Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers (11 page)

Often the narcissistic mother will be aghast at the self-saboteur’s adult life and decide to disown her. Daughters like this cause too much shame and humiliation for a narcissistic mother to handle. What does her child’s behavior say about her? What will the neighbors think? What will the relatives think? Of course, any daughter struggling with the above problems would benefit from her mother being there for her emotionally and helping her, but narcissistic mothers tend to worry only about how their daughters’ behavior reflects on them and are usually unable to help.

If you are a self-saboteur, it is important to know that you do matter. There are many people who do care about you, and working in recovery will indeed change your life. Your pain and struggle are part of your journey and you had to get to this difficult point to be able to see that you do have what it takes to design your own life and manage your feelings. Regardless of how your mother hurt you, you can heal. I will walk you through the recovery process step by step. Your job is to stay with it and take yourself seriously.

TRYING TO WIN AT LOVE WHERE I FAILED WITH MOM

P
eople continue to wonder what love really is. We all pursue it and value it, and each one of us has her own version of how it feels to be in love.

It is common for daughters of narcissistic mothers to try to fill their emotional void and emptiness with inappropriate love relationships. Unfortunately, they often search in all the wrong places for the right partner to validate them. In this chapter, I’ll talk about something I call “distorted love.” As daughters of narcissistic mothers, many of us learn that love means
what someone can do for you or what you can do for them
. Many women unconsciously choose their romantic partners based on this distorted meaning, which sets them up for dependent or codependent relationships—or no relationship at all. The dependent cares about what he can do for you and the codependent cares about what you can do for him. Having no relationship is a kind of giving up, or choosing to not enter the dance at all.

• Alexis, 25, is not sure she knows what to look for as she faces the challenge of searching for a romantic partner. She tells me, Mom doesn’t even use the word ‘love’ unless she is referring to a pair of shoes! Oh, I guess she does say she loves her cat. How am I supposed to know what love really means?”
  

Dependent and codependent relationships are not healthy or satisfying connections and many times end up as failed or miserable entanglements. If the relationship ends, the daughter is at risk for repeating the pattern unless she enters recovery and learns to understand that her “relationship picker” has been damaged. The daughter often reenacts her relationship with her mother over and over in what is referred to in psychotherapy circles as “repetition compulsion”—a cycle of relationships that results in disappointment again and again. After their expectations and hopes have been dashed, many women choose isolation or no relationship at all.

When the Relationship Ends

Whether the daughter of a narcissistic mother is abandoned by her partner or leaves him herself, she feels great shame for the failed relationship. No matter if this is the first one or a series of failures, her sense of not being good enough deepens. Her self-esteem is greatly affected by relationship failures. In our society, a woman can fail at business or finances, but failures in relationships are less acceptable. Having more than one divorce or failed love relationship feels like a curse or a gross affliction. A woman will feel guilt and shame, but shame will be the emotion she finds most difficult. Guilt is usually associated with a deed that can be forgiven, but shame encompasses her being, taking on an “all or nothing” quality, which has devastating consequences for mental health. Adult daughters of narcissistic mothers often refer to themselves as “damaged” or “damaged goods,” particularly after a series of failed love relationships. Underneath this shame is the feeling that they are unlovable.

• A beautiful client, Tyra, came to me after her second divorce. The epitome of beauty, intelligence, and charm, she reminds me of a petite china doll. But beneath her charming sweetness is a deep sense of sadness and unworthiness. She has recognized her past with a narcissistic mother, but now that her second husband has left her for another woman, she comes to therapy with this request: “Make me good enough!”
  
• Margo, 55, tells me, “I can hardly speak of this feeling of failure. I feel so damaged now. Who would ever want to even date me? How do you tell someone you have had more than two marriages? Do they not automatically think you are unhealthy or weird in some way? This is messed up and feels like it will never be better.”
  
• Summer reports, “If I want to feel immense pain and shame, I think about my relationship history. This will do me in. I usually try not to even think about it or even let it come into my conscious being. Talk about feeling unlovable!”
  
• “No kidding, listen to this,” says Karla when expressing her pain about relationships. “When I introduced my fiancé to my mother, she shook his hand and then said, ‘Good luck. Hope you do better than the last one did.’ How does one get over this shame of past failures in relationships?”
  

Why We Pick Who We Pick

Typically, the daughter of a narcissistic mother will choose a spouse who cannot meet her emotional needs. Even though our intuition will tell us in some way when something is not right for us, we tend to block it out if it isn’t saying what we want to hear. When the hope for love blossoms, we override the intuitive inner voice or gut feeling. Years of treating and interviewing daughters with maternal deprivation have shown me that we have a deep sense of intelligent intuition, but it seems to be accompanied by a special brand of “deafness.” In the desperate search for love that did not exist in her childhood, the daughter chooses not to pay attention to the red flags that may be waving. We do know. We just don’t listen. In recovery, you will learn better how to tune in to your innate intuitive direction and guidance.

You actually “choose” a partner largely on an unconscious level. As human beings we are attracted to the familiar. If you have not worked out unfinished business with your mother, you will likely find yourself with someone who re-creates that mother-daughter pattern of behavior. We also tend to pick partners who are on the same emotional level we are.

If you are dependent, you feel this way with your partner: I am going to lean on and be dependent on you. I see you as a person who can do a lot for me. You can take care of me. You have money, prestige, a good family and good job, you’re gorgeous, you look good on paper—you fit my list of criteria.

If you are codependent, you feel this way with your partner: I am going to take care of you to the exclusion of taking care of myself. I see you as someone I can feel needed by. You need me to nurture, take care of you, and be a mother to you. You need my love because you didn’t get that as a child, you need my direction—you need me and that makes me feel good.

Healthy relationships are based on an interdependency, where both partners move back and forth in the caretaking, but mostly operate as independent adults. This means that neither partner is dependent or codependent. In the dependent-codependent relationship, neither partner loves the other for who he or she is as a person—they act out roles and a distorted definition of love. An adult daughter of a narcissistic mother is often misguided in her choices by her unresolved neediness. Need-based relationships are usually unfulfilling because no one can satisfy all of an adult’s unmet childhood needs. But until the daughter addresses this empty void herself, she will expect that someone else can fill her with the feelings of worthiness, competence, and love that she lacks.

Many times the adult daughter will choose a partner who can’t meet even reasonable emotional needs because she unconsciously wants someone who cannot be emotionally intimate or vulnerable. This is what is familiar to her and what she feels is safe and predictable. Until she enters recovery, she is not especially in touch with her own feelings and therefore needs to partner with someone who is not “into” the feelings realm either.

When a daughter’s emotional and intimate needs are unmet, she can easily fall into the blame game, rather than own up to having chosen the wrong person. If this sounds familiar, be careful here: You do not want to fall into the narcissistic trap of viewing your partner as either good or bad. If you turn your idealized partner into a villain, you may then feel compelled to abandon him before he abandons you. Abandonment is a great fear because you felt abandoned. Your parents may have been there physically, but you felt emotionally abandoned. If you are dependent, it will be more difficult for you to leave the relationship. You might stay in an abusive or otherwise unwholesome partnership, feeling that you deserve no better. If you are abandoned by your partner, you might have an unusually difficult time recovering from the loss and rejection because it will trigger your past experience with Mother.

The Codependent Relationship

Overachievers often, unconsciously, find men who need to be taken care of. They are attracted to the “what I can do for you” dynamic. The daughter lets her well-learned skills of taking care of Mom and all her needs make her into a caretaker for life. When she partners with a man whom she can take care of in some way, she feels in a familiar, emotionally safe situation. A man who is dependent on her won’t abandon her. In return for taking care of him, she hopes that he will in turn fill her void and emptiness. Of course, this never works, and what happens instead is: The more demanding, dependent, or immature the man is, the more he reminds her of her mother, who was extremely needy and had “entitlement” demands. She eventually feels resentment and anger and becomes overwhelmed. She runs around trying mightily to meet his needs in hopes of a return pass of the ball, but it never quite happens that way. She gets tired.

The adult daughter does not really trust the dependent partner or his capacity for intimacy, because she knows, at some level, that she chose him
because
he is not capable of vulnerability or emotional intimacy. She has thwarted her need for validation and her hope for authentic, loving connection. He cannot love her for who she
is
, and thus she is constantly frustrated and sad. She seeks love but cannot find it until she completes her recovery.

I use a basketball analogy in therapy to give a visual image of this couple. Imagine a basketball floor with a basket at each end and bleachers on the side of the floor. The codependent, usually high-achieving woman is running back and forth making all the baskets on both sides, while the partner is sitting in the bleachers watching and hoping she will win the game for them both. After a while, the woman gets exhausted, feels frustrated and resentful, and wants to stop. The partner in the bleachers might be content that someone else is doing all the work for him, but his self-esteem is getting no validation or elevation, as he is not doing his part for himself or his partner.

• Betsy made the most of the three-pointers in her marriage. “I have a high tolerance for deviant behavior. Codependency galore! I recognize it now. Looking back on my second husband, he was passive and nice, and I was willing to put up with anything because he was nice to me. I was more charismatic and more social, the breadwinner. He used me. He was narcissistic and had a narcissistic injury too. I kept busy and took care of everything. He got fired a lot because of verbal arguments with people. I always wrote his résumés and got his jobs for him. Looking back, I see that he didn’t recognize what I did for him. He put no effort into things. He never said the words ‘I’m sorry.’ I had a high tolerance for this; I blew it off and went on with life. My expectation of others seems to be low. In relationships, I am comfortable with 80/20, not 50/50. I always give more than I get.”
  
• Daria says, “The pattern I see with myself in love relationships is that the physical relationship is the most important. If I am not present in the most sexual way, I feel I will not receive love from my boyfriend. I am valued for what I do for him sexually. I got this from my mom. She was always so beautiful. She would get dressed for Dad. She smelled good, sexy lingerie, sex toys, tried to look good for Dad. Dad had
  Playboy
  magazines, and she would look through them with us. Sex was very important to their relationship. She taught me that what I can do for a man was how I would be valued by him.”
  
• In every relationship, Coral has worked harder than the man. “I keep everything going when things don’t work out. I feel responsible for everything. I don’t hold him as accountable as I hold myself.”
  
• “My pattern is to pick men I can control completely,” Charlene says. “Then I can’t get hurt. I pick people underneath me or less accomplished than I am. When I got married, I was screaming in my head, No, no, no. I knew then, but I kept going.”
  
• Marlene says, “I always got into relationships with people who were messed up and needed me. My last boyfriend tried to kill himself when I broke up with him and had to be hospitalized. I always got the boys that were down on their luck. I do the same thing with girlfriends. I am everyone’s adviser.”
  
• Kate, 64, relates the following: “My relationship patterns are not good. I usually picked the wrong men. My first husband was abusive, physically and emotionally; my second husband was an alcoholic and a drug addict; and my third husband is an addict and felon. I smother, take care of them, and try to fix everything. I often get to a point where I have had enough and then I go on. I tend to try to impress and over-love somebody to make him love me.”
  
• Margie is a single career woman. “My relationships are always kind of nonemotional. Kind of like a business, rather than an emotional connection. Not feeling fulfilled. Finding that there is something missing from that person that I could find elsewhere. Feeling the sensation of being trapped at times. I am the codependent, the caregiver. I’ve always wanted to be the dependent one.”
  
• Dee Dee, 72, looks back at her marriage and her children. “I learned codependency. I see it with my husband and with my kids too. If I just do this or do that, you will love me more. I feel like I lost a lot of my identity and I am now finding myself again. My husband doesn’t value me for who I am, only what I do for him. I’ve always been the pleaser, the peacemaker, making sure everything is okay and nobody is upset.”
  

Until a woman has discovered and claimed her own sense of self, she will be frightened by a competent man who
can
actually meet her needs as she in turn meets his. A healthy man doesn’t want to be controlled or mothered, and he also wants to give in return. He understands how to be interdependent. The codependent needs to understand and realize that her behavior as a codependent is in truth her defense mechanism for her own dependency. It is her way to rail against these dependent needs and try to show that she is strong and in control and doesn’t need anybody, when in reality, she does, as do we all.