Hellllllllllo out there!
I've been running around in a fog for quite some time now lonely too. i am glad for this forum. A few months ago my husband, the narcissist (I show signs of it also) tested positive for marijuana at work. He fits the narcissistic description of cruelty with no remorse and I fit the type to find a listening ear and harp about my woes to the point of exhaustion. Here goes! The two people I confide in never call to see if I'm alright, I presume they are sick of my hopelessness and bottomless pit of attention getting and don't want to enable me. Well since the positive THC test he has had to seek treatment and his counselor directed him to AA and the twelve step program. He has been clean for weeks now and is on step four. I'm bracing up for step five which is for him to apologize and make amends for what he has done to me during his years of drug abuse. It's going to sicken me because I don't believe he has a clue of the way he has hurt me because even though he is clean, he continues to exert his will, and his one-sided views on me. When someone is sorry and they continue to do the same stuff it's kind of hard to believe them or forgive them and I know I'm guilty of the same, I realize I can't stop violating him. While he was smoking five and six joints a day, he developed a gal bladder problem and he blamed it on me for upsetting him with my emotional upheaval. it couldn't have been his polluted liver and bloodstream?!! I just cant imagine anything more hurtful than being blamed for someones's illness and for their drug abuse. I have fed him healthy nutritious vegetarian meals and massaged him and helped him in every way I could for years to the point of neglecting my own needs. I can't imagine that he will bring this up because he is still in denial at the way mj was affecting him healthwise. His eyeballs and skin were yellow. Since he quit all that has cleared up. He is not open to hearing this. He probably won't apologize for this injury of blame. And I AM guilty of upsetting him to the point of stomach aches. I did contribute. The gall bladder thing has caused me to refrain more and be nicer and stop going on and on sooner though inside I was still obsessing. He has come first, to the point of me feeling like there was no room for me and my needs I never used but I was a slave to marijuana. It really hurt when he said I made him use. We were in a pattern of him violating me and me responding unkindly so he could feel justified in using. This was fairly unconscious. he would have used no matter what. If you've ever seen the scene when Tom Cruise and his wife were smoking mj in Eyes Wide Shut you can get a sense of the kind of stupid man/wife struggle I'm talking about on that marijuana. I thought when he got off his drug that he would see. Well, things have improved because I see a lot of maturing happening and he catches himself when he throws his tantrums and blames: he apologizes even though sometimes it takes a cooling off period and he does see more stuff more clearly and he's taking responsibility for more stuff. Faint signs of empathy are cropping up. OH NO!! i wish I could be more ready for them but in my grip of fear they catch me unaware and I am still responding with insecurity and doubt.
But now I feel hopeless because my co-dependency has risen like an ugly wart on a witches nose and I'm going to have to deal with it, and I don't know how. HERE are the ExCUSES: I've spent years riding around in a car with a marijuana smoker fear stricken knowing that my professional life as a teacher could end at any moment, succumbing to performing lude sex acts which I don't even believe in deep inside of me because of his emotional blackmail of threatening abandonment, he withholds a gives sex like a god, his needs and plans come first each day and schedules me in if there's time, I see him finding things to take up time to avoid me and my overwhelming emotional needs like ah there's a hole in my bucket until the time for intimacy is used up and theres no chance of it and I feel rejected listening to his dreams and schemes that haven't included any discussion about what I want, and having him be resentful and angry over some nit picking thing every day. He tolerates no nit picking about house stuff. If I do he says I'm trying to control him and that I have control issues. With the sex thing,I am so immature emotionally, I do not always give room for regular functions in life like hunger, chores, sleep, work yet inside I feel like he is doing stuff to avoid me and trigger my insecurity and reject me sexually. Though it's intimacy I crave.
Our bills got so out of control and he threw a fit to borrow on a loan liner mortgage from the bank so he could have hundreds of dollars to buy dope available in his pocket. No amount of telling him that we could not make another payment would sink in. He threw a violent fit when I tried to protest and reason with him. I would have to be the royal bitch to pay the bills before paying for his weed. I gave in to the second mortgage loan liner and this became unbearable when I endured letter after letter in the mailbox of a payment that we could not make. After sleepless hours in the nights, I sent for my retirement mutuals and paid it off. But I swear my stomach still aches when I see the stupid mailbox. The bank had the payments in interest only and they would draw all kinds of fees and raise the payments, withdrawing out of the loan without permission. Between him and the bank , the seventeen thousand dollars only lasted less than a year. When I did withdraw my retirement funds he was recovering and we were able to talk more reasonably and he agreed it was necessary and has since apologized. I still am holding on to feelings of fright that he will ruin us financially and get our home taken away.
But the worst of it is how he flirts with chics in front of me while were in public. I do not feel safe having a female friendship because of it. Social situations are to be avoided. He says I have a jealousy problem and that he treats eighty year old ladies the same and it's just his friendly nature. He perceives everyone including me as trying to bring him down because he's so physically beautiful and brilliant and inferior people including me are just trying to bring him down to their level. And he recounts how many of his old friends and family victimized him in this way. He believes he is a victim and the marijuana really fueled this fire. We're getting older now and his charm doesn't work as well. We may be in Lloyd's at the car dealership and the needy secretary may come out from behind her desk to respond to his taking her business card and acting interested and commenting on her name and asking who her family is and edging in some kind of comment referring to me as being older blah blah blah but yesterday at this tile place the gal behind the desk ignored him. I was both humored and annoyed. I've seen his tactics so much by now I could nearly recite them. First he scoped her plaque on the wall and pronounced her name wrong, it's always some allusion the person's name, then he pulled a stool right up in front of her and moved around excitedly, drawing attention to himself, loudly eating the chocolate candy on the counter looking at her allot STILL NOTHING, then he perks up with interest when she pronounces her name to the person on the other end of the phone, (by George I've got it) then mentions dessert and says he's found the chocoholics (presumable her candy), that lady stuck to her work and her phone answering like he wasn't even there. I felt embarrassed in front of the six or seven other people behind the counter there, i don't know if it was as obvious to them as it seemed to me or to you. Then he gave up came to the show room and began controlling my purchase, I ended up postponing it for later when I could think straight. He was interupting me alto when I was talking to the salesman about the tile. I never told him that I noticed any of it later because I didn't want to go through the "he's such a victim and I'm such bully routine." I have no self esteem and my jealous suspicions are a big exposed button on my chest directly to my broken heart. I do have a jealousy problem.
Over the years our sex life went from a variety of positions, different times of the day and night to my moral boundaries being completely breaking down by exhibitionism in the car. Eventually he acted bored with it and it didn't work to engage him, I swear I am so not like that. I protested at first to his nasty ideas but he responded with guilt trips and threats of abandonment. " Like OK but I won't be able to get excited and you're hurting my libido, stuff like that." i could not hold the line spiritually, or say what I desired and what turned me off and what made me feel afraid and insecure without him thinking I was trying to control him or make him feel like a bad guy. Whatever seemed to make me insecure was what turned him on the most. My uncle molested me as a child once and he lives next door, he got onto that one like a hound on a fox and I found it so unbearable and had to come unglued to get it stopped. Part of it was that it started not to long ago and then he went into recovery and he was listening. I get so exhausted at the degree I have to go sometimes to get through to him about my needs and feelings. And he's made a point to be as lazy and withdrawn as he can during intimacy while still giving lip service to how we have this great sex life. It's like a boring exact safe familiar formula every time unless I make a big deal out of getting more effort from him. I miss being kissed. Why would he kiss me when he's always mad at me?? He's pushing my buttons to make me mad by constant criticism I have been analyzed to death. And I respond with my stupid immature emotional fits. I feel he does it to distance us. It works. I wonder why because I am pretty cute, I work hard, I try so hard but I can't stop behaving badly from insecurities.
The latest assertion he's made after his admitting that he's an addict at AA is that I'm a sex addict. So he did this intervention on me and became my sponsor. He brought up that I'm an addict because I risked my job etc in the car. So now I feel angry that I tried to draw some lines, I gave in, and now I'm being accused of sexual addiction. Yet, I would do anything for sex with him. Maybe I am I mean I don't molest little children or commit adultery but it's true I gave up boundaries and would do anything to try to get sex from him. I feel so unsatisfied for real intimacy and I think man if I were my wife I wouldn't miss out on opportunities to be close to her. I would appreciate all she does and how hard she tries. Isn't that just dandy! OK so I'm trying to have a look at my addictions. The good news is that the last time he suggested car sex I said no and he understood. I felt so confused by his doing that and when he said I agree we shouldn't do this especially if there's going to be guilt. then I felt guilty that i wasn't pleasing him, but i felt strong in saying no and i felt him support me, and it passed better than ever before and I feel confident we are embarking on a new chapter here. I've got problems because I'm stricken with fear that he is going to cheat on me and have jealous thoughts often, I throw emotional fits for sex even though he has relations with me every few days, I feel unloved even though he gives me love and affection every day and I feel there seems to be never enough to please me.
One minute he's telling me that I am all he cares about how much I mean to him and the next he has lumped me in with the worst women, the ogre at work and his mean sister. I think this happens when he gets exasperated with me and he says things in anger but it isn't a true reflection of how he feels about me, it's how he feels when I abuse him. But later after we've made up I keep hearing it and get obsessed with it. He loves to promise some treat like going to somewhere interesting or taking me out to dinner and then pulling up short just before we do it to punish me if I haven't responded just right. It's such a headtrip I usually panic and feel afraid of abandonment. Sometimes he will get mad and just block me out for hours. I want to get to the point where I can detach from the panic I feel when this happens and accept whatever it was I did to cause it and give him space to feel what he feels and act how he choose to act. My mind gets so fearful of abandonment this is then when I act up. Usually when I think it out I can find some misbehavior on my part, lack of appreciation, insecure comments, unpreparedness like maps and directions stuff like thateven though he has tried to get me to actively participate and prepare for days. I ACT HELPLESS.
With all this said he does try he hasn't given up on me. I haven't given up on him either. I think we are both getting an eye full of our own abusive behavior. Years of marvelous passionate vacations, lots of good memories too, I'm talking about the issues not the love we have shared. He's smart and talented at writing, guitar, and a fast reader. We have also enjoyed each others companionship and have been there for each other through lots of stuff. He's read every Talbot mundy book over and over and he loves the Lord. He loves me and he's endured an ice queen of a mother who accused him of being bad and abandoned him emotionally as a small child for her own interests. I believe sometimes he doles out to me what she gives to him. I've seen years of him trying to impress her and win her approval. and her distaste for him seems to grown over the years. I see the hurt she doles out to him by calling him names and having no time for him while she has this incredibly rich family thing going on with both of his sisters and their families who have become more lost in their drinking with each of our visits. Their alcoholism exacerbates the whole problem. Most mothers would give their eye teeth to have a son like him. I have grown to have a lack respect for her and her flaky golf club ways. His father who has passed on was adopted and kind of a tragic gambler who everyone loved but who his son had to enable emotionally and even financially a time or two. My parents were both alcoholics who flat out abandoned me as a child they did not have a clue that I had emotional needs especially concerning the molestation I had experienced. That happened when they were busy drinking. They have never known about it, Thank God. I have always had to act happy around them and never to threaten their drinking. I am grateful to have a pretty loving relationship with them and their drinking has slowed due to health problems. I feel sorry for them to have had that sickness.
I believe this is my crossroads that if there ever was any hope toward recovery it's now because he is drug free and working on change this is my opportunity to have some recovery too. I am hoping the therapist will help address some of his narcissism. I want to get well and be able to quit abusive behavior under any circumstance with no excuses i want to feel good and happy. He has worked hard on his steps we are at least talking better than ever before. i believe he cares for me and wants to be with me and that we are in a rut of looping abusive behaviors with each other. I don't want to give up on a thirty year marriage. I think we are both feeling hope. i am having a hard time detaching and not responding and letting go of the past. I can keep control with every teenager in my classroom and respond lovingly or reasonably to every emotional trick in their hats but this I don't have any power to overcome bad behavior in this marriage. I thought I was the victim but I have a part in it and I'm tired of being controlled by fear and his behavior. I feel like a five year old. I went to my first AL-anon meeting last night and am trying to do step one. Everyone says it works but at this point I can't see me overcoming this. If you have had the patience to read all this, I would appreciate your insights. Can you see denial? When I read over it, it all sounded so tright and doesn't really express the pain I have felt this summer. It helped me to see some of my own abuses better. I am not afraid to see. I want to see the truth.
