What I find challenging is it's not enough for e narcissist to have people think he's great- but he has to tear me down too. And seeing me not be in hysterics over his destruction of friends & family relationships, he has turned all his attn to the smear campaign w court. And hes textbook narcissism so he's good at it and I am scared.
Narcissists (and addicts) are most effective with people who have weak or poor boundaries. Family court people usually have good boundaries. Just keep working on your ability to exercise good emotional boundaries for yourself. His attacks will have less impact over time.
Putting it on him to say what he wants (knowing he won't put anything in writing that he doesn't actually want to follow through with) may work better than me going through my lawyer and proposing to him what I want.
This is definitely a good tactic with a narcissist. In my experience, he usually doesn't know what he wants, he just doesn't want you to have anything he doesn't. Usually when I ask him to specify what he wants and needs, exactly, I get radio silence. And then I roll with that silence. Ha.
I can tell you that while we have been apart for 13 years, I have spent a lot of time in therapist's offices explaining my side, defending the use of the term "narcissist" and waiting while they go through the motions of finding it out themselves. Finally, a couple of years ago, we ended up in therapy with another therapist who challenged me on the facts, and I told her outright: "Look, I just gave you a pattern of examples for emotional abuse and exploitation of me, our son, and his new family. If you don't believe me, ask him yourself." She did in the next session, and he blew up in her face, demanded that she define the term "exploit," decided that she was abusive, that I was abusive, that he was a victim of our alienation, withdrew permission for counseling for our son, and sent me a series of angry emails blaming me for anything and everything. The counselor was later apologetic, and said she'd rarely seen anything like it before. I asked her to write a letter for the
next therapist about her experience with the ex, and she did. It saved me some trouble.
Another anecdote: My ex is court-ordered to pay for guitar lessons for DS13. He goes in every month and is really awful to the people that own the guitar shop, complains about the costs, makes them communicate information to me for him, etc. They call him "the little prince" and are always making jokes about how awful he is. Last night the shop owner was remarking about some interaction they'd just had, and she told me, "He's one of those guys that only
looks human."