Poking the Bear: Growing Up With a Narcissist for a Dad

I grew up in an upper-middle class household in a middle-to-upper-income suburb. I did not want for anything — except the love of my parents, especially my dad.

I knew that Dad loved me, but I also knew that his love was not unconditional. What I did not realize until halfway through my thirty-first year was that my dad is a narcissist. I’m not sure that insight would have made a difference when I lived with him. After all, I was only a kid. But maybe it would have helped me see much sooner that I should stop trying to change him, to get him to see me.

Someone who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) lacks empathy for others and demands utter loyalty and admiration. He usually has grandiose fantasies of his own abilities, his own sense of power and entitlement. He believes himself to be the center of the universe. When he fails to obtain “supply,” to use the technical term, from those around him, or the required doses of affection and attention, he may try any number of manipulative behaviors. This may mean telling his tale of woe to get others to pity him or using harsh put-downs to undermine others’ self-esteem. He will stop at nothing until he regains control over others. Lacking an autonomous self, one that is not defined by others’ opinion of him, this aim consumes him. To the outside world, he appears charismatic, gregarious, and easy-going. In his private life, with his family, he is needy, spiteful, and prone to angry outbursts, even rage.

This description fits many, but not all, NPD people. My dad, however, is this person. I only realized that he might be a narcissist several months ago, after my therapist, in our first session, mentioned it as a possibility. When I got home, I browsed the Web for definitions and examples. I came across a page devoted to adult children of narcissistic parents. What I saw there, essentially a list of traits and behaviors, stopped me cold. It was the chill of recognition. My mind drifted away from my body. I was in shock. I copied and pasted passages and sent them to my sister. She wrote back: “Totally.” We’ve been grappling with the “diagnosis” ever since. We’ve picked apart our memories of rough times with my dad and held them up to the new light. Yep, we keep saying — that is what a narcissist would have done or said.

Whenever a friend asks why my dad and I don’t really speak or why I hold such a low opinion of him, I usually tell the same story. I was a freshman in high school, a very boyish, late-blooming 14-year old, when I learned that my dad had been married before. I think my mom mentioned it off-handedly, and looking at my dad, I said, “Wait, what? What are you talking about? You never told me you were married before you met mom.” “You never asked,” was my dad’s only response and explanation. Sometime later, probably no more than a few days, my dad and I were yelling at each other about something. Those were bad years. We always fought. I forget the particular issue that day, but it does not matter. I was mad, and feeling vengeful. So I said: “Why don’t you go back to your first wife?” It was, looking back, a very teenager thing to say. I have an eight-month old daughter, so I can’t say for sure, but I imagine that if she, at 14, were to say something similar to me, I might have to keep myself from laughing. My wife and I almost certainly would laugh about it later as being a very teenager thing to say. I definitely wouldn’t do what my dad did next.

I was seated on my bed looking toward my dad, who was standing opposite me. My mom was by the door. In one singular motion that I scarcely recall now, my dad took hold of both my shoulders and threw me onto my back on the bed. He climbed on top and pressed his 185 pounds into my frame, his leg against my chest and his knee against my windpipe. I sank into the mattress, unable to move. I could only wait, helplessly, as my dad buried me alive in the baby blue comforter on my childhood bed. I could only wait and stare up, at my dad. His face was red, his mouth twisted into an ugly grimace. The wrinkles around his eyes creased, his temples pulsed, his jaw clenched. He seemed almost out of breath.

In that moment, my dad disappeared. Some other man took his place. This man was angry and scary. This man was capable of strangling his son. When I look at my dad today, this is the man I see. This man waits in the shadows, ready to spring.

After my dad pulled himself off of me, we sat side by side on the bed. He broke into a giddy smile as he muttered an apology. He was clearly uncomfortable. He told me that I shouldn’t have said what I said. He hoped I would forgive him, so we could move on. My mom said nothing.

My mom stood by, saying nothing, on countless other occasions. Even in middle school, I knew it was preposterous that a grown man, a former semi-professional athlete, would want to beat up a 100-pound kid, let alone his son. Yet, he always went there. If someone interrupted him or, God forbid, failed to say “God Bless You” when he sneezed, he would let out a heavy sigh of hurt feelings and lash out with a nasty reprimand. He pounded the kitchen table if one of us kids began telling a story when he hadn’t finished his. We were always reminded that he had had a tough childhood. That we had to obey him and show him love. That disrespect was the worst possible offense — that he would take it to mean that we did not love him and were making him relive past trauma.

One time, when I was 11, he threatened to move away to punish my sister and me for not respecting him. I can’t recall what we allegedly did. But he was serious. My sister and I camped out on the floor of my parents’ bedroom in our sleeping bags, to show him our support. That we were sorry. We fully expected him to leave. In the morning, I heard my father stir. I looked up. He did not pack up, he simply dressed and headed downstairs to make coffee. He stayed, of course, but has never mentioned the episode. We have never discussed it with my mom. At the time, I felt that we had come close to disaster but Dad had brought us back from the brink. Better behave next time, I thought. I filled with anger.

I hated all of it. I thought it was so unfair. I also thought it was funny that my dad, an adult, acted so childish when he scolded me, a child. I sometimes pointed out the irony. I goaded him. In blow-out arguments, he would invite me to take it outside. I would accept. Thankfully, I always called his bluff. Sometimes I made it clear that we should throw down right here, in the kitchen. Why bother putting on our coats? At this he would charge at me, like a bull. He called me “big man.” Throughout my middle school years, he threatened to send me to the military academy so I would learn respect. I was an A student who got detention maybe once.

Sometimes my mom stepped between us, her body forming a T. Other times, she sat by as he pinned me against the fridge, one hand gripping my collar, the other wrapped around my throat. That was his move. He got up in your face, the crooked bottom-row teeth practically jabbing you in the eyes, the spittle landing on your cheeks. Still, to this day, I shudder when someone pokes me in the chest. The hairs on my neck stand up. My face blushes, my shoulders tighten. It pokes the bear inside me. It stirs a sadness and a rage that feel as if they could swallow me whole. I become again that 14-year old, this time determined to fight back.

The violence was scary but had the advantage of being direct. More often, my dad’s technique was subtler, making it harder to identify and mend the damage. Some NPD parents manipulate their kids by nitpicking and finding fault. They mention weight gain or cite personality flaws as reasons for self-doubt, to keep their kids on the back foot in order to draw them in. It is part of the reason NPD people often find romantic partners who are codependent. That was the service my mom provided for my dad. She built him up even as he tore her apart. He often was nasty and condescending. He never apologized. He just disappeared upstairs to his room. Then, hours later, he would suddenly reappear, pausing to drop a kiss on my mom’s cheek as he grabbed a bowl of ice cream. That was all. I never saw my mom and dad have a calm argument. It always escalated and then it was over.

With us kids, my dad didn’t undermine, except when cornered. Then he would destroy, reaching for the meanest thing he could think of. With my sister, it was always “spoiled bitch.” With me, it was “big man,” as if being independent and self-assured was a bad thing. With him, of course, it was. But in his everyday routine, my dad built us up, told us we were the greatest. That we could scale impossible heights. But there was a catch. We had to meet his expectations, or face his wrath. After all, we were his progeny, a projection of the greatness he imagined himself to possess. It was intolerable to him if we “failed.” It would be a sign of his failure, which he could not tolerate. When we did well, he gushed and boasted to all. It always felt more like praise than love. More about him than us.

A few years ago, over dinner, I shared with him the news that I finally had arrived at the argument that my dissertation would make. He was beside himself with excitement over my future greatness. He imagined I would tour the country lecturing the institutions featured in my project on ways to reform and improve. I would be socially important, a star. In that moment, I felt myself receding. I became a spectator to my own life, now suddenly his. It was always so important to him that I succeeded. What I wanted, or how I felt about what was going on with me, mattered, comparatively, very little.

As a child, the main arena where I continually had to prove myself to my dad was soccer. At 10, I was more talented than most but hardly a prodigy. I also was among the last of my peers to grow tall, fast, and strong, to have a mustache to shave. After early promise I started to fall behind. I joined more competitive teams and no longer shined. I sat out entire games. Part of me gave up. I no longer looked forward to playing. In fact, I often dreaded it. One game, I faked an injury. At half-time, my dad charged toward the players’ benches from across the field. Halfway, he yelled at me to “get my ass out on that field or we’re going home.” Good, I thought. Let’s go. After games where I played poorly or not at all, we drove home in silence. My dad’s anger filled the air. After my team lost the state championship, in a game where I had not even stepped onto the field, we drove the hour and a half home without speaking to each other. It probably did not occur to my dad that I, too, was disappointed. I was 13.

When I think of those years, between 10 and 16, I think of my parents’ disappointment in me and my dad’s anger. One night, when I was eleven, my parents sat me at the kitchen table for a talk. I had had yet another bad stretch of games. At one point, my mom buried her face in her hands. She began to sob, apparently unable to take any more disappointment. “Look at what you’re doing to your mother,” my dad said. I looked.

My freshman year of high school, I tried out for a new club team. These guys were good, a little out of my league. Indeed, I was cut not long after making it past the first round. The car rides with my dad were tough. The practice field was over an hour from our house. During the tryouts I was intimidated and wasn’t playing well. So, one time my dad gave me a pep talk on the way. He told me that he and my mom had decided to get a divorce. They had been thinking about it for a while. I said I did not believe him. So he dialed up my mom and asked her if she recalled “that thing” they had discussed and whether she still wanted to do it. Because he did. It was obvious bullshit. At least I can see that now. At the time I didn’t know what to think. My dad cleared that up for me on our drive back, when he told me that he had made it all up, to light a fire under me. For soccer practice.

In high school, we went long stretches of not speaking to each other. After my sister left for college my sophomore year, we abandoned all pretense of being a tight-knit family, something my parents had always insisted we were. Dinners usually were quiet, tense. My dad made a point of only addressing my mom. Afterward, he went upstairs to watch television. I remained downstairs with my thoughts. He stopped coming to my games, until my senior year when somehow I got my act together and started playing well. I was the top scorer on an undefeated team. I remember my dad at our final game, the state championship. He was hoarse from cheering. On one play where I made a careless error, he shouted encouragement. I looked over. Tears were streaming down his face. I wanted to walk off the field. During preseason tryouts at college, he called twice a day. For the first time in years, he said he loved me. That semester I lived as if in a daze. My depression returned. It probably had never left. I had had suicidal thoughts, on and off, since middle school. I had spent all my junior year of high school in a listless malaise. I honestly could not remember a time when I had gone more than two months without feeling overwhelmed by sadness.

My dad no longer tries to threaten me physically. He’s an old man, and the stakes are lower. We no longer live together. He no longer has to worry or resent that I am somehow stealing mom’s doting attention from him. When I do see him, however, he still gets up to his old tricks. When I told him that my longtime girlfriend and I were considering getting married, he said, in essence, “What about me?” He complained that he didn’t know her and felt left out. At my wedding, he didn’t speak to my wife or her family. The ceremony was held near where my wife grew up. My parents had never been there. In the car, my wife tried to give directions but my dad, without speaking a word, raised the volume on the GPS voice navigator. When I asked him about why he looked so grim in all the wedding photos, he said he never smiled in pictures. I didn’t bother to present the abundant documentary evidence to the contrary. When my wife, newborn daughter, and I visited my parents at their home, my dad said hello to me and ignored my wife until I reprimanded him. He mumbled an apology, but then never said a word to my wife’s sister, who was with us. The rest of the time he sulked around the house, barely speaking to anyone. He held his granddaughter once.

It was not until I entered graduate school — after finally leaving soccer and family expectations behind — that I fully realized what I had been through as a kid. Adult children of narcissists often attest to feeling like they don’t have a sense of self. I had been an intellectual kid and so had internalized all the trauma of living with my parents as a kind of mental puzzle. I had not let myself experience it, or much else. I realized that I had never felt like I had a self that I knew, or could present to others. At 25, I almost collapsed on the street under the weight of this realization. I mentioned this to my therapist during our first session. It was one of the things that led him to suspect my dad was a narcissist. As I write today, I still don’t feel entirely at home in my own body. I never have.

Instead, I lived the life of the acolyte, always in my dad’s shadow, even, perhaps especially, when I was rebelling. I had let myself believe that I could control my world with my thoughts. It was quite obviously a strategy to survive a home where one man monopolized every situation. And, I suppose, it worked. But it was not enough, nor could it ever be, to build a life of my own.

Which is why, lately, I have distanced myself from my dad. I no longer want to confront him about our past, when I was a teenager. The last time I tried, he told me, “You were acting in ways that I could not control.” That’s the one helpful thing about narcissists. Lacking self-awareness, they reveal their hand right away. At the time, when he said that, I gasped for air. I left our table at the restaurant and sobbed uncontrollably in the bathroom. But having the “diagnosis,” and years of therapy, has helped. Knowing that my dad is incapable of change has made it easier to let go of trying. I feel like I can finally just ignore him. I can shift the arena of my life. I no longer want him to own what he’s done. I know that he cannot. So I can move on, or try anyway. But please, I beg of you, don’t poke me in the chest.