Married to a Narcissist with Tina Swithin

The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, I Heart Media, or their employees. And we wrote vows. It was very important to him that we both wrote wedding vows. And I thought, wow, that is so romantic, and he hands me a stack of paper and what he had actually stayed up all night writing was a pre nup.

But this was not a normal prain up. It had things in there like if I were to ever get pregnant, I had to return to pre pregnancy weight within one year. Hi, I'm Dr Rominey, and this is navigating narcissism. In this podcast, we'll learn how to heal from the narcissist in your life from the people who know this territory the best the survivors. In this episode, we are going to hear the story of Tina Swidden. Tina is a survivor of an abusive marriage, post separation abuse, and a painful journey

to the family court system. Her story is one of perseverance through a relationship that seemed perfect at the start but went downhill, ending in a long court battle. Today, Tina is working to raise awareness of these issues in the family court system. She works with survivors and educates the general public post separation abuse and narcissistic abuse. Hey, Tina, Welcome, Welcome, How are you. I am doing well and I'm so

excited to be here. Well, I'm deeply honored because you know, I not only am all struck by your expertise, but you know, I very much consider you a friend. So it's an honor of times to to have you here on the podcast. So thank you so much for doing this and for sharing your story, which is incredibly empowering. But also it's unbelievable that you're able to talk about it again and again because of how difficult it is.

So thank you. Thank you, So Tina. I want to start at the very beginning and go back to literally when you first met your ex husband, and I want to understand what about the new life with your ex husband drew you in the most. I think it was the presentation and what he had to offer me, and how kind and considerate and caring he seemed to be. I had never dated anyone that was as thoughtful as he was, and coming from a very broken home life, difficult childhood, I really put both he and his family

up on a pedestal. They were, you know, an intact family. They seemed very healthy, very happy, very involved in the community, very educated. It was really a picture of stability. Interesting how compelling that idea of stability was. Let's pause a second and allow me to break this down a little more. One of the ways that narcissistic relationships can sneak up on us is when they represent something we have never experienced and are an offset to the difficult parts of

our life histories. People who come from dysfunctional families may be really drawn to what seemed like healthier people or families, or people who can pretend to be those things. If a person craves stability or has never had it, then stability can be really seductive. So from there, Tina, you chose to go with your therapist advice at the time by deciding to start dating him because she said you were not used to people treating you well. How did

following your therapist advice shape where your life ended up? Wow? You know, when I had taken a full year off from dating and really put myself into therapy, I wanted to work through past baggage from childhood, from my upbringing, and I didn't want to carry that into future relationships. And I remember going to her and telling her, you know, this person seems too good to be true, but for

some reason, I'm not attracted to him at all. And honestly, the thought of even kissing him it felt almost repulsive. I just could not imagine being intimate with this person. And I remember her telling me, you're just not accustomed to a normal adult, healthy relationship, and so you may have to push yourself a little bit out of your

comfort zone. And when she said that to me, it actually made complete sense, and I thought, you know, that is probably what's happening, and so I overrode my instincts and pushed myself forward, and I thought, you know, I'm being superficial I'm being vain because I'm not physically attracted to this person, and that there's more to a relationship than just physical attraction, and so I really pushed. You know. Now, in hindsight, I can see that was my intuitions screaming loudly.

That is so wild. You're right, you framed at us. Was I being superficial? But it does make me wonder if somewhere there was this instinct that was screaming out that in some ways you were sort of told to silence. So many people have asked me, Dr Rominey, how do I detect a narcissist as early as possible. They're always looking for a question they could ask or tell they can look for, but I always tell them listen to

your body. Our brain, frankly, often gaslights our body. Our body may not feel comfortable when we meet a new narcissistic person, but we often talk ourselves out of that feeling, or other people talk us out of it. Tina's body was telling her something, and most of us often don't listen to those instincts that we feel about a person

early on. And I have actually stayed in touch with my therapists from back then and she has read my book and has said, you know, these are things I never learned in school, and so she's learned a lot from my journey, from my experience, you sort of silence this physical instinct at one point that was trying to

help you. So Tina raises something really important here. For all the havoc that narcissistic people reak in our lives and our relationships, not all therapists understand narcissistic relationships because this stuff isn't taught in school. That can mean that a person going through a narcissistic relationship is going to therapy and clearly describing their relationship, and the therapist may simply just not have a playbook for a narcissistic relationship

to be able to help the client. Now, I love this quote from your blog quote, red flags are only seen while reflecting on the relationship in the rear view mirror. Take us through some of the red flags that you only realized were really read later and how you weren't able to see them at first. One of the first dates that we had, we were driving about an hour away from our home. He was taking me out to dinner and he didn't tell me where we were going. He wanted it to be a surprise. I didn't know

this person. He told me, the only thing you need to bring is your driver's license in case we go out after dinner, And so I got into his car trusting, and after dinner we had had a few drinks and had the hour drive back home, and I had warned him I fall asleep in the car. So I fell asleep. Next thing I know, I heard the tires of his car pull off into gravel. And when I woke up, we were up on the top of the mountain in the middle of nowhere, overlooking a city, and it was

pitch black out. I froze and I panicked, and I instantly thought, I've made a really bad decision. I put myself in a really dangerous situation. And I remember asking him, why why are we stopped? Can we please leave? And he said, I want to show you the view. I want to show you the city from up here. And it made me so uncomfortable. But then again I'm second guessing myself, thinking you're being too paranoid. This is such a nice guy. He did all the right things, set

all the right things at dinner. Then he gave me the silent treatment the whole way home because of how I reacted and looking back, a healthy, considerate human would not have put me in a situation like that, And so that was the very first red flag on our date. But again because I came from a background where I did not have healthy relationships and I had a lot of self doubt, that took over. And so then I started beating myself up, thinking why are you so critical

of him? You know? So again it's over writing my intuition. Many people might say, oh, it's a surprise, isn't that romantic? And yet you saw it as that. It felt unsettling. And then to be taken in the dark somewhere someone you didn't know. Again, a lot of people say so romantic, but not so much. It almost felt like there wasn't even that much consent. Yes, you were just taken and you had nothing to say about it. We tend to over romanticize surprises, being taken somewhere and not knowing what

it's going to be. It all feels very wrong calm, But when you think about it really early in a relationship, before you know someone, it may all also be a bit controlling and even unsettling Because a surprise is supposed to be so exciting. People will often feel guilty for viewing a heavily planned surprise as a red flag. And another red flag popped up here, the silent treatment when she didn't give him the reaction he wanted for his surprise.

When people are this thin skinned, that is a bad sign. Were there any other red flags, Tina, that jumped out at you from not even just the early days, but weeks months of the relationship that looking back, you're like, Wow, that was a red banner. Looking back, what I now know to be love bombing was extreme, and even the stories I hear now I sometimes reflect back on how

over the top it truly was. The first week we started dating, I would go out to my car at seven am to get ready and go to work, and there would be poetry on my window shield. There would be a dozen red roses delivered to my office stays after I met this person. Wow, the poetry, the roses, and all within a week of your first day. I'm going to take a moment now to explain what love

bombing is. Love Bombing is this process of seduction and idealization, and it sweeps a person away into something that feels like a fairy tale. Now, Unfortunately, while you're being love bombed, you can easily miss the red flags. Love bombing, though, is often a part of abusive and narcissistic relationship cycles, and it is exciting as all of this may seem.

The love bombing should absolutely be a red flag. Absolutely when the love bombing manifest says stuff being left on your windshield, on your doorstep, or flowers to your workplace really early on, once again, big red flag. There's something sort of surveillancey about it that they're rolling by your spot and making their presence known in your workplace. It's

like they're marking their territory. I know I sound like the anti Cupid pointing out these things, but a week in finding stuff on your windshield maybe a sign of more obsessive behavior and not just healthy interest. Tina, what were some of the other ways that he loved bombed you? I remember after first date he called me a couple of days later and said, I want you to take the whole day off of work. I've called in to the local day spa. I've put my credit card down.

You have a full day of services booked for you. It was so much that I truly didn't have time to think or to self reflect. It was just constant and truly overwhelming. But again, overwriting intuition, I thought, this is what it's like to date an adult male. I've only dated I was twenty six years old. I had a history of dating bad boys and you know, not the healthiest of relationships. And so I thought, this is what adult dating must be like, and sign me up.

If if this is what it is, it's amazing. So let's unpack this. Love Bombing is exciting and it can be amazing, but as Tina said, it's also overwhelming, and so we don't even get a second to process all that's happening. And the tough part of love bombing is that anyone looking at this relationship from the outside would think that you're lucky. So calling red flags out while you are being love bomb may literally feel impossible for many people, especially for people who may not have had

these experiences in prior relationships. There was another major red flag Tina that jumped out, which was a pre nup that you didn't sign. Can you sort of frame that as a red flag because it certainly seemed to be, but can you talk to us a little bit about that episode. Right before we went on this vacation to Maui, I had lost my mom to suicide, and so I was in this state of emotional turmoil. You know, it was very much a fog. And he suggested we fly off to Hawaii and spend a week there. I had

never been. I thought that was so exciting and a good, you know, place for me to just take a breather. A few days into our trip, he proposed to me. Not only that, he said, let's not tell anyone, and let's get married while we're here. So I'm away from friends and family, I can't call anybody. He doesn't want anyone to know. He planned the wedding within a two day period of time. He was insistent that it was a man who married us. He did not want a female.

That should have been a red flag. And we went to dinner the night before and we wrote vows. It was very important to him that we both wrote wedding vows. So we did that, and then we get back to our hotel and he said, you know, go ahead and go to bed. I want to continue working on my vows. And I thought, wow, that is so romantic. And he hands me a stack of paper and what he had actually stayed up all night writing was a pre nup.

But this was not a normal prenup. It had things in there, like if I were to ever get pregnant, I had to return to pre pregnancy weight within one year. If our marriage failed with in the first five years, I had to give the wedding ring back to him. If the marriage lasted eight years, we split the wedding ring whatever it sold for. If we made it past the ten year mark, the wedding ring was mine to keep. And it went on and on and on, and I

remember sitting there. I walked over to a curb and I am sitting on a curb, crying and basically some explatives and and shoved it back at him and said, I'm not doing this. And I didn't even read. I just skinned it. But what I did skim was mind blowing to me. And I told him I'm not marrying you and this is this is insane. And he ended up apologizing, begging profusely that we just go on with our day, go on with the ceremony, and so I didn't sign it. Yeah, that should have sent me running

for the hills of MAUI. Narcissistic entitlement can often come out in a pre nup. While pre nuptial agreements in and of themselves aren't an issue, in the hands of a narcissistic person, a pre nup can be punitive and titled and manipulative. In some ways. The devious nous of a narcissistic prenup is a real hint of what a mess a divorce from a narcissist is going to be. Just from my curiosity, if you had gained ten pounds after a pregnancy, then what did you have to pay

like a penalty? I have no idea, but I will tell you that was really what put our marriage in a downward spiral, because I did gain ten pounds and I didn't lose that that ten pounds right within the one year mark. But the gifts that I received after I gave birth were how to get perfect to abs. I got a new road bike, which I don't bike. I got running shoes, I got signed up for five

ks and ten k's new jogging strollers. And he ended up moving into a second bedroom after the birth of our second daughter because he was repulsed by it was probably fifteen pounds, but compared to the one and ten person he married, it was unacceptable and in his mind grotesque. Now that you talk about it, you know, people would say, that's beyond a red flag, like you know, that's like a red like a red cover a football stadium in one banner, like skin seat from the sun kind of thing.

Narcissistic gift giving can be really messed up. It's typically quite self serving. They will often give gifts that are consistent with their lifestyle and their interests, and for example, Tina getting a bike and running shoes that you didn't need, or relate to how they want their partner to look, or give lavish gifts so they can get praised by the world. Wow, what a great, amazing piece of jewelry

you gave, or something like that. But narcissists really give gifts from a place of empathy or thoughtfulness about what the other person wants. In fact, in this case, Tina got gifts that almost felt punitive. Yeah, get those flat abs back. But as you were talking about red flags, you said, so many things were happening so quickly you almost wouldn't have had the time to notice these things. As red flags like it was just sounded like there

was an intensity and a quickness to this relationship. So there isn't even enough time to process the information. No, but you start going in deeper and deeper, and then it starts to becoming I couldn't leave even if I wanted to. I have basically sold everything I owned. I am dependent on him because he wanted me to quit work go back to college, and so it was in a very short period of time he pushed me into completely being dependent on him in pretty much all areas

of our life. You know this as well as anybody out there. Tina. This idea of making someone financially dependent on them, that's one of many dynamics of a toxic relationship or toxic marriage with a narcissist when you look, especially at the early days of this marriage, because already the financial dependency was being created early. What are the other dynamics of a toxic relationship that you were observing in your own marriage? Whittling in a way at my

self esteem in a very covert way. It wasn't outright calling me names or saying negative things about me. He would say them about other people. My self esteem was non existent. Everything I had worked for a year in therapy to build up one is beneath him wasn't good enough.

And I remember any time I would be on a phone call with someone or talking to someone at one of his work events, he would then tell me the whole way home what I said wrong, why I shouldn't have said this, why I shouldn't have said that, to where I truly became quiet. So you're slowly being taken apart, that's what I'm hearing. Absolutely, a toxic relationship is death by a thousand cuts. These are relationships where a person's

wings are clipped one feather at a time. They mesodically play upon any existing narrative you have of being not good enough. They will scrutinize you and belittle you and criticize you, and all of this is a slow indoctrination into domination and control. The smaller they can make you feel, the bigger they believe they are. My mom had bipolar disorder and ended up taking her life, and he knew how afraid I was because I had read that it

was genetic. Back then, I didn't know a lot about it, and he would constantly use that to taunt me because we had a very difficult relationship because of her addiction to drugs and just the choices she made in life, and she wasn't a part of my life. But what I knew from a distance terrified me, and he used that to constantly. You know, I can think of one example, when my mom actually died, I found out, and it was a phone call. I expected my whole life because

of the path she had been on. I was in fetal position, crying, and he walked in and he looked at me and said, I don't understand why you're so upset. You weren't even close with her. And I started realizing that any time I had any type of emotional reaction, he thought I was unhind or unstable, and so it started creating doubt in me. You know, am, I is something wrong with me? Doubting and judging your emotion, questioning your grief, and then portraying you as unstable for having

any kind of emotional reaction. That is gaslighting, plane and simple, and it's also emotional abuse. Tina, you said something so interesting. You said were married in secret in Hawaii. We didn't tell anyone. We know you proposed and boom, you were you were, It wasn't Usually there's some space which in proposal on a wedding, And once he was willing to get rid of the ridiculous pre nup, you went ahead and got married. Why did you get married in secret?

Can you unpack that for us a little? Just to understand that the way it was presented to me spontaneous, romantic, we'll tell everybody afterwards, we're going to have this big party. And now I realized it would have been a big spotlight for him. He likes to be different, and I think there was a part of him who he was embarrassed by me. His family didn't accept me because educational, you know, they were very big on college. I had become an entrepreneur at a very young age, and I

took a different path in life. But all of a sudden that was a negative And I thought, Wow, am I that naive that other people judged me this way when I've always been praised and received awards for my successes. Interesting, Yet this family who I look up to, would somehow think less of me or wouldn't consider me to be appropriate for their family. So let's do a little bit of a deeper dive. Here right around shame. Narcissistic people

often infect other people with their shame. Narcissism is basically a shame based pattern, and they will often project that shame onto other people. So what we see here is that he may have wanted a secret wedding because his family didn't want people to know about Tina's education. Despite her considerable success as a businesswoman. Narcissistic people can leave any of us feeling like we are just one inch tall, devaluing our successes and our achievements, and that's mostly because

they are so insecure themselves. I know he would weaponize your mom's death. Did he do that? Did he use your mother's death as a way to to sort of reel you into this long term commitment into a marriage. Absolutely.

I mean when my mom died, he proposed to me less than a month later, and so I was in this deep grief, you know, because even though my mom and I had had in a strange relationship and it had been very, very difficult, I grasped so tightly onto hope that she would come through this, that she would get help. And so I was not only grieving her death, but the loss of hope of having a relationship with my mom. We see something interesting here. Pushing fast forward

on that commitment button. Proposing to Tina at a time of such complex grief when her mother died, it really exploits her confusion and her anguish It makes it harder to think clearly about committing to such a momentous decision, and also takes advantage of Tina wanting to find that piece of stability when so much has changed in her life. So you said in your book, you say that survivors of narcissistic abuse are some of the most intelligent, empathetic

humans I've ever known. Why do you say that and how did all of this get shaped by your relationship with your ex husband? I think that narcissists are attracted to people who are the exact opposite of themselves. So in some ways, through the work that I do, through the work that you do, you're able to connect with and find some pretty amazing humans to surround yourself with.

You know, it's funny here Tina frames it as narcissists being attracted to people who are the opposite of them Narcissistic people are actually drawn to empathic people, people who are willing to justify to cut them slack, to forgive them, and above all, who are willing to put up with their stuff without calling them out. So your empathy, the best part of you, actually places you at risk for

narcissistic relationships. You would think that survivors of narcissistic abuse would get the the empathy kind of um scared out of them in a way, and yet that doesn't go away despite having gone through something so awful, and certainly

your story was very difficult. I think that what you've really laid out is that at the beginning of a narcissistic relationship, the narcissistic person in a way has this sort of dark superpower as the only way you can designated to be able to find every vulnerability a person

has and use those to control them. And the entire experience leaves an individual who is in the early phase of a narcissistic relationship constantly doubting themselves, especially if there had been a history of sort of difficult or complex relationships when a person was growing up. So it's as

though the narcissistic person is the ultimate tactician. They get someone exactly where they need them to be able to take them apart to be able to control them, and then they engage in all kinds of tricks to obscure the red flags. So if you're not aware of what this is, and most people aren't in one of their

earlier relationships, they get your right where they want you. Yeah, I describe it as you know, this person when I first met, who seemed like a sponge, like he was the stride up sponge, and he was so interested in everything I had to say, my every worry, my every concern, my every ailment that I've ever had in life, and in a lot of ways molded himself to be my

band aid, my savior. And now looking back, he was keeping a mental spreadsheet of every single pain, every single wound, so that he knew right where to go to inflict the most pain the quickest, And it's hard to grasp for those of us who don't think that way. Something I've said is that I believe that narcissistic people create an atlas of our vulnerabilities, so just like a map, they know exactly where to go to get what they need from us. And that's what the love bombing is.

It's our walls come down and they get that information. So let's talk about them having kids. It's interesting in the pre nup he said that if you gain weight when you're pregnant, who knows what the penalty would be. But come to find out that he didn't really want kids. How would you connect, Tina, his lack of excitement around having children to his narcissism And how did this affect you in the beginning, because it sounded like you really

wanted to be a mom. For him, he wanted to be a jet setter, He wanted to travel the world. He wanted to excel in our businesses, have this fantastic life which he felt children would ruin for him. And he had grown up in a family with quite a few kids and didn't want to do that. He saw his parents struggle with having so many children, and for whatever reason, he was adamant that we would not have kids. So when I found out in two thousand and four that I was pregnant with my first daughter, I was

terrified to tell him. Um. I didn't even tell him that I purchased pregnancy tests because I didn't want it to be true for fear of his reaction and this sense of fear as I walked out of the bathroom and told him, and sure enough, he took one look at me, and I just saw this look of disgust and rage, and he walked out of the room. It's so painful a person is married, you find out you're pregnant.

We often have this vision of this being such a precious moment in a relationship, and you were met with the silent treatment. So that's what happened when you found out you were pregnant, and then you live or the baby. What was his caregiving like at those times. Well, I was almost two weeks overdue, and that infringed on his triathlon training schedule. So he would leave and leave me home alone for great periods of time, and it was terrifying.

And so he's gone for two hours, and I called my doula and pretended he was there, that we were just tying up a few things before we came, because it had become my role to protect our image, and I didn't want our doula to be mad at him during delivery. So I pretended that he was there with me and that we would be to the hospital shortly.

Once we got there, he became what I needed, and he was actually presented as very carrying, compassionate, and in my opinions, because there was an audience do law, doctors, everybody else, and we were known in the community. So he really did become a doting dad of this newborn baby in the hospital. But even in that period of time, it gave me such hope. I thought that I knew as soon as he met this baby that it would

all become clear for him how important this was. And so I I was on this roller coaster of you know, went through my whole pregnancy without him ever touching my stomach or feeling her kick, or doing the things a normal partner would do. And so I I did have hope after she was born, and that quickly went away. Right after I got out of the hospital, he let me know how much I had hurt his travel on training schedule and that he was really behind. Okay, let's

pause a second so I can break this down. Hope is a four letter word in narcissistic relationships, and people give into it so quickly. Tina's ex didn't take care of her at all during the pregnancy, but when he showed up at the hospital, the frustration of the prior nine months was almost immediately replaced by hope. This hope disappointment cycle is the roller coaster that is every narcissistic relationship.

I'll tell you I almost feel embarrassed to admit. The day we left the hospital, we drove out to the lake, which was about an hour from our home, and I sat in the truck and the parking lot with the air conditioner on, holding a newborn baby in excruciating pain, while he went out swimming and biking and did his whole trathlon run. And then later that week we went camping.

He had trained for this triathlon, and that was the weekend that it was happening, And so I stood at the finish line in high heat, holding a newborn baby with staples in my stomach, cheering him on like the good wife. I did it for both pregnancies, because both of my daughters were born in April. During his triathlon, I couldn't do the things you're describing on a good day camping, triathlon heat, waiting for somebody to run. But what's really interesting to me is how you keep saying

I'm embarrassed to say this. You have nothing to be embarrassed for, you know. It speaks to how much we internalize these relationships. You were simply doing what you needed to do to survive in that relationship, and yet, after all these years telling this story, you still feel that sense of embarrassment, as though you've done something wrong. I was in such a deep fog that I didn't see how horrible it was. Now looking back, if someone were to tell me this story, I would, you know, probably

look at them sideways, thinking, how you know? That seems almost hard to believe, but not hard to believe once we know what narcissism is. It's sort of like every story has different episodes, but all of it comes down to it being invalidating unempathic behavior. Stories may look different, but the theme is always the same. My session with Tina will continue after this break. So Tina, let's talk about the weekend that changed it all? Okay, because there

was this moment. Honestly, every narcissistic relationship has this. So far, what you've been talking about is behavior that's pretty bad, but a feeling. We haven't hit rock bottom on this one yet. So Tina, tell us how bad did your ex husband's behavior get and what was this tipping point? What did this look like? I started uncovering some pretty significant financial indiscretions. At one point I found out that

we were one point six million dollars in debt. There was a reality that I didn't know about, and that was we didn't really have the money that we were spending. There came a point where everything was frozen because the I r S shut it all down. Around that time, I ended up finding a therapist, and this therapist said, it sounds like he's highly narcissistic, and that really started

the beginning of the end. He basically waited until I left on a Friday night to go down south to visit my sister, and lying in wait was a moving truck and his face only members. They basically took every single possession that I owned out of the house and then replaced it with very cheap furniture. The most disturbing part was he had gutted everything out of my bedroom and redecorated it with a toddler bed with little girl decor, and on the bed he left the book The Proper

Care and Feeding of Husbands. M hmm, that's interesting. I can get him vindictively taking all of the things out of the house. I mean, that's staffed but okay, putting children's furniture in your room? What's that about. I have some hypotheses myself, But why do you think he did that?

To this day, I have no idea. It was so disturbing I to this day, I cannot understand why we could only speculate, Like part of me wonders, is that how he saw you as a child, because we can control a child right as a child that he could control, or is that just sort of how he almost viewed you within the I mean in the marriage, Like, I don't think being viewed as a child's being devalued. I think,

actually children are wonderful. But in this case, it implied like a powerlessness, like I'm going to render you to be as powerless as a child. You're going to have no more power than the toddler, basically because there's a toddler bed in the room. It's such a strange thing for him to have done. Yeah, And our nanny was living with us at the time, and she's the one that called me to tip me off that this was happening.

And she said, when I walked in the room, he looked manic, and he was terrifying, and he was trying to show me the photos of you as a little girl, and and look how sweet she looked. And our nanny moved out that weekend and I ended up in the women's shelter, afraid from my life very shortly after that episode, because I no longer felt safe in the house. You think about that again. We talked about the weekend that

changed at all. That you went from living in a comfortable home, married with kids and all of that to having to show up at a women's shelter just to feel safe is a remarkable, remarkable shift want something that you never sounds like in your story, you never would have anticipated something like that happening. No, I remember my little girl saying from the back seat, where are we going?

And I said, you know, we're going to a special hotel for moms and kids and will be there for a few days hopefully, and then we can go back home. But very humbling. So, Tina, I honestly think after what you've been through, you are literally an expert on gaslighting, something you probably didn't even know what it was before you got married. Talked to us about what does it mean, what does it mean to be gaslighted? And how it showed up in your relationship. I called him one day.

I was home in this brand new house that we lived in and the roof was leaking. I called him and I said, what should I do? I'm not sure what to do. And he said, Tina, I told you to remind me to have the gutters cleaned. He was irate and he was yelling at me. And it was in that moment I literally felt like things became so clear. I've never in my life had a conversation with anyone about clearing gutters and how everything in our relationship was

my fault. It's so interesting, Tina, that you should talk about gaslighting, because your story shows it in its many different forms. Gaslighting is a process of manipulation in which the gaslighter denies reality and doubts the mental health of the other person. Over time, a gaslighted person starts to not only doubt reality, but they also doubt themselves. For example, Ball with the gutters, you had a situation where he yelled at you for not cleaning them and that it

was your fault that the roof was leaking. He expected you to read his mind about cleaning the gutters, and because you didn't do that because you couldn't do that, it was your fault that the roof is leaking. And I would even argue to Tina that the way he was reassuring you that your family finances were fine, although there was one point six million dollars in debt, that

was gas lighting too. You know, you were married for nine years and it started going downhill to the point where you had had enough and the only option for you to get housing was to go to a women's shelter, and that was the place where you filed the paperwork for the divorce. At that point, he cut you off from all financial resources. It's not just about denying reality. It's cutting you down so much. Now you're already confused and you've been cut down. Gas Lighting has a few

parts to it. First, you trust him because he is your husband, or at least you want to trust him. Then he repeatedly denies reality, denies your reality, he denies all reality, which confuses you. Then he tells you that you're impaired or stupid about money, or have a mother who has mental illness. So this is a systematic process.

It's a systematic process of breaking you down so he can control you absolutely there it is so you can see that if you have less power, which in your case you did, and then he was from this family that had a good reputation in the community, and you are being painted as having something wrong with you, all of this together can make it really impossible to feel like you can fight back. We will be right back

with this conversation with Tina. So, Tina, your story is already extraordinary, but what starts happening in court is almost unreal. One of the most important points you have brought up over and over again is how the family court system cares much more about parental rights over child safety and welfare. Can you talk about that, because I think that's such an important part of your story. When I first walked into the family court system, it was two thousand nine.

I was forced to represent myself because of severe financial abuse. I could not afford an attorney, and I walked in so naive. I just believed that they would hear the concerns and that it's it's really common sense you protect children. That's what I thought that the court system was there to do. But what I quickly found out was that his parental rights were truly given more weight than my child's safety. Talk to us more about what a safe environment in this situation you're in for a child. If

your children would have meant for our situation. I mean, I don't believe he should have ever been unsupervised. But the way the family court system works, if you have a pulse and you say you want to give parenting a try, even if you've never parented before, or even if you could be considered dangerous, they're still going to give you a standing ovation for having a pulse and showing up, and they give the benefit of the doubt to the detriment of the children. What needs to happen

in the family court system. Then, so many people, myself and Fluted are shocked when they find out that most family court judges have zero training in domestic violence, and if they do have training in domestic violence, we're talking the very one oh one version, and and that usually involves black eyes, busted lips, broken bones. They don't have the understanding of the intricacies of these toxic individuals, the you know, narcissistic individuals, and that the children to them

are possessions, their ponds, their weapons. You know, in the family court system, it's all about winning and it's all about hurting the healthy parent. It sounds like it would make their job harder because right now it sounds like

a very rubber stamped parental rights thinking. It's also a lot of people making money, Tina, There's a part of me wondering that the system as it stands, there's a lot of money going into a lot of people's pockets that perhaps people, you know, powerful people don't even want to see a change. But I think at some level two is that once you have to account for these dynamics,

adjudicating these cases becomes a lot more complicated. It means you have to take in a lot more variables, And I just don't know that they want to make their jobs more difficult. Understanding narcissism isn't just a useful tool for people in toxic relationships. It is unconscionable that people making such life altering decisions that should be informed by this knowledge have almost no working knowledge of narcissism or

antagonistic personalities. In general, narcissistic folks know how to perform in court and can quite easily trick the various folks who make the big decisions in the family courts. The charm, in the charisma that you saw during the love bombing. They are going to bring that same game into court. Did your divorce, the finalization of your divorce, did that provide you with any closure? No? Actually, that two day trial that we had two years into my divorce proceedings

actually placed my children in a worse situation. Through the entire trial, I had brought friends into the courtroom, and when we were on a break, everybody was saying, you know, this is a no brainer. Instead of protecting my children, my children were actually put with him even more. It was such a difficult pill to swallow because the court had acknowledged that they didn't trust him to pick them up from school. Yet we're allowing this person to have them.

And you know, I'll tell you my daughters when this started, we're two and four years old. Had never been away from me, especially my youngest, not even an overnight, and the trauma that that alone, Even if he would have been a healthy parent or a semi healthy parent, it is so wrong what we're doing two kids, because years later we are still dealing with that baggage from her being ripped away from me at two years old. It

didn't provide you with closure. And it sounds a lot of that is because of the poor decision making within the system. As you said, they couldn't entrust him to pick up the children, but they were willing to entrust him to keep the children overnight. They're not even thinking about the illogic of that is actually quite striking. Can you tell us, Tina, where are things now with your case?

Two thousand nineteen, we successfully terminated his parntal rights, which I was told all along the way that would never happen. It's impossible. It took almost ten years for me to get from the starting point to actually terminating his parental rights. It's an ultramarathon. And the reality is narcissist typically only trained for a ten k and so it's outlasting them because these are children and you don't really have a choice to Your ends are tied by this broken system.

I am remarried to a wonderful man and he's adopted my daughters and so we we have peace. And I think that's so important for people to hear on multiple levels. There's just two things that jump out about what you just said, Tina. One was that this is an ultramarathon. Right you fight for your kids. Your story is extraordinary for your tenaciousness, for your perseverance in the face of

what happened. It's understandable how many other people would not have that tenacity, who would say I can't do this anymore, who are so traumatized by these systems. I know in your work you work with many people who have been pushed to those limits. So in your case, in many ways, one could view it as a win, Tina, but I think that's a risky way to frame it, because it was a win that left you and your children completely ragged. Tina's case is unusual in that parental rights were terminated,

and that was after ten years. Many people do not have these outcomes, and can we really call it a win. Even when people get outcomes that may ultimately protect their children, after the children are put through so much chaos and instability by systems that are so concerned with the rights of antagonistic parents over the needs of children. These toxic processes can impact children for a lifetime. You met someone and you fell in love, and you've created a new life.

I think survivors really need to hear that, they really do. You're happy, Yeah, that journey though you're exceptional as well. As we wrap up here, something you've often said, Tina's that you've chosen to take on or assume the title of being a survivor instead of being a victim. Talk to us about how you got to that way of thinking of yourself as a survivor. Everyone who goes through this system is a survivor. You're strong, you're a war you'r whether or not you feel like you are or not.

And I'm going to not only survive, I'm going to thrive. It's such an amazing journey because I really do it does. The family court system is almost designed to leave someone feeling like a victim, like something is being done to them, versus taking back your power and saying I am going to navigate through this. And I suppose the next part of the journey, after being a survivor, as being a thriver,

which is something you really are doing. Please tell us a little bit about what you are working on now and how people can find you, because your work is

absolutely extraordinary. Tina, thank you. So. I'm one of the founding members of an organization called the National Safe Parents Organization, and it's the top family court advocates in the country coming together and working really hard to ensure that in five years we don't have to keep talking about how broken it is and that changes are going to be made. But it's going to take a village. And Tina, how

can people find you? One Mom's Battle dot Com and my books Divorcing a Narcissist are all available on Amazon.

Fantastic Again, Tina, I know you and so you and I obviously have heard your story over the over the years, but getting to these pointed questions, and more than anything, having you tell the story in a way that people can actually see a story that was worse than most and the way how long it went through the system, how many barriers you face, the sort of the harrowing risks that at times you really had to walk your children through, and yet you got to where you needed

to get through through persistence. I think it's important for people to hear this because I have worked with many, many, many clients wending their way through the family court system and the sheer amount of hopelessness and powerlessness that people experience.

To hear a hopeful story despite having gone through such a difficult journey, I'm hoping is something that will sort of invigorate people to to keep getting up and fighting another day and being self forgive and recognizing that there are times that you just need to give yourself a break because the system is really designed to discourage people from soldiering on. So thank you again, thank you well. That was an amazing conversation with Tina. So let's go

over some takeaways after all that we've talked about. First of all, we learned it's so important to trust your instincts repeatedly and to listen to your body. From the very beginning, Tina felt something wasn't right. Don't talk yourself out of what you feel. If you are going through a high conflict divorce with a toxic or antagonistic partner, be sure you educate yourself about how family court procedures

in your region, state, or province work. Many people are rudely awakened when they recognize that the court does not account for narcissist sick behavior, no matter how badly it is harming children and take a page out of Tina's playbook. Another takeaway to keep in mind that when a person weaponizes your pain and vulnerability against you, that is abuse and it's a sign of how far this person will go when the relationship either goes on the rocks where

finally ends. And always remember that the most dangerous and abusive time in a narcissistic relationship is often when it ends. Be prepared for that. Thank you so much for listening. Lastly, make sure you subscribe on I Heart Radio and please

rate this podcast on Apple Podcasts. This show was produced by executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith Falon, jethro Ellen, Rackitton, and Dr Romeny Dr Vassila, Also producer Matthew Jones, associate producer Maura Della Rosa, and our editors and sound engineers Devin Donnahy and Calvin Bailiff.