Thought things would get better; they haven't.

[yellowdaisy]

I thought things would improve after DH and I went NC with in laws, but they have only gotten worse. What's replaced the IL's chaos is now DH's own PD. I really thought he just had fleas. Now I don't know what to think. I am about at my wits end. I feel like I've been tricked. He use to blame it all on his parents, and now I'm thinking back with his parents he had blamed it all on me.

He gets defensive over any little slight conflict, he gaslights, he manufactures chaos, he's dramatic, he barely has a nurturing bone in his body. I have to teach him everything. I don't want to be his parent and therapist anymore. I keep telling him he needs to reparent himself. I had to do it for myself as my FOO is also PD. The thing is, when I stop explaining things to him, he is almost intolerable to be around.

I am a SAHM with a LO. I do not want to start over from square 1 and split half of my time with DC. I really, really believed he didn't have a PD. I feel tricked and heartbroken. It's all the same cycle as I saw with PDILs. The defensiveness, the victimhood, the "woe is me" act, the empty apologies, then the lovebombing,  the gaslighting, repeat. He has started mirroring me even more. I now realize this is probably what he's been doing our entire relationship.

He has told me often he doesn't know who he is. He's told me he would not go out of this way to help someone else, unless it benefitted him somehow. He told me he doesn't know how to be nurturing and whenever me or DC are sick he has no idea how to comfort or care for us. He is constantly making empty promises and saying he wants to live this way and that, but never follows through. He went to therapy for awhile and I thought it helped, but I think he was just pretending, as he is not using anything he learned. We will have the same argument over and over and over again. The conversations are circular. He never learns. Nothing ever sticks.


Thanks for reading.

[escapingman]

I know exactly what you are talking about, for years I blamed everything on my in laws. They made our life hell and whatever happened I was always there for my wife, I supported her through hell with them. I was very blinded for her faults and made excuses for her behavior and felt very sorry for her and her childhood. FIL, who I know now was a massive NPD was running the show and it was easy for everyone to hide their own behavior as he was always worts. Very overt whilst MIL and my Wife are very covert, I beleive SIL also is an NPD but I don't know her enough to have seen to much of it. But when my wife finally went NC with them all, followed by FIL getting seriously ill and eventually dying I thought things would get better. Boy was I wrong, this is when things really escalated as FIL no longer kept my wife under his control and MIL no longer had to pussyfoot around him. In the end I have realised that my wife was beyond help all the time and that she played her part of it with her gaslighting and triangulation. Having looked back at the entire family with new eyes I can finally get some explanation to all weird events I had to endure, I can also see that it would never have mattered one jot what I did as it was never down to me.

Save yourself and your sanity, stop hoping as people say to me.

[ploughthrough2021]

Same situation here. My uNPD wife went NC with the In-laws (FIL has uPD) and things got worse... We are now going through separation (I had enough after 30 years and want to get the kids out of this toxic family environment).