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As soon as we get the SOS marketplace going, Lynn and Nap are going to make a fortune selling pillows. 😉
LOL JoAnn. Never fear, I would not create more work for you. Your plate is full enough. Lynn, I’ve got a couch in my living room that no one ever sits on. I’m gonna fill it with SOS pillows just as soon as you and Nap start production.
Certainly a conversation starter or a way to get rid of the Johava’s Witness visitor 🙂
No offense to any JW…just do not ring my doorbell….
Maybe you could put FUCKTARD on the other side of the FUCK THAT pillow? Now that’d be a show stopper!
back to the original question – i am reading the Gaslight Effect now, finally, and it’s blowing my mind… every sister should read this book. i know i am late to the party here… but the number one symptom that should have set off a huge red flag for me was that i started to isolate myself and my relationship from my friends – because i was ashamed and confused by what was happening.
that’s an awesome book! i highly recommend it to every partner of a SA. to me, this book helped me WAY more than the SA books. understanding sex addiction helped me see how sick he is. but that only helped me in the beginning, cuz i learned pretty quickly that there is nothing i can do for him.
but understanding gas lighting? that helped ME!
Artemis – thank you so much for the recommendation…I started reading Gaslight Effect last night based on your recommendation. It is excellent…explains SO MUCH to me of what I was experiencing, feeling, and why I reacted the way I did for 20 years. I am still in the state where I feel like my SAH might be manipulating and gaslighting me, but I can’t tell for sure and I keep doubting myself…this book is really helpful.
I’ve joined this site only today and have not been able to log off! Reading your posts is tremendously helpful. It is actually amazing that many have experienced the same odd and difficult to describe behaviors of my SA husband and that it seems common. I laughed and empathize with the sloooowww speaking and loved it when it was described as a way of getting attention. Right on!!! this is so true but it had never occurred to me. Labeling behaviors for what they are – so powerful. We need a whole new vocabulary.
Another one was the dissecting of motives. I could not understand why my SA h would bring up a sentence I said about 12 years ago and try to dissect it. It would blow my mind because he has such a bad memory of most things. This dissecting of motives and reading way more into them 2, 3, or even 12 years later. What does it mean? What would you label it as?
The frequent mention of narcissism among the in laws – particularly the MIL – is intriguing. Then there is the switching of affect from mother in law to you. This one I can talk about – it is a recent discovery/understanding. My MIL is a classic narcissist. I only understand the full picture now as a personality disorder but when I was first married I would be absolutely bamboozled by her behaviors. At any rate- she was emotionally incestuous toward my SA h as he was growing up and I believe this left him with a mixture of love and hate for her. When I came into the picture, he was able to split these feelings quite unaware and project the hate to me and the love to her. It is a convenient way of bringing order to the distortion one would feel when faced with both love and hate for one’s mother, and it reduces the intensity of the conflictual feelings. I don’t like psychoanalysis but I find this concept of splitting of the ego and projections, the only thing that can explain what I’ve been experiencing all these years.Zola, where you said, “I could not understand why my SA h would bring up a sentence I said about 12 years ago and try to dissect it. It would blow my mind because he has such a bad memory of most things. This dissecting of motives and reading way more into them 2, 3, or even 12 years later. What does it mean? What would you label it as?”
My God, does that ever ring true for me too. I’ve come to label it as part of his narcissistic disorder. Because the things he remembers and dissects are always negative things, that I guess threatened his shaky self-image. So they were indelibly imprinted in his mind, because when someone with NPD feels slighted, the ground disappears beneath their feet.
I also believe that they bring up anything they can think of ( and make stuff up) because they NEED you to be the bad guy so they do not have to face their own faults.
When my H was at his craziest , he brought stuff up that blew me away. That is when I finally figured out that he was crazy, not me….
Before, I had tried to address each and every perceived grievance in a rational manner…hahaha….that did not go well 🙂
Annie, Isn’t the overarching label obsessive-compulsive? I think remembering details of something said 12 years ago, or even one or two years ago, and disecting it, sounds like the person has been obsessing about what was said for a very long time. So easy to rewrite the motives of the speaker over those years. Sounds both obsessive compulsive and crazy making for the peson whose words are being dissected all those years later.
Yeah, I can’t remember the details of a conversation last week, even, so their using old stuff (mine did too, but we only had 18 months together so his choices were limited) makes me insane. Stick to the point at hand, please. If you’ve had any counseling at all, that’s a basic in communications, especially in conflicts. If you had done that 12 years ago there might not be a need to rehash it NOW! Duh. It’s just a tactic. Like I said, the objective is not ever to actually communicate. The objective is always, always, always to make them look good. Protect their cover. Etc.
Oh, yeah, my STBX brings up stuff I said before we were married- 23 years ago! I swear he remembers everything I ever said that he took as negative. But he can’t remember anything my kids told him last week about what they are doing. Bizarro world.
Lynn, so right about the objective is to make them look good. I just had 3 full days of that. And it was my weekend supposedly off from him (no visitation). So so so right.
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