ExH : is this narcissism or another personality disorder?

[Blondiebeachbabe]

I left ExH 16 years ago, after I found out that he had cheated on me for the whole of our 20 year relationship.

He couldn’t believe that I was leaving him. He begged me to stay, and I did give him 4 extra years to change his ways, but he didn’t.

Initially we had to communicate because we share 2 children, but as soon as the youngest went to Uni, he stopped all communication with me.

We have consequently never spoken of our children’s achievements as adults or their ventures in life. The children are now mid to late 20’s.

At our son’s graduation ceremony, my Ex would not even make eye contact with me, which was so awkward. I always try to make conversation but am ignored.

Our daughter recently got married, and it was just me and her in the hotel room when he came up to see her and he acted as though I wasn’t in the room. He also did not acknowledge me in any way the entire day.

Is this narcissistic or something else? I was faithful for our whole marriage and he was the cheater. So I find this whole ignoring of me so odd.

For context, after I left him, I met my now lovely husband 2 months later, and we have now been together for 16 years. And I don’t know if it’s relevant, but my husband thinks Ex has small man syndrome 😂 Ex is 5ft7 and very skinny. My DH is 6ft3 and very big. Not sure if that’s relevant at all.

Lots of things have been going on with the kids recently, like huge life changing events, and I find it so sad and ridiculous that we can’t talk about those things!!

What a douche, just an immature person

He’s 57! I think it’s more than that. If I try to talk to him, he can’t look in to my eyes!

I don't think any of that suggests a personality disorder. I guess you'll never know why he ignores you, unless you wanted to give him the satisfaction of asking. It might be guilt or shame, it might be anger that you ended it, his new partner might have insisted on it, he might have felt that you ignored him at some point and responded in kind, he might have learnt something about you since the separation that makes him angry or upset, your recollections of the marriage might vary. Who cares. It's been lots of years, and you're happy with a new dp.

Yes lemon you are right, and I barely give it thought, but daughters wedding just happened and it felt so rude on the day.

Narcissists have a whole list of pathological behaviours of which I'm sure infidelity is one, but you'd have an awful lot more to say about him if he was one.

Sounds like a tiny twat though.

Yes it's a shame you couldn't have a warm conversation at your daughter's wedding. No matter what your history is, you both love her and have shared memories. It would have been nice for your dd to see you getting along.

I think either he's ashamed and thinks you must hate him, or he is cowed by the fact that you are 'winning', or he has somehow convinced himself that you were at fault and is giving you the cold shoulder.

Sounds like leaving him was the right decision and you're much happier, so that's the important thing. Presumably, dd could see you trying to be amicable and him being an idiot too. Small man indeed.

Personality disorders are complex (and controversial) mental health diagnosis. Assessing for one is long-winded and complex. There is no way anyone on mumsnet could diagnose one from a post. And to be honest, speculation that people have a personality disorder because of some form of problematic behaviour is stigmatising snd unhelpful to those people who do have a personality disorder (it's also a fad - some years ago schizophrenia used to be the mental health condition everyone blamed for poor behaviour, then it was bi-polar)

Your ex is clearly an asshole. This could be because of any one of a number of mental health conditions but it's more likely it's just because he's a self-absorbed nasty man. I don't think you will ever know why he behaves like this and I wouldn't waste any time or energy trying to work it out.

I have a lot of experience with a narcissistic ex and I've come to the conclusion that trying to give them a psychological diagnosis isn't really helpful. In some ways it feels like a pass for their behaviour.

I find the the concept of High Conflict People more helpful and less 'pathologising'. It's pretty rare for narcissists to ever get a formal diagnosis anyway, so most of the time you'll only be doing armchair psychology. Understanding difficult people as being 'high conflict' focuses you on strategies for thinking about, managing and dealing with their behaviour patterns. (Which you may not need to worry about if you don't see or speak to your ex more than occasionally.)

Having said all that, my ex did start basically ignoring me except for when I addressed direct questions to him once he began to (correctly) suspect that I was seeing someone, some considerable time after we broke up, but before he had started seeing anyone.

As someone said upthread, narcissists hate to feel that they're not 'winning'. So if your life has worked out more so on the whole than his has, then it's a pretty safe bet he will be mad as hell at you.