2yr old dd back from narc dad's. She is crying and so am i

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My exp is a classic narc, he didn't even look at dd for her first year because she had nothing to offer him. I had the chance when we first split to go no contact and he would've welcomed it as we were an inconvenience to his superior life. But i pushed for one day a week contact thinking it was in her best interests.
He has discovered that he gets a lot of the attention he craves when he has her- he parades her round like a performing monkey, taking all the credit for my hard work. He's trained her to come to him when he claps and kiss him.
All week with me she is so well behaved and though she has tantrums they are just normal 2yr old ones, and we always have a hug after.

When she gets back from a day with him, she is cold towards me, angry, hits, won't go to bed(she's upstairs now screaming and crying after an hour of me reading to her) and i am downstairs crying feeling like i'm losing her. She'll want him not me because i'm boring cross mummy, and daddy is exciting.
today he took her to the pub and said everyone was admiring her.

I really really regret pushing for contact. I feel the deep bond between my daughter and me is being eroded by him and i don't know what to do.
I'm also scared of my anger on contact days, i am angry with him but it sometimes channels towards her when she's being challenging and i feel sad about that.
i just wish i could turn back the clock and keep it just us.

Just to add, he was extremely emotionally abusive to me, in that subtle way narcissists are, and gas lighting was normal. I think what my deepest fear is ,is that he will visit these techniques on my daughter. she already modifies her behaviour for him. i hate it. i let her know she can express her feelings to me, if she is sad or angry or happy, i am safe and there for her. with her dad, she is starting to be 'happy daughter' or 'cute daughter'. he has expectations and she is sensitive to his needs. i want to protect her, and i feel this invisible threat is something i am defenceless against.

He sounds shit. If i were you then id do everything in my power to go nc- if you had to actually try to get him involved in his child's life, then whats to say he won't drop out of her life when he loses interest? Obviously, where possible both parents should be involved in a childs life, but if there is no security and he is doing more damage than good you have to make sure she is protected. From your post, it doesnt seem he will try very hard to get contact, you could start the process and see how much it means to him then when he knows what he could lose.

Your daughter is letting go of the stress. She can't do this in front of him as she knows already that he wants her to behave in a certain way. She is safe and comfortable with you and can show her emotions.

These books may be useful

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It's hard isn't it?

Op I want to write something for you but can you hang on til I can get to a computer? In short, I had a dad like your daughter has and we're now no contact and Im very close to my mum is the short version! It'll be ok, she'll see what a twat he is and that its you that makes her feel safe, you'll see

He would fight for contact now, it provides him with a valuable source of admiration/attention. This is what drives him, he needs people to see how superior he is. It's too late, he's addicted to the buzz. He would make my life hell if i rocked the boat, it took a lot of work from me to make him think 'all is well' and take his focus off me. I have flourished outside of his attention.

the only way really would be for me to move far away and hope he gets bored ( if you cut off supply, hopefully he'll find a new source).but i love my community, i have so many friends now.

also he is so convincing that he would get people to believe i am the hysterical one denying him access out of spite. I am not spiteful, i have always tried to come from the best interest of my dd. Things have improved for me since i went very limited contact with him. But my dd is in his world one day a week and it is a world of lies, manipulation, selfishness dressed up as excitement, specialness,exclusivity.

I've been reading up on the effects of children who have narcissistic parents and i my lioness instincts are kicking in, but how do i protect her?

Oh god, i hope so spiced. He is very glamorous and lots of people admire him and think he's great. Want to be near him, compliment him, etc. This is attractive for a little girl. I don't want her to feel the eggshell walking, claustrophobic but-can't-quite-put-your-finger-on-it sort of pain i felt for 5 years i was with him. I truly thought it was me, i cannot let that happen to dd. i just can't.

I need to weigh up whether it is better to sacrifice my support network and the new life i have built here ( he lives round the corner) and move away, or to stay and manage it somehow.

thankyou so much for your replies, it really means a lot as for those 5 years i felt so alone and since the split i have become the person i should have been, blossomed, got loads of lovely friends. now i need to protect my dd. how, how?

Thankyou shoom. Yes, it is hard. i thought i'd done with crying because of him. he is so measured, so level, he normalises it all and the old feelings of disorientation come back. i don't want to have to keep questioning myself.

the hardest thing is on these days she won't let me comfort her. My basic mothering instincts are denied. she gives him a big hug and kiss, then when he's gone she becomes very sensitive and reactive, and won't let me hug her or hold her .

Yes, sadly all sounds familiar - my dad was great 'in the spotlight' too, especially at events like Parents Evenings where he could show off 'his clever daughter' but he couldn't tell you who my friends were or what I wanted to be when I grew up

It all kicked off as I hit teens and started growing away from both my parents (as is natural at that age) and whilst my mum took it in her stride and worked on other ways of keeping us close, my Dad hated that I wasn't as obedient or willing to agree with him instantly and we grew very distant very quickly - I went no contact in my mid-teens as he 'turned' on me when I wasn't as attractive to show off etc anymore...

I ope this makes sense and helps you, stay strong, you sound like you're doing a great job and will be all your little girl needs

the hardest thing is on these days she won't let me comfort her. My basic mothering instincts are denied. she gives him a big hug and kiss, then when he's gone she becomes very sensitive and reactive, and won't let me hug her or hold her .

This isn't personal to you, this is classic, textbook behaviour. Do you have a GP or HV that you'd feel comfortable talking to? There are games and activities and things that you can do with your daughter to help her emotional development, self-esteem and sense of independence.

Thankyou so much spiced . I am so scared. My love is deep and that is what i hope will protect her. I am consistent, i make sure she is in touch with her emotions and empathy, we talk about it on her level. What i am working on is giving her an emotional vocabulary .

He is looking forward to her hitting her teenage years, he travels a lot and wants to take her to exotic places (he is well off), and he uses certain drugs which he wants to be the one to introduce to her ( lsd, cannabis, coke) he wants to be the first to introduce her to all that. I am totally against it, but it is a long way off. I don't do recreational drugs, i am very sensitive and react badly and i think she is like me. He wants to be able to boast to his friends he 'looked after her' on her journey of discovery.
Which is so controlling. If she wants to experiment it should be along her own natural path. I'm rambling now. My fears are pouring out.

We have a lovely life together full of colour and discovery at her own pace. I'm an artist and am very instinctive. I hate all this interference.

thank you shoom that's so reassuring.
It's hard not to feel pain when i can't hug her, she pushes me away. I am very 'on it' with her emotional development, sometimes, as i am only human, i have a wobble.

Sorry, bit of a tangent re the drug thing. I know it's not something i need to use my resources to worry about now. It's another mind game isn't it?

OMG OP. Have we dated the same man!! Exp was exactly the same. refused to have anything to do with dd for the first 6 months and sporadically after that. I was forced to move closer to parental home as he refused to have anything to do with me. I also pushed for contact thinking it would be the best for dd and made frequent trips to where he lives for him to see her. Oh and he's successful and involved in lots of things and have people thinking the Sun shines out of his arse. Obviously having lived with him I have seen his Mr Hyde side (or is it jekyll that's evil??).

Now she is one and knows a few cute tricks she is suddenly interesting and he is now trying to get me to move back to my old town so he can have more access and is now accusing me of damaging dd by limiting contact between them. Wtf!! He does the whole emotional blackmail thing like how he cries because he misses dd. Boo hoo. Didn't he think I was crying when he refused to turn up at the birth!!

Sorry didn't mean to hijack OP but I do understand and now almost what I had followed his original wish if disappearing and not bothering him.

Wish not what

Oh bluebeard it's so sad that we're not alone in our experience. I could kick myself re contact. He said to me i was damaging dd as she was 'a little girl missing her daddy' when she hardly knew who he was, he was trying to blackmail me into extending contact time.

and at her birth he left me just after the c section, all alone with a newborn, to go and bath in all the congratulations. It's all about him.
Any clever little thing dd does, he takes credit for. She learned to count to 12 the other day and he said' oh yes, well i make sure i give her quality time, i give her intense 1 to 1' as if i am just the hired help to do all the boring bits like nurse her when she's ill, bath her, put her to bed and comfort her in the night.

Has he put his ambitions for your daughter's future drug use down in a text or email by any chance? That could maybe give you some ammunition to restrict contact if he has.

Exp calls dd 'his daughter'. He's probably has been with her the sum of a few weeks in her entire life. Tool!

No, he wouldn't be so careless. it is something he wishes to emulate, that a friend did with his teenage dc.
Exp is a magpie for other people's opinions, experiences and beliefs. I truly believe he doesn't know how to feel or act half the time and has to mirror other people in order to appear normal. He's very good at it. He saw the admiration of others towards this particular friend and wants a piece of it. Have no doubt, that experience is stored away waiting to be enacted at a later date.

A lot of this sounds very familiar, I will give you the advice I was given when my daughter was a toddler. Get yourself and her as far away as possible.

I can't tell you how much I have regretted not taking that advice over the years, as opposed to like you having in fact at times been the one pushing for contact. I have always felt he doesn't have a true emotional connection with my dd and only maintains the relationship for the benefit of his own self esteem.

My dd is 10 now and over the last year things have escalated quite significantly with her Dad. Similar to what other posters have described, she is becoming more strong willed, less easy to manipulate, she's starting to show emotions that he can't control. If she tells me of any mistreatment and I confront him about it he accuses her of lying, and he's pretty convincing. He even presented me with a recorded conversation recently as 'proof' that she was lying - why would think you might need to prove your innocence unless you expected to be accused of something? I have cried way more tears than I thought I had left in me over him. I am terrified of the effects his behaviour might have on her. I worry about how to react, how to not make things worse. I worry if she sees how much I hate him (until this year she wouldn't even have suspected, but I struggle so much to hide it now) she'll start to change her behaviour around me to make me happy.

However now she's at an age where she needs to make her decisions about their relationship and form her own opinions of him. All I can do is love her, believe her and hope she doesn't end up too damaged by him. Damaged is how I feel by my relationship with him, and I was an adult (well teenager) from a stable background with an already developed sense of self esteem and worth and experience of good normal relationships, she is a child, she is way more vulnerable, she is learning who she is, she should be being nurtured and instead she is dealing with emotional abuse.

Move away.

Wow masquerade, I am so sorry for what you're going through. And so grateful for your insight.
My instincts tell me to move. But I also feel angry that I would have to leave my support network . I just don't know. The friendship and support I've discovered I truly cherish, but of course my dd is my priority.

WTAF? If someone expressed a desire to introduce my children to illicit drugs, whether they were in their teens or 50s I would want to set fire to that person and get my children the hell away from them. Balls to your friends, protect your child!

Sorry if this offends, I know my opinion is pretty strong.

Not at all inpursuit, I feel the same . I am in the process of working through my reactions/ compromises as things I thought I did of my own free will I realise I was manipulated into/ gas lighted. So when he mentioned this whilst still in relationship, he worked on me to normalise it. It's now I'm free my outrage is coming out. If I moved he has said he would push for overnights and weekends which I don't want.

Not much sleep for worrying . Today's going to be a long day.