46 years of abuse by spouse?

[Areuth]

Yes, I've been married 46 years and just came to understand in the last three to four years that he had a personality disorder. It was quite a shock to me but explained a lot. Even my best friend who knows everything finds it hard to believe he is as awful as I say. I hope I can get some validation here and ideas how to go on with the rest of my life...

[notrightinthehead]

Welcome!  Yes, it is quite a shock but also a relief when the shutters finally come off. Please get as much information as you can, read around on the toolbox and the Personality disorders tabs. See you around on the boards!

[SonofThunder]

Yes, I've been married 46 years and just came to understand in the last three to four years that he had a personality disorder. It was quite a shock to me but explained a lot. Even my best friend who knows everything finds it hard to believe he is as awful as I say. I hope I can get some validation here and ideas how to go on with the rest of my life...

Hello Areuth,

Welcome to Out of the FOG  .  Many of us here have been married for decades before coming Out of the FOG, so you are among friends with similar pasts, similar experiences and similar futures.  Please continue to read over the main sections of the site including the toolbox, so you can continue on your well-deserved  self-healing process. 

I want to recommend two books to you.  The first is 'Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist' by Fjelstad.  In that book, you may find the author teaching you about yourself, which will help you understand your PD spouse as well, and combining the two with some very good advise, assist you into emotionally protecting yourself going forward, while letting your spouse be the adult they are.

The second book is 'Boundaries in Marriage' by Cloud and Townsend.  *There is a more widely read book by the same authors, which is simply 'Boundaries'.  The book(s) are about understanding boundaries, how most people misunderstand them and how to properly use the to protect yourself.  Please always remember boundaries are designed by you to protect you.  They are not designed to control the actions or reactions of another human, but only the actions and reactions of you. 

Boundaries are discussed highly here on Out of the FOG and many find difficulty in designing and implementing them properly because they are difficult.  But like most things, the most beneficial things are the most difficult, but well worth the work.  Please read over, understand and begin to implement the 'toolbox' section of this website. 

We are a group of friendly women and men who are all on the same journey, just at different places along the path and with varying experiences.   You are not alone but among good company.   Cheers to you for coming Out of the FOG. 

Married to my uPDw for 30 years.  Out of the FOG 6 years ago,

SoT

[11JB68]

Married 30 years soon, together for 34... Only started to figure out out about 3 years ago!
This community has been a huge help

[Areuth]

46 years of marriage are hard to put in the past.  It is my whole life.  I have thought of him and us since we met when I was 15.  I went from being told by my parents what to do to having him tell me what to do.  One of the things that is difficult to understand is that my husband is not horribly abusive. Dr Romani told me in an email that there can be such a thing as a narcissist lite and that probably most of the narcissists could be classified as such. But of course those are also the ones that fly below the abuse radar and are understandably hard to identify. My husband could be quite friendly loving and charming when he chose to be. Of course he came to me with a story of difficulty with his family and how he had been kicked out of his home for saying I swear word not long after we had met. I couldn't understand at all how a parent could toss their kids out on the street while they are still in high school. Of course I felt sorry for him as I would have been devastated if that had happened to me. He stayed away from home for over a year, going to high school and working while living and renting a room in a friend's home, friends that were his parents age. So that was the sad story and he was very attentive for a very long time probably because we were so young he could not move as fast as a narc normally would. But he eventually started the criticism and complaints and telling me how things should be done. He wouldn't show up when he said he would or call me when he said he would. He brought up joining the service or going off to college to emotionally control me by threatening to move away. He never asked me to marry him. At some point we just decided we were going to get married I guess. He wanted of course to have sex all the time and I put him off for a very long time but gave in eventually. But I was afraid that I might get pregnant and so told him no a lot. He came to me one day and said he had something important to talk to me about. I thought he was going to do something like ask me to marry him which would have been really crazy because I was still in high school and I thought to myself I will tell him no for now but maybe later would be okay. Really what he wanted to ask me was if it would be okay if he were to have sex with a girl at the apartments where he lived. Supposedly he had already been making out with her and had dry humped her. But he said she was willing to be like a sex surrogate so he wouldn't be so frustrated. Of course I said absolutely not as if this was some valid thing to discuss. I am still naive and I was certainly was more so then and I knew this was a crazy request but tried to just deny the level of crazy it was. I now see it as a really sick and odd way he was trying to control me with. It was like he was throwing in my face that he was going to have to do something with these other girls cuz I wouldn't put out.  I should have dumped him right then. But I already loved him or attached myself to him whatever you want to call it. You see my dad was molesting me. I guess maybe you could say he was molesting me lite has all he did that I know of was to rub my stomach but I felt that he was over reaching where he should be touching and I felt really uncomfortable. I was only five and I told my mom because I was afraid I would get pregnant but the odd thing is I had no idea at all how you would get pregnant. So regardless of whether all my dad did was rub my belly button or if he went much farther than that that I don't remember, it doesn't matter in the big picture because regardless your parent  has used you for their pleasure and not considered at all the damage that would be caused for their child.  Since I told my mom she confronted my dad and told me that she told him if he ever did anything again she would leave him. She also told me to never let him touch me like that again. I do not remember feeling like I had any responsibility for the situation. My dad had done this a lot of times before I do know. So what happened between my dad and I afterwards was that we never spoke of this situation but he pulled away from me and I pulled away from him, because I was afraid to get him in trouble and I'm sure he was afraid to get into trouble. My mom started to take me with her to her evening activities where I would be the only child with a room full of adults. I always thought she just felt I was mature and would enjoy my evening a lot more with her but not until I thought about this abuse when I was 63 years old did I look at it as an adult and realize she took me with her to protect me. I believe this caused me to be overly attached to her. I think when I met my husband and I fell in love with him it reminded me of the first love my dad and I had together before he abused me. I never remember hugging my dad from 5 years old until I was in my forties. So when my husband was done love bombing me and started to pull away from me and put up walls between us to keep his emotions to himself I think it felt just like when my dad pulled away from me. And I'm guessing I pulled away from my husband also to protect myself from being hurt again. My husband wanted sex all the time and I gave him sex all the time. I had this naive thought that as long as he wanted to have sex with me that meant he was really in love with me. After all I wouldn't have sex with someone I didn't love so why would he. Well I never had sex with anyone else except him to this day. Unfortunately he has cheated on me and whenever I suspected something was going on he would make it out to be my problem of my imagination and all.  So that is how it started and we have four kids and now have five grandsons and I thought we would spend our retirement enjoying our grandchildren. Instead he devalued me and basically push me out the door because of his cruelty. The rejection he has given me just tears at my heart. I think that it is so painful because it must remind me on some subconscious level of how it felt to have my dad pull away from me. But how do I resolve this? My dad set me up to put up with abuse my whole life and yet I thought it was love. I still don't understand how my husband seemed like he flipped a switch and no longer had any sort of love or care for me. But the things he has said to me and done make a lot more sense that they would come from someone who didn't care about me. He started out loving all the things about me that made me me and ended up telling me how he disliked all of those things.  The cruel things he said to me that I thought he said just to be mean we're much more than that.  He said them to manipulate me so he could have power and control and his supply. If I had had any understanding of narcissism I would have seen it 40 years ago.  If I had known about narcissism before we married I would have never married him which is a lot to say because if I didn't marry him that would mean my four children would not exist. And then of course neither would my grandsons.  But my kids all have felt the abuse that he also gave to them. He said our marriage had to end because he didn't get enough sex which was actually his doing but he made it sound like it was because of me, and it was because of him not being able to trust me which is not true at all and of course he is the one who can't be trusted, and he says that I turned his children against him by saying mean things about him. I admit I may have cried or shown being upset because of something he had done but they had their own eyes to see how he treated me and how he treated them. When they got to be in their late teens they would recognize the critical condescending things he said to me and they would call him on it telling him to not talk to me that way. I was sort of surprised because I had been talked to like that for so long it was just matter of fact to me. It made me feel really bad to not stand up for myself to him in front of my children. I think that they felt very protective of me but also they must have some anger at having to come to my defense when they were still kids and I was the adult. A lot have years have gone by and years ago my husband was diagnosed with diabetes. A few years before that his behavior as far as just being a jerk as I called it then, or an a****** as my best friend called it, worsned and he was having temper tantrums and crazy rages and it made his narcissistic personality that much more apparent and obvious.  I was foolish enough to ask him if he thought he might be narcissistic and of course in an angry voice he denied it but I know he doesn't even know the true definition of that he just knows that you do not criticize him. He is the best and he knows how to do things the best but he will never ever say that anything he has done was wrong and he will never ever apologize.  So here is where I'm at. I need to detach myself emotionally from him and whatever kind of bond I have I cry easily when I think of how we are over as a couple everything about us together is done and that I know for sure he will move on to get a new supply. I think it must be so painful to come to the realization at some level that he may not have ever really loved me. That it's all been a narc game. I just can't comprehend that. And that I finished with my own fairy tale the story he started. I trapped myself even farther. But I just feel profound grief over the loss of Hope for what I thought was there and that could be again. I don't think you can understand how that feels until you have been in this situation. It's a kind of rejection that is just overwhelming. My husband is the only boyfriend I ever had and of course the only husband I've ever had. And if he never really loved me then I have never been loved by anyone romantically ever. My first kiss and all the other firsts I had with him for just acts in lies?  Is that possible that he never felt anything and was just doing what he thought he was supposed to??  How can I ever wrap my brain around that. If that is true I feel I should get to have a real true love before my life is over.  Doesn't that seem fair?

[SonofThunder]

Hello again Areuth,

I'm very sorry you have experienced all the hurt in your life from your father and your husband.  The hurtful things your husband has done would not be considered 'lite' in my opinion and in my opinion, there is no 'lite', but rather emotional manipulation and, control of others by PD's as a way of self-focus.  As a matter of fact, I believe it is belittling and insulting to your experiences by your doctor to label your husbands abuse as 'lite'.  You have searched out professional counsel and now come to Out of the FOG and that is a lot of effort on your part to find answers and education for 'lite' abuse.   

I will again suggest what I said in my prior reply, as much of the ways we deal with abusive PD's can be understood and also corrected to protect ourselves.   In order to protect ourselves, we must first understand ourselves.   You have a lot in your past and it is good to understand it, as it assists in also understanding yourself.   

I will close by again recommending the two books (see my last reply) and recommending you simultaneously learn and use the toolbox here at Out of the FOG.   I don't personally believe any of us here at Out of the FOG can answer your very last question, but only you can.  My personal focus is on loving myself enough first, in order to do what it takes to protect myself in the current situation I'm in.  If I cannot do that, I am personally not qualified to judge someone else's ability to love me. 

SoT

[tragedy or hope]

Areuth,
You have come to the right community to share your pain. I would encourage you with the fact that at some point you saw something in him that you thought was lovable. Even as a young woman.

There is nothing wrong with you first of all.

You gave love in a very sacrificial way, which it sounds like at times was to your advantage. You have your beautiful family and grandsons.

First, HE is the one who has inflicted pain on you. For years you have been a resistor. NOT his victim. It sounds as if you gave it your best.

One thing I have learned about N's... they don't go away. In some form he may continue to annoy or intensify his torture on you, you are not rid of him.

This is the place where you have power. You get to make your own decisions. After 46 years, you know him better than he knows himself. N's are intensely cruel, and often give the impression they are done with you, but he is used to your supply.

I am married 50 also. I have heard every threat known to humankind. It doesn't have impact anymore now that I know how cruel they can be and how dependent they are on their chosen target.

Be encouraged. Many of us have not known about why our spouses have treated us the way they have, but we are still here, survivors, resistors, the ones who will get well because we love ourselves enough to get out of the way of the pain.

Welcome. We are with you, behind you and understand you. You are not alone in this. 

[Areuth]

Hello again Areuth,

I'm very sorry you have experienced all the hurt in your life from your father and your husband.  The hurtful things your husband has done would not be considered 'lite' in my opinion and in my opinion, there is no 'lite', but rather emotional manipulation and, control of others by PD's as a way of self-focus.  As a matter of fact, I believe it is belittling and insulting to your experiences by your doctor to label your husbands abuse as 'lite'.  You have searched out professional counsel and now come to Out of the FOG and that is a lot of effort on your part to find answers and education for 'lite' abuse.   

I will again suggest what I said in my prior reply, as much of the ways we deal with abusive PD's can be understood and also corrected to protect ourselves.   In order to protect ourselves, we must first understand ourselves.   You have a lot in your past and it is good to understand it, as it assists in also understanding yourself.   

I will close by again recommending the two books (see my last reply) and recommending you simultaneously learn and use the toolbox here at Out of the FOG.   I don't personally believe any of us here at Out of the FOG can answer your very last question, but only you can.  My personal focus is on loving myself enough first, in order to do what it takes to protect myself in the current situation I'm in.  If I cannot do that, I am personally not qualified to judge someone else's ability to love me. 

SoT

46 years of marriage are hard to put in the past.  It is my whole life.  I have thought of him and us since we met when I was 15.  I went from being told by my parents what to do to having him tell me what to do.  One of the things that is difficult to understand is that my husband is not horribly abusive. Dr Romani told me in an email that there can be such a thing as a narcissist lite and that probably most of the narcissists could be classified as such. But of course those are also the ones that fly below the abuse radar and are understandably hard to identify. My husband could be quite friendly loving and charming when he chose to be. Of course he came to me with a story of difficulty with his family and how he had been kicked out of his home for saying I swear word not long after we had met. I couldn't understand at all how a parent could toss their kids out on the street while they are still in high school. Of course I felt sorry for him as I would have been devastated if that had happened to me. He stayed away from home for over a year, going to high school and working while living and renting a room in a friend's home, friends that were his parents age. So that was the sad story and he was very attentive for a very long time probably because we were so young he could not move as fast as a narc normally would. But he eventually started the criticism and complaints and telling me how things should be done. He wouldn't show up when he said he would or call me when he said he would. He brought up joining the service or going off to college to emotionally control me by threatening to move away. He never asked me to marry him. At some point we just decided we were going to get married I guess. He wanted of course to have sex all the time and I put him off for a very long time but gave in eventually. But I was afraid that I might get pregnant and so told him no a lot. He came to me one day and said he had something important to talk to me about. I thought he was going to do something like ask me to marry him which would have been really crazy because I was still in high school and I thought to myself I will tell him no for now but maybe later would be okay. Really what he wanted to ask me was if it would be okay if he were to have sex with a girl at the apartments where he lived. Supposedly he had already been making out with her and had dry humped her. But he said she was willing to be like a sex surrogate so he wouldn't be so frustrated. Of course I said absolutely not as if this was some valid thing to discuss. I am still naive and I was certainly was more so then and I knew this was a crazy request but tried to just deny the level of crazy it was. I now see it as a really sick and odd way he was trying to control me with. It was like he was throwing in my face that he was going to have to do something with these other girls cuz I wouldn't put out.  I should have dumped him right then. But I already loved him or attached myself to him whatever you want to call it. You see my dad was molesting me. I guess maybe you could say he was molesting me lite has all he did that I know of was to rub my stomach but I felt that he was over reaching where he should be touching and I felt really uncomfortable. I was only five and I told my mom because I was afraid I would get pregnant but the odd thing is I had no idea at all how you would get pregnant. So regardless of whether all my dad did was rub my belly button or if he went much farther than that that I don't remember, it doesn't matter in the big picture because regardless your parent  has used you for their pleasure and not considered at all the damage that would be caused for their child.  Since I told my mom she confronted my dad and told me that she told him if he ever did anything again she would leave him. She also told me to never let him touch me like that again. I do not remember feeling like I had any responsibility for the situation. My dad had done this a lot of times before I do know. So what happened between my dad and I afterwards was that we never spoke of this situation but he pulled away from me and I pulled away from him, because I was afraid to get him in trouble and I'm sure he was afraid to get into trouble. My mom started to take me with her to her evening activities where I would be the only child with a room full of adults. I always thought she just felt I was mature and would enjoy my evening a lot more with her but not until I thought about this abuse when I was 63 years old did I look at it as an adult and realize she took me with her to protect me. I believe this caused me to be overly attached to her. I think when I met my husband and I fell in love with him it reminded me of the first love my dad and I had together before he abused me. I never remember hugging my dad from 5 years old until I was in my forties. So when my husband was done love bombing me and started to pull away from me and put up walls between us to keep his emotions to himself I think it felt just like when my dad pulled away from me. And I'm guessing I pulled away from my husband also to protect myself from being hurt again. My husband wanted sex all the time and I gave him sex all the time. I had this naive thought that as long as he wanted to have sex with me that meant he was really in love with me. After all I wouldn't have sex with someone I didn't love so why would he. Well I never had sex with anyone else except him to this day. Unfortunately he has cheated on me and whenever I suspected something was going on he would make it out to be my problem of my imagination and all.  So that is how it started and we have four kids and now have five grandsons and I thought we would spend our retirement enjoying our grandchildren. Instead he devalued me and basically push me out the door because of his cruelty. The rejection he has given me just tears at my heart. I think that it is so painful because it must remind me on some subconscious level of how it felt to have my dad pull away from me. But how do I resolve this? My dad set me up to put up with abuse my whole life and yet I thought it was love. I still don't understand how my husband seemed like he flipped a switch and no longer had any sort of love or care for me. But the things he has said to me and done make a lot more sense that they would come from someone who didn't care about me. He started out loving all the things about me that made me me and ended up telling me how he disliked all of those things.  The cruel things he said to me that I thought he said just to be mean we're much more than that.  He said them to manipulate me so he could have power and control and his supply. If I had had any understanding of narcissism I would have seen it 40 years ago.  If I had known about narcissism before we married I would have never married him which is a lot to say because if I didn't marry him that would mean my four children would not exist. And then of course neither would my grandsons.  But my kids all have felt the abuse that he also gave to them. He said our marriage had to end because he didn't get enough sex which was actually his doing but he made it sound like it was because of me, and it was because of him not being able to trust me which is not true at all and of course he is the one who can't be trusted, and he says that I turned his children against him by saying mean things about him. I admit I may have cried or shown being upset because of something he had done but they had their own eyes to see how he treated me and how he treated them. When they got to be in their late teens they would recognize the critical condescending things he said to me and they would call him on it telling him to not talk to me that way. I was sort of surprised because I had been talked to like that for so long it was just matter of fact to me. It made me feel really bad to not stand up for myself to him in front of my children. I think that they felt very protective of me but also they must have some anger at having to come to my defense when they were still kids and I was the adult. A lot have years have gone by and years ago my husband was diagnosed with diabetes. A few years before that his behavior as far as just being a jerk as I called it then, or an a****** as my best friend called it, worsned and he was having temper tantrums and crazy rages and it made his narcissistic personality that much more apparent and obvious.  I was foolish enough to ask him if he thought he might be narcissistic and of course in an angry voice he denied it but I know he doesn't even know the true definition of that he just knows that you do not criticize him. He is the best and he knows how to do things the best but he will never ever say that anything he has done was wrong and he will never ever apologize.  So here is where I'm at. I need to detach myself emotionally from him and whatever kind of bond I have I cry easily when I think of how we are over as a couple everything about us together is done and that I know for sure he will move on to get a new supply. I think it must be so painful to come to the realization at some level that he may not have ever really loved me. That it's all been a narc game. I just can't comprehend that. And that I finished with my own fairy tale the story he started. I trapped myself even farther. But I just feel profound grief over the loss of Hope for what I thought was there and that could be again. I don't think you can understand how that feels until you have been in this situation. It's a kind of rejection that is just overwhelming. My husband is the only boyfriend I ever had and of course the only husband I've ever had. And if he never really loved me then I have never been loved by anyone romantically ever. My first kiss and all the other firsts I had with him for just acts in lies?  Is that possible that he never felt anything and was just doing what he thought he was supposed to??  How can I ever wrap my brain around that. If that is true I feel I should get to have a real true love before my life is over.  Doesn't that seem fair?

Hello again Areuth,

I'm very sorry you have experienced all the hurt in your life from your father and your husband.  The hurtful things your husband has done would not be considered 'lite' in my opinion and in my opinion, there is no 'lite', but rather emotional manipulation and, control of others by PD's as a way of self-focus.  As a matter of fact, I believe it is belittling and insulting to your experiences by your doctor to label your husbands abuse as 'lite'.  You have searched out professional counsel and now come to Out of the FOG and that is a lot of effort on your part to find answers and education for 'lite' abuse.   

I will again suggest what I said in my prior reply, as much of the ways we deal with abusive PD's can be understood and also corrected to protect ourselves.   In order to protect ourselves, we must first understand ourselves.   You have a lot in your past and it is good to understand it, as it assists in also understanding yourself.   

I will close by again recommending the two books (see my last reply) and recommending you simultaneously learn and use the toolbox here at Out of the FOG.   I don't personally believe any of us here at Out of the FOG can answer your very last question, but only you can.  My personal focus is on loving myself enough first, in order to do what it takes to protect myself in the current situation I'm in.  If I cannot do that, I am personally not qualified to judge someone else's ability to love me. 

SoT

Welcome!  Yes, it is quite a shock but also a relief when the shutters finally come off. Please get as much information as you can, read around on the toolbox and the Personality disorders tabs. See you around on the boards!

thanks so much for your encouragement #notnrightin the head

[Areuth]

I'm not sure about exactly how to post a reply but I saw this quick reply and thought I would give it a try. I feel like I need some support from people who've been through this ordeal so much right now I'm so thankful you are reaching out to me!

[tragedy or hope]

 A,
Married 50 years. Only the last couple of years did I wake up to Narc. personality disorder. What a shock to my soul, and who I am. It is a journey, and you can find hope here on this site and from others who have been there. Thankfully you found us!

This is the beginning of a fork in the road for you. We welcome you.