I'm spamming this thread! Sorry (allowed as my birthday treat )
Mum rang me to talk about her horoscope. My mother believes in horoscopes and the Will Of God. She absolutely does make things happen in her life - but perceives them all as happening "to" her. Others see her as go-getting, even overbearing and manipulative. She sees herself as a creature of Fate.
My Dad ridiculed Fate, God and horoscopes. His mother (my Nice Granny) was a full-blooded gypsy, believed in second sight and spells. Dad chose brutal facts - the more brutal, the more he liked them. The word cynic derives from a far more even-handed view than his. He was a misanthrope with cynical knobs on. Given the time he was born, I imagine that the child of a Gypsy - conceived out of wedlock to boot - would have been less than welcomed to the world.
There was a strange incident, when he turned up unannounced at my flat in Stepney. He asked me to drive him around (Dad hated to be a passenger), telling me where to turn. All the time, he gave me stories of shocking prejudice against him, as a child, and against Granny and his aunties. Gran was born in Stepney and had sisters there. But nobody heard of the sisters, and Dad never mentioned any childhood experiences in London.
I've since told my mother & sibs about that day; their reaction, each time, is ... pure blankness. Although he was, in reality, a smallish man with a wall eye, his control created a giant presence in all of our minds. I can only suppose the idea of a secret & ashamed childhood: the gypsy's bastard; sits so badly with my family's iconic perception of him that they simply can't compute the connection. We know he was a bit nutty(!) - was this another of his weird tricks? I don't think so. There was no advantage to him, I'd been out of his circle for ages. Mum chose not to remember what I told her about that day. My sister, though - his golden child - not only accepted it, but filled in a few details about the aunties.
I'm writing this primarily for my own benefit, but also for those who find themselves in "reality shift" wrt their disordered partners. When you find out stuff you didn't know - and that, if you were a normal (healthy) couple, you would have known - your instinct is to dismiss it. My mother can get away with that because he's dead. But even she had the instinct that it was true. This means she instinctively accepted the truth of a huge part of her husband's life, which she'd never known about and which he'd deliberately hidden from her. Had I told her about it while he was alive, it would have added extra weight to the burden of double, conflicting beliefs that she lives with daily.
He asked me not to tell her, for pretty much the same reason. I said: "I've heard what you ask and understand your reasons. I'll choose what to tell her, and when." He acknowledged me: "I know you'll make your own choice but please be considerate to your mother's feelings." I wish I could say I left it there, but I was very cross about his claim to concern for her feelings! I ranted a bit, but then realised we were in a very odd situation - and I was driving round the East End, following 50-year-old directions. So I shut up.
The above is a story about the reality shift that happens all the time, with such people. (I think my dad was more sociopath/ASPD than NPD, but it's mainly a difference of internal pain for the sufferer afaik.) There is no point in trying to get to "the truth" or even "a" truth. The poor buggers don't even know themselves, where's the sense in looking for something that barely exists and, if found, must be denied?
In case you were wondering, no living relative of my father denied my story. I was met mostly by blankness ... you know, the normal reaction to incomprehensible information. I told it again after he died, and this time my sister filled in some info as I've described. I'll never know why he chose me for his honesty tour - Mum still wonders, but I think it's simply that I was living in Stepney and it was convenient for him at a time when he felt like doing it.
Biscuit.