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won’t ruin his marriage. But his lover refuses to accept this rejection and instead begins relentlessly stalking him, believing she can still win back his love and rejuvenate their “special” relationship. It finally escalates to the point where one evening she breaks into her former lover’s house, holding a large kitchen knife.
    Instead of being the obsessed lover, Betty Broderick was the obsessed estranged wife who could not let her husband or her marriage go.
    As noted earlier, statistically speaking, women kill at far lower rates than men. But when they do kill it is often due to jealousy and abandonment and the feelings of betrayal caused by rejection. Clara Harris and Betty Broderick are definitely not the first women to be accused of murdering their spouses in a jealous rage.
    Betty was a traditional woman of her time who believed in the all-encompassing romantic fantasy, the one where you meet and marry your true love and then live happily ever after, eventually walking into the sunset together. Betty idealized marriage and what it could do for her as a person. Her only goal in life was to become a beloved wife and mother. Unfortunately she married a man who did not share her sentiment or dream, at least not with her.
    At the beginning of her marriage she was very much on her way to making her dreams come true, serving as the ideal wife for a fiercely ambitious husband by placing his professional aspirations first, something that many women of her generation did, willingly or not. They supported their husbands’ rise to success, believing one day they would gloriously share in that success. And as long as Betty worked hard alongside her husband and supported his dreams, she could feel safely connected to him. After all, how could Dan leave such a valuable life partner? But like many young romances, the happy ending she had scripted in her mind was not meant to play out in real life the way she wanted it to.
    While Betty believed she had found a charming, handsome, and intelligent man in Dan Broderick, he had some narcissistic qualities. People like Dan tend to have a grandiose sense of themselves. They want to be recognized as special, important, and unique. Their preoccupation with unlimited success often helps them to achieve that success. After all, it’s what they already believe to be true about themselves.
    Narcissistic people often need excessive praise and admiration and they often find it in socially charming ways. Narcissism and infidelity are often linked. People who marry people with narcissistic tendencies can be in for a rough road with lots of suffering. Such spouses tend to be self-absorbed with an amazing sense of entitlement exacerbated by a lack of empathy for the emotional harm they cause others. Betty Broderick was certainly unprepared for the dark side of a failed relationship with a narcissist. And that failure appeared to strike at the very core of her being.
    Betty described her husband as intermittently abusive, but as long as she was able to be the kind of wife who could help him get to where he wanted to go, she was able to stick around. But as soon as she didn’t meet his needs or was not a reflection of who he wanted to be, she was dismissed and left. By her account, he did very little to consider her feelings or experiences during their marriage, but as long as Dan was providing her with what appeared to be family stability and a successful life, Betty could accept his behavior as part of the package of marrying an extremely successful man.
    She also felt that as long as she was doing so much for their family and his career, she would be indispensable to her husband. Dan Broderick’s name-brand suits, late nights out with the guys, plus the financial burdens he placed on his wife were all okay in his mind as long as he was benefiting and supported in living the life he felt destined for.
    Contrary to comments Betty once made on Oprah in 1992, there doesn’t seem to be evidence