Choose Your Battles Wisely When Divorcing a Narcissist

Miles Mason, Sr. joins trauma therapist Amy Helms to provide tips on choosing your battles wisely during a divorce.

Miles Mason, Sr. guests on the new podcast by Amy Helms, Hope After Narcissistic Abuse, Jan. 11, 2023.  Mason’s podcast episode link: Financial Abuse During Divorce. Podcast platforms include Apple, Spotify, Google, and others.

Miles Mason:

One of the keys to divorcing a narcissist is making sure you fight the right battles. Because not every battle needs to be won in this war. Narcissists, one of their items straight out of chapter one of their playbook is create a number of battles which just steal emotional energy from the other spouse. And so, we’ve got to be prepared both in terms of endurance and willingness to endure through the process and be strategic in which battles we choose to fight and which battles we choose not to fight.

Amy Helms:

So, what are some battles that you’ve seen recently that you’ve told people, this isn’t really important?

Miles Mason:

That’s a great question because there’s different levels to that analysis. And I’ll answer the question, I promise. Let me get there. There are problems that don’t impact the divorce settlement, but impact how we get there. There are other decisions that are tremendously personal and one of those are the pets. So, let’s say I’m representing the husband and the wife is the abuser. And she knows that this dog called Calm Spot is essentially the pet of the husband. She’s going to create an additional battleground by saying, “I want Spot to live with me. I know you’ve moved out of the house. You didn’t take Spot with you then because the apartment didn’t let you. Spot’s now mine.”

We have to analyze this from a number of different perspectives. Number one, is this just a strategy by the woman just to annoy?

Second, does my client care about Spot or can he just go get another Spot? All right. Which clients have done, they’ll go get the exact same breed of dog, exact same temperament. Or they say, “Ooh, I’ve always wanted a Frenchie. This is a good opportunity.”

Because one of the great ways to fight a divorce is to be careful what you ask for, you might just get it. Our first offer we’re going to be talking about … Even though Spot from a financial perspective means nothing, the judge is not going to want to hear an argument about Spot. And that’s a whole different discussion, but we’re talking about it in terms of narcissistic behavior.

Amy Helms:

They made a movie about that.

Miles Mason:

Yeah. But I’m talking about how do we really analyze it? So, I’m going to give the client pros and cons on whether we need to go to war over Spot. And one of the things we’ve got to decide is do we wait till trial to bring up Spot? Or do we bring up Spot and ask for a court hearing for the return of Spot? If one party has been taking the dog to the vet, feeding the dog, cleaning the poop the whole time, that’s a pretty simple answer for the judge to rule on.

But again, do we really want to create that conflict early? And we have to discuss what if the judge says, “Well, you left Spot behind. Too bad. Go get another Spot,” which would embolden the abuser much more than a $100,000. Because it’s not about the money. It’s about the control and the punishment of the abused person for not doing what they were told. And then because it’s more than just entitlement, it’s the joy of the slap.

Amy Helms:

All right.

Miles Mason:

All right. How to abuse somebody after you’re physically separated becomes the job of their attorney. So, as we go through that analysis, one answer for many of my clients has been, “Get a Frenchie. Frenchies are awesome. You can have them in an apartment, you can crate them up. They’ve got a lot of energy. You’ve got to go walk them when you get home from work.” But they’ll always be happy. So even if you had a Lab before in a big yard, no, don’t get another Lab for an apartment. And then we just say, “Oh, congratulations. You’ve won Spot,” in the negotiations. And it freaks them out because they hoped for this battleground, and you just let them win it. That’s one way to just pop that balloon.

And once you think through the problem three-dimensionally, a lot of times clients look, “Oh yeah, I love Spot, but I’m getting another dog, if I can stick it to her.” Well, the other thing is they’re afraid that that spouse is going to abuse Spot, and that’s scary, but that’s a whole different set of problems. And so, working through the three-dimensional Rubik’s Cube that is trying to play mind games during the divorce, that’s why it’s so important to have insight into that person’s particular psyche, needs, narcissistic supply, and overall level of strategic thinking.

Because a true smart narcissist would never put that much control in their hands. Even if it’s engineered to be toxic to the abused person, a deeply smart strategic narcissist would never put that much power in their hands, if that makes sense. Because everything is three-dimensional in this world, and not everything has meaning, but yet it might. And so, you have to be just super careful, and thoughtful, and patient in the communications because the options are almost always more than what a client would possibly imagine.

For more, see Miles Mason’s The Complete Guide to Divorcing a Narcissist, a seven part video series.

Learn more about Amy Helms, her therapy practice, and her podcast here.