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The Overwhelmed Brain
My abusive ex wants me to sit next to him at our child's wedding
00:38:46
A mom doesn't want to six next to her abusive ex during her child's wedding but doesn't want to come across as selfish. Is it selfish to make healthy choices that will keep you happy and safe? Important discussion today.
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These are my personal opinions. Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well being. Thanks for joining me today. I'm going to get right into a message that I received. This person wrote, I'm about a year out from separating after a 35 plus year marriage. We have adult children. For a long time, my life felt very off. I learned a lot from your podcast. I couldn't explain the chaos in my head to myself, much less to anyone else. My ex definitely has narcissistic traits. I finally began opening up to my best friend about what was happening. She's been my biggest support, but she's still friends with my ex and his social circle. Now my oldest child is getting married and my ex wants to sit with me at the wedding. His family will be there too. I didn't have enough boundaries during my marriage and I'm trying to prioritize my happiness now, but I feel pressure not to be selfish on my child's special day. I could use your take on this situation. This relationship has changed me forever. I'm not the same person I was. Thank you for sharing that. And I'm sorry you had to go through that relationship and discover that the person you're with isn't the person they started off being. Because most narcissistic and emotionally abusive relationships start off really good. Like, really good. And that's often because the abusive person is very good at charming and also giving you everything that you want in a partner. And so they build up this perspective or this perception of them that is above and beyond what you want. Everything is great, everything is wonderful. And then the behaviors start. So I'm sorry that you had to go through that and discover that. Because once you're in love and once you're attached and committed, it's hard to break that commitment. Or for a lot of people, it's hard to break that commitment because you have so much energy and emotion and sometimes financials invested into the relationship. You share a house, maybe you have kids, maybe you've moved to be with this person and now they turn into this other person that you had no idea was there. And so I want to thank this person again for writing this and sharing this. And I'm sorry that you had to discover this and for 35 years you had to deal with it. So wow, it sounds like you are moving forward, but now here's a blast from the past. Your oldest child is getting married and your ex wants to sit with you at the wedding. His family will be there too. And she goes on to say, I didn't have enough boundaries during my marriage, and I'm trying to prioritize my happiness now, but I feel pressure not to be selfish on my child's special day. I can use your take on this situation. Well, of course, this is a personal choice. If you don't want to sit with him and you don't want to ruin your child, I mean, this is not necessarily. I mean, not sitting with him doesn't ruin your child's special day. It's just a choice. You are choosing to sit wherever you want with whomever you want. And so, you know, I don't know the whole story there, but. But you have that choice to sit where you want. Now, if your child expects you to sit with your ex, maybe that's a different story. Maybe that's something you can tolerate. It's up to you. Your choice. If he was severely abusive, however, you know, I don't recommend that, because how is that going to go if he is that same person? Now, you know, I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to give you my perspective, as you asked. And my perspective is, if it were my child and my child says, I would really love to just have you guys sit together, I would say, fine, I'll deal with it. I only have to sit with this person for a few minutes at a time. And the rest of the time, I'll be dancing, I'll be eating, I'll be talking to my daughter. You're gonna end up seeing your ex in the wedding anyway. They're gonna be around, so he will be around. He'll probably say something to you. Maybe he'll be toxic. Maybe he'll not be toxic. I don't know. But likely he'll say something that will upset you, even if it's not his intention to upset you. Because you have a lot of emotional baggage with him, I'm assuming, and emotional triggers that he knows which buttons to press, so those will be activated. So it's going to depend on you and asking yourself, how much power do I have so that when I face him again, I can stand up for myself? And I don't mean putting your hand up and saying, get the f away from me. I mean when he says something that is toxic or tries to trigger you trying to push your buttons, you can either gray rock him. Gray rock, for those who don't know, is when you act like a dull gray rock. And you are pretty much a boring person to the person who's trying to emotionally trigger you. And if you're boring and they can't see that you're being emotionally triggered, then their attempt to abuse your emotions will fail. At least in their eyes. It will fail because they will see no visible or audible clue that you are reacting to the abusive behavior. Because abusive people seek out your emotional response so that they know something landed. And it's important to know. Abusive people, toxic people, want your emotional response. They have to know how to. How you react, how you are responding to what they're saying or doing. And once they see it, they, you know, I'm going to play a scenario here. They say, yes, I got them. That landed. That's perfect. And whatever they were trying to achieve, make you feel bad, make you feel guilty, make you feel responsible for things that you shouldn't feel responsible for, make you feel whatever they want you to feel because they want to control your emotions. But people cannot control your emotions when you don't show them your emotions. Gray rock is hard. Gray rock is not an easy technique because you're so used to being yourself, an emotional creature. And we're all emotional creatures, except for the psychopaths and antisocial personality people. We're all emotional creatures. And the toxic people that may have entered our lives, they know how to get certain emotions out of us. So if they want us to feel guilty, they're going to say exactly what, exactly what makes us feel guilty. You know that time when you left your kid on the playground for an extra 15 minutes and they didn't know where you were? That makes you a bad mom. They're going to say stupid triggering things in order to get a reaction out of you. And your job around a toxic person is to make sure you don't give them what they want. And remember, this is also what they need so that they know it landed and they can do the next thing in sequence they normally do. So continuing with the scenario, yes, that landed. That is exactly the response I wanted out of them. And now I'm going to push the knife in even further and twist it to make sure that they feel the lowest of the low so that I can feel powerful. This is the narcissist, the emotionally abusive person who just wants to have power over you and will do anything to they can to take your power away, to make them feel powerful and to give them control over you. Because there's a point where somebody takes away enough of your power where you feel powerless and then they can control you. So if somebody is capable of making you Feel bad, making you feel guilty, making you feel like less of a parent, less of a person, making you feel the lowest of the low. And you get into that state around them, then they believe they've won. And often that's what happens. They win by taking your power away. In order to keep your power, you can. This is one way to do it. You can, Gray rock. You can give them your unemotional response, if any response. So when they say something like, you're a bad person and this is why, or this is is all your fault and none of this would have happened if it wasn't for you, instead of saying, well, that's not true and defending yourself and explaining things, you can just say something like, okay, whatever, even though you want to say, you son of a. How dare you say that after all I did. Don't go there. Don't go into that reactive state. Stay dull to these people. The more dull you are to them, the more their bag of tricks won't work and they won't be able to read you because you're easily readable. When you're experiencing an emotion. It's on your face. It's in your voice and your inflection. It's the way you speak, the way you show up, the way you move. It's in your mannerisms. So it's all over you. Your emotional state is all over you. Even now my voice is raising. It's in my inflection. There's something there. There's an energy behind it that other people pick up very subconsciously. In fact, the more manipulative, the more abusive they are, the more they pick up. Which is why it takes practice to be that dull. Gray rock. It takes practice to be boring around somebody who want you to be excitable. It takes practice to be dull around somebody who wants you to explode with emotion or implode with emotion and sink down into yourself. Feeling low, feeling low of worth, low of value around them. The more low of value you feel around them, the more your power leaks away. It just drips and drips and goes away. And they see it. They can see you sinking down into yourself. We don't want to show them that. We don't want to show them. So coming back to this person's question, let me just make sure I got everything that they asked. My oldest child is getting married and my ex wants to sit with me at the wedding. So it's not your child asking for that, it's your ex asking for that. So here's the first thing that happens right now. Your ex is saying, I want to control where you sit. I mean, this is how I'm reading it. But if your ex has been narcissistic and abusive for many, many years, then he doesn't want somebody else to control him. He wants to have control over the situation. I'm making assumptions. I'm making assumptions that he did not go to therapy. He's had no healing, he's had no epiphanies, he's had no enlightenment, or some people call it come to Jesus moments. He's had no anything, nothing to change him or his behaviors. So I'm assuming that he is still the same person. And if he is, you need to know that that's who he will be when you show up. Now, there is a difference, and maybe it won't make a difference here, but there is a difference between friends, the narcissist, and the partner of a narcissist or somebody with narcissistic tendencies or just emotionally abusive tendencies, which are pretty much narcissistic tendencies anyway. But there's a difference because friends usually see an entirely different side of the narcissist. To friends, the narcissist is the victim and the narcissist victim is the abuser. That's how friends see things. Because the narcissist is so good. Or again, the person with narcissistic tendencies is so good at explaining their situation to make themselves look like they are the ones that are being abused or hurt or, you know, their partner is the problem and not them. And so they're very good at skirting responsibility and not taking any accountability. And they're very good at painting the picture that they want their friends to see. So I say that because you're going to deal with that. Like you said in your message here, you have a friend that is your biggest supporter, but she's still friends with your ex and his social circle. And because of that, your friend has a different perception of your ex that you haven't been able to convey to her how much you've been through. That often happens is that we are in a relationship with somebody so toxic, but they're so kind to everyone else outside the relationship that it's hard to tell friends and family what that person is doing to us because they don't see the same person. They see an entirely different side of that person. So they may never see the side that you see unless there's like video footage of that person doing something or audio that you recorded. And even then, even then, you can have proof that this person is awful and toxic and the friends of the abuser will say, yeah, but that's normal for any relationship because they don't see the compound effect of the abusive behavior day after day, what I call a drip feeding of hurtful, toxic behaviors that just continue to oppress and push someone down and make them feel wrong and bad. And it can be very difficult to explain that to someone who's not ever experienced it, which is why I have episodes. In fact, loveandabuse.com if you look up the episode called explaining, I think it's called explaining emotional abuse to friends and family and to doctors and lawyers and all that, just look up the word explaining or explain or something like that in the search field and you will find it. And it is a way to help you describe what is going on to people who may not understand. I'm not saying that you have to do this with your best friend. I mean, if you have a good relationship with your best friend and you're okay with her relationship with your ex, it's up to you if you want to bring that up. And just know that if you do, you may find resistance. You may. I mean, if this is your best friend, you shouldn't have that resistance, but you may find resistance from people who don't see that side of him. If they don't see that side of him, it's going to be very difficult for them to get what you're saying into their reality. So this is just something you have to be aware of. And often what ends up happening is the abuser has to get into another relationship and the next person in the relationship starts to experience what you experienced and then they start telling their friends. And if you're still in the same circles, then maybe the word will get around that him as a partner is unhealthy, but him as a friend is okay. You know, that's the kind of stuff that can get around. But, you know, that's not your situation now. Your situation now is your ex said he wants to sit with you at the wedding and then you said his family will be there and you didn't practice boundaries during your marriage or enough boundaries. And now you feel pressure not to be selfish on your child's special day. What makes saying no to him selfish? That's my one of my questions. What makes saying no to someone that you don't want to sit with X or not? What makes you saying no to him selfish? Because I want to make sure that you're really clear on what boundaries are. Boundaries in my definition is what you will and won't accept. And if some toxic person says, hey, I want you to sit next to me, will you accept that? Will you be okay with that? That's part of boundaries, too. What you will accept and be okay with and what you won't accept because you're not okay with it. Are you okay with sitting next to him? Because if you are, then there's your answer. But if you say, well, no, I really don't want to, there's a boundary. And if you want to practice boundaries, there's nothing wrong with saying, no, thanks. That's it. No, thanks. And I put a little gray rock in there because the gray rock is not having such an emotional reaction that he can attach to. So if you say, no, thanks, which also has an air of confidence in there, because I know what I want and I'm telling you what I want or don't want, so I'm saying, no, thank you. And when I say that, let's just say he says, what's the problem? Why won't you sit next to me? Oh, you know, you're going to do this on her wedding day. He's going to try to make you feel guilty, I'm assuming. And then you can say, no, I feel fine sitting over somewhere else. I feel fine sitting with my friend. Or how about this? I'm going to bring a date. And I don't want to sit next to you, so I'm okay. The thing is, you don't have to explain anything. You don't have to explain a thing. He's your ex. Ex for a reason. So when it comes to your daughter, that's a different story. If she says, I would love to see you guys sitting together, that would be a little strange, because she knows you're divorced, right? She knows you're not together. Because if she doesn't know that, it might be. Might be a little trickier. But I'm assuming she knows. And because she knows, I can't imagine she's saying, you gotta sit with dad. Because if she's saying that, yikes, that's. That's not very fair to you. But let's just say that she said that. I hope that's not the case. But if she said, I really want you guys to sit together, not because she wants you back together, but because it would be easier. I don't know. Or because maybe pictures would show you, you know, her parents to get. I don't know. I don't know what she would want that for. But if for some reason, she would be disappointed if you weren't sitting next to your ex. Can you tolerate it for a few hours until it's over? Or not even a few hours? Depends on where you are at the reception. You're probably not sitting next to each other. It's just the wedding. So it might not even be an hour. I don't know. But that would be my question to you. And I'm not saying, hey, you should do it if she wants it. I'm saying, or I'm asking, can you tolerate it long enough to get through it and then move on? Now you might say, yes, I can tolerate it, but I don't want to. So this is the second question. Let's just say that, okay, yeah, I can tolerate it, but I don't want to. Will you be able to be fully invested and myopically focused on your daughter, on her partner at the altar? Are you going to be focused on that or continually thinking about your ex and what he's going to say next? And you hope he doesn't touch you or whisper something to you because it'll ruin your day? If you're going to be in that space, then you have to say no. You have to say, no, thanks. Remember, it's very easy just to say, no, thank you. And I know it's not easy when you haven't been able to do that. I'm not saying that, hey, you can do this. It's so easy. But I am. But at the same time, I know it's not easy because you've been dealing with this guy for so long. So there's a lot of baggage there. There's a lot of ptsd, a lot of old trauma that is still present, clearly, because you're writing to me and you're asking these questions, but this stuff is still present in you. So another question I have for you is, will your submission to sit next to him override your attention that will be on your daughter and her special day? I want you to think about that. Will your submission to sit next to him override the attention that you will give to your daughter on her special day? What that means is, will you be thinking more about who you're sitting next to and what's going to happen because of that? Or will you be completely and totally mesmerized by what's going on up front with your daughter and her wedding day? Because if you tell me that, oh, no, I will be thinking about what he's going to say. Next, and I will have concerns, then you will not be totally invested the marriage. And don't take that the wrong way. I don't mean to put you down for it. I'm just telling you what may and probably will happen is that you will be constantly thinking about him instead of being totally invested in what's going on at the altar. And if that's the case, and you don't want that to be the case, then proudly say, no, thank you, and say it confidently. And say it as if you were watching your daughter get married in that moment, because nothing should override that moment for you. When you see her getting married. That's where your attention is. That's where your emotions are. That's where your entire focus should be. And when it's there, and nothing else can bother that because you're not near a toxic person, then you're fully invested. And again, if you feel you can be fully invested while sitting next to him, then by all means, I don't know how long it takes. But if you are okay with that and your proximity to him doesn't override your attention and your investment into what's going on at the altar, then by all means. But remember Grey Rock. Remember to be boring to him and be bubbly and excited and happy and all the other emotions that you want to experience at a wedding around everyone else. And then when he comes up, you just. You're playing. But I do want you to practice saying no, thanks. Don't get into explanations. Don't give a reason, don't give an excuse. Just say, no, thank you. And then when somebody asks, why not? Why won't you sit next to me? Aren't you over it? Come on, we haven't been married in so many months. What's the big deal? No, thank you. I mean, I'm picturing this happening, and it's ridiculous. When somebody doesn't honor your no. Your no. They should honor the decision that you make. Those who don't honor you honoring yourself aren't loving people, at least not in that moment. They're not being loving. They're not being supportive. If you say no to someone, that is your answer. And if they say, oh, come on, or whatever they're trying to do to make you change your mind or feel bad for honoring yourself, then they're not being loving. And when somebody's not being loving to you, what do you do? You become more confident that you're making the right decision for yourself. Oh, come on. What are you, a baby? Why can't you sit next to me for just 15 minutes. It's only going to be a little time. No, thanks. I'm good. That's all you need to say. Don't get into explanations, because abusive people also like to pick apart your explanations. Abusive people are very good at picking apart your explanations. What they're not good at is you being confident, making decisions that are right for you, and following the path that you lay out before yourself and not doing what they want you to do. They're not used to you not doing what they want you to do. This may cause difficulty, I'm not going to lie. And you may be worried about saying no. You may have your trepidations, absolutely. I'm not saying this just comes out of the blue, but this is why in my life, I've decided that I need to prioritize so I don't miss out on what life has to offer. And prioritize, in this case means it's worth the risk of honoring myself to create the outcomes that. That I feel most comfortable with. It's worth the risk of honoring myself to get the outcomes I want. And what that means is. And this is a story I've told on my show quite a few times. When I was at my mom's house once, my stepfather, who they were divorced for a few months, he showed up and she didn't want anything to do with him. And he's a dangerous man. He got old and he was less dangerous, but he was still dangerous for a long time. And he scared the hell out of me. And he scared the hell out of us kids when we were growing up. So a violent alcoholic a few times with my mom. And he just did so many awful things. And so when I moved a thousand miles away when I was in my 20s, I never wanted to see him again. And I was okay with that. I did end up seeing him when they came down to visit, but. But eventually I never saw him again. And then I got a divorce and I ended up with my mom. I was staying with her for a while, and he showed up. And immediately, as soon as I saw him, I shrunk down into that fearful little child that I always was around him. And that shrinking down feeling that we get is us not embracing the person that we want to be. It is relegating to the person we were around, the person who we feared or who hurt us or caused us pain and suffering in some way. And that's who I became. I became that fearful little child immediately as soon as I saw him. That Was it. I knew that I was going to be submissive and compliant and it would be best just to agree with him to. To avoid any trouble. But instead of doing that because he said he wanted to come in, he wanted to see the dog, at least that was the excuse. He wanted to see the dog, even though he was really there to see my mom because he wanted her back in his life, and that just wasn't happening. My mom did not want anything to do with him. And immediately I wanted to say, okay, come on in, because I didn't want any trouble because I had never honored myself around him. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I decided that I needed to prioritize one thing over another. And that priority was becoming the person I wanted to be around him versus being the person I always became around him. My priority was becoming someone who could stand up for himself and be okay saying no around him and be okay. As the adult in my 40s at the time, as the adult I am today, thinking back, I am the adult now, and I can choose to say no, you're not allowed to come in. That's basically what I said. Pretty spot on there. Sorry, you're not allowed in here. And I said that knowing for a fact that a fight was about to break out. I really expected him to throw a swing at me because I had never stood up to him. I've never said no to him. I'd never stood up and said, sorry, you can't do that. I just said, okay, anything you want. In my head, anything he wants, just to avoid inciting his violent behavior, because I didn't want to see that and I didn't want to face that. But damn it, you know, I was in that moment. And I said, I've had enough of being scared of this person. And I chose to prioritize what I wanted, the outcome I wanted and the person I wanted to be from that point on, over being a scared little child every time I see him. And I knew it was a risk. And so I said my thing. Sorry, you're not allowed in here. And I waited for the punch. I waited for him to throw. You know, I didn't know if he was going to punch me. He never did. He never punched me. But I just expected it to happen because I'd never done this before. And then it didn't happen. In fact, he shrugged his shoulders and said, okay, and then walked away. I was in shock, and I was trying to reconcile my emotions and my thoughts and trying to figure out what just happened? Because I'd never done this before. And I thought, why didn't I do this earlier? Because this would have changed my life and I wouldn't have to be afraid around him anymore. And so he started to leave. And my mom came out and she said, what's going on? And I said, you know who was just here? And she said, what? She ran outside. Because as the. I'm going to explain something here. My mom was quite the people pleaser. She didn't want conflict. I learned a lot from her. And she ran outside and tried to make peace with him. He didn't come in, but she ran outside and just talked to him, which was, okay, if that's what she wants to do, I'll support that. But I wouldn't let him in the house. And that was really a battle that I needed to have to change who I had been for so long. I prioritized who I wanted to be over who I've always been. And I prioritized the outcomes that I wanted over the outcomes I already or always got. Just like you may. The person who wrote you may want to prioritize your daughter's wedding and your investment and your feelings, your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations for the commitment they're making to each other and the future they're going to have together. And if all your thoughts are on them and for them and your thoughts aren't being hijacked by some other thing that you just have to worry about because it's sitting right next to you, then it's important to consider the outcome you want versus the outcome that you'll get depending on the choice that you make. And I do say this with the caveat, the disclaimer that. And people will write to me and say, why did you say this? He could be dangerous. Yes. If he's dangerous, that's another. I mean, he's emotionally dangerous. We know that. So we know that that is still present or can be present. If he's physically dangerous, then the obvious answer is no. Don't be around him. Don't get near him. Protect yourself. And if he's emotionally dangerous, we already know the answer is no. It's just a matter of getting past yourself, pretty much your fears, your worries about that. And I'm not saying that those aren't valid, because some people are just. They're terrible and they know how to get to you, and they can ruin your day and ruin your life by the things they say and do. So, yeah, there's something to consider there. But Man, I've gone through my own battle with toxic people, and I've decided that they're not worth having in my life. And so I've become more courageous in my life when honoring myself around them. And I'm not saying that you just have to point your finger and then say, get the hell away from me. It can just be a matter of saying, no, thank you, or I choose otherwise. And when they start saying, well, what's your problem? The answer to that might just be nothing. Mm. Nothing. I just. I choose to sit over here. I choose something else. And if they try to pull it out of you and try to get an emotional response. Okay, I'm gonna go now. So to the person who wrote you asked for my thoughts on this. Those are my thoughts. I don't want you to be in a dangerous situation. I also don't want you to be so focused on what he might say or he might do that you miss an important day for somebody in your life. And when you say you don't want to be selfish, make sure you don't mix up the terms selfishness and boundaries, because boundaries are not selfish. People who love you, people who care about you, people who want you to be happy want you to have boundaries because they know if you honor your boundaries, you're doing everything you can to live the life you want, which is supposed to lead to satisfaction and fulfillment and even happiness. So if you are doing what you want to do and honoring yourself, people who love you will want you to do that. People who love you will want you to honor yourself. So honoring your boundaries is not selfish. It's self loving in those around you who say you're being selfish. Selfish for choosing where you want to sit and who you want to sit next to. In this case, those people don't have your best interest in mind. They have their best interest in mind, which is to control what you do and how you think and your emotional state. It would serve them for you to give up your power to them. And that's what I don't want you to do. So those are all my thoughts. I really hope this helps. And congratulations on your daughter getting married. Thank you so much for sharing this. And stay strong. You will get through this and your life will change for the better as you learn that you are worth honoring and your decisions matter. And when you make the right decisions for you, that is the most loving thing you can do for yourself. And people who love you will love that you're doing that for yourself. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Overwhelmed Brain. I want to thank the patrons of the week. Paige, Stephen, Deborah, Tammy, Maria. I am so grateful for all of you. Thank you for your support of the show. If you find value in the show and you want to give back, head over to MoreToB.com and there are options to do that over there. Thank you so much, patrons. And for a show on how to navigate the difficult relationship, listen to my other podcast called Love and abuse over@loveandabuse.com Talk about narcissistic tendencies. That is the show that will tell you all about them. Again, loveandabuse.com and if you know you're the difficult one in the relationship and maybe you're the one asking your ex to sit next to you during a wedding of your child, if that's you and you want to change that about yourself, you want to work on healing those qualities about yourself, join the program that is helping a lot of people heal and even save relationships over@HealedBeing.com and with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions. And be firm in your decisions and actions so that you can create the life you want. Always take steps to grow and evolve. You are powerful beyond measure. And above all, and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you. You are amazing.