Part 5 of the Victim-Villain Deception Series

Are you struggling in your marriage, trapped in an experience that feels like narcissistic abuse? Would your partner describe you as narcissistic, and even accuse you of being the abuser who is constantly gaslighting them? If you and your partner take turns being the victim of abuse and dishing out your respective share of defensiveness, stone-walling, and accusation, then you may be a party to a victim-villain agreement.

A villain-victim contract is the machinery of rhe narcissistic abuse experience. This particular conflict cycle requires a villain and a victim. The challenge is, however, is that most people in this type of relationship perceive themselves as the victim. This reveals the first contractual agreement that forms the “cyclone” of narcissistic abuse.

The Victim Contract

The person who is convinced they are being abused by a narcissist becomes hyper-focused on the behavior of their abuser. This focus often leads the abused to conclude that their partner lacks empathy. Because the abuser lacks empathy, they gaslight the abused, deflecting from being accountable for their own behavior which the abused   person consistently complains about.

The abused has agreed within their own beliefs that they are a victim. A victim is powerless. The victim waits for things to happen to them. The victim reacts as circumstances and people confirm to them they are the victim. The victim has a fundamental mental, emotional and even physiological agreement that they are powerless.

Often, the victim, tired of feeling the toxicity of their partner’s unchanged behavior, begins to seek vigilante justice. The most common responses to their abuser are attempts to change the abuser’s behavior. Exhausted of feeling powerless, the victim seeks to control and/or manipulate their partner. They become so focused on everything that is demonstrably wrong with their partner, they prioritize changing their partner. The victim refuses to be happy until the abuser changes. 

The victim contract renders the abused so powerless they seek out advocates to exercise power over their abuser. Therapists, ministers, parents, lawyers and other perceived authority figures are sought out to put their abuser in their place. While in this state, the victim overlooks, minimizes and even excuses their own bad behavior. This behavior is rationalized by their own suffering. The victim quantifies their partner’s behavior as “worse,” “more destructive,” or the primary catalyst for their own bad behavior. A victim will often demand an apology before they are willing to accept accountability for their own wrong doing. 

A victim, except in extreme outbursts of uncontrolled emotions, is rarely wrong.

The victim takes the higher moral ground as compared to that of their partner. The victim is always right. Their abuser is always wrong. The victim is on an impossible journey. They seek outward behaviors, responses, and circumstances that will end their sense of suffering. When their abuser attempts to make concessions or behavioral changes, the victim is rarely satisfied. The victim seeks for more validation, more security, and more affirmation of their value at all times, in ever increasing demands. This behavior continues until their partner accepts the truth—there is nothing they can do to make them happy. 

Once the abuser has grown weary, and gives up any effort to make the victim happy, the victim becomes more resolute that their partner is a narcissist. The victim pushes buttons   which are calculated to trigger a negative response. The victim throws rocks at their villain and then hides their hand. And this is what makes the victim a participating villain in the conflict cyclone described as narcissistic abuse. 

In the next post, I will analyze the villain agreement which is the second essential provision of the victim-villain legal framework. Have you accepted the false belief that your purpose in life is abuse, neglect or abandonment? Are you willing to break your contract with powerlessness?

Be blessed and encouraged,

Judge Char

Part 3 of The Victim-Villain Deception Series

I held the phone with my former client, Corrine. She was seeking sympathy and legal guidance 14 years after I first took on her nasty divorce as my very first contested custody case. 

She was still living in the same victim narrative. But this time, her ex, Gregory, had staged the ultimate abusive scene for their 20-year long romantic horror-drama. Gregory, only 58-years old, had died unexpectedly. Sadly, however, from Corrine’s perspective as the everlasting victim,  he died in such a way that was calculated to torment her. He was in the grave.  But, to Corrine’s horror, Gregory scored the last laugh. 

“This is not justice,” she lamented.

Corrine was finally confronted with what I had been warning her all along. 

You can’t control another human being. 

The court can only do so much to regulate good behavior in families. 

Even after you punish him, you will still be empty, longing for something else, just outside of your reach. 

I warned Corrine to live her life, to stop being Gregory’s victim. But she was driven with an unsatiable desire to even the score, to see him brought to justice. Yet when his death left her in probate court, searching for answers to the riddle of her children’s inheritance, she finally encountered the end of her own pursuit of justice. 

She finally accepted that the justice she was seeking could only be found within herself.

She finally accepted the end of the fight. 

What I experienced in this case and the decades-long trail of broken hearts is an indictment against the system. It is an indictment against friends and loved ones who willingly accept a one-sided story where a partner diagnoses their own spouse without accountability for their own behavior. It is an indictment against the clinician’s refusal to confront the victim sitting in the patient’s chair, convincing them that the abuser will never change and that divorce is their only escape. It is an indictment against the legal system that can only surgically remove family members without ending the revolving door of contempt, modification and protective orders. 

It is a system of sickness that lacks justice. 

I don’t have all of the answers here. But what I do know is that we all have a role to play. How have you participated in someone else’s narrative of narcissistic abuse? Have you agreed with their conclusions? Or do you challenge them to embrace their personal power over victimhood? How have you participated in the false narrative that the legal system will fix it? That the lawyer will hold them accountable? That the judge will make them pay? How have you participated in ongoing litigation as an active participant of the unofficial legal team?

At the time of the divorce, I “won” Corrine’s case. But from a generational analysis, I and the system I represented failed this family. Corrine’s children are all young adults now. They were systematically processed – ran through the meat grinder of a clinical-judicial industrial complex until they were convinced, they, too, are victims. The truth is that when a family fails, everyone loses.

When someone tells you they are involved with a narcissist, I want you to remember Corrine’s children. I implore you to take pause before you console them by agreeing with their victimhood. I ask that you bring the conversation back to their choices, their insatiable desire for vengeance, and their personal power to change their reactions to another person’s behavior. 

I want you to remember: There are two sides to every story. 

In hindsight, Corrine’s behavior as the accuser was narcissistic gaslighting, keeping the heat on punishing Gregory. Constantly. But she was rewarded with the instant gratification of a system that has become more victim-oriented than recovery-oriented. And in the long run, according to this longitudinal case study, every professional in this clinician-judicial industrial complex should begin rethinking our professional approach to victim narratives.

Corrine’s children are not only fatherless. They are impaired in a way that predicts they will perpetuate victim-villain relationships which lead to the revolving doors of family and/or criminal court. As a society, we need to ask ourselves whether we are satisfied with this outcome.

Where is true justice for hurting families?

Be challenged and provoked to change,

Judge Char

Do you feel trapped in a toxic relationship? Do you self-identify as an empath or highly-sensitive person? Have you reached the painful conclusion that the only way to end your suffering is to totally abandon this relationship because there is no hope your abuser will ever change?

If this is you, then read closely.  [This is a long post. I will do my best to deliver these insights in a series of smaller digestible chunks.] 

There is a social phenomenon that has been creeping into the homes of broken-hearted people throughout the nation. Sadly, the comfort and emotional validation offered by this ideology is ripping more and more families apart, simply because of its undeniable logic. This phenomenon is the new “N-word.” It is the partner-led diagnosis of parents, lovers and friends. And if you have reached the conclusion your suffering is being driven by a narcissist, then the arguments I am asserting in this series of writings may offend you and challenge your beliefs, feelings, and logical reasoning. 

Confronting Family Conflict Professionals

“There really are that many narcissists,” said Dr. Joyce, a licensed Atlanta clinician. 

I remained puzzled, “Come on, now,” I prodded. “How did all of these narcissists suddenly come out of nowhere?” I challenged her, respectfully unconvinced. 

Her response fell flat. All she knew was that she saw a growing number of these personality traits appearing in her practice. She comforted her patients with the conclusion based on the DSM description of narcissism. She could not deny what she was hearing from her own patients—and their abusers. 

Dr. Joyce and I are friendly and mature enough to “agree to disagree.” But it bothered me that someone who shared so many commonalities with my own worldview would be so willing to slap the N-word on so many people in struggling marriages. Even worse, she had accepted the premise that some people cannot be healed or restored from their psychological and spiritual brokenness. For me, there were too many unanswered questions.

Was this a phenomenon of social media?

Was it the full manifestation and exposure of generations of child abuse?

Was it a revealing of the underbelly of the American Dream?

Where do all of these narcissists come from?

A year later, I had a similar discussion with Dr. Linda, an Atlanta-based psychiatrist. “Are there that manyclinical narcissists in our society now,” I asked with a child-like curiosity. 

“No,” she responded very directly. “I don’t believe that is what we are seeing.”

I was intrigued by her openness and directness of my challenge towards the clinical community. I proposed some of my arguments to her. She slowly nodded her head, “That is very possible. It makes sense.” She was even more compelled by my observations from the legal system where our work overlaps.

Dr. Joyce vs. Dr. Linda – Discovering the truth of the matter

In the matter of Dr. Joyce vs. Dr. Linda, I invite you to be the jury. Joyce represents the growing popular culture—there are narcissists everywhere and there is no hope for healing them. Dr. Linda, on the other hand, questions the clinical tidal wave that has been wiping out marriages at warp speed. 

The phenomenon most popularly known as narcissistic abuse is a real experience. Men and women are feeling drained and helpless in their relationships. They are feeling targeted and literally as though their life is being drained from them. The N-word, a life-sucking vampire, is their villain. And the only explanation they have found for their lived experience of dying a slow death—emotionally and even physically—is that the “other” is the N-word. With this explanation in hand, the “victim” slowly embraces the only widely available cure for their affliction: You have to abandon the relationship. Armed with an ideology that validates their experience, “victims” follow the advice of their clinicians, leaving their narcissist in a brave act of abandonment. 

As I continue to unpack what I call “The Victim-Villain Deception,” I will emphasize the injustice to both sides of a narcissistic abusive relationship. For too many people who have diagnosed their own partners, family and friends, they remain in suffering. They continue telling the same story over and over again, but there is never any true redemption of their own value that exists independent of surviving a narcissist. Why is that? 

If you have already abandoned your narcissist, why are you still haunted by the agonizing affliction of their abuse? Why do you still replay the story over-and-over again? Why are you still struggling to liberate yourself from the dark, damp depths of your own soul?

Disclosure of my personal bias

If it is not already obvious to the reader, I will be frank: I have already concluded that the clinical community is wrong. The evidence will show that individuals who follow the clinical trend—”they can’t be healed, so leave them”—are the same families who are on an endless cycle of clinically-driven litigation that is destroying their children, their joy and their financial resources. 

I do not deny that some people are certified “N-words,” for real. However, I too was once convinced that I was married to one. It wasn’t until I began to challenge the dominant cultural perspective and the bottomless algorithm feed that I found peace, healing, and connection on my marriage. But I had to be willing to be counter-cultural to find the nuance of what so many people like myself have experienced and continue to suffer through in silence. 

Destination hope and healing

The purpose of the adversarial system of law is to find truth. This advisory will seek to confront the prevailing dialogue that is wreaking havoc in families with no end in sight. Prayerfully, you will abandon the victim label which has been fueling your own suffering. Ultimately, my objective is to offer an alternative logical and spiritual framework that reveals the path to truth which helps you encounter enduring peace, power and healing. My hope for you is that you will embrace freedom from fear of anyone ever abusing you again. 

Be blessed and encouraged, 

Judge Char