Oh, Sigyn. The post that you just wrote should be put somewhere just to validate and support BSs married to this type of WH and give them the words to express it. You have just described EXACTLY how it feels to be in the hurricane with a person who is disordered in these particular ways.
You just touched the ultimate dilemma and mindfuck that I have lived too. Thank you for that post.
Posts like that post are why so many of us say you are doing so well and are so strong and will be okay. NOT because you are okay right now by any stretching of that word, but because you are able to understand and (at least sometimes) respond in a way that protects you and your son when faced with this information. Because you look at it clear-eyed and honestly and are not so completely caught in the brain fog of severe trauma that you are unable to see through it at all. Because you see your WH and what your life with him has been so honestly at moments like this rather than being totally helpless against him in these early days.
It’s not that we think you are always so strong and decisive and emotionally stable; it’s because you are CAPABLE in moments to have this level of insight, clarity and openness to your own pain and its roots in both your WHs disordered life and your own "naive complicity," without blaming yourself for it.
I can look back and see the way he's manipulated me, the way he bends our marriage and our lives to match the things he wants, his preferences, his needs. I saw it in small and big ways, but I just thought to myself at the time - well, he feels more strongly than I do about where we should live, the kind of house, the kind of vacations we take, our lifestyle in general. I just wanted to feel safe and happy and had a wide range of places and activities where those feelings would be possible. I rationalized that the things WH was pressing for must be the much narrower environment in which WH felt safest and happiest inside himself. So we ended up in a bigger house than I'd wanted, in an area of the country that was different than I'd wanted, things like that.
THIS IS ME! I realized early in our marriage that I was stronger and much more able to adapt to almost anything than my WH. I felt like I was being supportive and loving to concede those things for him to be happy. My safety and happiness were about emotional and financial security and having a partner (I know, laughable in hindsight). His always seemed to be about a million small details that he needed to control and things that he needed to have and avoidance of situations that made him uncomfortable (there were a LOT of all of these things), and his equilibrium was so much more fragile if any of these things was disturbed. So I began to concede and just never stopped until, as you’ve pointed out, I had become very, very small within our marriage—something that I "balanced" by not being small in the rest of my life and relationships although I’ll admit that I probably followed the flow with any of my high-maintenance friends, as well, at times.
It just seemed generous and caring at the time. It doesn’t now.
I'm feeling like everyone is hiding ugliness inside them - even me - and that they have the potential to pop out like a jack in the box from any of us. The thought that my own needs aren't small, they're not dismissable, they don't have to be overrun by someone with really deeply ugly, damaging, sick needs... there's something in that that's empowering if I can only get myself in the right emotional place,
This is the unfortunate result of feeling completely defrauded and traumatized by the person that you trusted most. As I said, i wasn’t just overly giving of myself with my WH. I have had exactly this feeling that EVERYONE is disrespecting and devaluing of me secretly instead of appreciating my kindness and caring thanks to what I now know. I have distanced myself from everyone at times in the aftermath of all of this because I felt so unsafe and so unable to trust anything. . .and ultimately so ashamed of the truth of what my life had been and what I’d allowed to happen to my family because I didn’t protect it from my own spouse. I still feel that particular guilt keenly at times.
It is REALLY important to begin to fully embrace the notion that your own needs and feelings are not small or dismissible. This will be particularly challenging since you are engaged with someone who has been and is COMPLETELY dismissive of you needs and feelings. Your post just resonates with the exact understanding of how utterly your WH dismissed any thought of your needs. I understand this realization completely, my sister. It is unbelievably painful. . .and also hard to really keep believing for some reason. We keep looking for some hint that we were really loved (the way we felt and were certain that we were) and valued for something beyond services rendered. Acceptance is so hard.
but then I feel an immediate kickback right after like I'm leaving my WH behind. Like he has died, but I haven't. Like a kind of survivor's guilt? And then I rebound horribly and feel so guilty, I start dreaming about him again, idealizing who I thought he was, thinking I can reach back into his sickness and pull his essential self back out. Then I look at the screen grabs from OW, his chats, his smug "I only lie by omission" and all of my other evidence that comes straight from his life, his words, his body, his actions. And I get so filled with rage again, feel like I need to get free from his charade, I've been such a sucker, such a naive smear of a nothing in our marriage. I want to find myself, MYself, the person I've made smaller and smaller in my marriage. And then I get empowered (this is usually when I post here, I am not really doing as well as I come across I think) and then the empowerment rebounds into guilt for leaving my husband run over in the road, repeat, repeat, repeat.
This just stands by itself. I can’t even express how reading this helped me and gave exact expression to the cycle that has haunted me. I thank you from the bottom of my being.
We took care of them for so long. We put their needs first. Our brains are imprinted with it, probably since long before we even met them. So any time that the repulsion to what they’ve done pushes us to put ourselves first and shut down to their dysfunction, our entire being rejects it and pushes us back into the guilt and fear for their welfare that has been our motivator for so long. It feels morally WRONG to abandon them even when they abandoned us so very long ago. And a WH like this will be the first person to see that and use it in any way possible to suck us back in.
The magnitude of it is socompletely disorienting and also so damaging ultimately. The cycling of this is what kept SO many of us here trapped for so very long, as we keep repeating in your thread. You have touched here on where the big danger is: your WHs goal will be to keep you cycling because it keeps you locked into his emotional control. He will be ruthless in pursuing it any way he can—and I mean ANY way. He will only see his needs and his wants. You are still thinking in terms of an "us," and he is not constrained by that notion. He only has to serve himself.
I don’t know exactly how to tell you to overcome the cycling. Part of me, clearly, was reluctant to give up the cycling because it would mean giving up completely on the vision of our marriage and our relationship and our family that had been the most precious and sacred value to me. The deep and irreparable emotional wound of realizing that that had been gone for a long time—and really never existed at all, as I had lived and envisioned it—is a pain that I’m not sure I will ever fully recover from.
I think that you will ultimately get there in your own way, and that is also why we all are here, not only supporting you, but gathering strength from your journey too. It’s the beauty of this site. As someone put it, it’s vicarious strength and healing and wisdom.
I’ll finish with a reminder that your WH is not safe for anyone emotionally. It’s not just you. I have made the mistake of believing that my WH loved his children and that would ultimately be the one sacred thing that he would protect. This was BROKEN thinking on my part. Our WHs don’t harm others because that’s the goal. They harm others because they are so completely incapable of what we think of as love. The only sacred thing to them is protecting and serving themselves. I don’t honestly know if this can be fixed or unlearned as an adult.
What I know is that my WH did great harm to my kids because he wasn’t capable in any way of distinguishing between his needs and theirs. If it served his needs, his mind just magically and unconsciously convinced himself that it was the right thing to do FOR THEM, or at the very least, that it couldn’t hurt them. This from the person who on DDay presented it to me as absolutely logical that the kids had not been affected in any way by his betrayal, infidelity and dishonesty. He had convinced himself of this for years. When I asked him how putting in jeaopardy the marriage that formed the heart of their family and security would not affect them, he honestly looked stunned and baffled.
So you should be watchful. I honestly can’t give you great advise about how to keep your WH from doing this because he is your son’s father. He will be alone with your son at many times in the future. Even when I have hit my WH over the head with how something he’s done or said has caused harm, he never seems to internalize that and do the work to become vigilant and careful about not repeating it. It’s almost if he thinks that it was an accident or an isolated and unintentional one-time occurrence that he doesn’t have to address in a bigger way. And that means that it is always repeated.
I’m not saying this is your WH. I’m just saying that a person who has lived his entire life operating on the unspoken principal that others exist to be controlled and keep him comfortable and safe and happy isn’t easily able to see others as separate beings with their own needs and wants that contradict and supersede his own. He confuses his needs with theirs. He believes they are the same. ALL beings around him serve his needs and purposes if he can just exert the right control and influence. And I’m pretty sure he believes that serving his needs will serve THEM. We can’t understand how their minds work. We just can’t.
I will say again, in spite of how it all feels, that you and your counselor and your support system are so solid and that your ability to honor your health and well-being are serving you well through this shitstorm. It’s still a shitstorm. It takes a lot of time and there is so much pain to walk through. I’m so sorry for that, for all of us.
Strength and peace to everyone. Sending you huge hugs of support, Sigyn. Keep going. Trust that you will get where you need to go in your own time and way.