Danu Morrigan, author, founder and owner of the website daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com, analyses the fall out from the war-of-words between Brooklyn Beckham and his parents ...
You’d have to be living under a particularly big and heavy rock if you haven’t heard about the serious and public war-of-words between Brooklyn Beckham and his famous parents David and Victoria.
As I explore this, let me be very clear that I do not know any of these people personally, nor know the truth of any of the allegations and counter-allegations, and I’m not making any claims as to the accuracy of any of them, okay?
What I’m hoping to do in this blog post is to analyse what has happened as if it’s true, and draw conclusions from it. The lessons are valuable for us ordinary people no matter how true the original stories are.
I do have a deep interest in the topic of family estrangement, if not in the Beckhams specifically. My name is Danu Morrigan and I’m one of DLT’s authors, writing on the topic of Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers.
I’m not saying Brooklyn Beckham’s parents are narcissists, or a narcissist/enabler, as I simply don’t know that, and as far as I can tell, Brooklyn has not used those words.
What I am saying is that the allegations about specific behaviours are absolutely consistent with the toxicity of narcissistic dynamics.
It all came to a head, seemingly, at Brooklyn’s wedding to Nicola Peltz, to the extent that they had a renewal of vows ceremony a couple of years later, in an attempt to create some good memories of at least that occasion. He says: ‘We wanted to renew our vows so we could create new memories of our wedding day that bring us joy and happiness, not anxiety and embarrassment.’
The examples he gives of his parents and particularly his mother ruining his wedding day do ring true, as other people’s big occasions like weddings do bring out the worst in narcissists. This makes sense from a narcissistic perspective: they want all the attention and praise, etc. on them, and of course someone else’s big day is about that person and not the narcissist.
My own parents absolutely ruined my wedding day in a manner very similar to Brooklyn’s accusations. For sure the details vary, but the principle is the same: to undermine your own celebration and to get the attention back on themselves. Two examples of many: In my father’s speech he described my mother, not me, as the most beautiful woman in the room that day. And my mother managed only a snapped, ‘I’m glad to see you married at last’ (rather than living ‘in sin’ as we had been, to her great disapproval), when I begged her to tell me if she was happy for me.
As I share in my book published by DLT, How To Go No-Contact With Your Narcissistic Mother, narcissists hate rejection above all. Again, this makes sense because if you’re so wonderful how can anyone reject you, and if someone does, it is information that you might not be that wonderful after all, and THAT CANNOT BE!!!!!!
And so, one of a narcissist’s reactions is to operate a smear campaign to everyone who will listen. This did not impact me very much as I had for years kept my parents apart from everyone else important to me, and we didn’t really have any extended family, but many daughters of narcissistic mothers suffer huge fallout from this as the people they have in common believe the mother’s lies and turn on them.
How much more so is this possible if the parents in question have a huge public and international profile, and access to journalists?
Brooklyn Beckham published a statement recently in which he said, ‘Since the moment I started standing up for myself with my family, I've received endless attacks from my parents, both privately and publicly, that were sent to the press on their orders.’
He says: ‘Unfortunately my parents and their team have continued to go to the press […]’ and, ‘I have seen with my own eyes the lengths that they'll go through to place countless lies in the media, mostly at the expense of innocent people, to preserve their own facade.’
Both in the autumn when the original story surfaced, and now that Brooklyn has made his recent statement, he is getting lots of backlash from the public on forums and social media. Words like ‘spoiled’ and ‘entitled’ and ‘nepo baby’ are being flung around. Much is made of his privileged, moneyed upbringing.
His wife, Nicola Peltz, is coming in for lots of criticism too, being labelled controlling, and being accused of being the one who is forcing this estrangement.
I have thoughts.
First, yes, he comes from a financially privileged background. But that does not preclude emotional and psychological abuse. You can’t assume a happy childhood based on bank balances. So the level of wealth he came from is irrelevant to this discussion.
Second, given that he, along with his siblings, were part of Brand Beckham, and were featured often in feel-good press stories, and photographed often, then surely he himself contributed to a lot of that wealth?
As for his wife being the one who controls him and forced the estrangement: yes, it’s true that abusers do isolate their victims, and there are cases where a toxic partner forces an estrangement from loving family in order to better isolate and weaken their partner/victim.
But equally, often it is the partner who is uniquely able to tell the truth about the situation. The person who grew up in the toxicity might not even know what’s going on, in a fish-don’t-feel-water way. It can take a person who is separate enough from the toxicity to identify it, and close enough to the person to want to free them from that, to be the cause of estrangement, but from love and support, not cruelty and isolation.
I have no way of knowing which applies in this case, but I do know that this rupture happening after he got married is no guarantee that this is all Nicola’s fault and she’s the toxic one.
In fact, Brooklyn says himself, in his statement, ‘The narrative that my wife controls me is completely backwards. I have been controlled by my parents for most of my life.’
He goes on to say, ‘I grew up with overwhelming anxiety. For the first time in my life, since stepping away from my family, that anxiety has disappeared.’
This seems to make it pretty clear that, whatever was going on in that family, he is experiencing that he is better off without it.
Brooklyn has made it clear that he is finished with his birth family. He does not use the words ‘No-Contact’ but that is in effect what he is doing.
As someone who went No-Contact myself, I know how difficult it is to do, and that is why I wrote my book, How To Go No-Contact, published by DLT. It’s a clear-sighted look at what this involves, the pros and cons of doing it, the price you’ll pay and the gifts you’ll gain, and the practicalities of doing it in a way that empowers you and exposes you to the least drama possible.
I never advocate that anyone go No-Contact, as it’s not my place, but I very much advocate for everyone knowing that they are not obliged to stay in toxic and abusive relationships, even if it’s with their parents, and the book How To Go No-Contact is the exact handbook you need to explore that option, and to do it if you so choose.
Danu Morrigan is the founder and owner of the website daughtersofnarcissisticmothers.com. Her other books include the bestselling You’re Not Crazy – It's Your Mother, To the Unloved Daughter, Dear Daughter of a Narcissistic Mother and Become a Boundaries Badass.
How to go No-Contact with Your Narcissistic Mother: Even Though You Think You Can’t by Danu Morrigan is available now in paperback, priced £10.99.
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