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I had a talk with my mother and she is of the same mind as a lot of you ladies – grin and bear it while working things in my favor. That means putting up with all the crap that goes on around here until I at least have my license. I’m not sure I want to think too long on living with this until school starts. That alone is enough to seriously overwhelm me.
What I need are strategies to deal with the idiot and his mood swings and angst, because it’s so easy for him to hit all the right buttons and drag me back into the same dysfunctional cycle with the usual fights and tantrums. If he feels I am not paying enough attention to him, he’ll become clingy and needy and pester me while I’m doing my own thing. If I tell him I’m busy, he sulks and will eventually pick a fight. If I’m interacting normally, that triggers all of his mommy issues and he starts acting like a little boy. Which will start a fight whether I mention it or ignore it. The fight is his ultimate goal, because it’s a form of comfort he feels he has control over. I don’t need to tell you all how hard it is to live with that on a daily basis and not lose yourself. Or how hard it is to interact normally at all, when so much resentment and anger is simmering inside that I want to just yell at him for acting as if nothing at all is wrong.
What I don’t get is how this has progressed so much from the start of our marriage, and why it got so bad after his relapse last year. I probably shouldn’t even care, but it makes me feel crazy to think that I actually married him, even if things were not like this back then. All I do know at this point is he owes me a hell of a lot for the last eight years, and I intend to collect on it.
I don’t stay because I love my husband. I despise him. I hurt for the scared boy he was that got completely fucked over by his parents and upbringing, but I hate the adult that wants to take no responsibility for himself and refuses to do anything but live in a disgusting and perverted reality. I want to cut him out of my life and forget I ever knew him. I want to be free, and never have to feel panic and fear and so much loneliness and mistrust in my own home. I don’t stay because I have any idea that I want a relationship with him. I don’t. The thought of him touching me or of us being anything other than roommates turns my stomach. I don’t even like him so much as to be his friend. He’s an asshole.
I just don’t know where to go with all of this. I have no friends or any sort of support group. I have one sibling who is disabled with multiple sclerosis and lives with my retired mother. They, my father, and an aunt are the only family I have, and they all live in another state, a thousand miles away. My father and aunt are ill and we worry about them. Packing up and going “home” isn’t really practical as they don’t have room for me, nor could they come get me. I also have my pets to consider, because there is no way I am leaving them. I could find homes for them and disappear, but how much more do I have to kill my soul?
We live paycheck to paycheck at the moment and I don’t know if I can even afford to think about calling an attorney and then trying to explain to my husband why I need to have him drive me to a lawyer’s office, or why there is a charge for it on our bank account. It doesn’t feel like the safest thing to do. I can’t be sure how he would react, and that scares me. I feel that “if I really wanted to” I could just take a bus or something, but I’m still scared of how he would react. Makes me feel spineless.
I was supposed to start school in the fall so I could get a real job – the idea being to help support us while husband worked towards a Masters degree, but at this rate it would be to support myself and my new life. Considering the best I have to show for myself otherwise is a GED and 8 years of being a housewife, I will need a degree to be able to do that and not just work some stupid retail job. I’d do any work necessary and be poor and happy, but losing the dream of making something of myself is painful. Is that enough to keep me here? I can’t think so, because all the stress and bullshit is making it impossible for me to care about getting things in order so I can start classes at all. I just don’t care.
It’s hard not to feel powerless in this situation. I don’t know what to do or what direction to go in. And in the end everything I said is just one big excuse, isn’t it? 🙁
Thanks for all your words. I feel so overwhelmed and shut down right now that I lose the momentum to respond or care, but I appreciate the time all of you take in this.
Lynn, I think what you said about fighting to feel normal makes a lot of sense. I also think that’s why it’s so easy to get “sucked back in.” The moment things seem to smooth over or calm down, it’s easy to tell ourselves things are all right and fine, even though they really, really are not. The problem for me there is keeping the “fuck that” feeling to finally get moving. I just want peace. When it seems there is peace, I stop struggling and just want to catch my breath. But it’s not really peace and I’ll just struggle more for it.
Allcat, the animal thing is probably different for all of the fucking creeps, but at least in my husband’s case he told me he used to have a stuffed dog that he would hold on to for comfort when things were bad growing up. I guess it translated from there. The fact he ended up friends with people in the “furry community” didn’t help. Here was validation! Friendship! Freedom from being yourself! Just pretend you’re some doggie boy and your life will be fine! All the weird gay sex you could ask for! Basically a group of broken and damaged men with mommy issues that put on animal suits and screw each other. Because that’s really going to make your past better and your future bright. Whatever. 34 fucking years old and prancing around like a six year old playing pretend. It just boggles the mind.
The fat thing wasn’t much different I guess. Some creep predator started talking to him on the computer when he was 15 and sent him gay porno stories and encouraged his weight gain – which he was already desperately doing to get his mother to stop fondling his nuts. She loathes being fat, so he thought if he was fat she’d leave him alone. Then his father came out as gay and left, so…
I can completely follow where all this started from and how it progressed. I just can’t understand why anyone who KNOWS why and UNDERSTANDS where it comes from will sit there and say, “Yeah, but, I’m gonna do it ANYWAY!”
Husband had a dream about his mother the other night. He wet the bed as a result. I just don’t know anymore.
Yeah, if it were beautiful and eager women he was after at least I’d feel “normal” in that way. His thing is men, fat men, men acting like animals, and I guess male animals. He told me once that his fantasy belief of being anally raped by an animal means he’d get to turn into an animal and run away from the world. I’m seriously trying to figure out why I stayed after learning that. I guess it’s easy to lie to ourselves for a good long while too. And you better believe I hate myself for that – what was I thinking? Why would I want to fight for this “relationship?” I’m more than half convinced that if I hadn’t been so dependent on him financially, I’d have been out years ago. I just feel sick right now.
I’m not sure it would matter if his penis fell off. Is there a way to make someone’s rear end close up? He’s all about being someone else’s dirty little toy, so maybe a chastity belt would work to test the idea?
It’s true that whatever it is they do or however much they use their sad excuse for a manhood, the problem is in their brains. The penis stuff is just a symptom of a much deeper problem. My husband has BPD. When he works with all the things as the therapist and psychiatrist tell him to, he’s not so bad to be around. When he doesn’t? He alternates between helpless little boy and raging queer. What a life.
I have to admit this is making me go and look up male chastity devices. Purely curious. I need something to laugh at now.
I got a real charming one just a bit ago, when telling husband that his isolative behavior while at work was a pretty obvious sign of his usual crap.
“So much it does feel like we only talk at each other. Even when the other really does want to make an effort. Although it makes me cry when you do reach out, because it happens so seldom anymore.”
I just don’t have words I can muster to that one.
Quite honestly, my first WTF came when husband’s mother started asking me questions about his penis and if he was able to please me.
Though thinking back on it, there was a point early on when we were together when he sort-of-kind-of told me he liked being “big,” and that he wanted to purposely gain weight and said it would be great if I told him he looked good when he did. I wouldn’t have cared if he was carrying a bit extra, but purposely doing so was not something I could get behind. So he “agreed to stop doing that.”
Yeah. Years later and I find out he likes looking at (among other disgusting things) pictures of naked fat men screwing and would steal money to buy extra food to get fat with. Because I would never ever notice the weight gain I guess. WTF.
WTF WTF WTF.
“I’ll be as honest as I can be…”
Yep, heard similar (“I’m being as honest as I know how right now…”)
We all know that line, I’m sure.
I’ve wondered if part of it is depression. My general nature is far too open and cheerful for me to think I could be dealing with that, but who knows? It’s hard to believe I really am THAT unmotivated about my own life without there being something behind it.
We were driving over to husband’s SA 12 step meeting earlier (I’m waiting around in a coffee shop now, as we had things to do on this side of town anyway), and he said to me, “You know, I really don’t think I’m as powerless as I say I am.” Naw, really? I told him that if he had spent the past six months working on dealing with his past and moving forward building a healthy life, and he had a “slip” or two in there due to poor decision making control, it would have been far better than waving a 6-month chip that clearly did nothing in the end. Clean time means nothing without actual RECOVERY.
Probably fell on deaf ears, but oh well. It’s a new year, time for a new me.
And then a part of me wonders, am I crying and in pain and upset because I’m not getting MY way? I don’t get a nice husband and a child and the ability to stay at home and not have to go out and maintain and manage everything myself? Is that what my fear really is?
And then I want to know when I became that sort of lazy person who doesn’t have motivation and effort to put into her own damn life. That makes me feel like I’m no better or different than husband, with the exception that I don’t whore around. Whooptee.
I have no idea why making concrete plans hurts so damn much. I don’t even think I care about him, since I haven’t had much in the way of emotions that haven’t been anger and hatred for him in over a year. I think I’m mourning for what should have been, but that’s not any sort of healthy way to look at it. None of us are promised anything. 🙁
This is the first time in a long time I’ve felt pain instead of anger. I hate it.
March, he’s been attending online meetings for awhile, and for the most part they seemed to be a good idea. Not long ago he joined another recovery chat, this one full of people (the other tended to have people only during meetings), and one of the men in there has similar issues as husband does. They got to talking in private chat, and I glanced over to see them encouraging each other in their perversions. I guess it was just too easy for the asshole idiot when he was already looking for excuses to run away. He just took what was there.
Of course, he then tried to lie and deny and pretend they were just “relating” their stories to help each other “recover.” Yeah, I sort of know better. There was no ambiguity about the shit they were saying. And he acted out again the next day, browsing things on the cellphone. I’m pretty sure he’ll be finding some way to act out today too. Why should I even care at this point?
I’m cleaning up right now, tidying the damn place not because I’m proud of our home and life together, but because it feels like a mental exercise in clearing things out so I can sit down and focus on what’s going to happen next. I don’t even know what that is.
I hear it’s very common for boys who end up being support and stand-in husband for mommy to end up with these issues. I’d be scared of potentially ever having a son, but it has to take some special kind of really perverse creature to do that to their own child, whether to physically or emotionally use them.
But oh yes, bumpety bump. I’m going to be humming that to myself all night.
If my husband had any real friends at all, he might have. Right now he has a few friends in the SA fellowship he goes to, but they don’t actually get together except for maybe to have coffee on a rare occasion. I have heard the best way to force a cheating spouse to end an affair (I guess providing it’s not a serial thing) is to tell everyone and expose it for all to see. Maybe it really would work the same for this crap?
We’re currently dealing with preparing to tell his family – the family we’ve had no contact with for 4-5 years because they’re all batshit fucked up crazy. Not sure how that’s going to work, or how I feel about that. On one hand I feel exposing it for what it is would be good. On the other, some part of me wants to keep it secret so his stupid bitch mother doesn’t get all smug at how much I’ve hurt. Especially since the child molesting skank is the root of it all and she hated me for taking her “husband” away from her. I’m sure she’d love to point fingers and blame me for everything, but sonny boy has been doing his little fantasy life since his teen years. Sorry, mama, it’s all on you.
Oh well…
That was a very interesting article, but it does leave me confused about the whole mess. We’ve been working with it as an addiction, and the 12 step group my husband attends seems to have helped him. Or it did until he decided to be a special little boy again.
His therapist hasn’t really focused on the sex behavior aspect, but on how to deal with the core feelings behind his acting out – the powerlessness, rage, and so on he felt from being molested by his mother. Husband has not been very willing to work with that, it being too painful or whatever. But even the therapist said he wouldn’t give up his sex stupidity until he was willing to change himself and face the real issues. So I guess the therapist has a pretty decent clue. Too bad he can’t beat my husband with it hard enough.
I’d love to show this article to my husband, but I doubt that would be worth the effort.
I’m staying, but I don’t see that being anything long term like I once did. When my husband first came to me with the truth of what he had been doing, I felt oddly relieved – here was the explanation for all his bizarre behavior, and now that we know, we can get help and deal with it. Thus started the therapy, 12 step meetings, addiction books, etc. etc. It wasn’t easy at first, and there was a lot of crap to wade through, but the end result was over a year of things being something approaching normal. It was good. We were “dealing with it” and moving on to healthier lives.
And then the stupid useless piece of shit decided he was too scared to be a man anymore and had a relapse, complete with full blown denial and all the shit behavior I see you girls describe in your husbands. He got caught, denied, lied, bullshitted, and eventually returned to recovery after I threw him out. The problem is, I get the impression that it was only a grudging return, done only so he still had someone to come home to and not because HE wanted to get better for HIMSELF. That’s the dealbreaker right there. Recovery as a way to avoid consequences is not the same as recovery to accept personal responsibility, and I’m done with him pretending to not know the difference.
If he does pull his head out of his ass and returns to real recovery – dealing with the trauma of his past, empowering himself to take care of himself and not waiting for the world to suit his whims – that’d be great. I will use that as a way to prepare myself for the final break. And you know what, any of you ladies wanting to stay and support your husbands? You do the same. You put yourself in that position of power so if and when you finally need to, you can show them the door and wish them well, and then get on with your beautiful lives. Being stuck with the stupid asses does not have to be the same as being stuck. I need to keep reminding myself of that too.
I suppose I should be “happy” that my husband doesn’t try to blame his self pity on me or my anger or whatever. Occasionally he’ll make a comment, but never with conviction and he’ll apologize when I call him on it, rather than defend it. It’s that way with most of his behavior. He still prefers to run away, avoid, and piss himself if I express my resentment, no matter if it’s the nice “communicative” way we learned in therapy or if I just start swearing at him. Because that’s so much better…
I stay with him due to not being financially independent. I haven’t worked since we have been married, which just passed eight years. I also don’t drive, which complicates matters. I was supposed to start school myself this fall, and my husband keeps wanting to teach me to drive – but I grew up inheriting my mother’s fear of driving, and haven’t done much to get myself over it. This is what I mean by kicking myself in the ass. I have things I personally need to do, but I’m either lazy or depressed or I don’t know what, because I just don’t. I don’t hate myself, but I do hate that about myself and I have yet to figure out WHY I’m being that way. Pathetic, isn’t it? 🙁
I also don’t have anyone in the area for support. We moved here for my husband’s job and never made any friends. My family lives several states away, and his family all needs to blow up and burn. They’re several shades of crazy and we haven’t had any contact with them in nearly five years. And by crazy, I mean my husband’s mother molested him for years and outright offered herself to him sexually before our wedding. Not surprising he ended up so screwed in the head. I only wish I had known this stuff then.
I guess the answer is to live politely with him until I learn to drive and find whatever job I can get, and start school as planned, but it’s getting too hard to look at the helpless little boy cringing his way around the house every day, and harder still to hold back my disgust and rage. He’s got clean time for now, but the moment that’s gone I just don’t know.
I really am venting today, aren’t I? 😛
I had that exact same feeling when my husband admitted he was skipping classes to act out in sex chats. School was something beyond important to him. If he could do that with something he held so much as a pillar of what he wanted to accomplish for himself, there was nothing left of the man I thought I knew.
I seriously wanted nothing more than to throw him out and never see him again at that exact moment. In my heart and mind, I already did; having to physically co-habit with him is all that is left to remove myself from. Eventually.
Take care of yourself. I know what a strange feeling it is.
