Divorcing a narcissist can be difficult. Your former spouse’s behavior may have created difficulties during the divorce process. They may have provided additional challenges that only prolonged the inevitable.
However, you may have children with your former spouse. As a result, you may share child custody with your narcissistic ex-spouse. This can present many other challenges that you can prepare for in advance. Here are a few difficulties of sharing child custody with a narcissist:
1. Child alienation
Narcissists rely on manipulating situations to their advantage. One way they may do this in a divorce is by alienating your children. There are a few ways your spouse may alienate your children, such as creating false accusations of you being a bad parent. Your ex-spouse may try to alienate your children so that you do not have a strong bond with them and they do not want to see you.
2. Unfair custody schedule
Your ex-spouse may try to limit how much time you spend with your children. They may present a child custody schedule that gives you very little physical custody of your children and declare all your attempts to draft a more reasonable plan “coercive” or otherwise harmful. They may even push the court to deny you visitation for fictitious reasons.
3. Restricted visitation
You cannot assume that a narcissist will obey any parenting plan. Your ex-spouse may refuse to give your children or make excuses as to why your children should stay with them, even if they have to manufacture “good” reasons. This can leave you struggling to enforce your rights.
Navigating these difficulties can take time. However, letting your narcissistic ex-spouse abuse their child custody rights may harm your relationship with your children. You may need to seek guidance to learn about your legal options.