When the Narcissist Uses Custody as a Weapon

How fathers who never ask to speak to their own children demand sole custody simply because he can.

There’s a pattern malignant narcissists follow, almost like clockwork:
They neglect, they abandon, and then, when you finally ask for accountability, they strike.

I was once married to one and for ten months after our separation, he never once asked to speak with our child. Not a single phone call. Not even the bare-minimum effort a disengaged parent makes out of politeness. I even put a house line in just in case he asked to speak to them.
He saw them once every two weeks, and even then, only on his terms, never theirs.

And yet, the moment I asked, again, for financials for suitable support for the third time, everything changed.

Suddenly, he wasn’t the absent parent anymore. Suddenly, he wasn’t the man who made zero effort to maintain a relationship with his own child. Instead, he recast himself as the victim. And with the entitlement only a narcissist can possess, he filed for sole custody.

Not because he wanted to raise them.
Not because he wanted to be a father.
But simply because he could.