Is it true if they say they want to change?

[Elizabeth]

I am new to this message boardand really looking forward to this connection. My husband had to seek therapy or lose his job and family at the beginning of 1998. We went into therapy with him blaming it all on me and it remained that way for over three years. He has been first diagnosed a N, then a codependant, then a controling Love Addict. We have gone through two separate times of intense therapy, lasting from six months the first round, and a year and a half the second. I have learned incredible things through my therapy, and I will never be the same selfless, unseen, never acknowledged, person with no life that I had become... But, despite all my boundaries and staying within my own skin, with all my logic and commitment to change, I have found myself still the recipient of crazy-making double talk and lies and misconceptions and accusations that come at me at best once a week and at worst ten times a day or more.

Can this man ever change? He says he wants to, but that comes when he fears I will leave him. Can I believe it? Within one month (in mid Oct.- mid nov.) I was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with four different guys! This is not a new thing. This has happened to me at least every three months durring our entire marriage, even though I have remained faithful for over fifteen years. The fact is, it is really getting tough to face the fact that I have never really had my needs met in this relationship, and to tell the truth I am finding it difficult not to find other men attractive. I realize it is really a signal to me that I want out but don't know how to justify the way I feel when he keeps telling me he wants to change.

Does anyone out there understand what I am going through?  


Elizabeth

[Acappella (not logged in)]

Welcome Elizabeth,

OH YEAH!   I sure do understand the promise of change Elizabeth!  

  Can you believe it?  Sure you already have proved that haven't you?  Ah, but do you WANT to?  Why?

My husband wants to change ....and just as soon as i do it for him he will, really he will!     I am like a drug to him.  If I am here he will use me.  I am enabling his NOT changing by being here.  

Why are you tempted to stay? guilt? fear? love?

You can have your own life & be independent of his change.  If he did change and you were sure you could always go back.  

Would you feel like a BAD wife?  How could you leave him?  Have you ever lived alone?  Do you have children?  

  You have been faithful for 15 years and punished for how many years for "crimes" you are not commiting?   And you sound aware that your attractions are a symptom and you haven't acted on them for your own good which is something your husband may not be capable of understanding.

You went to therapy..sounds like you worked hard and grew.  GOOD FOR YOU.  You were a team player and gee you tried to change and DID.  What a miracle!    You accept less from him though?

My husband of three years and I went to therapy.  The therapist diagnosed my husband as an N.  

I believe he was making some progress but not enough and moreover we moved and he has not sought out therapy here.  Sure he wants to change and my feeling is so the heck what?!  Does that change the quality of my life meanwhile?  Do I want to spend another day, week, month etc. like this? NO!  My being here with him is hell at worst and pergatory at best.  He said he needed and is going to get therapy and then doesn't...been six months.  I brought that up last week and he said we couldn't afford it...then I reminded him we have an HMO and he just started saying that his needing therapy isn't the problem.  He is like a split personality the way he changes his mind and he is so evasive I have to work my poor butt off too even get any info as to what he thinks/feels in the first place...oh i am tired of even describing it.  LIFE IS TOO SHORT AND TOO LONG FOR THIS. I am working to get the heck otta this.

  How can you change and then stay?  I know my relationship with my husband does not have room for my change...I'd have to be sumbissive and work overtime all the time to stay.  

despite all my boundaries and staying within my own skin, with all my logic and commitment to change, I have found myself still the recipient of crazy-making double talk and lies and misconceptions and accusations that come at me at best once a week and at worst ten times a day or more.

  You mean no matter how much you change he still is the same?  You sound a little surprised :

I have found myself still the recipient

as if you'ld awakened to find yourself in a place you don't recall driving to, like you're befuddled about getting unsolicited telemarketing calls ...your number is still listed as long as you are easily accessible to him.  I believe I recognize that as something I have felt...I have been so focused on possibility at the expense of actuality and probability.  Meanwhile reality just kept moving right along without me.  The last three years my career, health, credit, finances and chance to have child  ren  have all been close to ruined   Oh but it COULD have worked out!  So what...nice epitaph..."could of had a life."

Do you want to be a constant cattle prod to his making a little move towards change?   If your husband is like mine that is what is required, that is the price you will pay and for nothing.  He'll make a slight effort and then as soon as the immediate danger is gone he'll go back to his instinctual default and you'll be sitting right there just oh so handy to blame.  

There is a post on this forum ..search for Radio and author name: Al that has a link to The Infinite Mind program in which Nism is looked at and one of the therapists that specializes in Nism says that Ns must loose a lot to change.  Dr. R Grossman (who created this site) has excellent articles too on couples ..something like is communication enough and also article on Nism.  

My husband bullied people at his job and finally he was confronted by a group of coworkers (only because he is good at his work did they even bother communicating with him - he later lost that job).  I believe he did change as a result of that confrontation but how deep I still don't know and I have no one to confront him with regarding what he does with me at home.  If his mother and sister confronted him and stopped compensating for him and stop requiring he lie about himself perhaps he'd work harder to stop being a butt head ....if the whole world confronted him maybe...maybe...maybe...I DON"T CARE ANYMORE.

Take care,
Acappella


Here are some  song lyrics I recommend for motivation if you decide to get out:  

From Sting's latest CD.  The song is Never Coming Home:

Well its five in the morning & the light’s already broken
And the rainy streets are empty for no body else has woken
as you turn to wards the window as he sleeps beneath the covers
And you wonder what he’s dreaming in his slumbers
There’s a clock upon the table and
 it’s burning up the hour
And you feel your life is shrinkin like the petals of a flower
As you creep towards the closet you’re so careful not to wake him
And you choose the cotton dress you bought last summer
There’s a time of indecision tween the bedroom and the door
But the part of you that knows that you can’t take it any more
There’s the promise of the future in the creaking of the floor
And you’re torn if you should leave him with a number
And in your imagination you’re a thousand miles away
Cause too many of his promises got broken on the way
So you write it in a letter all the things you couldn’t say
And you tell him that you’re never coming home

She starts running for the railway station
Praying that her calculations right
there’s a train just waiting there to get her to the city before night
A place to sleep a place to stay will get her through the day
She’ll take a job she’ll find a friend
She’ll make a life that’s better
the passengers ignore her just a girl with an umbrella
Well there is nothing they can do for her, ther e’s nothing they can tell her
There’s nothing they could ever say to change the way she feels today
She’d live the life she’d always dreamed
if only he had only let her
Now in her imagination she’s a million miles away

When too many of his promises got broken on the way
So she wrote it in a letter all the things she couldn’t say
And she told him she was never coming home
She told him she was never coming home.  

I’m gonna live my life
I’m gonna live my life
And she told him she was never coming home

I’m gonna live my life in my own way.

[Anonymous]

Elizabeth,

It doesn't sound like he is changing one bit. Giving "lip service" isn't enough, he has to actually make changes.

[Anonymous]

Acappella,

I can't thank you enough for your insite, your encouragement and even the wake-up call.

To answer some questions:
Yes, I have children. I have three wonderful daughters ages thirteen, eleven and nine years of age. They are a big reason I have not given up yet. They love their dad, and I haven't been able to get to a place of decision where I can say that the pain and loss for them in the midst of divorce would be better than the fall-out of them living in the midst of our toxic relationship.

I also haven't left for reasons of faith and believing that if I could change so much, how can I judge that my husband can't or won't? We are missionaries who work with young people to make choices against drugs and alcohol and for conscious choices... Can you believe it! Is that the blind leading the blind or what? My husband is so good at what he does, but so much of it is his perfection at the art of deception and I have a really hard time watching him try to help others when he is so lacking of a true identity himself.

We will be leaving our field of mission work at the end of May for a year  in order to raise our support to return again after that. I have stated that I will not be remaining in this realtionship anymore the way it is; that I already want to run and that in order for things to possibly work we have to seek counsel again; separate counsel for the purpose of individual growth, not marriage counsel to fix the relationship. Until May we are under the accountability of a couple where we live who is not dillusioned concerning my husband or the improbability of change.

I guess I am trying to completely wake up to reality here and face the fact that I feel no hope and that I am at a last ditch effort before making a choice that I don't find appealing, but that may be the lesser of the two evils.

Thanks again for the words and the support. What did I do without this for so long?!!

Elizabeth

[guest]

I'm truly sorry to bring up this possibility, but are you sure that your N-husband's accusations aren't just projection?  Everything I've read suggests that when an N accuses you of having affairs with absolutely no basis for the accusations, it often means that they have had (or at least are thinking of having) affairs themselves.

At any rate, unfortunately I don't believe that N's change.  Maybe one in a million, but it requires honestly acknowledging their problems and being committed to a good decade of intensive therapy.  Even when they agree to go to therapy and seem to have a moment of self-awareness, it doesn't last long before they deny their problem again, and switch therapists or devalue the therapist (not to mention you) for daring to suggest that they have a personality disorder.

Look at the Ask-A-Narcissist website...there are probably hundreds of support groups out there for the people who have suffered because of N's, but apparently only one for N's in recovery and they have very few members.  Even their website says that the partner of an N has to be prepared for the possibility that the N may never be able to feel the emotion of love, even after many years of therapy.  Don't you deserve somebody who will truly love you for who you are, and not for how good you are at shoring up their non-existent self-esteem?

At any rate, I wish you the best of luck, no matter what you decide.