forgiving . And to say he bought groceries instead… that has always been something we were both doing. His words were actually “bought pretty much all the groceries” which is not true. I never stopped buying the usual amount of groceries that I have been buying. What he did was bought dog food more often and bought some steak or other expensive meals and other random junk more often. I’d rather we cover the necessities before buying extras.

~~ Yes, I figured out that he likes to put me in this position. It usually happens when I’ve been used to him doing whatever it is and expecting it. Then, out of nowhere he stops. I learn more quickly now and make sure the money is there or expect him not to be somewhere or do something. But, I always ask anyway, giving it a chance that he’ll surprise me. ~~

Without even pausing, as soon as he gave his excuses, he tried to turn it around to put me down and ask 20 questions. Rather than explain each detail or post screen shots, I’m just going to bullet point. Each point could be a whole page of explanation.

• Blames debt on me, then tells me my share would be 1/3, then says we’ll just make everything 50/50 (which is how it was already supposed to be) -each one contradicting the other.
• Says since I’m asking a question, he has some of his own, which he starts asking accusing questions (i.e. Where’s my wedding ring?? -it was on my finger and always has been, Why am I the only one not invited to a girls thing?? –I didn’t even answer that because I haven’t gone to any girls only things and invite him to everything, which he doesn’t go to and will deny my inviting him.) Plus, about 5 more questions including a remark about being room mates and him not needing a roommate.
• Called me plain mean (I don’t know what about, even re-reading the texts)
• Telling me I only care about money – which doesn’t make any sense because if I only cared about getting money from him then I should be happy with our relationship.
• After 20 years of him keeping everything separate, tells me it’s been me wanting it separate and what a pain it is.  – Yet, I practically forced him to open our joint checking account which he barely uses.
• Telling me I haven’t contributed to our relationship financially until recently. Which is a lie or at least a huge exaggeration. ~Out of our 24 year relationship, about 6 of them was I not employed. I was at home with our children.
• Talking in circles! Ugh! This drives me nuts. I tried extra hard to stay on track this time but not sure how much I succeeded.  – This is where he says something, I respond, he denies saying what I’m responding to and says something else, which I respond to, so he says the original thing or says I said what he started with. Obviously nothing productive ever comes from this kind of conversation.
• Telling me I’m wrong and that I’m twisting facts

I finally had to just stop responding because it was midnight, I was tired and we both had work the next day. That totally pissed him off but the conversation was going nowhere and was exploding into something huge when all I had originally wanted to know was why he wasnt depositing the money and if he was going to be from now on. (Which he said yes he would be. But, to give you an idea how that is playing out~ the next day he got a paycheck, today is the 18th, the money gets automatically withdrawn on the 20th.)

It’s extremely hard to grey rock when you have financial obligations that include both people and when you need an answer to something. 😣

Red Flag Warning #2

Anytime there is a holiday or special occasion, the Narc will make sure to cause conflict or commotion to ruin it. 

Father’s Day Gift for the Narcissist

For almost 25 years I’ve put lots of thought, time and effort into getting just the right gift for my Narc. It should come as no surprise that it’s never the right one according to him. 

– Says he can’t use. (But then he does.)

– Says he doesn’t need. (Even though he’s been looking into buying one himself.)

– Says he doesn’t know why I’d get it for him because …

– Purposefully doesn’t touch it or use but uses other items just like it from other people. 

– Etc. etc. etc. 

So, now that I’m at a different place mentally in realizing what motivates him, I’ve come to an idea. This Father’s Day I’m going to do what he does. That is, buy him something that makes me look good being the giver, something that I say is for him but is really for me, something to send an underlying message. 

This is more difficult than I expected!

Have you tried this?

Any ideas would be great!