Karen's Reviews > Will I Ever Be Free of You?: How to Navigate a High-Conflict Divorce from a Narcissist and Heal Your Family

A helpful book, although of course the sort of thing that no one wants to have to read. Narcissism is a spectrum disorder (p. 6), so there are a range of behaviors that affect relationships in a range of ways; I found McBride's frequent use of real-life stories drawn from her decades of therapeutic practice helpful in that respect. I appreciate that those examples included same-sex as well as opposite-sex couples.

McBride's primary emphasis is really on the effects on children of having a narcissist parent, which shapes the entire book. This emphasis made it less useful to me, going through a divorce without children, but it was easy to just skip or skim those sections.

I wish that I'd read the book much earlier in my own divorce process, especially McBride's conclusion that "A narcissist's perception of reality is that their way is the right way, so they are not usually able to use mediation or to compromise. Mediation with a narcissist is usually difficult and most times not worth the expense" (93). Ah well -- it was a helpful process for me in some ways, so c'est la vie.

"When you are enmeshed inside the narcissistic web, it is more difficult to separate from the strange things that happen. ... Your goal is to get to the place where you are standing outside of the craziness and looking at the narcissist's behaviors more objectively, separating yourself from his or her projections and distorted worldview" (112).

A more helpful book for learning about narcissism and borderline personality disorder, I think, is Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder.