DEAR AMY: My husband and I married 33 years ago and blended our family, his adolescent son and daughter and my similarly aged daughter. After a difficult custody battle for my husband’s children, we prevailed and our children grew up together. There were rocky moments, but many good ones, too. My husband’s ex-wife died tragically a few years later.
Our college-educated “kids” are now all in their 40s, married, and all with excellent jobs and children of their own.
They live in different areas of the country but have stayed connected until a year ago, when our oldest daughter began a mean-spirited tirade cataloging all the ways my husband and I had wronged her over the years.
It started abruptly after we had to return one day early from our granddaughter’s college graduation for an elderly friend’s funeral.
Our daughter accused us of demonstrating by that that “some old dead guy” was more important than her family. Her negativism escalated. Her vitriol was in written form (emails and letters) and on Facebook.
I stopped connecting with her on Facebook because of her disrespectful public posts, then she unfriended her dad.
We are told that her parental negativism continues online.
At my active encouragement, our son and his dad flew across country to talk and listen, in an effort to neutralize her attitude. It was not successful. She would not allow my husband to see his 10-year-old grandson during that visit.
My husband is absolutely done with trying and believes she is replaying a “generational meanness” exhibited by her birth mother and grandmother.
Her brother tries to stay connected with her.
I think we should make a more creative attempt to address her attitude toward us. She needs professional counseling. How should we approach this?
— An Aging Stepmother
Dear Stepmother: I don’t know what “generational meanness” is, but I do know what narcissism is.
Here are some quotes from an article in Psychology Today describing a narcissist: “A cross-section of the narcissist’s ego will reveal high levels of self-esteem, grandiosity, self-focus and self-importance.... Narcissists’ language and demeanor is often geared toward one objective: to maintain power in an interaction.”
Does this describe your daughter?
I am a layperson and I cannot diagnose your daughter (or anyone) with a psychological disorder. But if she has this, she will thrive on punishing people close to her.
Any communication with your daughter should focus on times when she behaved well, and state that you miss having her in the fold. Keep it very simple.
You could suggest professional help, but expect this to trigger more rage from her. Keep your door open for a relationship in the future, but don’t let her dominate and punish you now.
