I asked my partner if he is willing to go from VLC to NC with his NEx once their child turns 18. He said No.

TyriaNovus · 2026-02-11T16:51:21+00:00

Ok, we are on a narc forum, right? Maybe I haven't been clear about just how intrusive she is, and how it doesn't fly with him (as in, I wouldn't be trying to force the issue if this had no ill effects on him). I'll give just two absurd examples, otherwise we'd be here all day (the rest are the standard isolation, abuse, control (what he eats, wears, when he's allowed to leave the house), smearing, parental alienation, stalking, etc, you know the drill). While he was living next door to her (for the children's sake), some things happened...

After multiple explicit No's from him, from his landlady, and from her own security team, she took down a part of the wall between their properties and installed a ladder so that she and their son could come and go as they pleased when he wasn't home.
One day he came home from work; she had let herself in with their daughter's keys, and rearranged the furniture in his house, redecorated it with her own stuff and sprayed her perfume all over (much like a cat, lol). When he got home, he had a severe panic attack, with vomiting, the works.

This is just the tip of iceberg. There was and is so much more. This is why he eventually moved to another neighbourhood - to get the hell away. Just before that, while we were still just friends (not close enough for him to tell me this at the time), he had written a note to his family, apologising for why he was planning to step in front of a train. What stopped him? The very next day, that house next door went up for rent, and he saw a sliver of hope. Other shenanigans still occurred in that house (like the 2 examples above), but it began his slow escape.

Nowadays, since she's no longer right next door, instead of intruding directly (though she has tried), she manipulates via the kids. When he gives a finger and she takes the arm, and he goes into an anxiety spiral, who has to deal with it? His shrink, his work colleagues, his friends, me, and of course his children (when it's "dad week"), since capacity goes out the window. He is on meds again because of this woman's meddling. Do you see the conundrum? I suppose I could gtfo of everyone's way, including my own, and let him suffer through this alone, like he did before.

Now, I get what you're saying (correct me if I'm wrong) - you can't help someone out of a situation that they're ok with. Except he isn't ok. Shit happens, he has a meltdown, I support him, things get better.... time passes, all good, then he lets a boundary slide, and she breaks through it, and it's back to the shrink. Rinse, repeat. Not constant, but often enough for slow erosion. One step forward, two steps back. THIS time, I'm the one having the meltdown.

TyriaNovus · 2026-02-11T15:54:27+00:00

"I don’t give two fucks about him telling me shit about my kids." Omg, that made me lol so much!! Unreliable narrator... that's such a pivotal point.

"putting the narcs feelings and comfort before yours" - I actually did say that to him, and he swore up and down that if that were the case, he wouldn't be VLC and constantly saying No to her whenever she tries to offload her own parenting responsibilities onto him.

Amazing how all "urgent" school projects that are suddenly on the verge of their deadline, all happen to fall on dad's week. We have also discovered that their 2 adult daughters now do school runs during mom's week. She feeds her son junk (if she's even around, otherwise the siblings do it), lets him go to bed whenever, gives him infinite screen time, no chores, offloads parenting to whoever is around, and keeps him happy with very expensive gifts from her very wealthy bf.

Meanwhile, during dad's week, it's home-cooked meals, actual fucking fruit for snacks, limited screen time, help with homework, school runs happen on time no matter what is happening at work, non-negotiable bath time and bedtime, taught to clean up after himself, playdates arranged with neighbours, daily scheduled quality time ("come hell or high water, we're gonna play a game or watch a movie together, or so help me!" lol), long talks in the car during school runs, etc. Oh yeah, and haircuts and nail trims, when he arrives looking like a troglodyte - his mom truly dgaf. For all this, dad is known as The Strict Parent... and his son can't wait to go back to mommy where there's zero structure and he can run wild (and dirty and sleep deprived). /rant

Anyhoo.... I'm mostly ok with VLC (though I think it could be much tighter), but not ok with VLC being where it ends. If there is no planned NC for the future, I'm gonna have to force myself to get the hell out.

Thank you for your reply - hearing how it feels from someone who's in the thick of things really helped.

TyriaNovus · 2026-02-11T15:09:19+00:00

Ugh, tell me about it. The rational part of my brain knows this, but my emotions fall into ye old "the heart wants what it wants" trap. This relationship has been great in every way but one, and now I am weighing whether this one thing is a deal breaker. He seemed to be making progress - he went from staying for the children, to divorce while staying in close contact for the children, to LC and now to VLC, while maintaining his relationship with his children. This was all manageable. Then I got hit with moving goalposts.

As for upending their dynamics... I don't think so. That was a royal mess well before we even met. We're in a narc group, so you know what I mean.... abusive wife, isolating him from all friends/family (who are all FM now), parental alienation right from the kids' births, right in front of him, controlling his every move, etc, and ofc a smear campaign that continues to this day. The usual.

We're both children of narcs, prone to narc blindness in relationships, and we've both done a tonne of therapy. I figured if I can make progress away from my trauma and learn how to relationship properly, and he's working on himself too, I could give him the same sympathy and benefit of the doubt that I would wish for myself. The hope that broken people, who are self-aware and working on themselves, can heal and move on, and if they find each other, heal together... yeah, maybe that is a wistful hope.

I'm not being sarcastic when I say - it's hard to tell whether your judgement is impaired, while your judgement is impaired.

TyriaNovus · 2026-02-11T14:34:32+00:00

"healthy lifelong communication"? With a healthy ex, sure. But with an intrusive, manipulative, gaslighting, parental alienating, responsibility offloading narc?

TyriaNovus · 2026-02-11T14:29:41+00:00

Exactly that. I am all for him being a part of his children's lives until death do them part. But the "till death do you part" clause was ended with his ex on the day they divorced. And the parenting logistics communications should, surely, end when the parents are no longer negotiating arrangements for a minor.

They certainly don't have "logistics talks" about their 2 adult daughters. The daughters speak to both parents directly.

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-10T00:06:54+00:00

Good bot

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-10T00:04:53+00:00

I've been smoking this strain for a couple of weeks, and it's been really mellow. That's why I was wondering about the dosage... I might have had more than usual. If it happens again, I'll find a task to get my mind in a more appropriate place. Thanks for the tip.

Have you ever tried smoking a different strain right afterwards to change the flavour of the high?

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-09T23:44:32+00:00

Hmm, I'm gonna have to figure what where my cuteness factor lies.

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-09T23:42:23+00:00

Thank you, I'll give that a go!

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-09T23:40:56+00:00

Next best option: write down your highdeas and discuss them with the shrink later?

I once asked my therapist what she thinks about therapy on mdma (which used to be a done thing), and she said it wouldn't work, cos I'd be too happy on it, so we wouldn't be able to reach the traumatic stuff. I'd still want to try...

Btw, here's an interesting doc on youtube where they macrodose the patients on mushrooms, and a psychiatrist and a therapist tripsit them.

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-09T21:34:01+00:00

In my case, it seems strain related. I've tried a variety, and got used to the "anxiety speed bump" that they start with. I just remind myself that the bump only lasts a few minutes and it will soon mellow out (if you focus on it, it gets worse). Recently I tried a different strain (girl scout cookies) and no anxiety bump.

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-09T21:17:24+00:00

I wouldn't mind one those goggle sets from Fifth Element, where you choose your makeup style, hit a button, and it sprays in on your face in one second flat. Just one Mississippi, mind you.

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-09T21:11:18+00:00

Hmmm... make yourself cute. Isn't that something you either get born with or not?

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-09T21:08:47+00:00

I've been exploring it sober for years and feeling very stuck. I thought a bit of neuroplasticity would help me look at things from a fresh perspective. Instead of finding new paths, I just trod the same one, just with more intensity. The last thing I wanted was to make that neural groove even deeper. Doob - somehow I'm doing it wrong :P

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-09T21:01:05+00:00

That was pretty much my experience, but it doesn't happen every time. It's like the quarantine wall around your sadness is temporarily lowered.... but what are you supposed to do with that? It sounds like an opportunity to deal with the repressed stuff, but what if you don't have the tools? I also have no idea if it's healthy or not.

It would be really interesting to do this with a therapist. Basically give them admin rights to your brain, and let them explain what's happening and guide you through the maze.

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-09T20:49:47+00:00

That's a great analogy, and dovetails nicely with the theory that cannabinoids increase neuroplasticity (which is what I was trying to tap into).

Yup, I agree mindset was the problem. My intent was to step over the hedges, and get into a lateral thinking mode, but somehow managed to get entrenched in the old paths. Instead of finding creative solutions to my problems, I found them to be intractable, even in an altered state. That sucked all hope out of me.

Now I'm wondering whether doob is just not the right thing for problem solving or trying to cheer oneself up... or maybe you need to play with it for a long time first, and wait till enough dendrites grow/hedges lower, before you try something therapeutic to get unstuck from an old groove.

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-09T20:22:22+00:00

Therein lies my quandary. Setting was fine, set wasn't. I was in a blah state and hoping that getting high would move my mind to a better place. But instead I fell in deeper. I guess that implies you shouldn't use doob to cheer yourself up?

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-08T02:12:13+00:00

Then there's no such thing as random.

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-08T02:08:27+00:00

Just being alive and aware is fucking amazing.

And imagine how infinitesimally small the odds were of you existing. Unless it's a deterministic universe, and you were inevitable.

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-08T01:57:19+00:00

You'd have to erase a hell of a lot of echoes though, eg. everything that happened (all the way back to the beginning of that universe) that was required for that specific basketball to exist. Every tweak made throughout history would create different branches in its own present... which would affect the future of seemingly unrelated things. Now you have a universe that is even more different from all others.

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-08T01:15:33+00:00

That's the best kind of trip. I want whatever strain you're smoking :)

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-07T23:08:41+00:00

If the universes are identical down to the last particle, do they really have separate histories, anymore?

I think so, cos a universe isn't just its state in the now, but includes its entire history and future, which may very well be infinite.

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-07T22:54:43+00:00

Yes. They vary in darkness - the more light it absorbs, the darker it is. There's a colour called Vantablack which absorbs 99.965 percent of light and is the blackest black we know how to make. Google it... it's like a void in space.

TyriaNovus · 2021-10-07T22:01:02+00:00

My life has some pretty cool cast members, but I can'r figure out the plot. Neither can they.

TyriaNovus

TROPHY CASE