Hi Have Hope—
I just read your question, andalso your other thread on the continual cycle of raging abuse and love bombing (rinse and repeat!). You already know the love-bomb part is the same dysfunction as the abuse part (obviously more pleasant though!)

Yours sounds a lot like my marriage only it took us a lot longer to slide into the abuse phase. Tthere were a lot of enjoyable parts, yes, including sex, to the first four years, followed by five worsening years.

Here’s where I suggest you read “Power” by S. Arabi about being married to, and surviving, a malignant narcissist. (I know there are orher books that cover the same subject but I haven’t read them; also, I have it on my phone but if you don’t have phone or computer privacy it will be too risky to download it—maybe find a library or bookstore you can hang out in for a little while every few days or keep a copy at work). It’s a great explanation of HOW somebody who is supposed to be a partner can be so cruel and destructive to her partner—and her children (ACS got involved at one point).

The important thing to remember is that normal human beings expect their partner to be loving and supportive, not cruel and vindictive and abusive and controlling. But when you attempt to do anything with a malignant marcissist, you don’t get normal, you get gaslighting and manipulation and abuse.

That includes just trying to talk about the marriage.

Or negotiating an end to it.

She was the one who suggested mediation because it would be cheaper. I agreed. It didn’t work. We were fine and splendid agreeing on most things, but absolutely stuck on the things we disagreed in (you probably won’t have to worry about some of those, like money, if you were only married one year, we were married 9). So the mediation went well, wonderful attorney, we had our own wonderful attorneys as well, smoothly, but only by treading on eggshells very carefully. When the few difficult subjects (eg money) came up. She disagreed with the formula. After the meeting, walking out through the the building lobby she turned on the monster and she backed me up against a wall and screamed at me for 20 minutes.

The mediation lawyer was really surprised—and annoyed at me—when my lawyer and I served my wife with divorce papers for a court appearence. But by then I had gotten bored of trying to explain everything to everyone and figured the mediation would never ever succeed anyway. My wife’s response was to fire her attorney an hire “the best divorce lawyer in town”. And then fire him a couple of months later when he realized his client was so unreasonable and didn’t really have the money to pay him for the kind of cutthroat legal work he usually did for clients that usually had vastly more assets than we did.

Mediation is for two partners who agree to go separate ways. Just like marriage therapy is for two people who want to work as partners to have the marriage succeed. If one partner is just going to use these oportunities to manipulate things the prognosis is very poor.

The divorce took 17 months to May 2019, and yeah, it was really nasty, but by then we had been separated and my daughter and I were rebuilding our lives with court-mandated non-interference from my wife. It’s sooooo much better.

Short answer: mediation with a narcissist is just an invitation to manipulation.

Keep your eyes on the prize of a better life for you and I wish you serenity, courage and wisdom.