There are some relationships you choose to initiate but later learn your partner or friend is a narcissist. You must figure out how to manage the relationship and whether you keep the narcissist in your life or move on. But what if you have an amazing partner who is loving and supportive, but find out their parent is a narcissist? To remain in the relationship with your partner means you open the door for the narcissist-in-law to be in your life. How do you adjust to this dynamic and what is the best way to handle what is happening? This is especially hard when your partner is not willing to cut their family out of their life so the narcissist-in-law will be someone you have to encounter.
When you choose a partner, there are qualities in them you enjoy and you want to spend more time with them to grow the relationship. However, as things move forward in the relationship and are going well, you learn that your partner has a parent who is a narcissist, and this interrupts the relationship you have with your partner. You and your partner are great at communicating and solving issues that come up, however, when their narcissistic parent is involved, things become tense, and you feel like you can’t do anything right.
This feeling of never being good enough and as if you are going crazy can happen regardless of if your partner supports their parent or not. The narcissistic parent can very easily make things about them, and this can damage the dynamics of your romantic relationship.
As I have discussed previously, the narcissist looks out for themselves, and the world revolves around them. The narcissists have feelings of superiority and grandiosity, but they have little to show in their life to support these beliefs. They must always protect against being found out as an average person who isn’t as great as they want everyone to believe. To do this, they deflect and blame shift to maintain control of the situation.
The narcissist-in-law has spent a lifetime controlling their child and that dynamic has been created already. As the partner to their child, you become an extension of the child and the narcissist-in-law feels they can treat you the same way. As the partner to their child, you are also viewed as a threat because you are someone who has taken their child’s attention away from them. The narcissist must always feel like the center of attention and when there is a new person, you, introduced, the narcissist-in-law feels threatened.
When a narcissist feels threatened, they enter a protection mode to protect against shame and narcissistic injury. This can make it very difficult dealing with the narcissist-in-law. It will feel like a constant battle where you are always seen as the problem. You are brought up as the problem for anything and this is because the narcissist must exert their control over you to help themselves feel more in control.
When you learn you have a narcissist-in-law, it is very important to focus on setting boundaries as soon as possible with the narcissist. The narcissist-in-law will push all boundaries to see how they can control you and this is a constant game of trial-and-error so that they can always feel like they have the upper hand. The sooner you set, and keep, boundaries, the better the relationship you can have with your narcissist-in-law, and your partner.
Your partner has had their narcissistic parent their whole life and may not be ready to change how they interact. You need to be ok with letting your partner figure out this new dynamic but also be ready to initiate and maintain the boundaries you feel are important for you. Strong communication is needed between you and your partner as your narcissist-in-law tries to create a divide between you two. While the narcissist parent will likely cause chaos in an otherwise stable relationship, with good communication and boundary setting it is possible to grow the relationship with your partner while they figure out how to navigate their parent.