hi AnnaK.
I woke up from an alarm that I still haven't located in my bedroom yet, but I decided to spend time in prayer and then i came online to vboards.
This is the first time I'm reading your posts and I really identify with all that you've shared here. My husband, too, works like a machine and also talks like one. He has rote phrases for anything that have been programmed into his mind, to a point that he never actually has an opinion or view of his own making. His words are such that i can tell what he will say, not because I know him so well only, but because he is like a robot that spits out anything he has heard on the radio, seen on tv or read in a book.
My therapist has labeled my husband "narcissistic" after meeting with him and watching him go through all his defense mechanisms and hearing him project onto everyone else his faults. she told me that she sees how he takes our daughters, and gangs up on me with them. He resents his step-daughter (my child before marriage), because she never turned against me, but instead, will come to my defense every time. As a result, he was the cruellest to her and still doesn't have nice things to say, nor do her sisters.
I know what you mean about the 'work work work" and the "no feelings" thing. I have lived with a "husband" who made me drive myself to the hospital when I was in pain and could barely move. He told me "Oh you'll be fine. it's probably just the flu." It was a severe infection that was going into a staph infection which almost KILLED me!
When my daughters got hurt or sick, it was the same rote response "they'll be fine...the doctor is only gonna give them medicine and tell you it's ________________ and then send you home!" He always thought that, because he watched medical info on television, that he knew better than the doctors and could save us a trip to the ER or save himself money. Many times I went through guilt of having 'disobeyed" my husband, because I'd ignore him and take my girls or myself to get medical help. When I'd come back and tell him what the doc said, he'd say "oh....um...well, it's good you took her/or you went...I told you that's what they'd say." (he never could admit that he was WRONG for wanting me to not go/take my daughters for medical help)
To those on this board who are not married to N's, you have no clue what it's like to have someone that is supposed to love, honor, cherish you, actually be the biggest enemy in your home at times. Sure, you lived with N parents, but eventually you could LEAVE them. To those of us for whom divorce is not a personal option, except in cases of EXTREME abuse, we've LIVED WITH THIS FOR MORE YEARS THAN YOU LIVED WITH THE N PARENTS...some of us are still IN it. I'm not belittling the abuse that you suffer from your N parents either, but I am saying that, when you are married to an N, it's generally "till death" do you part...whether his or yours. it is the hardest thing you'll ever DO!
AnnaK, I sometimes have prayed like you did..change him or take Him, Lord. I don't want him changed into a cowboy though...he already is very COUNTRYISH, and I'm a city gal, so I would have liked him changed into a briefcase carrying, upstanding, businessman. It's not in his genes nor his blood to ever be that though, and some things I just have to realize. i should have married a city man if that's what I was looking for, but I didn't know that marriage really IS forever...nobody really could have convinced me of just how lOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG forever actually is on this earth...they tried, but all I could see was an easy escape from my foster mother, and a chance to BE the wife/mother for once, on my own. I took that chance, and now, 20 years later, i struggle with a husband who is nothing more at times than a piece of talking metal.
I watch his children say "Dad...Dad......DAD........DADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!" till I finally step in and say 'ROLAND, ANSWER HER!" Then, in a daze he snaps 'WHAT DO YOU WANT???!" I get to watch my daughters' faces drop, as the dad that they learned to look up to and fear, finally answers them with anger in his face and eyes. He may be ADD and N...he dissociates NOTICEABLY a LOT...is he ASPBERGERS? i don't know...I only know that my daughters have learned to make a joke out of it all, except for the younger one who has learned to say "STOP SNAPPING AT ME LIKE THAT, DADDY!" then, her sisters jump on her for standing her ground and setting her own boundaries...then i snap at her sisters for not allowing her boundaries...it's a MESS at times, but i usually take all the heat, in order to protect the youngest daughter. i'm a Big girl and i can take it...but she is an impressionable 8 year old whom I'm trying to teach to stand firm in her belief that women are to be respected by their dads and their husbands and boyfriends.
Sorry to monopolize your thread here. what Anna said really got to my heart and i want you to know, Anna, that i am where you are and if you want to talk to me, you've run into one who KNOWS.
~Laura
