thank you again trnrmom.

You understand a lot. Of course i have to explain my side & you know that and i am glad of that and i will explain more.

I am so saddened and angered on so many different levels

there is one thing i should have explained in my last reply: I have often spoken up to him as well as freezing up in shock, fear & ignorance.

What a horrible existence (i certainly cannot perceive this as a loving marriage/partnership) to freeze up, feel fear or ignorant

so i am not totally passive. At times i can even make a stand and tell him so or insist on doing what i think i should (he doesn't like that as he wants me to obey him & has said so and has said he is head of the household - note, he is not religious at all though, but i am.)
he sure feels that head of household makes him right; where did this come from: It sounds like this is a dynamic he learned early on,possibly seeing his dad abuse mom and she was compliant????

I have had to work on being assertive with him & i suddenly realized that the morning after the wedding when he was very nasty to me (but i couldn't work out why). I have had a lot of fear about talking to or dealing with him and have had to work on that. He is very judgmental, punitive & sure his perspective is the one truth.
So very sorry this is your existence

he sits on grievances because i have opposed him & can retaliate. He does not talk openly & work as a team. He would have made me have a nothing life if i had let him. There is so much i could say.

Again, it seems after all these yrs. He cannot or will not change and only you have made changes in your reactions to him...i can only imagine the stress you are dealing with and i hope you are seeing a therapist or at least have a support system of friends or family that you can turn to

he often says things that seem very inaccurate to me but he is very sure about himself. He has woven stories & scripts about me that are not true or are skewed away from reality & aren't updated over the decades of our marriage and that he keeps bringing up to justify a claim he is making about me such as that i don't want to contribute financially. He says them to me even though i know what is the truth. Maybe he fabricates what happened and doesn't realize that he does? But, though i know they are false, somehow i come to doubt my truth and my self confidence is constantly shaken.

He really knows how to manipulate you into doubting your truth and reality...no wonder your self confidence is shaken

but i have come a long way in not trying to explain to him as that never works and also leaves me vulnerable to his emotional attacks and diversions.

I'm just shaking my head;just reading what you write seems to me that he has diminished your self confidence to such an extent that you really do not have an alternative but to remain with this bully and walk on emotional landmines that he leaves for you to navigate...

His patterns of behaviour are typical of what is described in books on abuse such as by lundy bancroft and patricia evans and more recent ones. I have quite a library of abuse books and am currently rereading them more intensively again now that i have retired & have more time. The more balanced ones can be such a help.

Yet all the information in the books isn't going to change him...again, as others have written re your post, only you know whether you should leave, when you should, etc. And maybe you are just surviving in this marriage but getting little or no benefit from it...

About the matter of saying things that impact on him, i am not sure that i generally have much impact. Mostly i have to go ahead and do things he doesn't want me to do in matters that seem to indicate to me that that is what i should do. But i can have an impact such as when he was yelling at our first child when he was teething for the first time & very upset. My husband started shouting "shut up" repeatedly at him & i just locked down & faced him off & told him the fact & that he was behaving wrongly. He did stop doing that and actually was a big help in carry him around & patting him, etc.

Again, am so saddened and shocked to read this; those red flags were there many yrs. Ago and there certainly is in my opinion an imbalance comparing the good in him to the evil in him

i am often am so confused about him because i don't know if he is autistic or anti-social. But his behaviour certainly has many negative attributes and i know i "inherited" him like this. His family has related issued in different presentations & combinations. His oldest brother seems to have made it his mission to torment me. I think he is just a jerk.

So you have other family members who also abuse/torment you???

My children are all in their twenties and, yes, they have been negatively affected. He does a lot for them as has always been the case, making them dependent and the more selfish ones just use him. He has put me on the sidelines with the children. When they were young, he wanted me to be their servant and now he wants me to be his servant.

Interesting way you describe servant..now he's got his adult kids to carry on with the same abusive behavior as their dad; i wouldn't doubt that they will choose women whom they can abuse and bully but hopefully they might say: I'd never treat a woman the way my dad has treated my mom

but at the same time i am glad they have his assistance such as with cars & household maintenance. I think our son may be becoming selfish like him & he also can be unpleasant but not abusive. They are all pretty selfish actually & i have had to let go & settle for what good goes on.

So sad, but not shocked to read that dad's legacy has been passed on

apart from my being busy & unwell now, a problem in my communicating with this site is that we are in opposite time zones.