goddess1871
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Reged: 10/03/07
Posts: 14
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Hello all. Looking forward to meeting all of you on the boards at some point.
I am hoping you can offer some insight to me as to whether I am living with an abuser or just a jackass. My husband and I have been together for 14 years, married for 11. During this time he has grown increasingly micro-managerial and controlling.
When we first married, I was put in charge of a group at our church. We came home one night and he told me that something I had said at the meeting had made him “uncomfortable.” I apologized and kept it in mind. The next week, it was something else that I said that made him uncomfortable. Again, I apologized. And thus it began. Before long, there was not much that I could say that he didn’t have a problem with and need to correct. I put a stop to it for the moment by saying as we were coming home one night, “E.R. is on in 15 minutes, so please give me the rundown of everything I said that made you uncomfortable so I can go on.” That seemed like enough to do it.
In 1998 we moved to Kentucky so that I could begin working on my master’s degree. (I looked past the comment that my getting a teaching assistant was the ‘final nail in the coffin’ for his job, and numerous other comments.) Surprisingly, we got along very well during this period. He had plenty to do at his job and, I imagine, plenty of other people to monitor.
Then we moved in 2001 to Indiana so I could work on my doctorate, and it seemed like that’s when the marriage went south fast. In addition to the return of the millions of things I would do and say that made him uncomfortable, I was suffering from depression at the time and was having panic attacks, and the husband couldn’t understand why I didn’t just “get happy”. He wanted to know why exactly I had to be on Zoloft because it cost so much money. When I was too exhausted from being a full-time student and full-time house cleaner (because the husband wasn’t doing ANYTHING to help around the house) to have sex, he pouted and acted like I had personally injured him. During this time he also increasingly treated me as though anything that came out of my mouth was utterly suspect and not to be believed, professionally or personally. I literally felt like if I had been attacked by a drug-crazed rapist, he’d believe the drug-crazed rapist over me. We purchased our first home in ’02 and at this time he added little “talks” to me before company came over about what I should and shouldn’t say (I won’t even go into the number of time he’s put his own foot in his mouth and mortified me).
The final straw came this past spring, after I had been griped at non-stop about finishing my qualifying exams and the daily “reminders” to work on my dissertation, and the comment he had let slip that if I didn’t finish my dissertation and soon, he was outta there. I had a huge job interview at a small school in the upper Midwest, about 600 miles away from friends and family. He grilled me on interview questions, and when I asked him why he was doing this, he said, “I just don’t think you’ve prepared enough for this interview.” That night when I called to check in and say good-night, husband sounded like something was horribly wrong. Having a grandmother in bad health, naturally I expected the worst. He then told me that he had gotten on my e-mail accounts and read my e-mails. I had been hanging out on a PRIVATE, FEE-PAID web-board writing fan fiction (under a made-up username, of course), and he reacted to this like I had been trolling for internet sex and posting nudie shots on the net. He told me that he just wanted to make sure I got this job and the minute anyone looked me up on the internet they would find me out. I got home from the interview and changed all my passwords, needless to say!
I got the job, so we were both very happy, although the husband almost acted surprised. He apologized for snooping on my e-mail account. His justification was “It’s like ‘Law and Order’ – you can’t use the evidence if it has been improperly acquired.” (Evidence of what, exactly, is still a mystery to me.) He said he was happy because it was a chance for us to start over. During this time I was kicking a small drinking problem (binging but not constantly drinking), so I looked forward to this chance to get well. I think I drink because when I’m buzzed I don’t have to listen to him correcting and “helping,” as he calls it. At any rate, I was interested to see if the behavior would change.
We moved in June of this year. For the most part he has behaved himself, although he did tell me after I received my first paycheck that no, I may not buy a washer and dryer because I have bills to pay off. I produced a budget and he said he was impressed. I also told him I was taking over the heating/cooling bills because I am tired of sweating all summer and freezing all winter because “When you start paying the utility bills you can set the thermostat however you want.”
In general, I feel very resentful. I know people who really love each other forgive each other, but it’s very hard to do that when this kind of treatment is constant, and sometimes something will set him off and the next time it will be something else entirely. If he had thrown a punch or made a threat, I could act decisively because that’s pretty overt. But this seems to be low-level and constant, so that even when the behavior’s not there I have a hard time believing it won’t happen. I am pretty sure he’s not naturally like this because if he was he’d treat our friends and family this way, and he doesn’t. As a result, I also get a hefty dose of praise for him from my family and friends, whom he doesn’t treat this way. It’s as if he has enough sense to stop just short of sending me over the edge. Yes, he is kind and can be very loving, but I have no idea what I’m going to say that he will have to correct or critique. And it’s very hard to love someone who treats you like that.
I would greatly appreciate any and all comments anyone can provide. Sorry for being so long.
Edited by goddess1871 (10/03/07 04:04 PM)
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5191
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I vote for self-absorbed, controlling jackass. I was married to one of those. Officially, I think he could probably score low on the charts of "narcissist", but not so pathological that he makes EVERYONE miserable around him, just the favorite target of the moment. If I were you, I'd look up the various personality disorders & see if any of them fit, becasue his behaviors are really nasty.
OK... to be honest, when I left my ex, people were convinced that it should be called "abusive". They asked me, "should people be treated the way you were treated?" and the answer, "of course not", was easy... but it means I was mis-treated... which apparently translates to "abused". ICK.
I really do NOT like that lable. I was an adult when I married him. I got into it with my eyes open to the stuff that I valued & looked for. Who would have known that I'd get a report card after every interaction with any other human being? Who would have known that my clothing and daily routine would be cause for suggesting I was morally corrupt (clearly trying to entice some OTHER MAN by wearing low cut shirts). Who would have known that this decent, accomplished, educated man would be treating me like a worthless human being behind closed doors? If I dared to defy him, I was in for a sleepless night full of being berated & accused of being morally corrupt.
I did not drink, but if I used Vanilla or mouthwash, I was bringing alcohol into the house and therefore must be an addict (he's from a very conservative religious tradition).
It WOULD have been easier if he'd beaten me. I could have left. Or if he'd cheated on me. But he did none of those things. I am a strong person and I have faith. And I had made my bed, so I was determined to lie in it, even when it meant driving home from work every day, crying to know that I was about to get back home to him. I didn't leave till he made it clear to me that he intended me to convert from my own faith, which I felt was wrong & disrespectful, and he admitted that when we married & he said he respected my faith, that it was a lie, but it was a lie designed to save my immortal soul by getting me close to him and he could teach me how to be right, at which point I would naturally CHOOSE to convert. He was really upset that he hadn't been successful.
I blamed it all on the religion, and left him.
But it was not his faith, it was him. He is a controlling, self-absorbed jackass! Religion did not explain his unnatural tendency to accuse me of being a bad housekeeper if he was losing any other argument. Religion did not explain his very strange jealousy if I even said "hello" to another man in public. Religiou was NOT teh problem.
I was crazy to have stayed as long as I did. And I get the feeling that so are you.
Look, the way mine convinced me that I'm a trashy housekeeper, yours seems to be trying to convince you that you cannot manage money. Keeping the heat off in the winter JUST to punish you for not working when you were finishing your PhD? Being so pushy & such, as if his contribution to teh family budget cannot support the two of you (and living on a shoestring is common when the advanced degrees are in progress... so DUH... you didn't have extra to throw around... but the pressure to finish & get a job, the obsessive prying & trying to find out stuff about you that ight have to be FIXED so you can get a job... GEEE).
Doesn't he ahve a job? He's followed you around a lot. What does he do? I HOPE his aspiration in life goes to somethng a little more ambitious than managing YOUR career! I HOPE he was doing something that could easily move from place to place, so that it didn't wreck your incomes... which MIGHT have given him a good cause to do some of the money-controlling foolishness.
Which doesn't mean that he did it RIGHT, just that... .well, I've found that peopel with these personality disorders take a little grain of truth & blow it up into a full-fledged disaster or cause for abuse or humiliation.
OH, and I had to laugh about how you shut him up for a while... I did a similar thing once, asking him to go ahead & give me the "report card" for my behaviro at the party we were driving home from, so that I could get it over with and relax when we got home. He was furious that I was accusing him of being mean and didn't know how to respond without being mean. Unfortunately, he thought on it a while & came up with excuses for why he had to be mean... it was to help me learn to be better. Oh, he was just SO self-sacrificing to spend his efforts on trying to improve the utterly hopeless Gigi!
Clearly, your husband's his way of handling things with you is mean & not effective. You need to decide whether it's worth staying.
Frankly, if it hadn't been a fundamental religious diffeence, I think my ex could have benefitted from marital counselling. I could have pointed out his belittling ways & he could have learned how to get things to happen without being nasty. He could hav epointed out what he thought was my essential laziness about housework & I could have figured out how to hire help to make up for the fact that I was not home to do all the housework. We could have made it work with counselling, I believe... IF it hadn't been for the more fundamental differences that would not ever be fixed.
Only you will know if there's something so fundamentally different about the two of you that's capable of being fixed, or if there's a chance that you've just both got some really bad, entrenched habits, that might be fix-able with a little work.
Good luck in figureing out which it is.
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goddess1871
New
Reged: 10/03/07
Posts: 14
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Gigi,
THanks for your insight! I don't think he's an abuser either, but sometimes it's so constant I have a hard time telling the difference.
And yes, he has a job. When we moved to Indiana he got a job with a company in LA in which he telecommutes, so as long as he has a cable modem he's good to go. As far as religion is concerned, we are both members of the same denomination (we were when we met). He is a preacher's kid, so I often get the "morally self-righteous" vibe from him, since I'm the child of divorced parents.
Like I said, I'm giving this a year to look around and see what I want to do.
BTW, someone sent me a PM asking for examples of criticism. OK, last night we were at Wal-Mart. I have been scrubbing the basement floor and walls so we can paint down there and install a washer and dryer. I had intended on buying the 5-gallon bucket of Kilz since the basement is HUGE and it's cheaper to buy it in the large bucket. He told me no, we were buying the one-gallon size because I ALWAYS buy too much when I buy anything in bulk, and while we're on it, I shouldn't be painting the basement at all because I'm supposed to be working on my dissertation and I always find to work on things other than my dissertation. How we went from paint to dissertations is beyond me. Not the best example, but hey, it is what it is. When we got out to the car, he thanked me for trusting him. It had nothing to do with trust, I just knew that I wasn't going to win that argument. Then he was pouty because I didn't just smile sweetly and tell him how right he was.
One of my other "favorites" was one time I left a message on a friend's phone when I had forgotten what I was supposed to bring to a potluck. This is a VERY good friend, someone I could say just about anything to. Anyway, I laughed into the phone and said "Ha ha, I'm on [censored], I totally forgot what I was supposed to bring, blah blah blah..." The minute I get off phone, he looks at me in all seriousness and says "You know, you need to be a lot more careful about what you say to people, how do you know she doesn't have relatives on [censored]?" WTF!!!
And for what it's worth, last May marked our THIRD time in counseling.
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Sarah1014
Platinum
Reged: 04/12/07
Posts: 2363
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I think I'd rather be hit.
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goddess1871
New
Reged: 10/03/07
Posts: 14
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[quote]I think I'd rather be hit. [/quote]
Ha! Me too. My mother's second husband was extremely violent and verbally abusive, so I know what to look for when it's overt, and he KNOWS that he might punch first, but I will absolutely be the last one punching!
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gigi
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Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5191
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I know you said that flippantly, but the truth in my own marriage was that if I'd been hit, I'd have had clear justification to divorce him, and becasue I wasn't, I stuck around. I admit now that it was abusive. I admit now that I suffered some ego issues over it and it took a LONG time for me to recognize waht a normal disagreement was as opposed to a coercive demand that I change. But I will NEVER admit that I was a victim. I chose to stay for as long as I did and when I came to a rational conclusion that it did not make sense to stay any longer, I chose to leave. simple as that. I did not need to have anyone convincing me that I was a victim.
If I'd been victimized once, that woul dhave been the last time! I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself. No one does that to me. But... the emotional stuff. It's tough to put a finger on, and I STILL refuse to acknowledge taht I was a victim, even though I don't mind telling my husband that his own ex victimized him when she did exactly the same stuff to him that my ex did to me! And frankly, my husband refuses to agree that he was ever a victim, either. He stayed as long as it suited him, and until he could no longer be a positive influence for the kids while being in her household (when she started treating him like a slave & showing the kids this nasty way of being was effective)... he was victimized by the fact that she really used the system after he left her, but he will not, will NEVER agree that he was a victim in his marriage. He will agree that she is abusive, that his emotional state & ego suffered, but he is as stubborn as I am about it. As competent adults, we do not want to be victims. I refuse! He does too.
So, the question then becomes whether it's bear-able or unbearable, whether you're better with him or without him (as Ann Landers used to ask). It's a good question, and I think it applies here, too. We all know what I did... I left the bum. And maybe this poster should, too... but only she can tell whether she's hit her limit of how much abuse she'll take.
Figureing that out would be a whole lot easier if we'd ever been hit!
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goddess1871
New
Reged: 10/03/07
Posts: 14
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Yes, I did say it flippantly to a large degree. Absolutely I would get out if he ever hit me but I don't think I would just run.
I have been journalling for the last few months (bought a notebook to journal in DURING said interview, ironically enough), and looking back is really opening my eyes. A 25-minute "discussion" while I'm out of town about why the husband should give the dogs their heartworm medicine? Demands that I watch out the car window rather than read because he "went this way so you could see the scenery, not so you could read that crap"? Excuse me? I've worked too freakin' hard and gone through too dang much to put up with that nonsense! ...
And yet, my best friend asked the other night "Do you love him?" And my answer is yes, I do love him, although I must be honest and say that that love is greatly diminished since like I said it is hard to love someone who constantly treats you this way. I think he is very shrewd and knows how to go right up to the limit but never go over it.
Oh, and I think you asked...his brother has Asperger's Syndrome and I see some of those traits in the husband, although he's already made it clear that HE doesn't have that problem and no, he's NOT going to go get tested.
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Sarah1014
Platinum
Reged: 04/12/07
Posts: 2363
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I could never hang with this "self-absorbed, controlling jackass" as Gigi eloquently nails it.
Although I hung with an Borderline alcoholic for 13 years.
Good Luck. Find the nearest door.
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gigi
Platinum
Reged: 11/06/06
Posts: 5191
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Asburgers? Oh, that's odd! How about narcissistic, borderline or sociopathic? Try reading Sociopath Next door & Stop walking on Eggshells (for sociopath & borderline) and also google Narcissist... you'll see the criteria, but mroe importantly, you'll see what others have seen in thier narcissistic mates, and it's easier to understand & figure out whetehr yours is extreme enough to call it a diagnosis.
When you figure out whether they ahve CHARACTERISTICS of one of those syndromes or disorders, it gets a whole lot easier. Not like you have to have it diagnosed for sure, but just to KNOW helps... it helps figure out why they're doing certain things, how to avoid issues, how to "stop walking on eggshells"... if that's what you've been doing.
We've figured out how to at least not react so strongly to my husband's ex's nonsense, becasue we realize where it is coming from & it's not so inexplicable any more. Heck, it started to be easier to identify & explain her inconsistent stories when we recognized the patterns of the stories. And suddenly the judges & therapists started to figure it out, because we know what inconsistencies to point to. We're no longer disorganized in figuring out what is her story. Being disorganized is what makes it possible for perfect strangers to not realize that she's lying... because when ALL you do is refute one little part of what she's said, it doesn't address her larger issue. When you figure it out, point OUT the larger issue that she was trying to imply, and THEN refute the little stupid thing that she was using to try to make it look like the larger issue was a real issue... THEN people realize that they're being given a snow job.
Oh, I guess I don't have to give details... just that it helps a LOT when you figure out her problem & where it comes from, and THEn try to figure out how to handle it.
The friend who recommended Sociopath Next Door to me... she was amazed...her ex fit th eprofile perfectly. Once she realized this, it was SO easy for her to simply separate emotionally from her ex. It was SO easy to stop the game playign that he'd been doing, and now she's got a really happy divorce... she never talks to him, he never talks to her... the kids go between the two & there's no need to really explain, they can see whose house works & whose house is not happy, and all is well with the world.
Truly, it's a great thing. If you see some symptoms of asburgers', maybe it does not have to be full-blown to affect you, or for your knowledge of the syndrome to help you out, but that's an odd one. I'd really look more atthe borderline & sociopathic ones to see if either applied, first...
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mistake#2
Platinum
Reged: 07/19/06
Posts: 3310
Loc: Florida
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[quote]I vote for self-absorbed, controlling jackass. I was married to one of those. Officially, I think he could probably score low on the charts of "narcissist", but not so pathological that he makes EVERYONE miserable around him, just the favorite target of the moment. If I were you, I'd look up the various personality disorders & see if any of them fit, becasue his behaviors are really nasty.[/quote]
I 2nd that. He's a jerk...and it sounds like there were underlying issues of jealousy due to your pursuing higher education.
Decide whether you can live with the behavior, change the behavior or not live with him. Is either of you willing to change how you handle the situations? People tend to continually communicate the same way & you can clearly see the behavior/outcome is the same as well.
Is counseling an option?
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