Can you negotiate with a narcissist?

Can you negotiate with a narcissist?

ABSOLUTELY yes.

People will tell you that it is impossible to negotiate with a narcissist, and they are partially right. It is nearly impossible to get a narcissist to compromise on something they know is important to you and will cause chaos and drama to argue about.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t negotiate with a narcissist. It just means you have to be strategic about doing so.

There is a story that I read after my divorce that sticks with me. A question had been asked on a FB page about strategies for mediating with a personality disordered individual. One woman responded that she had made a HUGE deal about a hairbrush in her divorce. Instead of fighting over the kids, she kept going on and on about this brush. She didn’t actually care about the hairbrush, but the narcissist latched on to this being an important item. So he fought her over it. She ended up leveraging this brush – that she never actually wanted – to get the things she actually did want in the end. Is there something in your situation that you can make up to fight about?

In my own case, I used this a few times (though made the mistake in mediation and our custody modification of thinking that if I just told the other people exactly what I wanted, we could figure it out). I knew that we were up against a situation where ex was saying that abuse allegations were made up. I also knew that eventually a court would try to order counseling for the kids with their dad. He had already snowed a psychiatrist, a social worker, and a forensic psychologist. I was pretty sure he could do the same for the kids’ counselors. And I also knew that counseling with their dad wouldn’t actually be effective. So I would regularly ask him to go to counseling with the kids (like once a month or so). It became a way to control what was being argued over, which helped things stay calmer outside of that one “disagreement.”

Another strategy for negotiating with a narcissist is to appeal to their ego. When you send an email and want them to agree to something, you can add phrases like “I wasn’t sure about the kinds of lunches I needed to pack for [child]. I know that you care about healthy lunches. What do you think we should pack for school?” if the other parent isn’t sending the kids to school with appropriate food. You can even try “Good parents love watching their kids play soccer, and I know you are trying to be a good dad.” You don’t have to believe it. You are just focusing on getting your desired outcome. It’s crucial to frame your negotiations in a way that appeals to the narcissist’s self-interest and reinforces their sense of power and control.

The worst thing you can do when negotiating with a narcissist is to get overly emotional. It’s where the work learning gray rock is important, even if you use a modified version in your regular communications. If you are unemotional, disimpassioned, and neutral during most of the negotiations, but you get emotional in your disagreements over the proverbial hairbrush, then you are setting yourself up to be in more control during the negotiation.

Can you negotiate with a narcissist? Yes. Does it take practice and strategic thinking? Absolutely!

Finding One Mom’s Battle and Divorcing a Narcissist

As my world began to unravel, and I started to question everything that I believed about my family and the previous ten years of marriage, I started researching. The problem was that I was terrified of X. He seemed to know where I was, what I was doing, and who I was talking to AT ALL TIMES. How was I going to research my situation without him finding out (just as a PSA – if you are worried about how to google without enduring the wrath of your husband, I give you FULL permission to read that as a huge RED FLAG and get the hell out of there!).

I wasn’t sleeping much as it was, my anxiety about the situation growing. The problem with waking up to the reality of an abusive marriage is that once you are aware, you have to do something about it. You CAN stay, but even that becomes a choice once you are cognitively awake. X liked to stay up until the early hours of the morning before going to sleep. So I would wake up about 4 am, sneak downstairs, curl up on the couch, and hide under a blanket so he couldn’t see the websites I was visiting if he did wake up. I wasn’t certain whether there was a keylogger on my phone monitoring my web traffic – I considered it at least a high possibility. But I needed information, so I took the chance.

I don’t remember how I got to narcissism from my search terms. Despite growing up in a toxic and abusive family system, narcissism wasn’t a word I was particularly familiar with. Boundaries were definitely not a part of our vernacular! One of the websites I found was Out of the Fog, which helps those whose family members have personality disorders. I read a lot of personal stories there, which finally gave me the words to describe what was happening. It’s one of the reasons I share my story. Reading academic text is fine, but it’s others’ stories that truly connect us and help give us the strength to make different choices.

One Mom’s Battle

One early morning, I found Tina Swithin through One Mom’s Battle and her book Divorcing a Narcissist. While I was becoming aware that there was probably no way forward in my marriage, the One Mom’s Battle blog showed me what I would likely face if I decided to get a divorce. X had sent me something he called a Holographic Postnuptial Agreement that gave me full custody and all of our assets. But I didn’t trust anything he said anymore, and I didn’t know how the court would intervene even with that document. X also said on several occasions that if we got divorced, the kids and I would never see him again (spoiler alert: he lied).

I’m going to jump ahead a bit in my story, and I will go back in another post and fill in the gaps. After I asked for a divorce, I scheduled a call with Tina. I didn’t know what a divorce coach was. In 2016, I don’t think that’s what we were calling them. All I knew is that she had been there and that I needed validation. A LOT OF VALIDATION.

Some people use divorce coaches regularly. That wasn’t quite my strategy. I needed someone to hear how crazy things were, let me know that I wasn’t out of touch with reality or overbearing for wanting to protect my kids. I also found that Tina Swithin knew strategies and techniques (like asking for a nail test instead of just a hair follicle test for drugs).

When my ex-husband’s parental rights were terminated, one of the first phone calls I made was to Tina. I think I was a blubbery mess! I wanted her to know that I was free and that I couldn’t have done it without her.

Tina and One Mom’s Battle now train others to become high-conflict divorce coaches. I am certified through her program, the High-Conflict Divorce Coach Certification Program. Tina has taken the knowledge she has gotten from One Mom’s Battle, from Divorcing a Narcissist (Sociopath) and made it accessible to many more of us. I have the knowledge of my own divorce and family court battle, but I also have the collective knowledge from Tina and all of the other high-conflict divorce coaches who have been through the program.

I will forever be grateful to her for sharing her story, for finding her one early Spring morning, curled up under a blanket, not knowing where to turn.