LOL If you knew why I said 'accurate' you'd know what I do (well, one of the things I do) for a living!! But as you live in the UK, you probably wouldn't guess in a million years!

(But I didn't use the word to tease, it's something I now live by.)
It's a 'distinction'. If you try to tell the 'truth', well, what is 'truth??!!! Whose truth? So the best we can do is to be as 'accurate' as we can be in what we say!

Does that make sense???
Re my husband - he's always been like that but I didn't 'see' it or I didn't believe it... or something - because I'd been so brainwashed by my family situation. It was just something I didn't 'see' fully. Like my mother, he had a public persona that was very different to what I lived with.
I thought I had pretty much kept strong throughout our marriage except I now realise that within a year of getting married I'd lost my job mainly because he undermined me so much that I wasn't able to stand up for myself any more. I didn't realise at the time. I knew he admired me for my strength - but he then 'made me' feel ashamed of it. If I'd realised, I'd have done us both good by continuing to believe in myself as a 'good' person, even if an 'upfront' one.
To realise that you'd lost a successful career because you trusted the man you married - when it had all been so hard to get started in the first place because of parental undermining...30 years of personal and professional work just went up in smoke. How could I climb that again at the age of 50 - despair!
My awareness came about after I'd fully understood about my mother and how 'what I am' in the world is so much a result of my attempts to handle her, cope with her and please her. Suddenly I saw myself in relation to my husband in a different way.
THAT was the worst bit of all. I felt sheer terror. I even locked the bedroom door to keep him out that night. He saw the door was shut so he (dramatically) slept on the couch downstairs (even tho we have a perfectly good guest bedroom!)
To recognise that you just don't exist for a parent (never did, never will) is awesome but then to discover that you jumped out of the fying pan into the fire...
Fortunately, (to use a shorthand) I think he's an N rather than an NPD. And he's the son of an alcoholic father (I guess ACOAs will recognise some of the symptoms). I found a book on ACOAs and he fits the bill to a T. (I'm not implying that ACOAs are Ns - he is an ACOA and in terms of our relationship he's an N. Let's not forget that I married him for his castle wall-like boundaries - very important in allowing me to be separate psychologically, and diametrically opposed to my mother's total lack of boundaries!!!)
To resolve it, I had to keep challenging him every time he put me down or misperceived who I was. It was a huge effort at the beginnng. I honour him that he is trying to be different. I challenged him hard to be aware of himself, to take time out to read. He agreed to have some energy healing, too. There are bad days but I no longer accept the blame for his feelings. I shrug my shoulders and say that's yours, not mine'! I take up all my space and there is no room for anyone else in here! Not him or my mother.
I'm not sure I could have survived without my energy healer either (Metamorphic technique, a kind of reflexology, is amazing for soothing emotional pain and giving you calm and strength to carry on).
And that's what made the (one so far) conversation with my mother possible - and the result has been a note from her admitting to creating confusion and (almost) apologising for it.
Now, have I been wrong about her all along...or is this a lull before a new storm...or...
My energy therapist/alternative healer would say that I no longer have any 'hooks' and without the 'hooks' they ain't got nowhere to hang their coats! ie I don't get 'hooked' in any more.
I think that, because of our past, talking therapies are positively bad for us ACONs. (I can intellectualise for England!) But the body don't lie - and body work really is effective.
Well, I've really bared my soul this evening. Or perhaps I've said all this in different ways already on this forum. It's 1.30am - and I really, really gotta go.

R