I was lucky, I left home at 17yo not primarily to pursue an Airforce life, not to earn adult money but to escape the dynamics under my family's roof. Such tension I couldn't understand at the time but it wasn't happiness.
It wasn't long before living with other recruits, that they pulled me into line. The first lesson was what we can call "backstabbing". I can vividly recall another colleague screaming at me to discuss personal matters with him face to face "like a real adult". I was shocked, what actions I saw as perfectly normal wasn't normal at all. So the tough road to the realisation that I needed to re-educate myself began. In fact I had to also realise my family habits were way out of proper human to human behaviour.
While I did change for the better, I didnt really embrace why my family developed into this toxic method of treating others. Now 70yo I've known for many years why and I want to share it with you using some examples, then a remedy.
Triangulation, the behaviour of introducing a third or more people into a personal disagreement between two people is carried out by a party that is insecure, they require other people to agree with their disagreement to - make themselves feel stronger, an endorsement if you will, they also need those loved ones to pursue the fight on their behalf, to put pressure on the other party to concede, to front up and apologise. This works quite well with children albeit as wrong as it is, but with adults it causes more friction and generates anger thereby extending the estrangement.
The triangulator is clever enough to be able to recruit the third parties without the third party realising they should butt out of the conflict. Normally they might but the tears of the instigator tug at their heart strings so they become in the least a silent enemy of the one that tries to contain the problem.
I've had a person say "I hate what you did to your mother" to which I replied- "I never interfered with you and your mother- butt out"
Triangulation is a narcissistic action. It is not carried out by mature adults that can accept that disagreements between two people should remain that way. Indeed the ramifications are far more reaching.
The act of triangulating is clearly mentioned in the book "walking on eggshells" by Dr Christine Lawson. Extracts can be found by googling - witch queen hermit waif. It's under the queen umbrella. The queen treats people, usually their children as extensions of themselves, an extra limb, eg they own you. You dont dare cross the queen, if you do the witch will hunt you to the end of the earth, harm you by any means then call upon the WAIF to cry to their supporters telling them how hurtful that person was. Such manipulation, emotional blackmail is classic narcissism.
In my case my mother (dec) recruited cousins, aunties and others to disown me and I went years not knowing their true feelings. Again no face to face discussions. She even told them all not to tell me she had died, as if it was the last punishment she could muster after 15 years of estrangement. My sister repeated the triangulating methods as she knew no better, trained by the best. But here's the thing- if you stand up against that behaviour you will suffer also. A no win!
My sister had a disagreement with my daughter. I left it to them until a phone call from my sister was to recruit me against my daughter. it failed. The fallout meant that I lost my two adult nieces siding with their mother (get the picture), it meant my daughter lost her cousins. So a dispute between two people resulted in 5 destroyed relationships. The war from a triangle!
Now years later we have a stable life, there's nobody present in my family that tolerates such behaviour, no drama, no games, no indirect negative talk. Narcissism sadly has only one answer- to remove them from your life. We are talking personalities, not necessarily mental illness. Personality disorders are hard to treat because the patient believes they are 100% correct, they know no other way.
TonyWK
