The Five Stages of a Deteriorating Marriage & The $300 Custody Hack with Dr. Becky Whetstone

What if I told you that your marriage didn't just suddenly fall apart - it died in five predictable stages, and you missed every warning sign?

In this enlightening conversation, I sit down with Dr. Becky Whetstone, marriage and family therapist and author of "I Think I Want Out: What to Do When One of You Wants to End Your Marriage," to talk about what no one else will tell you about leaving a narcissist.

Dr. Becky spent 20 years trying to get her book published. Why? Because literary agents kept rejecting it for being "too negative" - they wanted her to save every marriage in the end. But Dr. Becky knows the uncomfortable truth: some marriages can't and shouldn't be saved. Especially when you're married to a narcissist.

She's lived it. Twice. Two narcissistic husbands, two divorces, and hard-won wisdom about what it actually takes to get out and stay out.

In this episode, we dive deep into territory most therapists won't touch:

• The five stages every deteriorating marriage goes through and why most people suffer in silence until it's too late
• How narcissists show up in couples therapy - spoiler: they're there to change YOU, not themselves
• Why only 30% of abusers ever change even with the best treatment protocol, and why the other 70% never will
• The critical difference between narcissistic tendencies and actual Narcissistic Personality Disorder
• If you're asking yourself "Am I the narcissist?" - you're not. Here's why narcissists never self-reflect.
• The $300 custody hack that ended her million-dollar-earning ex-husband's lawsuit in 30 seconds
• Why you can't reason with a narcissist and what to do instead
• How to leave covertly when you need to protect yourself financially, and why sometimes disappearing is the safest option

This conversation will challenge everything you think you know about saving your marriage, trying one more time, and whether couples therapy with a narcissist is even safe.

If you're stuck in the "I think I want out" phase, if you're exhausted from trying to make it work, if you need permission to stop reasoning with someone who will never change - this episode is for you.

Dr. Becky Whetstone is the author of "I Think I Want Out: What to Do When One of You Wants to End Your Marriage" and is currently releasing her memoir "The Congressman's Wife" about her own marriage crisis. Find her at marriagecrisismanager.com.

Ready to do your own recovery work? Visit ThePassageToPeace.com to learn about my P2P Essentials 7 week program, explore my coaching programs, P.E.A.C.E. Pockets Survival Sessions, and one-on-one coaching.

Transcript

Marcia Williams:
Hey everyone, welcome to The Healing Lounge. I'm Marcia Williams, licensed therapist and narcissistic abuse recovery coach. Today I have a guest who speaks my language, someone who's been in the trenches both professionally and personally when it comes to narcissistic relationships and divorce. 

Dr. Becky Whetstone is a marriage and family therapist who spent 20 years specializing in marriage crisis intervention, helping people figure out if they should stay or go. She's the author of "I Think I Want Out: What to Do When One of You Wants to End Your Marriage," and she's currently releasing a memoir called "The Congressman's Wife" about her own marriage crisis. 

But here's what makes this conversation different. Dr. Becky was married to a narcissist. She fought custody battles. She's had to outsmart someone with way more money and power. This is real talk from someone who's lived it and helped hundreds of others navigate it. Dr. Becky, welcome to the Healing Lounge.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
It's so great to be here with you. Really appreciate it.

Marcia Williams:
I cannot wait to jump into this conversation. If you could tell the listeners about your book and why you wrote it after 20 years.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
I had gone through a marriage crisis with my kids' dad back in 1992 and 1993. We went to our marriage therapist who said they couldn't help us because I wasn't motivated to work on the marriage, and they sent us off to manage the crisis on our own. We had two little children and we just made a complete mess of it. We acted immature, we did ridiculous things, and ended up divorced very quickly and prematurely in my opinion.

About 10 years later, I went to graduate school and decided I wanted to become a marriage and family therapist. Whenever I had opportunities to do my own research, I was always in the library looking up information on marriage crisis. Why wasn't our therapist able to help us? Was there information out there?

I learned several things. Number one, they don't teach you in marriage therapy school how to handle a marriage crisis. It's something they pretty much ignore. They tell you that you can do divorce therapy if you want to, but they don't train us how to do it.

When I was in the library researching, I found fantastic books written by scholars with great strategies for people in marriage crisis, for those considering divorce, and maybe ways to come back together. I was beside myself thinking, why didn't our marriage therapist know about this stuff? Here's some great information, nobody knows about it, and why isn't anyone putting it out there?

When I did my dissertation, I researched how people decide to divorce. I felt like I had enough to write a book about it. When I got out of graduate school in 2006, I sat down and started writing the book that just came out last February.

I did a book proposal and went to writers conferences and met book agents and tried to pitch them on my book. They all thought it was so negative. They wanted me to save every marriage in the end. They said if you can't save every marriage in the end, then we don't really want to publish it.

Over the 20 years, I would try again and again to get the book published and got rejected again and again. About three years ago, I told myself I needed to try one more time because the information is so good, so valuable, so needed, and there's still nothing like it. I need a book to recommend to my clients.

I hired an editor who helped me make it perfect and gave me great feedback. Together we knocked it out and she helped me sell it. I finally was able to publish it when I involved a book editor and we got it out there a year ago. I'm so proud of it. It's exactly the book I wanted to put out there all these years.

In the meantime, over those 20 years, I started attracting clients to help them in marriage crisis and I honed how to help them over this period of time. So now I'm very experienced in it, but nobody else is doing it.

Marcia Williams:
First of all, I am so glad that you did not give up. This was needed 20 years ago, just as much, if not more than today. Today there's so much more information out there, but like you said, there is more of a focus on heal your marriage, work through your problems, learn how to communicate, find that spark.

But we are talking about specifically being married to a narcissist. If you don't understand the narcissistic personality disorder, it's not helpful to either of them to try to force that relationship to heal. I am so excited to hear about your five stages of a deteriorating marriage. Tell me about that.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
I went to the library doing research for my dissertation. They make you do a chapter on a review of the research, so you have to dig up everything that was ever written on your subject.

One of the books I read was called "Uncoupling." It talks about how couples uncouple. It's so brilliant. In the process, she mentions through her research she found that marriages die in four stages. When I did my dissertation on how people decide to divorce, I found that they died in five stages. So I added a stage to it.

The first stage of a deteriorating marriage is you're going along in your marriage and you say to yourself one day, "I think I'm unhappy in the marriage." Most people then kind of have a conversation with themselves where they say, "I know marriages have ups and downs, so maybe this is just a downtime and it'll come out of it. I'll just wait and see if it's serious."

Stage two is, "My god, it is serious. My feelings aren't going away. This could lead to divorce even, and I'm seriously unhappy. It's not just a little thing, it's a big thing and I'm very, very unhappy."

In my book, I tell people that right there is where people need to tell their spouse, "Hey, I am seriously struggling in the marriage right now and we need to do something." Of course, I recommend getting professional help right then and there. Because in that book "Uncoupling," she says that most people go through these stages talking to themselves about it and not telling their spouse that they're struggling and unhappy in the marriage. It's very important that you not keep it a secret.

Once you say, "I'm seriously unhappy, this could lead to divorce," the person quickly says to themselves, "I don't want to divorce" because of religion, children, family, friends, culture, so many different things. So the person says, "I'm not going to divorce, so I'll just stay unhappy here."

They don't realize that they're going through a process that's going in a downward direction. They're going, it's going to get worse. They don't realize it though. If I'm a six out of 10 unhappy, they don't realize that pretty soon it's going to be a seven or an eight and then a nine or a 10.

When it gets to a seven or an eight, now they're thinking about it more often and it's really bothering them. It's starting to be more of a focus of theirs. The unhappiness increases, their ability to tolerate it decreases, and so they start looking for coping mechanisms.

What they say to themselves is, "I'm getting more and more unhappy here. If I can just find something else away from the marriage - a hobby, going back to school, going back to work, doing volunteer work, starting to exercise, even having an affair - if I can just do this thing over here that doesn't involve my spouse, then I can have something for myself and cope with my terrible marriage."

That stage is called detachment because you detach from your spouse and you are trying to distract yourself with something else.

Then again, it's going to increase. We never know what day, what moment, what time it's going to happen, but one day your spouse will do something or forget to do something or not do something they were supposed to do. In that moment, you just get this instant clarity where you say, "I can't be married to somebody that would do what that person just did."

All of your fears that you had in stage two where you said "I can't divorce because of kids, religion, culture" - all those things go away in that moment. You know that you have got to get away from this person now. Whether people do get away at that point is another thing. We call that the straw that breaks the camel's back.

What we know is once you hit that point, you will not tolerate marriage part one as it was. It's got to either drastically change at that point or you will emotionally unplug. That's stage five - emotionally unplug. I call that death of the marriage, meaning death of marriage what it was. A lot of people get divorced right then at that point. But some people just stay completely unplugged for years and years and years.

Marcia Williams:
Dr. Becky, you just described my 30 year marriage from beginning to end. You literally just laid out every stage of my marriage. This is why this book needed to have been out 20 years ago!

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
I hear that all the time! People think I'm psychic, but I'm not. We have researched human beings. Human beings tend to - we can predict their behavior and stages of anything, whether it's stages of alcoholism or stages of decision-making or the stages of whatever. It just pisses people off so much that they're so predictable. But they are.

Marcia Williams:
Absolutely. I say this all the time, particularly when I'm referring to narcissists, but this is across the board. Particularly the tactics of the narcissist, they are so textbook. When victims and survivors begin to learn all of these manipulation tactics that have been being used on them and inflicted on them for years, they're like, "My gosh, that's exactly what I've been experiencing."

We study human beings and our patterns of behavior, not just for narcissists, but for human beings can be predictable.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Very rarely do you get an outlier.

Marcia Williams:
This brings me to the question of narcissists in therapy. You said narcissists come to therapy to change their spouse, not themselves. What does that look like?

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
I immediately got a picture in my head of this one that came into my office. In the history of my practice, I have seen anger many times, but this person - she just, even talking about it, got so angry that I thought she was going to have a stroke or something. I mean, it was extremely intense.

She said that when she and her husband - they had just gone on a vacation and they were on the airplane and she got into it with a fellow passenger and started having a fight and a hissy fit match with the fellow passenger on the plane. And her husband wouldn't defend her.

When she told me the story, her husband said, "When we're on trips, she gets into it with people regularly. We get kicked out of restaurants and kicked out of taxis. If you piss her off, she's going to have it out. She's going to rip you apart."

She was there to get her husband to support her in these moments where she chewed people out. In fact, the husband told me that he had started hiring private planes to take them to destinations so that she would have to encounter fewer people on the trip that she might want to tussle with.

It quickly became obvious to me that I was dealing with a female with a personality disorder. Her husband was one of the worst enablers that I've ever seen. His head was in the clouds and he was in complete denial about how horrible she was.

She got to a point like so many narcissists do - she didn't want to come back because the focus was becoming on her. I told him, "I hate to tell you, but I think she has a personality disorder and you need to look it up. You must never tell her this. Do not ever tell her that I told you this. It's not going to go well."

About a year and a half later, I got a voicemail on my phone and she goes, "I was told that I have a personality disorder and I want to meet with you." I called her back and left a message and I said, "I will only meet with you and your husband in my office. I am not going to talk to you on the phone. You come make an appointment with me and both of you have to be there, otherwise we're not doing it."

I never heard from her again.

Marcia Williams:
You said a word that I speak to a lot and I'm so curious to hear what you think about this. You said the husband was in such denial. I called denial my best friend when I was married to a narcissist for 30 years. I said denial was my very best friend. I truly believe that it is literally the only way that you can stay in a relationship with a narcissist is in denial.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on that and the dynamic of the enabler that you described him to be and the narcissist that you described her to be - how it becomes a perfect match of dysfunction.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
I'm not sure I understand it myself. One thing about this couple that was so incredibly unique is they made millions and millions of dollars a month. This man tried to have a budget with this woman. I remember her credit card limit was $30,000 a month and she could not stay within the $30,000 a month.

He told me they had boxes piled all over their house from Amazon and UPS and FedEx unopened for months at a time. I would say, "If she's going over budget, why don't you put a stop hold on the card? Why don't you set some boundaries with her?"

He said, "She doesn't have any hobbies and I just look at this as her hobby. She's bored and I can afford for her to do it."

Then the other thing they did was they remodeled their house over and over and over again. I remember that he gave her a $50,000 a week budget on furnishing and remodeling her house.

He had all his excuses and justifications for it. I really think she had an addiction. The husband was not going to set a boundary. He just was not going to do it. If it was something he really wanted, he would do it, but he wouldn't control her.

Marcia Williams:
In your clinical experience, can you talk a little bit about how the wounds of the victim - and I know everybody hates the word victim, but they literally are because they are being abused by the narcissist. They both have wounds. The enabler, when you say, "Why don't you set boundaries? Why don't you cut off the budget?" - and honestly, we could relate this across the board, whether it's a $50,000 budget or a $50 budget.

The enabler does not see that as an option. They're operating from their own core wounds while the abuser is operating from theirs, which is "my cup will never be filled, you'll never be good enough, I need more and more and more of everything to prove that I'm worthy or important." And this dynamic, you said denial helps this to go on sometimes for years.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
There's no doubt about it. Part of his problem was a lack of self-care. Healthy people set boundaries for themselves. Boundaries, at the end of the day, is kind of a security system for a human being to protect themselves from harm, but also to keep from harming people as well.

It's amazing that the person who is not going to protect himself was so attracted to the person who's not going to restrain herself and has no problem harming others.

I had a professor one time who said, if you put the narcissist in a room with the person who's not going to protect themselves, in a room of 500 people, they'll find one another within five minutes.

They test. I have a client right now who - she had some dude just help her move out of her house. She was married to a narcissist and she did a move while her husband was out of town. So when he came home, she was gone.

The mover then started calling her and assuming that they're going to be best friends and making these assumptions like, "Why are you being so distant with me?" She's like, "What are you talking about?"

I told her, I said, "He was testing you." Because if you weren't going to protect yourself and set your boundary and swat him off when he tested you, then he knew that you were a woman he could abuse.

Marcia Williams:
I love that you say that. They test you absolutely from the very beginning. They test you and that's how they determine if you are a candidate. It's really hard for a lot of people to wrap their head around this because we're talking about someone that they love, that they fell in love with, that they saw themselves being married to this person forever.

To have to look back and say, "You were testing me, you targeted me. Did you ever really love me? Was any of this real?" All of these questions start running through their minds. They're starting to see the light, but that's really hard to accept. How do you help someone walk into acceptance that they are in a relationship with a narcissist?

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
One of the disabilities that so many humans have is the inability to discern reality accurately. They talk themselves out of what they're actually seeing. Or they make excuses for it or justifications. Sometimes they're just completely blind and they're just not processing what's right in front of their face.

Part of becoming healthy is looking at what's in front of you and making sure that you're seeing reality as it is. If someone is a jerk to you, you see that they are a jerk. You don't make an excuse for them being a jerk. You take full ownership of them being a jerk.

Don't dismiss what's right in front of your face. In my world of dealing with people and trying to get them to be healthy, it's all about evidence that's provable. If your spouse is saying ugly, nasty things, then I want you to believe that that's real and that that's really going on and to not put it in a blender and try to dilute it to less than what it actually is.

Any of us that have been in difficult relationships - in "The Congressman's Wife," I write so much about this because I was a relationship expert when I married the congressman, who was a terrible narcissist, but I had not gone to graduate school. I was not a therapist. I was just like an Ann Landers kind of person that wrote about relationships. I wasn't trained in mental disorders and all those things.

When I was going through the divorce with him, I was in graduate school and I was in the internship stage. I chose to intern at the Family Violence Center in San Antonio. In your orientation, they teach you all about the abuse dynamics and all the statistics and everything you'd ever want to know about abuse.

When I had that training, I could no longer deny to myself that he was abusive. When we were married, I would say, "I think you're abusive." Sometimes my friends would go, "Oh my God, Becky, he did what? That's abuse."

When I take it back to him, he would go, "You don't know what abuse is." When I went and did that training, all of a sudden I said, "You know what? I do know what abuse is now. I've been trained in it and I know what it is and you can't tell me it's not abuse anymore when I know for a fact that it is."

I think education and awareness is something that's very helpful for you to be able to see reality clearly. You can go to any abuse website in the United States and they have all the information on there that I learned myself when I was in the orientation because we teach those things to the women that we're working with so that they can no longer deny it.

There's so much stuff in black and white. If they're doing this, it's abuse, period, end of ball game. Once you start realizing that this is what it is, and then they've got all these statistics that show that the likelihood of the abuser ever changing are so minuscule.

They have studies done. They have studied men who have gone through programs recommended by the county or whatever and the only ones that do change are the ones who go to anger management, group therapy designed for abusers, and get long-term individual therapy. Of the men that they've studied that did all three, which is the recommended protocol, only 30% succeeded in changing.

If your man is not in all of those three things, there's a 100% chance he won't change. If he is in the protocol, there's a 70% chance he won't change. Come on, wake up. They're not going to change.

Marcia Williams:
The reason why is because the likelihood of them seeing themselves as part of the problem is so low, and that's what's needed before you even get into that protocol. You first have to be willing to say, "I need help." What's the percentage of a narcissist admitting that they need help?

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Zero percent. I mean zero percent. I would like to think that the 30% of that group doing the protocol that did change were probably not deserving of the true diagnosis of narcissism. They probably had narcissistic tendencies.

Marcia Williams:
Dr. Becky, that's mind blowing right there because there is a spectrum and you're saying that of the 30% that do change, it's likely because they were not full personality disorder.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
I don't think they deserve the NPD diagnosis as it's listed in the DSM-5. But there's plenty of people - I used to be one of them. I was raised by my parents to have narcissistic tendencies. But when I went to therapy and started addressing all these things, I was able to change. I used to not have empathy, but in therapy, I was able to gain it.

I was never worthy of the true diagnosis. It was a tendency that I had. Those people can grow and change and get empathy and stop feeling entitled and all those things.

Marcia Williams:
That is so important because a lot of my clients feel like - and of course they are manipulated by the narcissist because they're told that they're a narcissist - and they begin to look at themselves and say, "Well, maybe I am the narcissist because sometimes I am selfish. Sometimes I am self-centered. Sometimes I don't have empathy. So maybe I am a narcissist."

Are you saying that we all have tendencies and it does not make us a narcissist?

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Absolutely. You're not a narcissist unless you meet the criteria listed in the DSM-5 Diagnostic Manual. But every human I've ever met just about has narcissistic tendencies. Sometimes there's some that have them all the time, but there's some that have them sometimes. Just because every now and then I feel entitled to do X, Y, or Z does not make me a narcissist. I'm just having a narcissistic moment.

Marcia Williams:
I love that - a narcissistic moment. I'm allowed to have a narcissistic moment. As long as I don't harm anybody, you know, that's the thing. I would never harm somebody.

The difference when we are either told or confronted about our narcissistic tendencies - we don't want those tendencies. We get into therapy. We go to a psychologist to say, "Help me. I need help. I want to change." And that's the difference.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
I wanted to say a little bit earlier that if you're sitting there going, "Could I be a narcissist?" - if you're even questioning it, you're not a narcissist.

Marcia Williams:
Yes! I say that all the time. Thank you for saying that.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Because narcissists don't self-reflect like that. They're so certain of their rightness and of everyone else being wrong that they would never question that there could be something wrong with them. It's really kind of comical because those of us that have some level of humility are willing to self-reflect and take ownership that we're not perfect and that we may have some flaws.

Usually in ordinary people like us, it's just a little old case of immaturity or something. It's not that big of a deal. Humble people are willing to say, "Hey, maybe it's me." A narcissist is never, never going to say maybe it's me.

Marcia Williams:
I love you for saying that. That needs to be shouted at every mountain top because if we could accept that, it is immediately freeing. It is literally fact. So ladies and gentlemen, you've heard it from Dr. Becky Whetstone, it is so true. And if we can accept that, we can move forward with our healing.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
They operate from an image of having to be seen as good and perfect. I always picture like a warrior on a hill and he's up there and he's fighting to keep his ego intact - the ego and the image of being good and perfect. He's standing up there with a sword and anybody that tries to climb up the hill and challenge that ego and say "You're wrong, you're not good and perfect," he's beating you off of him and doing anything in his power to maintain that image that he's good and perfect.

Keep that in mind, everybody, because a person who is fighting to keep their self-image such that they appear good and perfect is probably a narcissist and will never ever admit they're wrong. They will fight to the death to not be wrong.

I have cornered the narcissists like that in my office before and the most juice of wrongness that I could squeeze out of them was "Well, I didn't intend to." But they wouldn't say they were wrong. "I didn't intend to do that." That's the most I can squeeze out.

Marcia Williams:
And for that to be the most is scary. Unfortunately, it's also the breadcrumb that we in a relationship with a narcissist have no choice but to accept. That's all we're going to get. We begin to accept breadcrumbs like that because that's the most you're going to get.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Exactly. Just keep in mind that their ego has to be seen in this certain kind of way, and that's why you're having so many difficulties with them because they're going to fight to the death to only be seen as good and perfect.

I was going to tell you a story from "The Congressman's Wife" because I wrote the book after our divorce in 2003, and I was so emotionally raw and beat up after being married to this narcissist because he was outrageous. My kids and I came out of it and felt like we'd been in a cyclone. It took me years to get over it.

Because he's a congressman, it was a very public thing. It was in the newspaper and stuff. I just couldn't take any more public scrutiny. So I've been sitting on this book all these years. I finally have pulled it back out and I'm going back over it and releasing it.

While writing it, I realized that one of the things he used to do is he would have breakfast with these people every Sunday. He had these routines. They'd pick him up at 8 a.m. on Sunday and they'd go eat breakfast. Whenever he came back from there, he'd be in a bad mood and he would say, "My friends told me they saw you last week driving around town. A man was driving your car. You were with another man driving around in the car."

I'd go, "Well, that just didn't happen. I'm just telling you, that didn't happen." He would tell me, "You could have gone to breakfast with us, but you had the kids this weekend and my friends hate kids, so you can't come." Or if his friends called to go out to dinner, "You can't come to dinner because my friends hate kids."

I realized later on, writing the book, that I don't think his friends ever said they saw me in a car driving with a man. I don't think his friends ever said, "Becky can't come because we hate kids." I think he didn't want me to go with my kids. So he made up the story about his friends.

I think he wanted to test me like catfishing to see if I was cheating. So he created a story that I was in my car driving around with a man, probably because he was up there in Washington doing that himself.

Marcia Williams:
Exactly. They typically accuse us of the exact things they are doing. And then it distracts us because we're like, "My gosh, what? Who told him this? Where did this come from? How can I fix this? How can I convince him that that wasn't true?" And we're off trying to fix it and we're distraught.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
I was guilty until proven innocent. He told me, "You have to prove you weren't with a man in your car." And I'm like, "How do I do that? Because it never happened." It was crazy making.

Marcia Williams:
It is crazy making. This is, I think, speaking to those of us who feel like we have to try couples therapy so that we can say we tried. That was me. And it's so many of my clients. I felt like I could not leave unless I could truly say to myself, "I tried everything."

Couples therapy becomes that last ditch effort that we're still clinging to hope that they will change. So people use couples therapy as proof that it will or won't work. Is that valid?

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Of course. People, especially when they have kids, they want the peace of mind that they tried. The kids are going to ask you why you divorced. When they're real little, they don't, but when they get older, they're coming to ask you questions. You want to be able to let them know that you did all that you could.

I think therapists know sometimes that we are used so that the person who's going to leave can justify to their family. But what I wish they'd quit saying is "We went to therapy and therapy didn't work" because it wasn't the therapist. We bring the goods and we're ready to help you, but the truth is a narcissist can't change and that's what the deal is.

Marcia Williams:
I love that you say that. It's not necessarily the therapist, but would you agree that a therapist who doesn't have the awareness, the knowledge, the insight into a narcissistic personality disordered person - they may not spot this person in their office in couples therapy. How do you navigate that?

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
I think even the most clueless therapist is going to find out that they're dealing with a difficult person. The person is going to be resistant and there's certain key words they say in therapy that cues the therapist. Sort of like Jeff Foxworthy, "You might be a redneck if..." - you might be a narcissist if you say, "I'm feeling attacked. I'm feeling attacked in this session."

I always say to them, "Do you really, in all honesty, think I'm attacking you? I say the word attack. Am I attacking you?" Try to make them really think about what they're saying. But that's a real deflector right there that they'll say.

Another thing they do that will first get my attention is in telehealth therapy, I've got the husband and wife on the screen and I'm talking to the husband, getting to know him, asking a bunch of questions, and then I'm planning on talking to his wife in a few minutes and he'll go, "Why are you only talking to me? Why are you only asking me questions? Why aren't you asking her questions? I think you're acting like I'm the one that has the problem here and you're not talking to her."

I'll say, "Dude, I can't talk to two people at one time. I have to talk to you all one at a time. Right now I'm talking to you and in a few minutes I'm going to talk to her."

The thing about the narcissist is they start pushing back. If I mess with them too much or in their opinion too much, they won't come back. They will say, "I don't ever want to see Becky again." They may think they're hurting me and I am absolutely thrilled that they're not coming back because I don't enjoy working with narcissists. I know no therapist does. But typically they therapist shop. They keep going from one therapist to the next to find the one who will buy into their story.

You've probably had cases like I have where at first, an individual comes in to talk to you and they sit there and tell you for weeks how terrible their spouse is and they're so put upon and all these things. Then maybe you ask, "Can I meet with your spouse so I can get their perspective?"

The spouse comes in and within 10 minutes you realize that the person that you've been seeing is a narcissist. Because this person who's so kind and humble comes in and is totally willing to take ownership of anything. They're like, "If it's me, I want to fix it." Then they start telling you these outrageous stories of what their spouse has been doing and all of a sudden, the picture becomes very clear.

When a narcissist goes to individual therapy, if we don't have the spouse's perspective, we may fall into the trap of empathizing and sympathizing with them about how downtrodden they are. I think a good therapist is going to say, "Can I get your spouse's perspective?" and have them come in and then the truth will be told.

Marcia Williams:
That is a great tip. It is so funny how obvious it is when you can get the perspective from the other person because the narcissist obviously wants to manage the narrative. The only reason the narcissist would agree for you to meet with them is if they feel confident in the fact that they have full control over the partner enough to believe that they will not tarnish their image, impact their image.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
My client who's the narcissist is thinking he's so right. His perspective is so correct. He really believes with all his heart that he is being victimized by this sweet little thing that just came in and visited with me. I think part of it is just their confidence.

That woman that I talked about at the beginning, the rich woman, she was so certain that her husband was in the wrong, that she dragged him to therapy. It took me 15 minutes to figure out that there was something wrong with her and not him. He was just her enabler.

Marcia Williams:
That is the mindset of a narcissist. "I know that I'm right. I'm so confident in it that you can ask anybody." And what they're really saying is, "I'm so right and I've manipulated everyone around them to agree with them. And if they don't, something's wrong with them."

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Absolutely. When I get to the pearly gates, Marcia, I'm going to ask whatever divine source there is, if there is one, I'm going to say, "Why did we have narcissists? Why did we have to have that?"

My husband's an anesthesiologist and what he would have to do every morning in his job was meet the patients and their families to vet them for anesthesia. He agrees with me that 95% are severely dysfunctional in relationships and 5% are very, very solid and functional people.

That could be improved with education, but our culture doesn't educate us how to be functional in relationships. I really believe our culture lets us down. You have good and well-meaning people out there who still have terrible relationships because they haven't learned the skills. That changes. Y'all only fish in the 5% pond.

Marcia Williams:
Where is it? Where is it? Show us the way and we'll be there, Dr. Becky.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
The best way to find somebody in the 5% is to be in the 5% yourself.

Marcia Williams:
There you go. Say that again, please. Say it again.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
The best way to find a partner who is in the healthy 5% is to be in the healthy 5% yourself. So get yourself as solid as you can possibly be. Educate yourself, read books, go to therapy, go to workshops, immerse yourself in being as healthy mind, body, spirit as you can.

Men and women in the 5% - part of being healthy is you won't be with unhealthy people. You won't already. You've got good boundaries. You take good care of yourself.

Marcia Williams:
You won't tolerate it. Absolutely. That is so powerful. I literally got chills when you said that. And that is why we have to do the work. It's not enough just to say, "I'm in a relationship with a narcissist. Now I know I'm not the problem." We can't stop there. It doesn't stop there. We now have to do the work. What made me a target for a narcissist? How did they pick me out of a room of 500 people? What is it about me?

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Because you're a nice girl. You're probably a pleaser or a recovering pleaser. And they can smell those pleasers. That's one of the worst, most common personas that we humans take on. I'm a recovering pleaser. Pleasers let people get away with a lot. The pleasers will throw themselves under the bus so other people can be happy.

Marcia Williams:
Absolutely. And I'm in that club of a recovering people pleaser. Like you said, it's exactly what a narcissist is attracted to. I played that role really, really well, too well.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Well, you're cheerful and you're nice, and then you didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings and you didn't want to disappoint anybody and they just love that.

Marcia Williams:
Okay, before I let you go, I have got to get you to tell us the story of the $300 custody hack.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
My kids' dad was a narcissist and he was an orthopedic surgeon who made tons of money. He was just loaded with money and he was extremely - I called him a hard ass. We lived in Texas and he liked to be the tough Texas guy.

When I was in graduate school, it was mainly brick and mortar. You went to class, you went to the building every night. It wasn't online. I did not have one online class when I was in graduate school. Most people worked during the day so most of us went to school at night.

My kids were very young so normally he had them on Wednesday night, typical custody night. But when I was in grad school, I had made a deal with him that he would keep them also on Monday nights so that I could go to graduate school and not have to have a babysitter and they could be with him.

At the time he goes, "I want that in writing." I'm like, "I'm not putting it in writing, but just do this." I was in graduate school for years. So for years we did that.

When I went into the dissertation phase, I was no longer going to class. It was all about going to the library and researching and writing and stuff. The kids said to me, "Hey, now that you're home, can we stop going to dad's house on Monday nights and stay with you?" And I said, "Of course, we'll just go back to how it was before."

The dad called me up and he's like, "I want them on Monday night, like always." I'm like, "The kids don't want it anymore and we're just going to go back to how it was." He was mad as hell. The next thing I know, I'm served with a subpoena. He has sued me for custody of my children. I couldn't figure out why.

I was going through a divorce with the congressman at the time and I thought, "I didn't know what he was up to." The kid told me, "You know what it is. My son was going through puberty at the time, so his voice was changing. He's like, "You know what it is? Dad is mad at you because you didn't give him that Monday night, and to change custody in Texas, you have to sue for custody."

I was like, "God, that's overkill." He had paid a $10,000 retainer to do this custody thing against me and I didn't have $10,000 to hire a lawyer and go against him.

The one thing I said to myself - I've had two narcissistic husbands and I had learned that you can outsmart them. You can't necessarily go toe to toe with them in power or money, but you can outsmart them.

With my kids' dad, what I decided I was going to do is I went and hired a lawyer for $300. I paid him for one hour of his time. I said, "Look, my rich ex-husband is suing me for custody of the kids and I can't afford to hire a lawyer to fight him. The kids don't want custody to change. They want things to stay the same. What can I do? Is there anything you know of that I can do to shut this down?"

He said, "You know what? There is something. Your kids are old enough to decide who they want to be with." They were like 12 and 14 or something like that. He goes, "I'm going to print off this sheet of paper right here and you get your kids to sign it in front of a notary and fax it to your husband and his lawyer and it will be over within 30 seconds."

I went home and the last thing I wanted to do was pressure my kids to sign that paper. But man, I was sure hoping they would. I said, I told the kids, "Here's this deal. If you sign this at the bank and we get it notarized and we fax this to your dad, this thing will go away. But I don't want to pressure you. It's completely your decision."

My daughter immediately goes, "I'll sign it. I'll sign it." My son goes, "I need to think about it." About a week later, I said, "Look, I'm going to the bank. Me and Casey are going to go to the bank and get this thing notarized. If you'd like to come..." My son goes, "I'm coming." I was like, "Thank you, God. Thank you, God."

My son signed it and we faxed it. We got home. My hand was shaking. I could not fax it to his dad and his lawyer fast enough.

My son and daughter told me that their dad got so mad. He was so furious with them for signing that paper. He told my son, "You're not a man. You're not a man because you signed it." You know what my son said to me? He goes, "I didn't care. I did the right thing. I know I did the right thing."

That custody thing went away. The message is, if you're fighting in legal battles and stuff with the narcissist, use your brain and your common sense and do things like go hire an expert for an hour or a consultant in whatever it is for an hour or 30 minutes or whatever, and get their expert advice about what you can do, what power you have that can shut these people down without spending a fortune and having to go through all the emotional exhaustion of it.

I was so pleased with how that turned out. The custody thing was thrown out. I bet he had to eat that retainer. I bet he didn't ever get that money back.

Marcia Williams:
I bet. I bet you won. That would be the icing on the cake. Not only that, but you beat him with $300.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Yes! And it's outsmarting him. Knowledge is power.

Marcia Williams:
And that's the word. Thank you. Outsmarted him. You don't need a $10,000 retainer. You need $300 to speak with someone for 30 minutes or an hour to get some advice.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
You'd be surprised all the little loopholes and things that these attorneys know about. That just worked out beautifully and I was so happy.

Marcia Williams:
That is so amazing. That is the best story ever. It is very satisfying to say the least. I love how you didn't pressure the kids because you've got to be careful with that because they get triangulated and then they get retaliated against. But I love what your son said. "I don't care. I did the right thing." I love that.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
He knew his dad was out of line. That's the thing - our kids know when their parent is being an absolute horse's patoot. They know.

Marcia Williams:
This is patoot. I love it. They do know. We don't give them enough credit. I didn't. I spent so much time thinking I was protecting them. I was the buffer. My oldest son, he's 31, said, "Mom, I could have told you something was wrong with dad when I was seven. I could have told you he was a narcissist when I was 13." I was like, "Oh my gosh."

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Kids do realize it. I remember when my kids came home, when they weren't that old, maybe around the same age as your son, and they said, "Mom, we think we know why you divorced Dad."

Marcia Williams:
He was like I said a Texan hard - he didn't have any empathy. He was a hard ass. He wouldn't let him have more than six inches of water in the bathtub. He had a little measuring stick.

Would you consider your ex an overt narcissist? It sounds like he was obviously outwardly arrogant and puffing of the chest and "Here I'm a..."

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
No, he maintained an image of being very humble. He loved because he's an orthopedic surgeon - he was the doctor for the San Antonio Spurs. I mean, he had people sucking up to him like nothing, but he loved to play the pig farmer's son.

He would tell people, "I never graduated from college." You know why? Because he got early entrance to med school because he was so smart. He tried to play this role of Mr. Humble.

Y'all, the narcissist is all smoke and mirrors. Underneath, they themselves don't think they're good enough. It's just an image that they're maintaining. He was doing all this, working so hard and wanting to be the Spurs doctor or whatever, the doctor of a bunch of teams in San Antonio to prove to himself that he was worthy.

Marcia Williams:
Yes. That's why their image is everything to them because without it, it means they would have to face who they really are. And they're just not willing to do that because that's not what a narcissist does. So their image is everything.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
My kids - my daughter knows he's difficult and all that stuff. She says he says things like, "I know I'm not perfect, I'm not complaining, but look at all I've done in my life."

I'm thinking to myself, "Yeah, you've gotten all these awards in San Antonio for being Mr. Sports doctor. You've gotten trophy after trophy after trophy, but you don't have a good relationship with your only child." That's your only living child. Yeah, a terrible relationship with her. Makes me sad.

Marcia Williams:
Which says a lot. It's very sad. It's very sad. So I hate that our time is running out. I could talk to you for another couple of hours. I'm really upset that we're running out of time and I know how busy you are and I greatly appreciate you being here. I really do.

I want to ask one last question before I let you go. What is the biggest mistake people make when trying to leave a narcissist?

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Maybe it is thinking that you're trying to reason with them. Like I recently helped - the idea that you can sit down and go, "Now, honey, I'm going to divorce you and let's talk about how we're going to do this." To think that you can have that conversation because we're nice guys, right? We like it. We don't want to be jerks. We want it - it's against our countenance to do anything nasty to another human being.

I've got the pleaser client that I have had for many years. A few weekends ago, I helped her covertly when her husband went out of town. We had a moving truck waiting outside of her house and she called me. I drove right over and helped her pack her stuff up and get everything out of the house that night because we knew that if she did it like "Hey, now I'm gonna file for divorce," we knew that he would go get in the bank accounts, turn off the credit cards, leave her destitute.

She had to do it this ugly way to keep her financials and things that she was entitled to intact because he's not safe to leave as you would like to leave a person.

Unfortunately, when you're leaving a narcissist, you've got to put yourself and your well-being and safety number one over anything else. So move your money around or put it in places where the narcissist can't get to it. Any sort of bills that they're responsible for - like if they're responsible for the car payment or whatever, your car payment or whatever - make sure you get control of all those things.

Because they'll see that you get your car repossessed. I mean, they do all sorts of dastardly things. Just make sure you've covered all your bases and then leave and disappear and don't let them know where you are. Block them on your phone and have a lawyer deal with them, period. And that's that. Try to have zero contact with them if you can.

Marcia Williams:
Exactly. And go straight into therapy to get help with breaking the trauma bond because that's why it is so hard to leave and stay gone, block and stay blocked, no contact and stay no contact. That trauma bond makes it so much easier said than done. But you're right. It is the only way. It's the only way.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
It's been two months now and she still hasn't had contact with them, which I'm thrilled about. She went through the stage of doubt and feeling guilty and now she's over the hump and she sees with clarity now. She keeps saying, "Now, I am really seeing how really bad it was now. I see it clearly now. I'll never go back." I'm going like, "Yeah, thank God."

Marcia Williams:
Beautiful. Wonderful. Yes, because when you remove yourself from that toxic environment, it gives your brain a chance to clear the fog. And that clarity starts to come over time. Like you said, she got over the hump, but there is that hump that you have to get over. And it's not easy.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Absolutely. Just have a support system. She's a woman who - this particular woman has never had a mother. Her mother was an alcoholic and she was taken away from her mother when she was three. I said, "Girl, you need a mother right now and I'm going to be your mother, your mother by proxy."

I'm going to - and you're going to lean on me every day of this debacle. So she texted me every day. I checked on her every day for about the first two or three weeks. Then I could just see her getting stronger. So now we talk every two weeks. But she needed a strong support and I knew she didn't have one.

Marcia Williams:
Beautiful. Exactly. That is - some people might go as a therapist, you probably shouldn't have helped her move and done all those things. But you know what? There was no one else for her.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
I know it was the right thing. I just do.

Marcia Williams:
And I think that's what we do as therapists when we truly feel in our heart that this extra step is going to help them get to a place where they can begin to work on their independence. It's a happy ending story and that is beautiful.

I need everyone to know how to get your book. "I Think I Want Out: What to Do When One of You Wants to End Your Marriage." Everyone needs that book.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
First of all, you can go to my website marriagecrisismanager.com and read all about me and my book. Then I have a blog on Medium where I've written almost 200 blogs on every subject imaginable including narcissism.

My book is available at every bookseller - Barnes and Noble, Target, Walmart, Amazon - audiobook, and yes I read it in my voice if you can stand any more of my voice, Kindle version and hard copy. It's my pride and joy.

Marcia Williams:
Beautiful, beautiful as it should be. I still say we needed it 20 years ago, but I'll take it. I'll take it better now than never. I thank you so much for what you do for this community, what you give, how you allowed your experience of being married to not one, but two narcissists and coming here today looking fabulous and just ready to help any and everyone else who's been where you were.

That's my passion as well. And that's why I'm just so thankful for you. So thank you for being here with me today.

Dr. Becky Whetstone:
Well, I'm thankful for you Marcia, I really appreciate you providing this platform and I know how hard it is. So thank you.

Marcia Williams:
Absolutely! I cannot wait for the world to hear Dr. Becky Whetstone. Dr. Becky, thank you so much. And just thank you for the work that you do.