Why is My Narcissistic Ex Taking Me to Court (Again)?
Understand why your narcissistic ex-partner continues to litigate against you.
For many survivors, family court escalates traumatic feelings of powerlessness, fear, anxiety, and protectiveness.
It doesn’t make logical sense that anyone would seek out opportunities to frequent the family court system with frivolous lawsuits, expensive motions, and complicated false allegations or does it? Why do high conflict/narcissistic individuals constantly take survivors back to court?
Narcissists Love the Courtroom… Here’s Why
“It’s not just that my ex felt entitled to dragging me through the courts… he seemed to like it. The chaos, the drama, the stress. He seemed happiest when I was most anxious.”
Narcissistic individuals view family court as an opportunity to fill up on “supply” in several ways:
They get heaps of attention from court professionals, family, friends, and victims;
They enjoy feeling “all powerful”, knowing that they’ve created a situation that others now have to respond to;
They thrive on chaos, conflict, and manipulation - all of which are easily drummed up in a family court dynamic;
They like keeping their existence at the center of the victim’s life.
A quote from the Santa Clara study, Confronting the Challenge of the High-Conflict Personality in Family Court reads,
“Many of our experts noted that it is the rare case where there is an actual diagnosis on the record in family court. But the lack of a common diagnosis does not mean that there is no discernable pattern to cases involving high-conflict personalities. Indeed, all of our interviewees identified cases in which individuals simply refused to work toward settlement and described the litigants who prolonged these disputes as being driven not by greed or anger, but rather, by what our experts viewed as a mental illness. Just as Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of obscenity—“I know it when I see it”—acknowledged a reality that is no less real for all the challenges inherent in articulating a definition, so too does the term “high-conflict personalities” point to a real, if loosely “defined, issue with which both family law attorneys and judges regularly wrestle. Our experts did not agree on a single diagnosis when discussing these cases, yet every single one of them described the challenge of disputes (often multiple ones) in which individuals seemed drawn to conflict, thereby thwarting settlements and prolonging the underlying dispute.”
Fact: The battlefield is an overwhelmingly stressful place for healthy parents. And perhaps that’s exactly why narcissists seek out opportunities to keep going back.
Ultimately, ongoing litigation abuse is just another facet of post separation abuse.
Certified High Conflict Divorce Coaches understand this dynamic and can help you develop strategies to cope and work toward freedom and safety. Find your coach here.
