Just had my world broken open into a million little pieces

[Healingslowly]

Hi All,

I have been struggling in a relationship with my "fiancé" for 6 years (I use quotations because at one point she took the ring off and said I had to earn it back, and could propose to her again once I did whatever changes she required of me. It has been years and lots of change but that day has never come).
We have a beautiful 3 year old daughter together. She's an absolute gem of a soul and becoming a father has been the best experience of my life.

The relationship has always been completely one sided, impossible to navigate, and has left me feeling confused, depressed, and hopeless. I'm afraid of her rage, her intelligent/subtle manipulations, and now her ability to control me with finances, our daughter, etc.

I run a succesful business that i started from the ground up. My spouse has always had contempt for my business and has even worked to subtly sabotage it on occassion. But the business has allowed me to work 30hrs a week from home, and provided an amazing life for us so she could stay at home with our daughter.

I do the cooking, cleaning, regular baking of fresh bread, shopping, driving, financial matters, and home maintenance. She was livid that I wasn't also taking on 50% of the childcare too and has asked that we hire someone to do laundry, which was her SINGLE task besides raising our daughter. I fully realize how hard being a new mom is and her argument in and of itself would be wholey logical if it were any other person, but I was literally running sun up to sun down for years while she lay on the couch and complained. I do also love being a father and did contribute as much as humanly possible given the circumstances. I have no chauvenistic preconceptions of which spouse should do which task in the home, as long as both are contributing somewhat equally. She also leaves EVERY thing she touches wherever she left it and I'm forever living in filth and leftover moldy food if I don't clean constantly around her.
I've found us an amazing home in an unbeleivable small community, completely custom renovated our home top to bottom and set us up so we have no mortgage (we live in a coach house, and have tenants in the main house paying the mortgage for us) so she could be at home with our child for 3 years.
She has never contributed a thing to the relationship except shit talking me for how I work too much, care too much about finances, and can't "connect" with her. But how do you connect with someone who is equal parts your burden and your abuser?
I hope that doesn't sound completely arrogant, I don't mean to toot my own horn but I'm trying to get across the total imbalance in the relationship, and I'm clearly still processing some anger. 

My spouse and I are both in therapy, and we are even taking our second crack at a couples therapist.

My therapist suggested I look into material on narcissism after hearing months of the behaviors I was dealing with. At first I thought... No this doesn't really fit, in fact I feel like I have more of these behaviors than my spouse (I carry a heavy dose of shame around with me wherever I go so I tend to self blame). Then I discovered the covert narcissist and my head completely exploded. 

All of the odd, idiosyncratic, scary, troubling, and off putting behaviors I was experiencing over the years, but couldn't understand, were laid out in front of me in black and white. All of a sudden 1 million tiny lightbulbs went off in my mind and I could see every moment of our relationship with crystal clear clarity. In fact, I don't know how I was unable to see it until it was pointed out to me. But I guess that's the way it goes. It even shed a ton of light on how I grew up (surviving off of bread crumbs from a narcissistic father), and how my fiancé grew up (a narcissistic father and both parents emotional immature and unable to meet her needs as a child).

I've never been a person who enjoyed or found solace in alcohol but these feelings of confusion, hopelessness, and worthlessness drove me to start drinking regularly... sometimes 6-8 beers a night. Fortunately it's under control now and that was only a few brief spells. Surprisingly now that I know I'm not crazy and I'm not the problem (at least not more than 50% of the problem), I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and the urge to drown my feelings has subsided.

I've been through the typical range of emotions from denial, anger, sadness, depression. I also confronted my spouse, against all of the suggestions I read online. She actually took it surprisingly well and said she was happy to talk about it in therapy, but I found the relationship has just gone downhill since then, and all the withholding and diminishing has gotten more intense. I get the sense that she sees therapy as a way to enrich her knowledge on human behaviour and therefore better manipulate her narcissistic supply. And I can clearly see how her entire world view is so warped. She actually SEEMS to beleive I am solely at fault for all the wrongs of our relationship and doesn't seem capable of even understanding that her behaviour can be wrong, hurtful, or abusive.

This really has thrown my whole world into disarray and I now feel like I'm sleeping with the enemy. The woman I love deeply and thought I would spend the rest of my life with, is now my mortal enemy. I had envisioned having many more children together and doing a deep dive into therapy to work our respective sh*t out but now within the span of 3-4 weeks I'm envisioning leaving her, somehow having to co-parent with a person I don't want to have any association with, getting financially ruined, and trying to learn how to date again after almost a decade.

Such is life in this crazy world... 

[M0009803]

Hi,

Welcome the board.    It looks like you are in therapy and educating yourself about your situation.

Your post goes into detail in regards to your fiance becoming a SAHM.    You are correct that a lot of your fiances behaviors do track as it pertains to being a covert narcissist.

Having said that, its been my experience (male with dysfunctional family of origin)  that pregnancy and early childcare (both very stressful events for young mothers) can cause a material deterioration of the dysfunctional behaviors seen in people who display narcissistic traits.

Post Partum Depressiom is also very real (and has increased in frequency due to the pandemic) and can also affect the frequency and severity of those narcissistic behaviors.

Is this an area that your therapist has explored with you as a couple?

[SonofThunder]

HealingSlowly,

Welcome to Out of the FOG and so very sorry you experience these things, but also so very glad you have had your lightbulb moments. user already provided a lot of good opinions, info and resources. 

I can surely relate to much of what you wrote.  Yes, you are NOT alone in your experiences.  Glad to have you here walking the Out of the FOG trail with us.  Pull up a chair around the board campfires and join in the wonderful discussions.  Welcome out of that confusing fog my fellow comrade. 

SoT