How to break up with a narcissist, by a top divorce lawyer

Divorce is hard, but when it involves breaking up with a narcissistic partner, it can be even more traumatic, says Rebecca Zung, an American divorce lawyer turned bestselling author and narcissism expert.

For 20 years, Zung has litigated many high-net-worth, complex divorces and regularly found herself negotiating with tricky and demanding individuals.

“It used to be that people characterised husbands as ‘controlling’ or wives as ‘crazy’, but increasingly I was hearing the word narcissist being bandied around in the legal world and used in court in front of judges,” says Zung.

Zung set about researching the condition in depth, interviewing psychiatrists and psychologists, and developing strategies for how to negotiate with narcissists in her legal practice.

“I decided to apply what I was learning about narcissism to my cases and all of a sudden I started to see movement with these extremely difficult, high-conflict personalities – and that was when I realised I was onto something,” she says.

Already the author of two books on negotiation, she distilled what she had learnt into her latest book – Slay the Bully: How to Negotiate with a Narcissist and Win.

She also runs digital programmes on negotiation and shares her tips and knowledge with thousands of subscribers on her YouTube channel.

Below, she shares stories from her practice and advice on how to spot and manage a split from a narcissist.

What exactly is a narcissist?

Narcissism is a personality disorder where people seem to have an inflated sense of their importance combined with a lack of empathy for others.

Yet underneath it all is deep insecurity and emptiness, and a black hole that can never be filled, so they attempt to fill it with what is called “narcissistic supply”, which can be a mix of people and things.

For many this narcissistic supply is about how they look to the world. So it might be a big house, a high-profile job, money, fame or high-status celebrity friends.

Another form of narcissist supply is treating people poorly – that can be putting them down to make themselves feel good, talking badly about people behind their backs or controlling and manipulating them.

I’ve found that narcissists will attempt to protect their supply at almost any cost in a divorce.

One example was my narcissistic client Randy*  who had been married to his wife Lidia* for 18 years, which, by Florida law, was considered to be “long-term,” meaning that Lidia would be eligible for permanent alimony.

We had finally reached an agreement when Lidia’s lawyer asked to speak to me. I braced myself for a failed mediation, which would mean going to trial. But, he said, Lidia was willing to wave permanent alimony completely if Randy simply apologised to her for everything he had done to cause the marriage to fail.

I was shocked. To put this into perspective, he was going to be paying her more than $2 million (£1.6 million) over several years, which she was willing to waive for a mere apology. Even more shocking was that my client Randy initially refused.

He didn’t want to admit he was wrong, and he didn’t want to lose control over her. I had to take a deep breath and say calmly, “Millions of spouses would kill to be in this position right now. So, swallow your pride, get up and walk over there and apologise.”

With the reluctance of a teenager, he slowly shuffled out of the room with the mediator. Randy would rather have paid the huge sums in alimony than apologise. Why? Because then he would still have supported her and had control over her. It shattered his sense of self.

I have interviewed many psychiatrists and psychologists, and they have said that narcissists, for the most part, cannot change. The reason it is so difficult for mental health specialists to treat people with narcissism is because of the very nature of the disorder itself. People with narcissism don’t tend to be people who want to sit around and ponder their faults and flaws.

How common is narcissism?

Experts say that incidences of narcissism are going up. Dr Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, studied how many people have been diagnosed between the 1970s and mid-2000s and found a 30 per cent increase in narcissism in Americans.

Experts estimate that potentially up to 15 per cent of the world’s population either has narcissistic personality disorder, possesses narcissistic traits or tendencies, or has other types of antisocial personality disorders that cause them to lack empathy.

Many experts think the growth of social media is contributing to this rise in narcissism.

Social media rewards these traits of telling everyone how great you are, sharing everything you do, and making it all about yourself.

How to spot the narcissistic red flags in a relationship

In a marriage, narcissists often start by “love bombing” – they flood their loved one with admiration and gifts. This love bombing releases dopamine in the brain of their partner, but often their behaviour is intermittently “nice”, so people can become addicted to the person and that dopamine hit, hoping all the while for more love and attention.

But, over time, narcissists often end up seeking other forms of narcissist supply, which can be adultery, abuse or treating the other person like a possession.

Yet every single person I have spoken to says that, looking back, there were red flags, but that they ignored them. There are many small signs of narcissism: that inadvertent email chain you “accidentally” got left out of, the “jokes” about your weight or diet, the promotion you get when they’re not happy for you.

Or the gaslighting, such as when one client of mine found out her husband made plans to go out of town with the guys on their anniversary weekend. When she questioned him about it he said: “We discussed it and you agreed.”

She knew that she’d never had such a conversation, but he kept insisting and she began to feel as if she couldn’t trust her own memory.

What you should never say to a narcissist

The very first step in dealing with a narcissist is to put an invisible shield around you and tell yourself you’re not going to be disrespected.

Observe their behaviour, rather than absorbing it. You can say, “I can see that you’re upset and angry, let’s have this discussion later when you’ve calmed down.”

Respond with curiosity instead of anger, say, “Oh, that’s interesting, why would you think that?” Never justify, argue, defend or explain yourself.

How to negotiate with a narcissist

First, don’t expect to settle this amicably. When it comes to negotiating with a narcissist over a divorce, it is imperative to understand that the playing field is not level.

You will say something to the effect of, “I only want what’s fair, and I don’t want to fight, I’d like to settle this amicably.” But you will actually mean it. The narcissist will say something like that too and you will believe them. But it will be a lie.

Narcissists fight dirty. If this were a physical fight, and you were two kids wrestling on the ground, they would be the ones biting, pulling hair, and kicking you in the groin. Thus, coming at them directly is not a smart strategy.

Here’s a perfect example. When I interviewed Dr Joe Vitale, a bestselling author, he was just finishing a two-and-a-half-year divorce, and he said: “This divorce should have been over easily and effortlessly because what I offered was basically the world – because I was willing to walk away.

“What happened instead is that the ‘narcissistic’ other side decided to create a persecution of my life and business, and it has been the most excruciating, tortuous, emotionally exhaustive, expensive, painful experience of my entire life.”

Making generous offers will not resolve the situation. The narcissist will then want to hold you to those offers that you floated out there as if they were agreements that you actually made, but then not give you anything in return.

Start with a strategy

First, figure out your strategy. If you’re going through a divorce, you need to visualise the life you want. What kind of settlement do you need: do you want the house, how much time do you want with the kids, do you want child support, be really specific about what co-parenting is going to look like, will you be at dance practice together, who will pick up from sports games?

Visualise what you need your life to look like in three months, six months and a year. This helps give you the strength to stick to your goals.

Use their ‘narcissistic supply’ as leverage

For leverage in the negotiation, you need to threaten the narcissistic supply – I call it ethically manipulating the manipulator. For example, I had one case where the husband was a Fortune 200 CEO and he thought he held all the power in the marriage, which he basically did.

Then his wife found out she had herpes, and we discovered that he was seeing sex workers on the side. In Florida, you can demand a jury trial for sexually transmitted diseases. This would have exposed and embarrassed him with things he didn’t want coming out publicly. We let him know in the mediation that we would ask for a jury trial and depose people in his company, and he settled the case.

This was because we were threatening a form of supply, his reputation, which was more important to him than the supply he was getting from messing his wife around.

It’s helpful to keep track of all communications, financial records and regularly change your passwords. Keeping track of everything will help to catch the narcissist amid their lies and schemes and provide real evidence against them. Mary is a good example. A kind woman in her 60s, she was married to a surgeon who held the patent for a lucrative orthopaedic surgical invention.

Her husband often baselessly accused her of leering at other men in lifts and would then make her “pay” for it for days with abusive behaviour, sometimes just verbal and sometimes worse.

She decided she’d had enough long before she finally had the strength to leave. She came to consult with me and then spent the next several years slowly gathering financial documents such as bank statements, credit card statements, and income tax statements. She’d then stop into my office and drop off what she’d found every few months.

As she gathered the documents, she also gathered her strength and her nerve. Throughout the divorce process, she was shaky and felt crazy, and he was threatening. But by the time the divorce was over, many years later, Mary was a different person. She was outgoing, socialising, wearing her hair longer, wearing makeup, and exuding confidence.

Watch out for the smear campaign

In a way, covert narcissists – those who try to hide the obvious signs of the condition – are the hardest to deal with. They present as humanitarians, doing things such as showing up with the food basket at hospitals, but a lot of times this behaviour is strategic and they’re involved in smear campaigns behind the scenes.

They are more likely to be female and present as the victim, they use guilt and passive aggression. They’ll say things like, “I’m so concerned about Fred and his drinking, I don’t want the children to be affected, it’s just that I’m worried about him.”

They’ll plant a seed, and then the next thing you know they’ll be saying, “Fred’s an alcoholic, I told you about his drinking months ago, I think we need to take the children away from Fred, it’s not safe.”

All the while Fred probably had no issues with alcohol at all, or any idea at all that this was going on, but he’s been smeared in terms of his ability to care for the children.

Don’t get stuck in victim mode, focus on strengthening your self-esteem

I’ve always loved the film The Wizard of Oz. Now, looking back, I see how the Great and Powerful Oz was a lot like the narcissist: behind the curtain was a feeble, scared, little man. Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion all thought the Wizard was the one who knew everything and could give them everything they wanted until they figured out that they had to take the journey to find themselves all along.

At the end of the movie, Dorothy has to tap her red shoes together to find her way home, back to her true self.

So you need to focus on yourself and build up your self-esteem. Nobody is coming to rescue you. The cavalry is not coming to say, “you are worthy”, you have to do that for yourself.

Focusing on poisonous thoughts such as “I can’t believe this person treated me like this after everything I did for them,” means you get stuck in victim mode.

Being stuck in victim mode means you can’t be in “confidence mode”, or “power mode” to negotiate with narcissists, and you definitely can’t be in “getting on with the rest of your life mode”.

You need to stay on the offensive and know that 100 per cent of winning is about your mindset.

Make sure you have a good support system around you, reflect on how you want to feel and focus on the positive feelings you want to encourage.

The more you respect yourself, the more the narcissist will back down.