Smear 'Em with Kindness

[Scythe]

My husband's is more covert than a typical smear campaign. He says he's the person on my side the most when he talks to his friends and coworkers. They get mad when he doesn't go along with them saying mean things about me. He tells them about how I'm trying to get help for my depression, and how the results of my EEG for neurofeedback showed several major areas of low brainwave function and dysfunction/imbalance (As an aside about neurofeedback, the treatments were way too expensive for me to do while our divorce is still going on. I may try to pursue it in the future, but some sources say it's a scam. The clinic is also an hour away, and you have to do 2-3 treatments a week).

So my husband says nobody's mad at me; they all just feel bad for me and want me to get help. "The poor girl has a broken brain, and she's taking it out on you when you don't deserve it." He said we can stay married and separated without any type of romantic relationship, and that he'd support my getting any and all the help I need, and he would do whatever I wanted and act however I wanted, indefinitely, for as long as I need to get better. Whoever turns that down must be mean and cruel and selfish, I guess. I apparently never gave him a chance. I just made this really rash decision out of nowhere. Because of my depression.

Honestly, he can say whatever he wants, and people can think whatever they want. I don't care about his coworkers, and he needs people on his side anyway. It's only one mutual friend that hurts. I thought this one guy was on the same page as I was. He likes tattoos and piercings like I do and always gave my husband crap about not letting me get them. We visited the city with him, and he was the only one to ask what I wanted to do and try to incorporate that into our plans, when most of the trip was planned around what the guys wanted to do. He was sort of our go-between the first time I left my husband last year. But apparently at that time, he'd said something to me to the effect of, "Whatever you do, be absolutely sure and committed to your decision," as in, if I went back to my husband, go back for good. So perhaps this guy felt betrayed by me. I don't remember him saying that to me at all; it was probably when he stopped by to grab something for my husband and I was just concentrating on not trying to cry in front of him.

But sometime after that when he came over to visit us, some random disordered thing happened with my husband that I don't remember, and when my husband was out of the room, this friend said to me, "I think I understand the method to your madness." Like, whoa. It meant so much to me to have someone arguably on my husband's side understand me and where I was coming from. That's probably why it hurts so bad that now he's saying things to my husband like, "You should have left that crazy bitch first."

I'd tried texting him a while ago, before I heard he said stuff like that. I told him to let me know if he wanted to hear my side of things, because I still liked him and respected him. But I haven't heard from him or really any of our mutual friends since the divorce started. There was one other really nice dude who said he wasn't taking sides and wanted to stay friends with both my husband and me, but apparently his wife got jealous and made him stop talking to me. And I also got a message from the girlfriend of one of my husband's high school friends. She's dealt with a number of disorders, both suffering from them herself and suffering abuse from disordered family members. She was very kind and encouraging but also said that "some things didn't add up," I'm assuming about what they'd been hearing from my husband.

Since all of my own friendships died off during the course of the relationship (due to isolation tactics, but I also take full responsibility, because I should have maintained the friendships), I have zero friends. There was one: they went from talking daily, saying they were there for whatever I needed, to now basically ghosting me for who knows what reason. I'll think about trying to make new friends after the divorce is over. I mostly just want a functioning computer so I can get back into gaming. I'll find friends online. Between depression naps.

[Spygirl]

Im very sorry,

I completely understand what you are going thru. My stbxh DOES use this tactic, he is SUCH a good guy. It is looking like i will have to sever those mutual friendships too, for the most part. Try not be too angry with thise people. They dont know what you life was behind closed doors. I was also made fun of for " my self help and trying to improve myself" like i was such a mess and he was perfect

I look at the blessing in all of this, because there are many. I really know whst was happening to me and why, and i can improve or maybe even fix it FOR MY BENEFIT. I dont want to find myself with yet a other narc.
I know who my real friends are, and i know how to be avalible to new ones in a healthy way. I KNOW WHO TO KEEP AWAY FROM NOW. Happiness is creeping back into my life.

The strategy i keep hearing is to change your perspective from the negative to the postive parts of everything. So those people think you are an awful person, so what!
You get to meet new people now, healthier ones.  Your h's attempts to make you feel broken and crazy, are just an effort to make HIM look better. Thats all.

I support you, everyone here does. It will keep getting better.