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I'm getting ready to leave a marriage of thirty LONG years. I believe my husband has Narcissistic Personality Disorder which truly gets worse with age. He is waiting for the world to make him "happy" and revolve around him. After an incident 3 years ago, I knew I could not stay but financially could not leave at that time. We have a son who is 25 years old and has developmental disabilities. I really believe this will benefit my son getting him away from poopie face because my husband just ignores our son because he is so wrapped in the misery while he waits for the world to make him feel admired and loved. When the love is gone, it is gone and it makes every little fault just scream in your face and when the faults are major.......... I once asked him why he never really made an effort to change and he said "Because I did not think you would ever leave me." and he insists that "I know you love me." Yeah, right. Although I won't go into details, whatever the issues you can bet they get worse and if you mention leaving, they do change overnight until they think the crisis is over so it isn't like they don't understand what the problem is, they just don't care because you aren't worth the effort. Some people are incapable of loving others and there is no way to change that.
To give him one last chance to try. If I left without really trying, I'd never forgive myself. Marriage is a serious thing. It's supposed to be forever. He has been good to me in many ways, and I feel I owe him that.
I feel I owe myself that too -- so when I leave, I'll be sure.
Hey JerZ--Sorry you're going thru this. 10 years? If your hubby wanted to go to counseling he would have done it already. Good luck. PS----I really miss The Central Coast![San Luis Obispo]
Marrriage counseling sounds like a waste of time. Tell him the problems. Give him a date, and fillout the papers for divorce. Time for a change. Make it happen or keep blaming him....the fact that you want to "talk" means to me you want him to change. He won't. You know that.
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Originally Posted by jasper12
No. I just had flashbacks to my previous completely dysfunctional marriage. When on a sinking ship, just jump. At some point you get tired of bailing water. The ship is still sinking.
I agree with this^. Jerz, your situation sounds alot like my marriage before I finially gave up. Id bet money counseling wont help and that he will never change for the better. Save yourslef. Normally, I try to encourage people to work on a marriage and not give up so easily, but your description sound so similar to mine and I wasted nearly 10 years trying.
Divorce is not an easy thing to go thru, especially if your older, its actually very difficult, but once its finialized and you find you no longer have to walk on eggshells everyday or deal with all the negativity or be alone when your with the person you once loved, its like a great weight has been lifted.
To give him one last chance to try. If I left without really trying, I'd never forgive myself. Marriage is a serious thing. It's supposed to be forever. He has been good to me in many ways, and I feel I owe him that.
I feel I owe myself that too -- so when I leave, I'll be sure.
I can relate to what you'er saying JerZ. If you can't afford divorce, you could maybe separate without going through with the legal aspect. I'm technically still legally married to the woman I ran away from. All the emotional separation is there but we just don't have the time or money to file an official divorce yet. You could decide amongst yourselves who keeps what, without depending on a lawyer. In my case, I wanted out so badly that I took a trashbag of clothes and left with my best friend and roommate.
Like you, I feel like I married one woman and left another. When we got together, she was my safe haven. She was so open to me, and I could be open with her. She helped me adjust to becoming totally blind. She understood what I was going through emotionally (I was almost hospitalized for PTSD) and was so supportive to me. By the time I left her, she was physically, mentally, and emotionally abusing me. She beat me so badly that I went deaf. You can see how, to me, it felt like one woman was swapped for another.
If that's how you feel (even if the details are different), then you do have the right to duck out. I think people have this ideal of lifelong marriage, but people change and circumstances change. I don't know if he's ever mistreated you, but I had the same thoughts with my ex. I told myself "marriage is forever" and "I have to accept how she treats me cause I love her unconditionally" even when she was controlling my food and money, stealing my cane and hearing aid, slammed a door on my hand, prevented me from traveling, even to get official training for deaf blind independence skills at the Helen Keller National Center.
Is it really supposed to be forever? I can't answer that for you, but you really have to think deeply on that. Don't you deserve to be happy? Doesn't he deserve to be happy? Sometimes marriage isn't meant to be forever. It's up to you if you want to try again with counseling, but do remember that if you two have simply changed and your relationship is just not the same, there is nothing wrong with moving on. Don't let societal expectations trap you in an unhappy marriage if that's how you feel it is.
If you want to try to work it out, that's great. But do remember that at the core of every relationship, in order for there to be mutual love and respect, you have to have self-respect and self-love. Forcing yourself to stay in a situation that makes you fundamentally unhappy is not loving or respecting yourself. Just think about it, JerZ.
Last edited by nimchimpsky; 04-18-2012 at 07:43 AM..
Jerz, I am one of your fans, but I agree with cpg. As much as you might want to believe it in regards to your husband, people don't change that drastically overnight. He might have had the ability to hide some of his "differences," but there's a higher likelihood that you had blinders on and don't even know it.
Regardless, I wish you luck. Do what makes you happy.
This is true, and in my case I also admit that I completely missed a ton of red flags (like the time she pushed me off the bed about a week after we got married--should have seen that as a sign that physical abuse was to come. Instead I dismissed it as a "one time thing", she promised she'd never do it again, and I believed her.)
But even if you had your blinders on, JerZ, you still didn't marry the man you thought you did. It's very easy, when you are in love, to fall into disillusionment. Sometimes we fall in love with who we think a person is, and not who they really are. Whether he changed or whether you just didn't see his true colors when you first married him, it doesn't matter. The point is that you are where you are now, and you have to decide based on your relationship with him now how you want to move forward.
If he will try again then go, if not go without him. I told my ex I wasn't happy and we went to 1 session where he talked for the whole 3 hours. I never got to say a word, when we left he said 'I don't think we need to go back!' I told him 'I was the one who was unhappy not him'. We didn't and I didn't stay either.
Look it take 2 to make it work and if only one is working at it surely isn't going to make you happy
Hi, cpg. No, seriously, he was...someone else once I took him home. I had asked him if we could live together before marriage but he didn't trust that...he thought if we broke up, he'd be without a place (which would be true -- I had a son, whom I didn't want to move; he'd be moving in with me). I thought that sounded reasonable.
After he moved in, I thought it was ALL my fault. He was out of a job (he moved quite a distance to be with me), he was away from his family and I thought he was depressed.
I moved in with my ex because my parents made it so uncomfortable to live with them after they kicked me out for a weekend and reluctantly let me move back in, under the agreement that I would try everything to get my vision back. I had gone blind and they couldn't handle it, so it was like everything had to be a battle over whether I could see, how much I could see, etc. "What color is this?" "Try to read this." I was tired of it so I decided to move in with her, because she didn't care how much I could see or not see, and was happy to help me adjust to my vision loss instead of making everything into a vision exam.
That's red flag number one--when you move in for any reason other than "because I feel ready and want to". Ideally people should only move in with one another because they want to and feel ready, not because of some other situation that forces one person to feel like they have no choice but to move in. That stress is bound to lead to tension with day-to-day living--and for us, it was. She was a complete slob, which was actually just quite hazardous for me as a blind person. So I single-handedly cleaned her room so that our feet could actually touch the ground and so that I wouldn't constantly trip over things.
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What happened was, from the word "Go" he got on his computer, and basically never got off. Oh yeah, wait, he did get off...when he got on his iPhone. He seriously spent all day while I was work on the comp, then practically all night on the comp.
Sounds like my ex. She spent most of her waking hours playing video games. Granted, I spend a lot of time on the computer as well, but if I am in a relationship with someone, quality time with them is very important. Her video games were more important than me, and I couldn't even enjoy them with her, unless you count feeling the vibrations through the bed cause she had the volume up so loud.
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He also stopped doing anything he swore we'd do "together" as far as housework. Dishes, laundry. I stopped doing HIS laundry and he literally got called into his office (this was six months down the road, when he found a job) because he smelled bad. Yes, for real. I felt so bad for him and I thought he was depressed and it was all because of me, "making" him move, so I started doing his laundry again.
This reminds me of my ex too. At first, when I didn't have work, I was happy to do most of the house cleaning. She did her bit too. But then eventually she did nothing--even when I got two jobs. We needed the money. She still played video games all day and expected me to work AND do all the house chores.
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ALL the romance, deep talks, and his admiration of me stopped pretty much within the first couple of months. Just stopped, period.
Sounds like my ex too. I don't know if things got physical with you two, but this sounds very emotionally/mentally abusive to me. When we met, we shared poems and stories. We could relate so deeply. And then at some point, I can't even pinpoint a certain time, she closed herself off again. It was back to her being all walls, the same way she was with everyone else. But I was her one exception...until I wasn't. That whole dynamic is very emotionally abusive, and worse than all the punches in the world, IMO.
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I became a tyrant after that, I admit. I admit it to him, too. I also CONTINUOUSLY begged him to go into counseling or at least to be anything like he'd been before we were married, but in the end I only got him to go that once.
Why does this sound familiar? Oh, yeah! I did the same with my ex. She agreed to go, but we didn't talk about anything real. It was about my disabilities and her disabilities (mainly emotional ones), but we never talked about the abuse, or any of the other things that were really causing us to go downhill.
JerZ, this really does sound like an unhealthy relationship, based on what you've posted. Maybe you can even try separating temporarily, which will give him the "kick in the ass" he needs to shape up. You can also analyze yourself and what you have been doing or not doing to contribute to the dynamic. When I left her, she did change. Completely. She begged for me back and I said "After what you put me through? No way." But maybe if you want to try to keep it going, leaving for now might be what it takes to stay together long-term.
I separated from my ex after 28 years of cohabitation. We weren't married in the sense of having a committed relationship, we were married by law. It wasn't a pleasant relationship and I knew within 2 years it was a huge mistake but I thought if I just tried harder, different, something else.
I was so relieved when we separated. The tension was gone from my day to day life and I realized I was pretty happy with myself - wow. At 48, I was free! Free to be me, free to find myself from wherever I'd gone to escape. I like the me I am now. And so does my partner. Life isn't perfect, but it's darned good. My big regret is staying with my ex so long that we left hating each other - well, he hates me and I just don't care enough to hate him.
JerZ, you deserve to be happy & content. To be able to live in peace, harmony, tranquility.
Do what is best for you & your beloved Son.
I do know a couple whose marriage was helped by going to a "Marriage Encounter" weekend, years ago. Going brought them much closer together. National Marriage Encounter
Please, take gentle care of yourself...
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