I think women need to take responsibility for themselves. I agree with you that, once she realized how abusive this man was, she should have left BEFORE having a child.

HOWEVER… we don’t know what games he was playing with her, or how fragile her emotional state was because of it. Abusers can be really sophisticated. If this woman is an empath and the man is a narc, then she was like a mouse with a snake.

I know a man who was married to an NPD. The woman is incredibly manipulative. It took him TEN YEARS to figure out what was going on and to connect the dots.

So on the one hand, this is a precautionary tale. On the other hand, I am not going to blame someone who was being victimized.

It’s easy to tell a woman who was raped — well you shouldn’t have worn a short skirt/accepted a drink/walked home alone. But the problem is not the woman, the problem is the rapist, and it’s not fair to blame the victim.

Right now, this man continues to victimize her and also their child. That really bothers me. Anyone who thinks this man actually cares about the child needs to ask — why won’t he let the child see the mother, at least in a monitored setting?

So often we hear about men who are denied visitation rights. That bothers the h*ll out of me. Because that plays games with a child who needs to know both their parents.

So why are the courts not calling for at least some monitored visitations for this mother?

The fact that they are not tells me right there — this man might indeed be a narc. He doesn’t care about the child. He gets off on power trips. And if the mother was an empath, or a particularly sensitive and vulnerable person, he would have known exactly how to play her to keep her victimized.

I doubt she had a support system that was helping her. That is how many victims in this situation break free — they have a friend or family member or some other advocate that sees what is happening. This woman didn’t have that, I don’t think.

I feel incredibly sorry for her.